The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry

Lanita Gautier, Key Account Manager for Ivoclar, & Dr. David Rice, Founder of igniteDDS & Chief Editor of DentistryIQ, join the Group Dentistry Now Show. They discuss:

Current DSO market challenges
The importance of education & training
Vendor / DSO relationships
Much more

To learn more about Ivoclar visit https://www.ivoclar.com/en_us

You can visit the Ivoclar training academy at https://www.ivoclar.com/en_us/academy/learning-opportunities

Feel free to reach out directly to Lanita Gautier at lanita.gautier@ivoclar.com

If you would like to speak with Dr. David Rice or learn more about igniteDDS you can email Dr. Rice at david.rice@ignitedds.com or visit https://ignitedds.com/

If you like our podcast, please give us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on iTunes https://apple.co/2Nejsfa and a Thumbs Up on YouTube.

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Full Group Dentistry Now Podcast Transcript:

Dr. David Rice of igniteDDS & Lanita Gautier of Ivoclar discuss current DSO challenges and more.

Bill Neumann: Welcome, everyone, to the Group Dentistry Now show. I’m Bill Neumann. And as always, I’d like to thank the audience for being a part of the show, listening in, or maybe you’re watching us on YouTube without the support from our audience. We wouldn’t have great guests like the next two guests we have on the show today. We have Lanita Gauthier. She is the key account manager for Ivoclar. And we have Dr. David Rice. He is the founder of IgniteDDS and also the chief editor of Dentistry IQ. So thank you both for being here today. Thanks, Bill.

Dr. David Rice: Thanks, Bill, for having us.

Bill Neumann: And I’ve known Lanita for a while. I’ve known Dr. Rice for longer than I’ve known Lanita. So I’ve known Dr. Rice for, it has to be over a decade now.

Dr. David Rice: Yeah, it’s been a bit.

Bill Neumann: So, it’s great to have you on our podcast and get a chance to find out what you’re up to and what you do, how you work in partnership with Ivoclar. Awesome. So, Anita, why don’t we start with you a little bit about your background. I know you have a hygiene background. You’ve been in the industry a while and you’ve been in this key account manager role for a little while with Ivoclar. So, maybe a little bit about your background.

Lanita Gautier: Sure. So I’ve been in dentistry 30 years. Don’t do the math. I started out as a dental hygienist and actually worked in a DSO and moved into a leadership role. I dabbled in a couple of different things as a CETA board examiner, the president of my local hygiene association. and began lecturing and delivering CE courses. And someone came up to me and said, you would be great in sales. I said, absolutely not. I’m an educator, not a salesperson. So with that, I took the challenge to move into sales and have worked in on the restorative side for about 15 years with Ivoclar for the past year. We’ve curated a DSO team and I’m really excited to be here.

Bill Neumann: Thanks, Lanita. And Dr. Rice, founder of IgniteDDS, there might be some people in the audience that don’t know about Ignite, so maybe take a couple of minutes to talk about what IgniteDDS does and then a little bit about your background.

Dr. David Rice: Sure. So IgniteDDS is a community of dentists, really. We work and coach with multiple groups a year. We also work with multiple private practices a year, like single locations. I’m an educator at heart, and we’ve got a little over 31,000 dentists that we network with pretty much every day of the week. Outside of Ignite, Dentist Lanita, I’m going to see your 30 years and meet you right there. I’m 30 years in. I can’t believe where the time has gone. But I love, I love the practice. I love our patients. I, you know, I love the transitions we made over the years going from one location and one dentist to multiple docs and multiple locations and pulling in that educational piece. It’s, it’s great to be here with both of you.

Bill Neumann: Great. Let’s get into the Q&A portion here. Lanita, I’ll start off with you. So you’re working with these DSOs and not just DSOs, right? You work with emerging groups as well. So when you work with them, what are you hearing as like big challenges, like headaches that they’re dealing with right now?

