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This is Riz Hatton with the Becker's Dental Pasti. So podcast,
I'm thrilled to be joined today by John Button,
executive chairman of Collective Care Dental. John,
thank you so much for being here today.
My pleasure, Riz. Thanks for having me.
Could you start off by introducing yourself and telling us a bit,
a bit about your background? Sure.
Happy to do that. Uh, I grew up with, uh, the son of a doctor,
so healthcare has always been my passion. That said, I went to college.
I was married at a young age,
got out and went into an industry totally removed from this. Uh, I had,
uh, a good career. It, it was, uh, uh,
a very fulfilling in a lot of ways and I had a lot of responsibility,
but I never had the passion around that industry that I had around healthcare.
So I was running a, a fairly sizable business,
but just eight to get into healthcare.
So I left and brought the experience that I had to the healthcare environment
back probably in the early nineties. I had a consulting business,
consulting with doctors and dentists and hospitals and things like that on a
variety of issues. And, uh, so that's the background that I had.
Uh, when we finally decided to get into this business back in, uh,
2000, mid, uh, 2014 or so, uh,
we actually acquired our first practice in 2015 and Collective Care
went from there. So that's my background, Riz.
Fantastic. Thank you for sharing. Let's dive into my first question here.
What are the biggest issues you're following in dental today?
That's a great question. I, I'm going to look at it a couple different ways.
I think if I were to say, what are we following in healthcare today, it's,
it's obviously, or in dentistry today,
it's obviously the emerging technology and its
impact both clinical and nonclinical and its impact on the industry.
As I think about that question,
I also think about it in terms though of what are we focusing on internally
in our business,
and I think that's probably a little bit relevant to the conversation because as
with dentists all over the country,
staffing has been a real issue that we've had to focus on,
particularly since the pandemic and driving patient loyalty is what
dentistry's all about.
So we spend an awful lot of time thinking about how do we continue
to grow our patient base.
And I think that stems from patients receiving excellent dentistry
in a caring and compassionate manner from people who they enjoy being around
and people,
those people have to enjoy being around the folks they're working with to have
that show through to the patients.
So we spend an awful lot of time focusing on what I'll call culture within the
practices. Uh, you know, I think as you,
uh, as you try to grow your practice,
losing key people has had a real impact on this industry.
And as we all know,
the hygienist workforce decline somewhat after the pandemic.
So how do you attract great people and
keep them in ways other than just continually increasing
compensation because that's unsustainable.
And one of the things we noticed during the pandemic was that as the
workforce became, uh, smaller, uh,
then people started saying, well, we'll answer that by paying people more money.
And that, that is unsustainable,
particularly if you're running a business and you have to generate a profit at
some point, there's gonna be an end to that. And I think generally, people who,
who change jobs strictly for the money are only gonna
be there until the next dollar comes along. Uh,
so we've spent an awful lot of time focusing on
education internally, staff training, staff, education,
uh, how do we do things internally that are fun?
How do we get people to enjoy being together,
create an environment where people wanna be there for reasons other than
just fair pay? So obviously fair pay is a very important thing,
but we strive very hard to provide an environment that, uh,
encourages people to really wanna be there.
Interesting. Thank you. Sure. So looking ahead into the future of industry,
what are you most excited about and what makes you nervous?
The emergence of technology is critically important in this business,
and I think I'm, I'm very excited about that.
I think the quality of dentistry is gonna improve. I think the, uh, and that,
you know, with things like 3D printing,
the cost of providing some of that service will get better.
Digital dentistry is critically important.
It gives patients the opportunity with Al cameras, et cetera,
to see things differently than they were able to in the past.
So it's good from, uh,
in terms of educating the patients on what's really happening, you know,
in their own situation. 3D technology is great,
is a great diagnostic tool for certain things.
And then if you look beyond just the clinical technology,
the practice management,
web-based systems with analytics capabilities and things like that
are,
are very important to optimizing the performance of your practice,
the patient communicator tools, the on online appointment, appointment,
scheduling, you know, just all kinds of things. And then of course,
artificial intelligence, which is emerging now as extremely interesting,
uh, across not only dentistry and healthcare, but in, you know,
all kinds of other areas as well.
So those are some of the things I think that I'm excited about.
I think it's gonna really change the scope of the provision of
healthcare across all, all aspects of it,
not just dentistry.
Interesting.
So what will the most effective healthcare leaders need to be successful in the
next two to three years?
Uh, great question. A couple of things. First of all,
cybersecurity is probably the biggest threat that we have right now.
And sometimes I think that goes, uh,
it gets overlooked to the extent that the impact could, uh,
have. So, you know,
we're HIPAA compliant industry and payon data is so critically
important.
So obviously I think healthcare leaders always have to be very focused
on what the success factors in their industry are.
And so healthcare leaders are gonna have to be very attuned to keeping
their enterprises as secure as possible,
capturing good data,
utilizing the analytics are things that, you know, we,
we didn't have to do that to the same extent and didn't have the ability to do
that to the same extent in the past as we're gonna be able to do as we can
today, as we're gonna be able to do tomorrow.
So the really good leaders in this industry are gonna take advantage of that.
I think they're gonna take, uh, stay abreast of not only nonclinical,
but also clinical technology evolution.
And the, the, Tim, in my way of thinking, r uh,
it's not critical to be leading edge in everything. You know, I think the,
I always say this internally in our business,
w we need to determine what's truly an investment and provides the right kind of
return versus what's a cost.
Some things are nice to have and they're great and they look good and they're
pretty,
but they don't really improve the performance of the business to the extent that
they're worth the investment. Other things may seem expensive,
but the return, uh,
that you get for investing in that particular technology or whatever it is,
uh, it makes it something you, you can't do without.
So I think good leaders are gonna have the ability to think that way.
And I also think the last element,
I guess would be getting outside the box
. And I'm not suggesting this that I'm gonna say, but I,
I think one example of that is you read a lot today about the four day work
week.
I haven't heard anybody in dentistry talking about going to a four day work week
for the, you know, the practice as a whole. Individual dentists may do that,
but not the practice as a whole. And I'm not suggesting it,
we haven't really looked at it,
but stepping back from tra the traditional thing and looking at new ideas that
come along to see what the impact might be on the overall
practice, on the employees, uh, on, on,
on all aspects of it, I think that really good leaders are gonna be,
you know, looking at, at new ideas on a continual basis and,
and bringing some of those to bear.
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, John, for joining us today,
and thank you for all of your fascinating insights.
I look forward to connecting with you again in the future.
Thank you. R I enjoyed it. I look forward to that.