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We try to use all that experience in our assessment and screening.
More and more, we’re getting dentists in their mid-30s to mid-40s who are searching
us out. And they are just tired or stressed out from operating their practice, or they see
the opportunity in the business model and say: “Look, I can work with an organization
like PDS. They can handle all the business stuff. I can run the practice, which I’m good
at. And, together, we win! Together it’s a better fit.” That’s a pretty cool development
that’s starting to take place.
MD: That is a cool thing. That’s really the main reason I wanted to interview you. It’s
kind of become my mission to help dentists: Help dentists lower their remakes, increase
the longevity of their restorations and consistently produce esthetic restorations they can
be proud of.
We tend to focus on helping the dentists who work with Glidewell Laboratories, and I can
only share with them what’s worked for me as a dentist with an average set of hands. I’ve
had to come up with systems for preparing teeth and systems for taking impressions to get
good restorative results. But once you get past the clinical skills, you’ve still got to take care
of the whole business side of things.
Knowing what PDS does, and talking to some of the dentists who are affiliated with
your company, makes me really excited to share this story with other dentists. There may
be dentists reading this article who have been out of school for 15 years, who are right
around 40 years old and think: “Well, I don’t feel like I’ve made a mistake. I think I picked
the right career, but things just aren’t going the way I wanted.” You talk to dentists who
hate hiring and firing. They hate the business aspect. Before a service like PDS was available,
I don’t know what those dentists did. Maybe they retired or sold their practice and
got into real estate. So, I think it’s so great that PDS is able to step in and help those dentists
who have dedicated so much time and money to this career, and show them there’s
another way to do it, where they can concentrate on the clinical and make more money
when they turn some of this stuff over to PDS.
ST: I think our results speak for themselves. Our average Owner Dentist is approaching
$400,000 in income and works slightly more than 32 hours per week. These
Owner Dentists tend to spend about one to two hours per week on administrative
time; maybe reviewing finances or something like that.
What’s really cool about this, for me too, after doing this for 22 years, is that the
clinical side is getting more and more fun. We’re able to provide an environment in
our infrastructure systems so that the dentist can just get better and better clinically.
We have a saying at PDS: Clinicians Leading Clinicians in Clinical Excellence. We’re
trying to position our company as a true leader of modern dentistry. We are really
positioning the practices and the clinicians as leaders in fast, easy, efficient and great
clinical environments for patients. And we’re the world’s leader in CEREC ® (Sirona
Dental Systems). PDS affiliate dentists have done more than 250,000 CEREC restorations.
Affiliate dentists are doing a lot of implant work — doing a lot of great dentistry.
I think we’re now the world’s leader in laser therapy for periodontal disease. The
results have been, from a clinical perspective, absolutely fantastic.
When you have this many dentists pushing each other to improve their skills, it can
weed out those dentists with no desire to improve. But it also allows the dentists who
want to improve their clinical skills to really step up to a whole new level than they
might if they were practicing alone. Isolation is the biggest downside for a dentist in a
solo practice. The solo practitioner is so isolated. Who do they go to or where do they
go when they need help? In our organization, BOOM, there are 500 different dentists
they can pick up the phone and talk to, who they can e-mail, and with whom they
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