Lanita Gautier: Great question. And interesting enough, it’s not necessarily related to, you know, what we do in sales, right? But attracting and retaining talent, I think, is the number one headache that most DSOs are suffering from right now. And post-COVID, you know, we all know the story. I think everyone’s in the same boat. But when you really take a deeper dive and you look at, you know, why is that? You know, I think there’s two different, you know, camps to look at. One is maybe the tangible things like, are you integrating AI? You know, what is the technology like in your group practice? Are you investing in that? Are your clinicians excited to come to work because you have CAD CAM dentistry or you’re looking at 3D printing and things like that? The second piece, I believe, is more maybe Dr. Rice’s wheelhouse is something more intangible like the culture. Are your clinicians excited to come to work? Are there interesting things? Do they feel a part of the organization? And maybe it’s not, you know, a big group where they feel like they’re, you know, a little fish in a big sea, but it’s the individual practice. The leaders in each practice have the ability to control that, even if they’re part of a bigger organization. So I think, you know, really going back to your question to alleviate some of those headaches, you know, looking at some of the tangible and intangible things that you have control over, in your group practice really will make a difference in retaining and keeping some of that talent that’s out there.

Bill Neumann: So, Dr. Rice, what do you see as far as challenges? You’re working with these group practices, you’re working with individual docs, what do you run into?

Dr. David Rice: Yeah, we’re seeing the same thing that you just shared, Lanita. the biggest problem in all of dentistry today. And it’s not just us, right? But it’s, it’s our home. So it’s, it’s where our focus is. It’s people and we’re having trouble retaining team members, especially on the DSO side. We’re having trouble retaining associates. And then I think that’s not necessarily, um, the model, but the scale. So the larger we get, the more difficult it is for us to get that top talent, keep that top talent happy in a world where people are, are, are kind of shifting and grooving and, It’s fascinating to me. We don’t agree on a lot of things in dentistry, but you know, most people are seeing the writing on the wall with hygiene right now in the next five years, or you’re going to see a mass exodus of about 33% of assistants walking out the door. And so we’re living it. It’s not going to get better, you know, until we with great intention address the causes of it. I think that’s the biggest problem we’re seeing every day.

Bill Neumann: So you’re both saying really the same things. Anything else, David, that you’re seeing beyond that retention and talent challenge? And I think there’s been some drive to address that. Certain DSOs are either starting their own dental assisting schools. They’re investing in schools, educational. platforms out there, but it still seems like it’s a big challenge. I think a lot of us thought that it was COVID related, but now we’re four years past that and we’re still seeing those challenges. But anything else you’re seeing? And then I guess for both of you, what’s the fix?

Dr. David Rice: Sure. So what I’m seeing is the second most prevalent concern is clinical operating procedures. So I think most DSOs and, you know, even on the emerging group side, people do a pretty darn good job on standard operating procedures. So the business side of the house is fairly standardized, but the clinical side of the house is is not as standardized as everybody would like it to be. And I think maybe if we took a deeper dive into each location, as much as we maybe think it is. So it’s, it’s difficult, especially with the DSOs who have grown by acquisition, you know, promises get made to people that we can sort of keep things the way that they are in an effort to onboard, you know, great practices within great groups. But at some point, we have to get to a place of standardization and it goes back to that whole scale breaks things if we don’t have great people and great process lined up. So number two for me is really clinical operating procedures.

Bill Neumann: So standardization can be very scary, especially for clinicians. And how do you address something like that where there’s a lot of them like, hey, I like the way I do things. I don’t want standardization. But to your point, I mean, that is really the way you become much more efficient. And ultimately, the goal would be to provide better patient outcomes.

Dr. David Rice: Sure. So I’ll tell you how we do it. We actually, um, we start at home. We engage every dentist, every hygienist, every assistant, everybody on the admin team with, what is your best life at home? And then once we really understand each member of the team despite their role and what motivates them, what they really want out of life, then we show them the connection between the success of the practice, the group, to their success in their personal life. And it’s It’s amazing how people have light bulbs go off when they realize, Oh, so sure. We could work with 20 manufacturers or 20 labs or do a 20 different ways. But if we just shrink and find a happy place in the middle, we’re a lot more productive. We’re a lot more profitable. And that. That profitability allows me to have more time and have more money for the life that I want outside those four walls. I think that’s the ultimate motivator for people, not so much what happens in the four walls.

Bill Neumann: And Lanita, on the standardization side of things, you know, how does Ivoclar help to address that and how do you feel that’s received?

