The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice Of The DSO Industry

Tom von Sydow, COO of Cornerstone Group, joins the Group Dentistry Now Show. This is Tom’s third visit to the show. Tom gives us an update and discusses:

Why they are now acquiring brick and mortar offices
What changes he is seeing in specialty dentistry
Why some endo specialty DSOs are struggling
Massively underserved endo markets
Creating education to create super GPs and better endodontists
Much more

Find out more about Cornerstone Dental Specialties https://cdsdental.com/
Find out more about Cornerstone Specialty Products https://cspdental.com/
Find out more about Cornerstone Training Institute https://ctidental.org/

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

Our podcast series brings you dental support organization and emerging dental group practice analysis, conversation, trends, news and events. Listen to leaders in the DSO and emerging dental group space talk about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry has listeners across North & South America, Australia, Europe, and Asia. If you like our show, tell a friend or a colleague.

Choose your favorite listening app below and subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode! Full transcript is also provided below.

Full Transcript:

Bill Neumann:

Hey, I’d like to welcome everybody to the Group Dentistry Now Show. I’m Bill Neumann. Welcome back to anybody that has been following us. Whether you come to the groupdentistrynow.com website, or you follow us on YouTube, or anyone of the number of listening podcasts that we’re on, like Apple, Spotify, Google, and there’s a handful of others. Thanks for being a part of the community. We appreciate it. And the gentleman – if you’re watching on YouTube – that you see here, you may have seen him before. This is his third time on the podcast. In fact, I think, Tom, you are probably, you beat out Steve Thorn, I think who’s been on twice, and a handful of others that have been on twice. But I think you’re the only one that’s been on three times. So we have Tom von Sydow, he is the chief operation officer of Cornerstone Group. So good to have you back, Tom.

Tom von Sydow:

Thanks a lot, Bill. Appreciate it.

Bill Neumann:

And it’s been a while since I’ve seen you in person. I think we ran into each other in Nashville at the Leadership Summit. And before that, we sat outside in Denver and listened to some music at the Dicamba meeting, which was last summer.

Tom von Sydow:

Yeah, yeah, it’s been a little while.

Bill Neumann:

While. Yeah, it sure has. Well, good. So you’ve got some updates on Cornerstone Group, so maybe talk a little bit about who Cornerstone Group is. You’ve got a series of companies that are part of that group, and then I’d love to get some updates from you.

Tom von Sydow:

Sure, sure. So, for the listeners that are not familiar with Cornerstone, we’re probably the largest mobile endodontic group in the US. So that means that we provide endodontic services at the general dentist office. A little different than a traditional model. So, think of us – like maybe a popup – would go into a dental office, we bring a provider, we bring all the supplies, we bring all the technology we need to do the root canals. We do the root canals in the general dentist’s office that allows them to place the crown off in that same day. The patients love it, because they don’t have to go to a different location. And that model we’ve been doing for almost, well, I guess it’s almost 20 years now. I’ve been with the firm for about five. But we do about 260 locations in 14 states with that model. About four to 5,000 root canals a month with 50 providers.

And we’re seeing a steady growth. We’ve been growing, since I joined, about 20% a year. So that’s been a really good run. Our other two businesses really support the primary business. One is the training institute. So we have a very state-of-the-art training facility in Irvine with 14 simulation stations for wet and dry dentistry. They have microscopes, we have three live operatories. We do charity work through there, mostly on veterans because they shut down the VA in Long Beach Dental Clinic. So we do a lot of veterans, we do a lot of disenfranchised folks in the Orange County area. We even have a million machine there on site from Glidewell that we place crowns on those patients, because that’s a big problem when you do root canals on folks that don’t have any stability in their lifestyle or whatever. They will sometimes not come back and get their final crown. So we place the final restoration if possible that day.

