The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry – Episode 224

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Welcome to The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry!

Building Strong Lab Partnerships: Insights from Smile Doctors and Specialty Appliances

Dr. Bob Waugh, Clinical Director, Fixed Appliances of Smile Doctors, Arlen Hurt, Chief Clinical Officer of Specialty Appliances & Tim Jackson, COO of Specialty Appliances join the show. The trio discuss:

• Lab partnerships
• Quality over cost
• Clinical support & training

To learn more about Specialty Appliances visit – https://specialtyappliances.com/

To learn more about Smile Doctors visit – https://smiledoctors.com/

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Building Strong Lab Partnerships DSO podcast transcript:

Welcome to the Group Dentistry Now Show, the voice of the DSO industry. Join us as we talk with industry leaders about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. With over 200 episodes and listeners in over 100 countries, we’re proud to be ranked the number one DSO podcast. For the latest DSO news, analysis and events, and to subscribe to our DSO Weekly e-newsletter, visit GroupDentistryNow.com. We hope you enjoyed today’s show.

Tim Jackson: Welcome, everyone, to the Group Dentistry Now show. I’m Bill Neumann, and appreciate everybody watching us today. We’re going to talk about something I think that’s really important in the industry, and it’s partnerships, but we’re going to focus specifically on lab partnerships with this podcast. I was recently at the Dykema DSO meeting and there was a lot of talk about vendor relationships with different DSOs. And you kind of hear a lot, some are really strong and some tend to be very transactional. And we’re going to focus on that value of that partnership and We’ve got three guests on here. We have Arlan Hurt, who is the Chief Clinical Officer of Specialty Appliances. Arlan, this is your second time on the show, so welcome back.

Dr. Arlen Hurt: Dr. Arlan Hurt Yeah, it’s good to be here again. I really enjoy it.

Tim Jackson: And two first-timers here, we have Tim Jackson, Chief Operating Officer at Specialty Appliances. I’ve spent a bunch of time with Tim. We spent some time in Chicago midwinter chatting, and it’s great to have him on. Good to see you, Tim.

Tim Jackson: Thank you, Bill. Looking forward to it. Excited about this opportunity. Yeah.

Tim Jackson: And we have Dr. Bob Wah. He is the Clinical Director, Fixed Appliances for Smile Doctors. First time on the show. Dr. Wah, thank you for being here.

Dr. Bob Waugh: Yeah. Thanks for your interest. And it’s an honor to be here. Thank you.

Tim Jackson: So why don’t we start with you, Dr. Wah, a little bit about your background and then a little bit about your role at Smile Doctors.

Dr. Bob Waugh: Sure, I can give you the brief rundown. I’ve been practicing orthodontics in Athens, Georgia for 37 years. That dates me a little bit, but I think of orthodontics as just a passion. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed and I look forward to coming to work every day. I joined Smile Doctors in 2018. And so Smile Doctors has an early beginning as around 2050. So I was the 81st office that joined. And now with over 560 offices, it’s grown and it’s been fantastic. I became their clinical director for braces. And so that’s really what I do is oversee a lot of the implementation of processes, appliances, in this case, products that enter our catalog. And it’s just a joy to put the best products in front of our doctors and teams so that we take good care of patients.

Tim Jackson: Thank you, Dr. Weil. We’re gonna dig into a little bit more about what that role is like and what the relationship is like with specialty appliances. Arlen, a little bit about your background. You’ve been in, you have 41 years at specialty appliances and you’ve been a CDT now for 30 years. You’re an inventor. You’ve got all sorts of things going on. A little bit more about your background and maybe a little bit about specialty appliances.

Dr. Arlen Hurt: Sure. Yeah. You know, number one, I agree with Dr. Wah that, you know, orthodontics, I just love this industry. I’ve been doing it a long time and it’s really a big part of me and what I see in the future. And I think that With Specialty Appliances, we’ve always tried to be innovative and create the best products and services we possibly can. And over the years, that’s really kind of helped us shape who we are as a company and our character, just with the quality orientation. But it’s been a fantastic journey. It’s something I still look forward to every day.

Tim Jackson: Thanks, Arlan. Tim Jackson, COO at Specialty Appliances. You’ve been in the industry for 20 plus years. You’ve got tenure at Discus. You have tenure at Phillips. And you’ve been really involved lately at Specialty Appliances. I think it’s six acquisitions that you’ve had in recent years. So I’d love to learn more about those acquisitions and about your role at Specialty Appliances.