Lanita Gautier: Yeah, I think when you partner with a manufacturer, there are certain things like, you know, bonding agent, we all have it, right? But what makes one manufacturer different from another? And for us, it’s packaging, especially when you speak of bonding agent or something of that sort. We have the VivaPen that really streamlines your workflow. It speeds up your workflow in that you’re not going back and forth into a dappen dish, you have it right in your hand. and have micro-dosing that is controlled and very simple. We have a power cure system that is a three-second curing light and a whole host of material that complements that. And so I think having, you know, systems like Dr. Rice mentioned that really alleviate some headaches, your workflow so that you don’t have a lot of different systems, a lot of different bonding agents, multiple cements from different manufacturers. Do they work well together? And really honing in on a strategic procedure within the office and your materials complement that. It will allow predictable and consistent outcomes.

Bill Neumann: We actually have a couple of previous podcasts with you that talk about the VivaPen and some of your other solutions. We’ll drop links in the show notes so people can find out about those. So Dr. Rice, on the emerging group side of things, you work with five emerging groups per year, which seems pretty specific. So you’re limited to that number for a reason. So, you know, why do you do that? And then talk a little bit about, you know, how you’re, you’re helping them.

Dr. David Rice: Sure. So I guess what we’ve always found is success comes from taking deeper dives and deeper dives require time and focus. So although I educate, you know, with Ivoclar actually with lots of different DSOs, that’s fun. And, um, we, we tip of the iceberg many, many things and then teams take over. My focus has to be with five different groups. If we go beyond that, we don’t have the appropriate time to actually dive deep, get into the weeds, be physically present with those groups. I love digital formats. They’re wonderful. They allow for scale on my side, but the reality is If people and process need to unite for us to be highly productive and profitable, then we need to, as a team at Ignite, be able to have feet on the street and be in the practices, see how they work together, see what’s really happening as opposed to how we dentists maybe share something’s happening. I’ve been guilty myself in my practice if somebody asked me, how well is something going? It’s either going incredibly, and I think it is, or it’s going incredibly and I’m just not even really aware of what’s happening in my practice. So we like to get objective, firsthand eyes on things. And five is a nice number that our core team can commit to and really start being impactful within the first 90 days.

Bill Neumann: How long do you typically work with one of these groups?

Dr. David Rice: Um, two years is two years. I would say is the meat. The third year is often kind of, uh, more on the maintenance side of things, unless said group is trying to go from 20 locations to 50 or 50 to 70 or 80, then that third year may be needed. But typically for us. We focus very hard on the people side and low-hanging fruit to get very productive year one. Year two, we start fine-tuning and we’re very situational as we build the production side of the practice and the profitability. And year three is just bring it all together for people and make sure everybody’s living up to the person they promised to be for their group.

Bill Neumann: So this ties in nicely because you’re doing a lot of education at IgniteDDS, whether it’s in-person, hands-on, or some of you actually do digitally, like we’re doing here today. So, Lanita, let’s talk about the importance of education, and then I’d love to get Dr. Rice’s feedback on this, because when we look at, especially DSOs and group practices, And I hate to say this, but a lot of products are commoditized by these DSOs. And part of it is because products continue to get more advanced and better and better. So it’s harder to differentiate between maybe one bonding agent and another bonding agent. So, a lot of it comes down to maybe the delivery of something, you know, is it easier to use, does it take less time, but a lot of it is the support behind it and the education. So, Lanita, talk a little bit about the educational opportunities that Ivoclar as an organization really provides for DSOs and group practices.

