Hello. This is Arianna Portolatin with the Becker's
Dental and DSO review podcast. I'm thrilled to
be joined today by doctor Rick Mars, the
president of Dental Care Group in Florida and
a global faculty member at Align Technology. Doctor
Mars, thank you so much for being here
today. It's great to have you.
It is my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Yes. Of course. To start us off, can
you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell
us a little bit about your background?
Okay. I, am a proud graduate of both
Emory University and Georgetown University School dental
school, school of dentistry, and,
I have been practicing dentistry for thirty seven
years.
I have four offices.
Two of them are right next to each
other, an adult in the kids practice in
Aventura, Florida,
one in Pembroke Pines, Florida,
one in
Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
We have about,
14 dentists working with us. Our entire team
is about 80 people
and,
love what we do. Been doing it a
long time, doing the right thing,
and, happily married for thirty five years with
three awesome sons and a beautiful wife.
Great. Very nice. Thank you so much for
the introduction.
First question here, what are some of the
biggest issues that you're following in the dental
industry this year?
You know, I think every practice owner,
watches a lot of the different things going
on in the news primarily.
There are things that are happening, and without
getting political, you know, down in Florida here,
we just had the whole fluoride issue happen
where they
have this involvement of people who aren't the
experts to the nonscientific community kinda making decisions
for dentistry.
That really concerns me. That's something I follow
constantly.
We're also looking at things like,
you know, the cost of being a dentist
today.
Insurance reimbursements are not keeping pace with everything
else in dentistry in terms of
equipment supplies and labs and things like that,
and even employee salaries are everybody's making more
money,
in terms of employees, and it's been very
competitive in
my market for sure.
But, you know, it's the challenges that we
do so we can,
keep our practices running positively and doing the
things that we need to do, and we
wanna do it right. And,
the things I watch are a lot of
people are doing the right things,
becoming very innovative, doing different things in their
practices.
But, unfortunately,
you watch a lot of things in dentistry
that are concerning to me where you watch
people
using inferior products. At what time a few
years back people were, you know, sending their
lab work out of the country.
That was a big trend until people found
out they were getting crowns back with lead
in them and inferior stuff. And now, you
know, you're watching things like dentists are going
and using things that they basically shouldn't be
doing like,
inferior products. You know, if it's, clear aligners,
they'll go for the cheapest company, not the
best company.
And these are things that, you know, I'm
always trying
to preach to younger dentists to do the
right thing and give your patients the best,
and that's the way I was trained.
And when you see those things going on,
that's kinda disturbing, and these are the things
that we're following.
Some great insights and thoughts from you there.
Thank you so much. Next question here. What
are you most excited about when it comes
to dentistry, and what makes you nervous about
the
industry?
What makes me excited? Dentistry makes me excited.
We do an amazing thing for patients
on a on a daily basis.
We're changing people's lives. We're making them happy,
giving them beautiful smiles, taking patient patients out
of pain,
keeping their mouths healthy.
Really the
get getting to see more people realizing
about the mouth body connection
and hearing patients come in and saying, and
it's not just us preaching it to our
patients.
You know, I I've had a number of
patients over the years say, you're my most
important doctor.
And I kinda look at them and go,
you have a cardiologist,
and you have all these other yeah. But
it all starts in the mouth. And if
I'm keeping my mouth happy,
you know, that's,
really the most important thing to me. So
when we have patients,
you know, getting it, that gets me excited
when we're doing great things.
And, you know, we take a lot of
pride in our practice. A lot of my
doctors will come show me, you know, amazing
cases they completed and, you know, my paradise
has an amazing picture book of of the
things that he's done, and he goes around
the country and teaches also like I do.
And,
you know, it's it's an excitement about just
dentistry, just doing it and doing it right.
The innovations in dentistry are ever changing.
You know, the big hot butt right now
is AI.
But,
it's,
it's it's it's the most important thing that
we're doing right now is just giving our
patients the best we can and staying current
with everything that we do.
So
that that's the name of the game for
us is doing it right, staying current,
staying there with innovation,
and that's really what has me most excited
the most. It's just it's it's it's a
great time to be practicing dentistry at the
end of the day.
Great.
And I know you mentioned earlier a bit
of things that are,
giving you some concern in the industry, but
I wanted to, see if you had anything
else to add for anything that makes you
nervous about dentistry right now.
You know,
there was it's it's slowed up a little
bit,
but there was this big trend with do
it yourself dentistry.
