Hi, everyone. This is Lucas Voss with Becker's
Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to
the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. It's great to
have you excited for today's discussion from Pilots
to Making
Lab Management
stick. And joining me for today's discussion, also
very excited to have him, is Brandon Belfort.
He's the vice president of procurement at Heartland
Dental. Brandon, thanks so much for being here
today. Hey, Lucas. Yeah. Thanks for having me.
And for those that might not know you,
I do wanna start off with introductions
for everyone. Could you just give us an
overview or share a little bit about yourself
and and your work at Heartland?
Sure. Happy to. So, yeah, I've been with
with Heartland,
going on almost eleven years now, and,
had the pleasure of a great opportunity
to stand up our strategic sourcing organization and
and build it kind of from the ground
up with leadership from
doctor Workman and Pat Bauer, our CEO, and
then my boss, our chief growth officer, Mark
Greenstein, has been
alongside in a great team. So, yeah, we
we
have
the
responsibility
of managing all of our supplier partner relationships
and and making sure that
our supported doctors and teams get the best
deals
out there and and have everything they need
to deliver,
the highest quality patient care every day.
Yeah. I'm so excited to have you on
because that's certainly what you just described is
certainly not an easy feed for over 1,900
supportive practices
across the country.
And I I do wanna start off with
sort of laying the baseline for this, and
I think this is a great starter for
the conversation.
When you think about affordability
for those supportive practices,
what's your team's approach? What's Heartland's approach to
sourcing dental supplies and lab services, everything that's
needed, right? And and how do you balance
that cost with with that consistency
and and quality and also practice autonomy?
Yeah. Well, you you hit on you hit
on everything there, Lucas. So, you know, we
we view everything from
a true best value perspective. So it's, you
know, all things
when we're sourcing anything across all areas of
our business, it's you know, we look at
cost,
quality, delivery,
and, you know, strategic partnerships in in the
truest sense where,
you know, we
wanna deal with,
you know, supplier partners who are true partners
with us. But from a a clinical standpoint,
when we're talking about
supplies, labs, equipment, everything that's used in patient
care,
that truly starts and stops with our clinical
council. They lead us through it.
They're a group of our
deeply experienced
Heartland supported providers,
and they're experts in all of the categories.
And and they really lead us through
evaluating
those products,
and they give us the thumbs up before
we go negotiate anything
that those products and those lab partners and
and supplier partners are
truly worthy
of being,
in our in our terms, we call them
diamond trusted.
So being diamond trusted,
products and services to to support those 3,000
plus doctors and and as you said, 19
over 1,900 offices today.
I do wanna touch on that diamond trusted
piece a little bit more.
How is that designation
earned, and and why it's why is it
important to have a designation like this?
Yeah. It's a great question. From the time
doctor Workman,
you know, started Heartland Dental and and founded
Heartland Dental, it's always been
doctor led.
And,
before
our strategic sourcing or our procurement team,
before we enter into any negotiations
with any clinical supplier,
Our clinical counsel leads us through,
a clinical evaluation
by truly using
those products and and those lab services
in their offices
every day.
And then they
come to us and say, okay.
This product or this lab service has the
clinical efficacy to to earn the Diamond Trusted
status
within Heartland Dental, and then that gives our
team the green light
to then go negotiate
with those suppliers to get, in our view,
you know, the the
best price
and best terms
that
we as as the largest
end user and buyer of,
you know, I guess, outside of maybe the
US government
of, dental supplies, equipment, lab services in The
US that that we deserve,
you know, that those best deals. So
that's kind of that's kind of the why
behind,
you know, our doctor led philosophy and our
clinical council structure.
Yeah. You talked a little bit about the
collaborative aspect from this. We started off, obviously,
with the procurement piece, which is already a
collaborative process, but also this process.
Right, the the diamond trusted products piece to
this. I'd love to know how you're
incorporating ongoing feedback into this as well and
sort of performance data that that is already
there after something is approved. Right? What does
that process look like to to have an
ongoing,
process?
Yeah. I I I think,
it's it's important if we maybe take a
step back and and
really just tell you how we
how we approach strategic sourcing at Heartland Dental.
And and this is something that, you know,
as I mentioned, Mark and Mark Greenstein and
myself,
really kinda came up with
in dental, which was a little bit, I
think, unique at the time and and installed,
you know, ten or so years ago. But
we really kinda have six levers that
is is how we operate our sourcing,
overall. And and those six levers are,
you know, we're continuously
scanning the market.
We have a clinically valid validated formulary.
We are wildly open to private label products
and offerings.
We negotiate with manufacturers
and distributors.
We
prefer firm fixed pricing.