Lanita Gautier: Absolutely, and I would agree with you wholeheartedly as a clinician, and as a clinician that actually worked in a DSO, is there are often times where decisions are made that are outside of your control, and you’re handed a product, and they say, here, use this. And the education is paramount when it comes to making any changes in clinical decisions on the products that you use inside of a DSO. Ivoclar really has taken a giant step and has probably one of the the biggest platforms in education that I’ve seen with a manufacturer. Dr. Shashi Singal heads up our education department, and we have obviously our Ivoclar Academy, which is an online platform that has webinars that are available and some recorded webinars that you can access. We have an exciting summer school program, which I think is such a great idea. And doctors or actually students who are in dental school have the ability to travel to New York and our corporate headquarters and spend time learning from Dr. Shashi and his team and some of the KOLs that work with us and have a hands-on experience and become familiar with Ivoclar products before they even graduate. But specifically with the DSOs, we curate a program for each DSO to make sure that we’re addressing any headaches that they may have, that we are giving information ahead of time, whether it be, you know, through email where they can access videos and tutorials about our products and hands-on courses with KOLs like Dr. Rice or, you know, CE events. We have our field team, which is, they’ve been, I think our average tenure is over 10 years for our field sales team, which is unheard of in this market. And the reason I feel that that’s important is that they’ve probably heard the question that you’re going to ask, or if a headache comes up and you say, hey, I need help with X, Y, Z, they’ve had that call 5, 10 times already over their 10 years. So they have the ability to answer those questions and really support a DSO.

Bill Neumann: Dr. Royce, talk a little bit about your involvement with Ivoclar’s education.

Dr. David Rice: Sure. So I’m going to say early on in my career, I was very fortunate. My practice is 10 minutes door to door to Ivoclar’s US HQ. So it started off with Ivoclar and I becoming friends with their team, becoming patients. And then over the years, thankfully, they liked the dentistry. And over the years, what happened was we started seeing all these opportunities to really dig deep. And like LaNita said, I love Ivoclar Academy’s hybridized model. So we can flip the classroom and we can get a lot of digital education in front of people quickly. It can be very customized to DSOs, which I love. Not everybody does that. Sometimes people just put out one lane of content. It’s just one size fits all, but Ivoclar doesn’t do that. And then, you know, we get to that in-person hands-on piece, which can live at IBAFAR when groups want to come to visit Amherst, New York. It’s, um, contrary to the snow stories, it’s an amazing place to be. I would, I highly recommend getting there. And then we’ve built a bunch of program sets that say, Hey, step one is we can come to you, make it really simple. Option two is you can come dive a car and option three is we can really dive deep together and custom build programming that serves the dentistry that’s happening in your four walls every single day. So the goal being very efficient workflows that deliver, you know, optimum results despite the DSO that you’re in and how you’d like to do it.

Bill Neumann: And I would concur about Amherst, New York and people’s perception if you’ve never been there. It’s a beautiful part of the country and some of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet. And I wouldn’t maybe necessarily go in January, but, you know, But for the most part, the weather is not like you’ve heard, and just a really nice place. And the facility itself, Ivoclar’s facility, is second to none. I mean, it would be great to hands-on. I’ve been there a couple of times to experience that. So I would definitely recommend, if you get the opportunity, go out and see it, enjoy it. Go check out Niagara Falls, of course, while you’re out there. But yeah, really, really special part of the country. So you’ve kind of talked a little bit about it, Dr. Rice, but why did you decide to partner with Ivoclar? You had some of them as patients, and did you have the ability to go in there and do some hands-on before you became a partner of theirs and actually kind of get on the other side of things and help educate?

Dr. David Rice: How did that work? It worked just that way. So first, total transparency for everybody who’s tuning in here. I get behind the curtain with at least a dozen manufacturers every year times the last 20 years. So I get an inside peek at what happens that maybe we don’t get to see as clinicians. So what first attracted me to Ivoclar were their products and was the technology. I think what kept me coming back was the people. And to Ivoclar’s detriment, they never put something in front of us as clinicians that will get us in trouble. They go tried and true and they bring hard data to the to the table and then they share it with us and that’s not true of a lot of manufacturers out there. Lots of times things get brought our way that’s the next great material says you know sliced bread and then you know eight nine months later that material no longer exists or we get this nice little envelope that says hey please don’t use this for crowns anymore. And that’s a dangerous place for us to be, especially when you start talking about 20, 50, a hundred, a thousand providers and learning that something gets, you know, recalled and, and we’re in some big trouble. So I think I went in for the, I went in for the technology and the materials and I stayed for the people because the integrity level is just unbelievable to me. And that’s, that doesn’t go unnoticed. And it’s, it’s extraordinarily rare in today’s world.

Bill Neumann: So as we start to wrap this up, I mean, now, I think we celebrated it maybe like a year and a half ago, the 100-year anniversary. So we’re past the 100 years at Ivoclar. Where do you see things heading, Lanita? I mean, you continue to innovate 100 years in. So what are some, maybe some things we have to look forward to?

