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This is Fri Hatton with the Becker's Dental Castilla Cell podcast.
I'm thrilled to be joined today by Ray Caruso,
c e o of Lone Peak Dental Group. Ray, thank you so much for being here today.
Thanks, Ruth. I'm happy to be on.
Great. Well,
could you just start off by introducing yourself and telling us a bit about your
background?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I've spent most of my adult life in dentistry.
I started out as a dental assistant when I was 19,
joined the Army and over a couple of years they saw
something in me and, and sent me to hygiene school.
So I did hygiene for a little bit, and when I got out of the army,
I went back to school, got my degree,
and started working for Hartland Dental Care at their,
at one of their offices at the front desk. I was with them for 11 years.
I left as a regional director and moved up to Chicago area
where you are and, um, started working as a, uh,
VP of ops for a small startup DSO called Decision One Dental.
Um, they had, uh, just a handful of practices at the time,
and by the time I left I was working with them as their coo and we had grown
it up to 20 practices.
And then I came over to Lone Peak Dental Group in 2017.
I've been here, um, almost six years, been enjoying every minute of it.
We've built this to be one of the largest pediatric dental groups in the
country. We have 70 practices in 14 states, and, um,
we continue to provide access to care for pediatric patients, um,
in the markets that we serve.
Fantastic. Thank you for that introduction. My first question for you is,
what are the biggest issues you're following in dental today?
The biggest issues that I'm following is access to care.
There are millions of kids out there and adults that aren't able to get
quality dental care in the communities in which they're in.
And there's a lot of dentists that will not accept certain types of insurance
and certain types of payers, mainly Medicaid.
And so we do our best to combat that by providing services
for these kids in the areas that we are in.
There are so many needs out there,
and really if you look at the payers and the providers, it's no wonder why,
um, why doctors,
dentists won't accept some of these payers because of the low reimbursement
rates and where the insurance companies and even the states have the ability
to change that, which will increase more access to care. Um, I,
I think that's one of the biggest issues that I'm, I'm following personally.
Interesting. And do you see anything, um, any big movement in the,
in the reimbursement space that'll, um,
kind of help dentist be more inclined to,
to accept these different insurance types? Do you see any movement, uh,
when it comes to policies?
I have, I have and, and really excited about, uh,
what some of the states are doing and what some of the politicians are doing in,
in this, uh, in,
in some different regions that are providing higher reimbursement rates
for the dentists and, um,
allowing more dentists to see a reason why they should be able to provide
treatment. 40% of kids are on Medicaid,
and when,
when you have that large of a number of population
and so many doctors and dentists not accepting that,
the reason is usually reimbursements. And so the politicians, the states, uh,
governments are seeing this as one of the needs that they have
to make a change for. And I've seen in several states,
not just small increases of two or three or 5%,
but larger increases, uh, 10%, 20%, 30% even.
So as those states continue to make these changes,
other states are jumping on.
Very interesting. Thank you. My next question for you is,
what are you most excited about and what makes you nervous when you look towards
the future of dentistry?
Yeah, so I'm most excited about technology, um,
e especially retain, um, pertaining to administratives, um,
services that can, that really can bring us into this decade. You know,
we're, everyone is short staffed there,
lots of people are talking about being short staffed.
So why are we relying on old technology like calling insurance companies
and waiting for insurance companies to get back to us, to, to get, uh, um,
to get confirmation that our patients are are on there? Um,
why are we, why can't we do more scheduling online?
Why isn't 90% of all of our scheduling done online? Um,
and, you know, we could have technologies that, that increase or,
or improve the, um, uh,
credentialing and, and just getting us all into this,
into this decade that we're in. Um,
I even see technologies that we can be using that,
that can have notifications for patients and waiting rooms as to when their
patient, when their, when, when their kids are gonna be done. I mean,
I order a pizza and it lets me know when it goes in the oven,
when it comes out of the oven, when it's in the driver's hands.
Why can't we have that same kind of technology to keep our patients or impaired
informed? Um, so those kind of things that can,
that can help us leverage the,
the team that we do have and give them different responsibilities
instead of, uh,
consistent administrative tasks like scheduling appointments and get them
into more, uh,
patient focused technologies or patient focused administrative duties
that are, uh, you know, working directly with the patients,
keeping patients and parents informed. So, um, that's what excites me.
Um, what makes me nervous, you know, I still,
I have to go back to the access of care. You know, DSOs,
they really understand their market and their market is the doctor that's,
that's who they're really serving as the doctor.
And they know that doctors want to be in attractive cities.
So what happens to that rural practice? Um,
there are few providers that wanna live in small towns,
but there's plenty and plenty of patients. So w what are,
what are people doing about that problem? And we personally,
we combat that by providing an ownership component for, uh,
for our doctors. So they own, uh, a, uh,
a significant stake in the practice in which they work.
So that keeps 'em tied to the practice. Uh, it keeps them focused on,
on ensuring the success of the practice.
And we have greater retention with our doctors because of it.
And we can go ahead and put practices in some of these
secondary and tertiary markets and treat these,
these patients that really need access to care so they're not driving an hour
and a half, two hours to see a dentist because we do have that ownership model.
So that's how we're combating it. Um, I know some other, some other, uh,
DSOs are doing, uh, making other changes, but this is what we do.
Interesting. And that, that's a really cool, um, unique solution to,
to the issue of getting access to care in those maybe rural or or less
populated areas. Thank you for sharing.
Yeah, absolutely.
So what will be the most effective healthcare leaders?
What will the most effective healthcare leaders need to be successful in the
next two to three years?
You know, I don't think it's gonna be any different two to three years from now,
e except it might be even more challenging, but attracting and retaining talent,
that is the number one thing right now. Uh, it will be the, i i,
I believe it'll be the number, uh, the number one thing in,
in the future because everybody is seeking the same
talent. They're out there looking for the same people. And,
and as people get more and more, um,
a as dentistry gets more and more consolidated,
you will find that it won't be about who the company is
or how much I'm getting paid.
It will be about what are you providing me as what kind of culture am I
getting and what, um, what you currently ha.
So I, this is why I like to know that this is gonna get edited, uh, .
Cause I I got off track there a little bit, sorry. Um,
it will be more about what kind of culture and what kind of company am I going
to than the commodity of how much am I getting paid.
So attracting the talent around culture
and what you stand for as a company is going to be more important than
how much are you paying, because that's, that's gonna be about the same around,
uh, throughout the whole country.
Fascinating. Thank you. And that's definitely a,
a theme I've heard from lots of other dental leaders as well. Well, Ray,
thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today,
and thank you for all of your great insights.
I look forward to connecting with you again in the future.
It was totally my pleasure. Thanks for asking me.