And all this is enabled by marketplace technology,
which we'll talk about in a little bit,
I think. And,
it's aligned with our doctor compensation.
So
back to your question,
the the first lever is
continuously scanning the market.
And
we
our supported doctors, you know, help us with
this, certainly,
supported hygienists and team members.
We always wanna be up to date with
the latest and greatest innovations in dental
and make sure that, you know, we're investing
where it makes sense. And and our supported
doctors and teams have
the latest and greatest of everything at the
best prices to to deliver that highest quality
patient care. So that's that's our overall approach.
Yeah. Improvement across the process at every single
level, which is so key to be able
to support all of those offices that we've
talked about earlier. And I wanna jump into
this innovation piece that you've talked about, a
little bit here.
You've recently selected Dentaira as the enterprise lab
management platform for your supported offices,
more about the partnership, what made now the
right time to expand that
partnership
specifically,
and sort of what criteria
went into it to say, okay. This is,
you know, enterprise ready, not just good.
Sure. I'll I'll I'll give it I'll give
it a shot. I this is a vision
we've had,
along with some of our doctor leaders for,
you know, a long time.
I think, first and foremost, we we're we're
always committed to finding scalable solutions
that continuously improve our doctor support and and
their patient outcomes.
And
five years ago or so, we selected Dentira,
which is a world class ordering platform for
supplies
at the time
to to give doctors and teams an intuitive
one stop shopping experience for all their dental
supplies.
And, really, what it does is it it
provides
product options at pricing options
that we've negotiated.
But, you know, we try to do our
best to educate doctors on what those diamond
trusted products are through Dentira.
So if we take that to the next
step,
our doctors and teams have come to us
over the years, and they've been looking for
a similar solution
on the lab side.
And, you know, the a solution that
helps with communicating with the labs, helps tracking
the order,
the the case throughout the manufacturing
process.
And
since Dantira
already powered our supplies purchasing,
expanding the partnership to labs,
gives our supported offices a unified platform for
basically all of their clinical needs.
And
as I I mentioned a few things, but
for
3,000 doctors across 1,900
practices,
this gives them one place where they can
order their supplies. They can
track
the lab case throughout the process,
have a predictable
time, and
that that lab case will be delivered back.
They can communicate with all of our diamond
trusted labs in in Dintera.
And then they'll also be able to see
financially,
how they're
spending,
you know, and and performing when it comes
to supply spend and lab spend
and have all of that available at their
fingertips real time.
So, you know, we we really think this
is one of the most advanced, scalable
lab supplies and labs e ecosystems
in dentistry.
Yeah. It's a more holistic
approach to the conversation as well, which is
is so key to be able to then
be, as you've mentioned, be scalable
across the board for practices.
Now,
Brandon,
the beauty of your job is in procurement,
right, this isn't going away. Unfortunately, we're always
going to see supply chain volatility most likely,
especially in 2026, but also beyond.
How is your team and how is Heartland
Dental working to maintain that quality and reliability
across the network for those practices in 2026?
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's a great question.
The way we the way I think about
it, anyway, we think about it is, you
know, the more and more volatility that
we have experienced
if, you know, we just start with certainly
COVID
and some of the supply chain issues that
that presented,
certainly, you know, the the noise around tariffs
over the last maybe, you know, twelve to
eighteen months. But all of that really kind
of amplifies the importance of
scale and alignment with
our true strategic partners
across all areas of the business.
But, you know, really now more than ever,
our supported doctors
and teams
with the leadership
of our clinical council, our operations
folks, our executive leadership,
and our team, we're
we're doing better and better every day is
truly acting as one.
So when we can align
and drive
our purchasing
to a smaller set of products
and lab services in our world. It's the
Diamond Trusted products and the Diamond Trusted Labs.
This allows our supplier partners
to
predict what they need to provide us and
at what price point. It also allows them
to then strip costs out from their supply
chain and share those savings with us.
So as we continue to to act as
one,
it'll
continue to allow Heartland Dental
to and our doctors and teams to have
the best and most predictable
prices
available.
And this just, again, fuels
their ability to deliver the highest quality dental
care
to the patients
and their teams and then, you know, ultimately,
the communities that that they serve.
Yeah. It all comes back to the collaborative
nature of everything that we've touched on at
the beginning of the conversation, which then in
turn leads to more stability,
across the network for you. Brandon,
so great to have you. Thanks so much
for being here and taking some time for
us. My pleasure. Thanks, Lucas.
Great to have you. And we also want
to thank our podcast sponsor, Heartland Dental. You
can tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare
by visiting our podcast page at beckershospitalreview.com.