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Location is extremely important. We opened an office recently with a dentist in Scottsdale, Ariz., which has got to be one of the most competitive dental markets in the U.S. The very first day we opened, we had 170 patients already booked out. Do you tend to be more in the outlying suburbs? Are you allowed to talk about that? ST: Well, I don’t mind talking about it. I’m sure our game plan is in the corporate offices of all my competitors. (It’s a friendly group; we all know each other pretty well.) At PDS, we stay very focused. Our target market is the middle to upper middle. We didn’t go into the ritzy area of Scottsdale; we went pretty far out, so that may have played into it. We stay away from upper income areas, and we are selective in lower income areas. We will do areas like Bakersfield, which has done very well. Again, the dentists have to be a good fit. We recently opened practices in Southern California — in Lakewood, La Habra, Pasadena — and we’ve done extremely well in those areas. We’ve also done very well in various parts of Texas that you’ve probably never heard of. The same goes for Arizona, Colorado and mid-areas of central California, too. MD: So Pacific Dental Services is in six or seven states at this point? ST: We are getting ready to open in our sixth state, New Mexico. That will happen shortly. MD: And is opening a dental practice in another state much different from opening a dental practice in California? Or is it the same formula based on the same values, and just kind of getting to know the local real estate a little bit better? ST: There are definitely differences in each state’s laws and regulations, whether you’re looking at the laws that PDS has to comply with or the laws of what dental assistants and dental hygienists are allowed to do, their licensure and extended functions. Rules vary from state to state. And there are nuances in operating these offices. But in our target market — the middle to upper middle — it’s more nuances than major differences. MD: Right. I noticed that I don’t see a lot of advertisements from PDS. That’s why I was wondering how you reach out and make yourself known. But you said that you go to 32 www.chairsidemagazine.com
dental schools, and I thought that was interesting. Many people go to dental school but don’t necessarily have a relative or a mentor who they are going to work with. They are probably a little bit daunted by the task of borrowing all that money and starting a practice from scratch, whereas you’ve started a couple hundred practices from scratch. When you said that you talk to dental students, is it more for associate positions? Or, if they can line up the financing, does PDS ever take a chance on a recent graduate as an Owner Dentist? Or does that not work out that well? ST: We have a mantra in our organization: Hire owners. We’re looking for future owners. That being said, the odds of a dentist coming right out of dental school and being successful, day one, in a group-style model are very slim. I can’t think of one we’ve done. We have had some dentists who had a prior business background, so this is their second career. And these dentists became owners quickly — maybe within months. But for the typical student, who came from undergrad and went to dental school, they just do not yet have that leadership ability or the business knowledge. Frankly, they are still working on some of their clinical competencies and efficiencies. MD: So they are potential associates who might be good Owner Dentists in five years, or something like that? ST: Exactly. And what we’re trying to do is say: Look, in the large group practice model, which is where we’re kind of lumped, most of the large group practices have not invested — and this isn’t a knock on any of my competitors, by the way — in the infrastructure and technologies like we have at PDS. We are the world’s largest CEREC provider. We have a digital infrastructure that is second to none. We are the first large group practice to go to all-digital health records, all-digital patient records. I believe we are the first large group to be all-digital X-rays and all-digital panorex. We’re now beta-testing several 3-D cone beam machines. So we’ve really tried to step up not only the actual but also the image of a large group practice among the dentists entering the marketplace. We’ve very carefully positioned ourselves there. MD: You guys are really, in a sense, the anti-large group practice — at least from my perspective, that of a dentist who graduated in 1988. The large group practices back then, the Western Dental’s and others, were places you’d go if you had no other option. Maybe you’d go for a year or two to improve your speed, but you’d get out of there as soon as possible to start building your career. So there has always kind of been this negative connotation associated with the large group practice. I’ve always liked how none of the Pacific Dental practices are named Pacific Dental. They are all named for the communities in which they are located. In fact, if someone looked from the outside, I don’t think they would ever necessarily know it was a PDS practice, except for the fact that the practice has every piece of high-tech equipment known to man. ST: We’ve been very focused on our positioning in the marketplace. We are actually calling it Private Practice + . The “plus” is all about the modern dentistry, infrastructure, systems and support. But we view PDS as more on the private practice side. Yes, we have structure. Yes, we have systems. But we look at it as a very autonomous practice. The practices are locally branded. A local dentist owns it, and his or her name is on the door. Typically, that dentist will even put the names of his or her associates on the door, too. The dentist’s credentials are hanging in the office. Many dentists hang pictures of their family on the wall. What I’ve found, after doing this for so many years, is dentists want that. They want to feel like: This is mine. This is where I practice, and I own it. The dentists we affiliate with don’t just want a job. They’re looking for a fulfilling career, where they feel part of something bigger and better, an organization that’s going to help them be the best clinician. And this is true of most of my experience with dentists: Dentists want to be great clinicians. I know there’s a bell curve in clinical skill with 150,000 practicing dentists. But in Interview with Stephen Thorne33
Page 1: Chairside® A Publication of Glidew
Page 4 and 5: Contents 38 CEREC ® Connect: A Wel
Page 6 and 7: Letters to the Editor Dear Dr. DiTo
Page 8 and 9: Contributors Michael C. DiTolla, DD
Page 10 and 11: Numbers by the An elephant’s mola
Page 12 and 13: Dr. DiTolla’s CLINICAL TIPS PRODU
Page 14: Dr. DiTolla’s CLINICAL TIPS PRODU
Page 17 and 18: Figure 1: Tooth #9 is going to be p
Page 19 and 20: Figure 7: Crowns often look fake in
Page 21 and 22: Figure 15: The prep is essentially
Page 23: Depth cuts ensure that we get enoug
Page 27 and 28: Interview with Stephen Thorne - INT
Page 29 and 30: ST: No, it was definitely the forme
Page 31 and 32: can share a blog. There are many ti
Page 33: After those steps, Owner Dentists t
Page 37 and 38: all the way through retirement. And
Page 40 and 41: CEREC ® Connect: A Welcomed Upgrad
Page 42 and 43: Many CEREC ® dentists find making
Page 44 and 45: Figure 1 Figure 2 CEREC Connect Pro
Page 46: Figure 5 Figure 6 Conclusion CEREC
Page 50 and 51: working stone model of the single p
Page 52 and 53: detailed occlusal anatomy picked up
Page 54 and 55: high occlusion in the final prosthe
Page 56: use a high-flow, stiff (no bounce)
Page 60 and 61: most overlooked esthetic zone 3,4 (
Page 62 and 63: and floss. The facial and lingual p
Page 64: metal designs like the Wynne Hybrid
Page 67: The Chairside® PHOT Hunt Eleven ye

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