And then the Cornerstone supplies, our Cornerstone dental products, is like we call it, is more support our own doctors, as obviously our doctors use lots of files and going to purchase different types of products in their treatment of the patients. So we have a few white labeled products that we have. And we also distribute Brasseler, Agendo. We have a relationship with Morita, W&H, so we primarily use that for our own doctors, but we do sell the market at large. And then the two proprietary things that we have, one is the vacuum clamp, which sits on top of a rubber dam clamp and takes the water off the rubber dam. So you don’t need an assistant. Very helpful for residents. And then we have the GEMS procedure, which is a guided endodontic microsurgery stents that you guide, that you create with a cone beam and an oral scanner. And we believe that technology will help facilitate more apical surgeries, save more teeth, and make apical surgery more easy to access by the masses. It’s still kind of a tough procedure, and even not a lot of endodontist still do it.

This makes it much more simplified and you can print it like on a SprintRay, you can print it in your office. So it’s really kind of cool. The 3D printing technology’s advancing so much nowadays. And these chairside printers, you can actually print the stent right there. And then last but not least, we are launching a light-activated antimicrobial solution that allows the endodontist to do a final rinse of the canals and kill all the bacteria in the canal, using a proprietary solution, and a light activated at a certain wavelength that makes the solution work. So those are the big updates from the three organizations.

Bill Neumann:

That’s pretty cool. On the product development side, internally, your endodontists are developing these? Or do other companies come to you, and the endodontists are almost using these, testing them out? How does that work with some of the products that you just mentioned?

Tom von Sydow:

Yeah, we we had a few outside folks reach out to us to try to validate. We have a lot of technology inside the institute to create products. We have 3D printers and other things that we can do. We have a full-time PhD on staff in dental materials, so sometimes they’ll come to us. But a lot of this stuff comes from our own group of doctors. I think we have 30 board certified endodontists and the rest are board eligible. So we have a lot of endodontic talent inside the organization and sometimes come up with ideas.

What we’d like to do traditionally is license these at some point. For example, there’s a thing called the Accu file that’s distributed by Brasseler, and it allows the provider to put the apex locator on the handle of the file versus the shaft of the file. And for folks that understand that, putting it on the shaft is kind of cumbersome because the files in the tooth, this allows them to put it on the handle. And so that’s a patented device that one of our endodontist patented himself. And then I arranged the distribution agreement with Brasseler. So they sell that now, it’s called the Accu file.

Bill Neumann:

Oh, really? Cool. Okay. That’s great. And Tom, can you remind the audience what your role is at Cornerstone? You said you’ve been there for five years, you’re the Chief Operating Officer?

Tom von Sydow:

That’s correct. Yeah, so I’ve been in healthcare since ’81. I started out as a Navy corpsman and did various things in various aspects of healthcare. I was involved in medical device sales for a long time, and then I got into dentistry with Nobel Biocare. I ran the Western US and all of Mexico for them. And then in 2008, Steve Thorn reached out to me and asked me to help him come build out his specialty business. So, I was at Pacific for 10 years doing that, basically managing everything other than GP. And then I went did a small stent in ophthalmology, cause that was my background, and that landed in Cornerstone. And essentially I’m in charge of all the operational growth strategies for the company, for all three business lines, and including the acquisition strategy that we’re launching on right now.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah. Talk a little bit about that acquisition strategy. So you’ve pretty much always been mobile till recently. So this is one of the updates, one of the reasons you’re here. So I guess, what’s the strategy look like now on the brick and mortar side? What are you looking for and where, and then why?

Tom von Sydow:

Yeah. So the why is: we would run across endodontist in our recruiting effort, that didn’t necessarily have, we didn’t have a mobile client that needed resources, but they were great doctors, right, great people. And we just felt it was terrible to have to turn them away. They wanted to work with us. They liked Cornerstone, they liked the reputation. They liked working with a group of endodontists and not a corporate structure. They liked the fact that we’re a law firm, or an accounting firm. We’re owned by endodontists, we’re managed by endodontists. So we got to thinking, “Well, maybe we should start looking at buying brick and mortar.” Going from mobile to brick and mortar is massively easier than going from brick and mortar to mobile. So the mindset, the flexibility of the clinician, the work atmosphere, all those things are easier going the other way than going from brick and mortar to mobile.

