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can share a blog. There are many times
they’ll actually get in the car and drive to
personally help each other out.
MD: It’s funny: The solo practitioner model
is the one that has existed for so long. And I
think it’s the one that a lot of us who went to
dental school thought of when we thought of
owning our practice. But it is lonely. I don’t
know that there is any other word for it. It’s
lonely, in the sense that you don’t have somebody
else to bounce things off of. And you’re
right, there is sort of a friendly competition
that takes place when you put a few dentists
together. But it’s really in the spirit of cooperation
that everybody gets better.
I do triathlons, for example. So, as part of the
swim technique, you do these master swim
classes, where there are eight of you swimming
together. You push one another to get better
because you swim faster together than you
would alone. It’s an informal competition.
That informal competition certainly applies
to dentistry, as well. I can understand how
with a disruptive technology like CEREC,
this in-office CAD/CAM dentistry, that one
dentist is going to learn it a little better than
another dentist. But he is going to share that
knowledge and get that other dentist excited,
and they’re going to kind of spur each other
on. I completely understand what you mean
when you talk about this cooperative effort
between the dentists that, in the end, gives
the patient a better clinical result.
From a lab standpoint, we get more digital
impressions from PDS practices than we do
from anybody else. You guys are No. 1 by a
long shot. We get lots of digital impressions —
mainly for monolithic BruxZir ® (Glidewell
Laboratories) restorations that you send
via CEREC Connect to the lab. So we can
see that you are quite obviously using these
units a lot. And I’m sure that of the 250,000
crowns made, most of those were probably
IPS e.max ® (Ivoclar Vivadent) done in
office. That’s fantastic. In fact, your CEREC
purchase is almost legendary. How many
machines did you buy?
ST: Oh, shoot, I have no idea what number
we’re up to. From what I understand,
there’s at least one machine in every practice.
There might be a few old docs out
there who have not adopted CEREC, but
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.
Interview with Stephen Thorne29