Lanita Gautier: That is what we’re most excited about at Ivoclar. Ivoclar has entered into a collaborative partnership, I’m sure you’ve heard, with SprintRay. which we could not be more excited about. And so Ivoclar brings, as everyone knows, the past hundred years has really done well on the material side of things. We offer innovative aesthetic workflows that really make a difference. Think back over our years ago with our partnership with DenseFly Sirona and Emacs with Sirac. So that really has changed the way we practice dentistry today. You know, thinking back, the education around that, the heavy lifting that had to be done to bring those two partnerships together really made a difference in Ivoclar. And we look forward to that with SprintRay. They are the experts in 3D printing, second to none. So this partnership with SprintRay, I would predict, will probably change dentistry in the same manner that Emacs and Cirec did.

Bill Neumann: That’s great. And I know I saw something about a summer tour, right, where I think Ivoclar and SprintRay are going to different parts of the country. And so you get a chance to kind of see what the partnership actually looks like. As we wrap this up, final thoughts, we can start with you, Dr. Rice. Just anything you want to talk about, discuss about what’s going on at IgniteDDS, maybe some things that you’ve got going on there, and then maybe even on the educational front with Ivoclar, what you have going on with them.

Dr. David Rice: Sure. I’d say I’ll focus more on your audience and all of us out here who are clinicians. Whether you’re just getting started or you’re at five, six, seven locations, or you’re at several thousand locations, If we want to truly scale and find great success, we, we need to focus on having strong financial control. We have to have great systems control and, and yep, dentistry, we have to have clinical control as well. So take a look at each one of those controls in your group and, and, you know, pass the mirror test. Ask yourself, honestly, am I on the right path? where I’m green lining things and growing and everything’s working for me or am I in the red line path and maybe I’m not quite on the path I’d like to be on and understand that this trajectory to success isn’t a straight line. So if you’re green lining it and you’re on the right path, things are great. If you’re on that red line path, you’re going to be further away from where you want to be in six months or a year than you are today. So make sure to just self-assess work on your team, get things calibrated, and then start elevating and moving the direction you want to go in and you know is best for you. And I couldn’t tell you a better partner and people to work with than Ibaclaran. It’s been a great honor and a great run to work with their whole team for almost 30 years now. So I appreciate being here with you both.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, thank you, Dr. Rice. People want to find out more about IgniteDDS or they want to get in touch with you. How do they do so?

Dr. David Rice: So the best way to get in touch with me is by my email. It’s david.riceatignitedds.com or you can find IgniteDDS, you know, pretty much everywhere on social media. We reach about three and a half million folks a month. So reach out any way that’s best serves you. And I’d love to, I’d love to chit chat.

Bill Neumann: Excellent. We’ll drop the email and the website info in the show notes. And Lanita, any final thoughts? And I also want to make sure that people have your contact information. And if anybody in the audience would like to take part or find out more about Ivoclar’s educational courses, how do they do so?

Lanita Gautier: Uh, yes. Um, so Ivoclar.com, uh, there is, uh, at the top corner, you can click on the Ivoclar Academy, which will have a listing of all of our continuing education courses. Um, my email will be in the show notes, but it’s lanita.goatia at Ivoclar.com and, uh, my phone number 8 2 8 2 0 3 3 7 6 4.

Bill Neumann: Thanks, Lanita. And I’m going to just spell that for everybody. It’s Lanita.Gautier@Ivoclar.com. Correct. And yeah, thank you, Lanita. And thanks, Dr. Rice. Just just great conversation. You talk a lot about, and I talk about this all the time, about the importance of education. And, you know, we’ve got two great educators here. We’ve got the, we have Lanita with Ivoclar and we have Dr. Rice with IgniteDDS. So this is going to be one that we’re just going to make sure that we highlight education on this podcast because everybody’s going to know this is going to be the podcast to come. If you’re really trying to figure out you know, whether it’s clinical education or it could even be, you know, the culture of the organization too, which is a huge issue with a lot of these groups as well. But appreciate you both sharing your thoughts and your expertise. And until next time, I’m Bill Neumann, and this is The Group Dentistry Now Show.