So we knew that we could do brick and mortar well, because we do mobile well, we knew we could be efficient at it. And so there’s a group of offices out there in the country that don’t fit the profile of some of the larger endodontics specific DSOs. And these are great organizations and they have a great model, but they’re tending to look for people, maybe in their mid-fifties, that maybe have an associate or two. They’re probably on the higher end of the practice profile, probably a couple million or so in collections. And these owners want to run for their five, to seven, to 10 years. They’re motivated to continue to do endodontics and drive their practice growth. So those are great. There’s also a group that they just want to literally retire and just do an asset sale, just sell the building, or sell the equipment, and they want to immediately walk away.

We don’t really work in either one of those areas, but there’s a group of offices out there where the provider is maybe in their sixties and they have been contemplating selling. They don’t really want to work five years because most of the larger groups want you to sign a five-year contract. They don’t really want to do marketing. They don’t want to do some of the things they have to do if they go with one of the bigger DSOs, they just want to slowly transition out. Maybe they’ll work for 12 months or 24 months. Immediately they want to take a vacation because these single proprietors can’t take off because if they leave, the referrals are going to go somewhere else for a while. And so a lot of these folks, guys and gals, they haven’t had a chance to have a vacation. So that’s a profile that we’re looking for.

So maybe they’re 800 to a million and a half in collections. It’s a single proprietor, maybe they have one associate. The one thing that we look for is reputation. That’s one thing we can’t really fix. So as long as they have a great reputation in the community, we’re a potential buyer for those folks. And so we’re getting the word out and letting people know: if you don’t fit in this bucket, and you don’t fit in this bucket, and you’re in this bucket, give us a call. Because we’re probably one of the only buyers out there, other than private transactions. So one endodontist buying another endodontist practice, that’s not as common as it used to be. A lot of the kids getting out of programs are very much in debt, and a lot of them have never experienced practice before. So they go from dental school, to maybe a GPR, to a residency, or dental school, or residency.

And so they’ve never experienced practicing in a commercial environment or an environment where you have to charge patients, and do all the things you do in private practice, make sure the plumbing works, and the signs are up, and the books are kept, and records are kept. So there’s few of those folks. So we’re kind of fit a niche in there that’s there. We’ve started this in August, we’ve got three. We’ve got another five or six in due diligence. Our goal is to have 30 in the next three years. I think we’ll hit that goal. But the nice thing about this model is there’s no geographic constraint. So if I have a office, you still have to kind of have a matching program. So if we find a great office, then we have to go find a provider still. But it gives us a much broader opportunity to talk to residents. And the few endodontists, that I call fluidity, they’re in the market, they’ve been out for a few years, they’re still fluid, they’re still willing to move, or change occupation, or change jobs.

And so those folks, we have a much broader opportunity now to speak with them. And a lot of students, to be honest, that when they come out, they really don’t want to do the mobile model. They don’t really like the idea of traveling, location, location. They’re much more comfortable working in a set location, with set times, and set hours, and a stable staff. And, again, those folks weren’t a really good fit for us before. Now we can open up the conversation and discuss opportunity to do a brick and mortar. So yeah, that’s the update. We don’t change the name, they don’t become Cornerstone endodontics. They’re whatever, Poway endodontics or South Las Vegas endodontics, or whatever the name may be.

And we don’t really change a whole lot initially. The staff has to punch in and out on our time clock, obviously, so we can pay them. And then eventually we will fold in Denticon, which is our EMR of choice. We’ll fold that in over time. Generally with the new provider that we bring in there, we let the person that sold it to us kind of stick with what they’re doing, because they’re usually phasing out in 12 or 24 months. So it’s not a big deal to let them do what they do. All the billing will go through Denticon and that kind of stuff, but if they keep using their paper charts, that doesn’t really bother me.

And then eventually we fold in all of our technology. Our app that the referrals can use which has an AI component scheduling, it’s got communication, exchange X-rays under a HIPAA secure environment. We’ll fold that into the practice eventually. And obviously if they don’t have a cone beam, we’ll buy a cone beam, CBCT. Upgrading the equipment that we might need to upgrade over time. But yeah, it’s exciting. It’s exciting to start to do something different with this.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah. Totally different from what you’ve been doing. But it makes a lot of sense and there’s certainly a subset of the endodontic practices out there that don’t qualify, so to speak. They’re not the larger practices. Which kind of leads me to my next more general question, is what are you seeing? And we kind of go back to right at the start of COVID. All of a sudden, endodontic specialties seemed to kind of come out, were born, I mean, they were there before, but certainly, I think investors had a lot more interest in endo and oral surgery, being really the two that were emerging care and stayed open during COVID. And I think money took notice of that. So, what are you seeing now as far as this emergence of all these different specialty groups out there, specifically endo and oral surgery, and what are your thoughts around that?