Mhmm. You know, there there's there's so much
wisdom that we import on our patients. And
when people hear logic into some of their
decisions, they go, yeah. I I I know
you're right. And, yeah, I guess I shouldn't
have done that. You know? When people make,
health care decisions based on money alone, they're
generally making bad decisions,
and that's why people do do it yourself
dentistry.
So I've been doing Invisalign
for over twenty years,
and I've done over 4,000 cases. And I
had a patient come in yesterday who told
me,
that she tried using a do it yourself
product by the name that's not important. You
can fill in the blank because it doesn't
matter. And she goes, it was really unsuccessful.
I go, can I ask you a silly
question? I said,
does logic tell you that you have zero
training
and you can get the same results that
I can when I'm using a better product?
I've done 4,000 cases. I know exactly what
I'm doing, and you're clueless. And she literally
goes, I don't even know why I did
it. You know, she got sucked in on
social media,
and, you know, there'll be an influencer that
comes on and and preaches something to the,
you know, patients out there that they're using
such and such a product.
And people know the influencers are getting paid
to do this, and they'll just get sucked
in, and they'll make bad health care decisions
based on something they pick up online.
Even yesterday too, I had a patient
call me up concerned that his periodontal condition
was resulting in all these health problems because
he read something on WebMD that it could
be the situation.
And he went through all these symptoms and
told me everything that he had, and WebMD
said it could be related to periodontal disease.
I said, I agree with you a 100%.
I said, there's only one problem. He says,
what's that? I go, you don't have periodontal
disease.
So two plus two does not equal seven.
And and patients, you know, knowledge is power,
but, unfortunately, people can't delineate
what's good knowledge, what's good information.
And this is a concern to me that,
you know, it's great when patients can come
in and say, hey. I heard about this.
What do you think about it? You are
the expert.
But lots of times people depend on social
media
or something that they look up online on
Google. They Google something and they think it's
just the equivalent to,
you know, my dental degree is because they
Googled it. And we all know logically
that's not the truth.
But while people are doing it, they get
sucked into making bad decisions.
So that's that's really what makes me nervous
is people doing things that hurt themselves.
There's a gazillion trends. I mean, charcoal toothpaste
and and, I mean, they're doing thank god
they're not telling people to drink bleach or
anything like that today,
but virtually every dumb trend that's gone out
there gets refuted by modern dental science.
And by the time the the science catches
up to what's online, it's already too late.
There's been thousands and thousands of people that
make bad decisions. So that that's probably what
concerns me most about things going on in
the industry right now.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Thank
you for,
adding those thoughts there. Definitely some wise words
from you as well.
Last question here. What will the most effective
health care leaders need to be successful in
the next two to three years?
Okay. So,
every time I get a question anywhere related
to this as far as advice or what's
what's my key to my success, it always
starts with doing the right thing.
And,
when you do the if you're not doing
the right thing, you won't be successful, period.
You might have some short term
financial gain or whatever it is, but if
you're not making good decisions doing the right
thing,
you're off to a bad start. So start
with doing the right thing, number one.
Number two, getting smart with technology.
Not getting too sucked in into what's the
latest trend. You know? The hot button in
every industry right now is AI. What can
we do with AI? What can we do
with AI?
You know, we get very smart when it
comes to new technology. We generally,
unless something is really, really, really just blowing
us away. In my practice, we don't get
sucked into doing the first one that comes
out there. We generally wait and see when
two or three products tend to come out
there, and we see who's the best one
and why is it the best one.
So, you know, working with technology and innovation,
I think we can't go through this podcast
without mentioning the consolidation of dentistry.
I think people have to make good decisions
when they're doing that. Again, there's a lot
of
good organizations
out there that are doing consolidation,
and there's a lot of organizations that are
just really their business organizations is what they
are, and they don't care about the patients.
So I think the successful people in the
future are gonna still maintain even if they're
in consolidation.
Patients come first. And if you do the
right thing by the patient,
all the rest follows. If you're not doing
the right thing by the patient, even if
you are doing the right thing by the
patient, lots of times patients don't realize they're
real because they don't wanna hear bad news.
But you just have good principles, do the
right thing,
stay involved with good technology, solid things. And
when you're making those business decisions with consolidation
or anything else, to make good decisions with
good organizations that really do care about the
patient at the end of the day.
There you have it.
Great. Thank you so much for sharing that
there. That's all I have for you today,
doctor Morris. Thank you so much for joining
us. Been Been a pleasure speaking with you
on the podcast today, and looking forward to
connecting with you again in the future.
Absolutely. Have a great day. You too. Bye
bye.