Hello and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
My name is Chanel Bunger and I'm recording
live at the Becker's Healthcare
Future of Dentistry Roundtable in Chicago and sitting
down with Alexa Bracken, the VP of Communications
and Business Development at Houston, Texas Dental Spa.
Alexa, thank you so much for joining me
today. Thanks for having me, Chanel. I appreciate
it. Perfect. Well, to get us started, could
you please introduce yourself and tell us a
bit about your background? Yeah. So, again, I'm,
Alexa Bracken and I'm out of Houston.
My dad is a, general practitioner.
We specialize in
all facets of dentistry and we co own
Houston Texas Dental Spa.
We have,
started to develop and grow that. That's why
I'm here today is to hopefully
have some nice expansion into the DSO space.
We'll see. But I got started in dentistry,
not on purpose as probably most of the
people that I've spoken to here other than
the docs. So about 10 years ago, we
started working together and it's been been a
fun journey since. That's exciting. Yeah. But moving
forward, can you talk about some key experiences
that have shaped your leadership journey in the
dental space? Yeah, sure. So we together, my
dad and I traveled for many years teaching.
So teaching implant placement,
on his part, of course. And then I
would do the admin and and help docs
that were taking his courses,
to implement that into their practices. So it
was it was such a great opportunity to
see
where practices were falling short for their patients
and how how so many smaller private practices
operate.
Some of these were groups, but it really
gave me the opportunity to see the need
that we have for not only
efficiency and, you know,
tightening up ship in in terms of clinical
operations, but
the need that we have for true clinical
excellence.
And so that's that's very important to me
and something that I stress a lot. So
Got it. And you guys already mentioned expansion,
but can you maybe go into more detail
about, what strategic initiatives
are you prioritizing for growth and patient care?
Yeah, absolutely.
So again, you know, we center around clinical
excellence and how how can we how can
we do the best thing for the patient,
which I I think is all of our
goals. Right? I fully believe that as as
dentists and dental practitioners, like, we are the
the physicians of the head and neck. Right?
So that's our space. And how do we
better serve our patients? There's such an inequity
and where healthcare ends and where dentistry begins.
So trying to marry that and trying to,
make our
patient care much more comprehensive
is so important. And and I think we're
starting to to dip our toes into that.
But in our in our own practices, we've
we've really taken the initiative to expand into
chronic pain management and,
some of those more traditionally medical centered services
that are well within our scope. And that
nobody's providing to patients really,
truly taking care of TMJ in a way
that, that gives patients relief, you know? And,
and of course these things work out really
well for your business structure. Absolutely.
Yeah. Absolutely. Well,
can you talk about some of the challenges
that dental and DSO leaders are facing currently?
And how are you addressing them at Houston,
Texas Dental Spa? Yeah. You know what? I
think so much of it is patient education.
Right?
We're finding ourselves
in this really cool moment where people of
our generation are now the people that are
spending money on their healthcare. Right? And we
want knowledge. We want to research everything. We
we don't just believe the physician when we
go and they tell us to give us
a tell us to take a shot, you
know? So we as a profession,
I think are are starting to utilize AI
better.
But what what I'm seeing is that we're
leaning too much on it. So we're not
marrying it in a way where, you know,
we're overlapping symptoms with what we see on
an x-ray that the AI has identified, you
know. So I think if we can better
figure out how to,
utilize that in our patient education,
more than anything,
it'll help us to not only, you know,
get better outcomes for the patients, but also
follow those patients through their journey and have
better patient retention.
Obviously, we make more money by doing that
and, and all of that. Absolutely. Well, Alexa,
I wanna thank you for your time today.
But before I let you go, can you
talk about what essential qualities or skills should
emerging leaders in this industry cultivate?
You know, I mean, I I think that
that so many of the leaders that I've
met here today are are so sharp. Right?
They're they're so good. And I think we
get so wrapped up in in the business
side of things, the finances, and that's what
we have to do. Right? That's that's literally
our jobs. But at the end of the
day, I think we really have to remember
that
the journey of the patient is the most
important thing. You know? Clinical excellence is the
most important thing. And so if we can
if we can really help to develop more
of those fundamentals
and not just lead that for just the
doctors in our organizations to handle,
it makes us better leaders and, and everything
will fall in line from there.
Of course. Well, Alexa, I wanna thank you
once again for your time today and for
joining me on the Beggar's Healthcare podcast. Thank
you so much.