Tom von Sydow:

Yeah, I mean, it’s been very interesting. And you’re right. I mean, there’s been an explosive growth. US Endo partners, Endo1 partners, there’s HighFive out of the South.

There’s a few others that are growing out there. I think both US Endo and Endo1 are now also involved in some of the other surgical specialties, so I think they’ve actually changed their name. But yeah, surgical specialties, I think, was seeing this as kind of a darling during COVID. For sure, for us, I mean, as I mentioned the last time we talked, or the first time, we did more root canals during COVID than we did pre COVID. We were inundated with business. The practices that were able to stay open had to really offer that, whether the GP does it themselves, or they have an endodontist that does it. They really needed that because that was the emergency, that was the definition of an emergency during that, I mean, you either extract the tooth, or you do a root canal and crown it.

So when someone was in pain, they were able to get into somewhere. So the offices that stayed open and provided those emergency services did very well, overall. And no one did real well, but they did well, comparatively. And I think it did kind of shine a light on endodontics and oral surgery in particular.

It’s been interesting to see, like I said, I think the larger groups are kind of vacuuming up some of the more higher end endodontic groups. I’m not familiar if they’re doing many de novos yet, but the model seems to be it’s a hundred percent buy-out with a small percent retained in the corporation that they could hopefully participate in a recapitalization of the corporate parent company and gain some additional income from that. But they do tend to sign, I think they’re all required a five-year contract, and they do all go back as an associate.

So there are some interesting dynamics. The biggest one that I’ve heard, and there again, I don’t know if they’re going to stick with this, but the rumor is that a lot of them are going to cash. So they’re opting out of all insurance networks, which I understand. I think you can probably pull that off in certain areas of the country. I don’t know how that’s going to play in California, or Arizona, or Texas, Florida – some of the larger states where the patient flow is driven a lot by the insurance plans that people are on. Now, granted, most of the plans don’t give you more than a 15 or $2,000 benefit anyway. So, if you get a root canal and a crown, you’re going to pay some cash out of your pocket anyway. So it might be left pocket, right pocket, is the thinking. But currently, we’re evaluating these practices value, understanding that they have some insurance in their portfolio, and then we’re going to try and stay with that.

There may be a few plans that we drop. We may try to add a few plans they don’t have that are good plans. And then we have our financing program, six months, same as cash, for people that don’t have an insurance plan. But yeah, I think that’s going to be an interesting dynamic. I don’t know how long that’s going to hold, but it’s certainly putting pressure on DSOs that are utilizing services like ours, or their GPs are doing their own root canals, or they’re bringing in endodontists that are not affiliated with a group like ours. Their peers are going to start telling them, “Hey man, you know, you need to do root canals for $1,600. You’re doing them for $900 or $800. That’s crazy.” And I think that’s already started to impact us. We’re getting that pushback a little bit in our own network of people saying, “Why are we doing these root canals for seven, 800 bucks on these HMO plans, and some of these aggressive PPO plans?”

As you may have heard, Delta just slashed specialty rates in California again, and they also continue to put things inclusive. So before, you could bill out for obstructed canal; you could bill out for BioPure; you could bill out for other things that you did in conjunction with the endodontic treatment consultation, x-rays. They basically eliminated all that. It’s all considered global fee.

So. I think there’s got to be some balance, and I don’t know when it’s going to happen, when the inflection point’s going to come up, but the insurance companies have to come to the table and realize they can’t pay a board-eligible, board-certified endodontist these low fees. And I don’t know how long these larger groups can sustain going cash only. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens there.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah. Wow. Interesting. For sure. Overall endo market, so beyond the growth of specialty DSOs, what are you seeing as far as demand? And I’m just kind of curious about, even the talent pool, and we all talk about challenges to recruiting and retaining, so that’ll be interesting to hear your thoughts, and challenges Cornerstone may have.

Tom von Sydow:

Yeah, it is definitely getting more and more challenging. I think that I speak to a lot of my peers, folks at different DSOs that do their own recruiting. And I think there’s two problems emerging, but they’re being exacerbated by one cause. So there’s about 5,700 endodontists in the US, give or take, depending on what information you look at, I kind of depend on the Kaiser Family Foundation. They do a pretty good job of updating their database on their website. But 5,700, give or take, 850 in California, 650 in New York. I think there’s like 400 and something in Florida and another four, 500 in Texas. So you’ll put those four states together and you’re looking at a large percent of endodontists. What even makes it more difficult is like that 850 in California – I don’t know the data – but my gut would tell me that at least 500 of those are within LA, San Diego, Orange County, and San Francisco.

So you’ve got a massive amount of people in Southern California. I tell residents all the time, “Please don’t come to Orange County.” But yet, I’ve been at five programs, there’ll be 12 freshly minted endodontists in Orange County by June, 12 more. That’s just the ones I’ve spoken to. So one entire residency, we have 10 people, five and five. The entire group that I had dinner with was going to Orange County. So anyway, we have a big issue in the flyover states, and so I don’t know how they’re going to fix that.

The pediatrics had a similar situation when I started my kid’s dentist back in 2009. I think there were like 4,200 pediatric dentists in the US, and it was a very fast-growing profession. I think now they’re up to 9,000. They massively expanded the number of residencies and they expanded the slots. I’m on the board of the foundation, AAE foundation. So I know a lot of the program directors. I know a lot of the leadership of the AAE, and I haven’t heard anything that indicates they’re going to do a similar path. They’re either going to increase the number of residencies or they’re going to increase the number of residents per program, but it’s obvious that they do a lot of recruiting for their students from the coast. So a lot of California kids, a lot of New York kids. And I think that if they don’t fix that somehow, it’s going to create a market problem. And as I mentioned to the leadership, when the market solves your problem, you’re probably not going to like the outcome.

So, the endodontic community has to figure this out if they want to have it figured out with board-eligible, board-certified endodontists. So I think there’s going to be an emergence of, what I call, endotologists, which we’ve got a couple of them that work with us. These are general dentists who have dedicated their life to doing nothing but root canals. Some have done thousands of root canals. We augment that with a fellowship program in our training institute with the didactic and clinical skills development and verification. But quite honestly, there’s areas of the country that there are no endodontists. The ones that are there kind of have a monopoly, and there are clients and patients that need endodontic therapy done by somebody who really knows what they’re doing. And this is another alternative to that. But the other thing that’s happening that I think the large DSOs that started with an acquisition strategy, and more of a super dentist kind of thought process, those groups that emerged 15 years ago, 17 years ago, they were buying up offices where the dentist was in. So a lot of times, in a rural area.

And they had to be a super dentist. They didn’t have the luxury of being able to send their patients down the street to a specialist, especially a periodontist oral surgeon or an endodontist. So they went out and got trained in these different modalities and became proficient at it. So when they were in their mid-fifties, early forties, mid-fifties, and they sold to some of these larger DSOs, the DSO was able to continue that thought process, right, as they were doing dentistry like they had done it before. And they were able to consume a lot of the specialty work, and they weren’t necessarily have to go out and find a mobile or itinerant type of person to come in. So, I believe those groups – I’m talking to them now – those specialty dentists, those super dentists are retiring.

They’ve been in practice now for 16, 15, 10 more years than when they sold, and they’re getting ready to age out of the practice. And the reality is to get an associate up to that level of sophistication is going to be very challenging. Most dental students don’t need to do one root canal anymore. If they do any, it’ll be one. They’ll do one root canal in their four years of education, so maybe 10 at the most. So how do you get a guy and gal like that to get proficient at their crown or bridge work? Get proficient at diagnosing and treating periodontal disease, get them proficient at working a proper schedule, getting patients through, seeing new patients, continuing care patients. How are you going to do all that and then teach them how to do implants, teach them how to do root canals, maybe teach them how to do simple third molar extractions.

Start getting them to dance around orthodontic therapy with Invisalign. So, you know, you can see that these kids are going to get overwhelmed very quickly, and you’ll have some rock stars, you’ll have some outliers that’ll be able to immediately do this, but the vast majority of the bell curve is not going to be able to do that. So what are they going to do now? They either have to send these patients out or they have to figure out a way to do an itinerant model, like Pacific has done from the beginning, right? Steve Thorn started with that idea of specialty care being delivered by specialists and he had a de novo so he could steer that ship with his clinical advisory board and his older doctor network. Whereas if you are at Heartland, for example, and you’re buying up hundreds of practices in the Midwest, many of them rural, and they all have super dentists, well 15 years later, now what do you do with those practices?

So I think for the market, the itinerant, the mobile will continue to grow. I do think if they struggle with it, people that haven’t adopted it, struggle with how they pay for it. Is it worth it? What if they turn them over, then they’ve got this program they have initiated and the oral surgeon leaves, and now what do they do? They got to find another oral surgeon.

And that’s what kind of our brand promises on the mobile side is we’ve got multiple providers generally credentialed. We have multiple providers, certainly licensed, in the state. We had a doctor go on maternity leave in September. Dr. Abid flew down to Texas and took care of her patients for the eight weeks she was out. That’s kind of one of our value propositions. But if you’re going individual by individual, it could be a little bit of a risk.

Bill Neumann:

So, I mean, you talked a little bit about your Cornerstone specialty dental products, and I know there seems to have been a lot of innovation with endodontic products in the past 15, 20 years. I worked for a company that developed endodontic products. I mean, does that make it easier for super dentists to do endodontics or, I mean, they obviously still need to be trained, but I’m wondering, does that help at all? This situation with-

Tom von Sydow:

Well, I think, I’m not a clinician, but I think that if you talk to an endodontist, certainly rotary files, and some of the more modern hand pieces being delivered by companies like Brasseler and Morita, have certainly made things better. There have been some technology improvements in some of the areas of endo that make the process of endodontics a little more efficient and faster.

But I think the critical issue is not so much the technology, it is kind of the experience. Because if you talk to someone who’s done a lot of root canals, whether it be a GP/endotologist person, or you talk to an endodontist that’s been in practice for a few years, a lot of what they do is still by feel. They get the tactical feedback from their hands about where they’re at during the procedure. And then of course, the diagnostics is really the key, knowing what you’re getting into before you get into the tooth, understanding that kind of a three-dimensional format in your brain before you launch. And that comes with experience. So I think some of the technology certainly will make the ramp-up faster, but I don’t think there’s anything that’s come out that is going to simplify or remove the need to do a couple hundred procedures under some type of a supervision or feedback loop. You need a couple hundred before you start to get that feel for it.

Bill Neumann:

Do you have any idea? We talked a little bit about COVID and all of a sudden all these endodontic specialty DSOs. Any idea where we are as far as consolidation goes? If you had to throw a percentage out there, I know it’s so subjective, because what’s a DSO? But if we kind of looked at the groups of endodontists or specialty groups, because it’s like you mentioned, Endo1 which is now Specialty One and has perio and oral surgery, any idea how many endodontists are part of the group as a percentage?

Tom von Sydow:

I think if you included the itinerant block group of guys and gals and then you threw in a few of the DSOs that have purchased, it’s kind of odd. I mean, I’ve run across a few DSOs that are mostly general dentistry, but they’re kind of picking off a few of these endo practices here and there. So if you fold that into the number and then you just aggregate, I would say, we’re probably in the neighborhood of 10 to 15%.

Bill Neumann:

Okay. So there’s quite a bit of opportunity out there for what Cornerstone is doing and a lot of these specialty-focused, and then the larger DSOs to find.

Tom von Sydow:

Yeah, someone asked me that question the other day, and if I ran the math, I’m guessing that there’s probably a hundred to 125 practices in the US that fit our niche. That’s probably about where it is. And then when you take that, because you’ve got another half of them probably have two endodontists in them. So that’s a couple, it’s a couple 300 endodontists. A couple hundred and 300 endodontists. And I think the upper profile has more opportunities. And I think there’s quite a bit also in the very lower end of that spectrum, the guys and gals that don’t want to work, literally aren’t going to retire. And I think there’s quite a few of them, that unless they find another endodontist to buy their practice, they’re going to be waiting a while.

Bill Neumann:

Right. Yeah, that’s good. There’s some great updates here. Before we end the podcast, first off, did we miss anything? I want to make sure that we covered everything that you wanted to cover. It’s always great having you on, and you’ve got a lot going on there. The brick and mortar was a big surprise to me. As you-

Tom von Sydow:

Yeah, I know-

Bill Neumann:

It’s been the model for so long.

Tom von Sydow:

Yeah, no, it’s exciting. It’s got a lot of challenges to it. I’m not naive, it’s not going to be a cakewalk. And like I said, the good news is we believe in our heart that we can bring efficiencies and lots of things to these brick and mortar practices up from the clinical aspect. And we’re fortunate, that unlike General Dentistry DSO, that’s got hundreds and hundreds of codes and 75 permutations of things they can do on a daily basis. We do like 10 codes. We either do fresh root canals, retreat root canals, we do molars, bicuspids, or anteriors. It’s really, from a billing perspective, it’s not that complicated, or not as anywhere near as complicated. So we’re bullish that we can make these practices do really, really well. But those-

Bill Neumann:

You have this group of endodontists that really, for whatever reason, just isn’t a focus of other DSOs.

Tom von Sydow:

Exactly. Yeah.

Bill Neumann:

Well good. And so we got that down. If people want to reach out, they have a practice like we’re discussing, right. That maybe somebody that wants to stay on for a couple of years, how do they reach out to you, and how do they find out more about Cornerstone?

Tom von Sydow:

Yeah, I think the best place to start would be the main website, which is cdsdental.com, Charles, David, Sam, dental.com, cds.com. And on there, there’s lots of ways to get in touch with us, in the various things that we’re doing. So our training institute is connected to that website. Our recruiting page is connected to that website. There’s a phone number on there, obviously. And we do have a full-time recruiter, Phillip Roth, and we have a full-time business development person, Karen. So those two individuals are kind of focused on, well, Phillip’s on everything and Karen is mostly on brick and mortar.

Bill Neumann:

Great. Okay. Well, what we’ll do is we’ll drop that URL in the show notes and also we’ll get Phillip and Karen’s email addresses and we put those in the show notes. You mentioned Karen’s more on the acquisition side and Phillip’s the recruiter, right?

Tom von Sydow:

Correct.

Bill Neumann:

So, we’ll make sure we have those in there. Well, great, we appreciate the updates. This is exciting times, I think, in the dental industry. Certainly trying to keep up with the rapid pace of change in just everyday life. But in the dental industry, in particular, whether it’s on the product development side, whether it’s on the recruiting side, consolidation, it’s tough to do that. And of course, you mentioned a lot of the younger clinicians, endodontists, coming out of residency with tons and tons of debt and not having the means necessary to hang their own shingle or even the desire to do that. So I think the opportunity’s great for Cornerstone and other DSOs out there that are focused on, and the donics are even just looking to add some endodontic practices to their profile.

Tom von Sydow:

Yep. No, it’s a good time to be an endodontist, that’s for sure.

Bill Neumann:

Well, great. And it’s a great time to have Tom von Sydow on our show once again. Now we’ve got you in for three shows and we’ll get you back when you have some additional changes, which I’m sure you will. Tom, if anybody wants to reach out to you, would you mind shouting out your email address in case they had any questions regarding the specialty dental products or the training institute?

Tom von Sydow:

Sure. It’s tvonsydow, so T-V-O-N-S-Y-D-O-W, @corsgroup, C-O-R-S-G-R- O-U-P.com.

Bill Neumann:

And we’ll drop that email address in the show notes. Thanks everybody for watching us today. If you happen to be on YouTube or if you are listening to us on Google, Spotify, or Apple, we appreciate your support. And until next time, this is the Group Dentistry Now Show.