Tim Jackson: Yeah, Bill, it’s been great. So after having, you know, 20 plus years with Discus Dental and Philips, I came over to specialty in early 2021, really with a focus of kind of converting the business from that founder led lab into a scalable organization. And my passion is developing leadership and really creating a continuous improvement environment with a focused on leveraging technology. And that’s what we’ve done. And that’s allowed us to double our business organically while still maintaining less people than we had in 2021. But the real growth is also coming from these acquisitions. And we made a choice recently in the last couple of years to not only add on to the labs that we were acquiring for orthodontics, but also to add on to dental. So now we acquired three dental labs to go along with our ortho labs, which really is just set us up well to be a full service dental and orthodontic provider, uniquely kind of positioned to serve DSOs with that end-to-end solution. And it’s been great to watch the growth of the company, but also to watch the growth of the people and see how well the business can do with that really a focused effort on continuous improvement and really develop leadership across it.

Tim Jackson: And I was, Kim and I were at the AAO meeting in Philadelphia this year, and you had a big crowd around the specialty booth. So a testament to what orthodontists think of specialty and just the crowd that you drew when Kim and I were trying to have a conversation, but this doggone orthodontist wanted to talk to you. So that’s a good thing.

Tim Jackson: Absolutely.

Tim Jackson: So let’s get into the Q&A part here. And again, we talked about really wanna focus on lab partnerships. Dr. Weil, really start with you with this first question here. And we do see this in, especially with DSOs where there are some in-house labs with certain DSOs. So why does Smile Doctors really choose to partner with preferred labs rather than to do this in-house?

Dr. Bob Waugh: Yeah, I think just look around you, the quality and the representation you have from specialty appliances says it all. I’m actually geographically pretty close to them, and I’ve always enjoyed working with a lab. Now, it doesn’t mean that a doctor couldn’t come to Small Doctors, have their own in-house lab, and we try to support that, but it’s just a lot better practice for our group to move through all of the growing pains and things that you have in the OSO environment. with a scalable lab that’s a quality-oriented lab. Because we have this culture at Smile Doctors where we put the patients first. And we try to, of course, support our doctors and teams to do that the best way they can. And I don’t know how we could be experts in lab work and be able to pull that off centrally is just too much. It’s a distraction, really. It takes us away from our primary focus, which is to care for the patients and to try to deliver the best patient experience that we can. I would say there’s some challenges, too. I don’t know if you want me to continue.

Tim Jackson: Yeah, I think that’s great. That was going to be my next question.

Dr. Bob Waugh: Yeah, I know the challenge is for us, I guess, internally, you just want consistency and quality, and it needs to be clean. It needs to be delivered in a timely way. And there’s the schedule to think of, where it ebbs and flows throughout the season. So what are we going to do as a big organization other than rely on preferred labs? You know, I don’t know. I think the, the, the margins, the profitability, all of that aside, I just would rather work with a lab I could depend on. And I can consistently count on the trust that we have, the relationship we have is really, meets all the challenges that we, we tend to have in our, our organization.

Tim Jackson: Dr. Wah, when you and Smile Doctors go through the process of selecting a preferred lab partner, what does that look like? What are those key factors in making that decision, who you partner with, like specialty appliances?

Dr. Bob Waugh: Yes, well, Specialty Appliances has been a longtime friend and a longtime reliable lab that does quality work for us. And we’ve, I’m sure, restarted out our whole relationship as an OSO with Specialty Appliances because they’ve been there for us. They’re a trusted partner. When we start bringing on more doctors, they come in with different experiences and different relationships, and we try to honor those. And of course, we’re looking at scale. We’re looking at what lab under the circumstances could deliver for us in a timely way. So delivery of a timely product, good quality and reliability, having availability, to answer those questions for our doctors on specific patients that are in queue. I think that’s huge. I think having a relationship with a lab that answers the phone, that picks up and takes care of the people that you’re trying to serve is a real big part of the process. So when I start thinking about choosing a lab, we need a variety of labs just to serve all our needs. Lab work is really specific to patient care, and so you can start with templates of lab appliances, but when it comes right down to it, every patient’s different, and you need to be able to answer the response, I think, to add this bell or whistle to this or that case to make it go well for every doctor. So just a lab that’s flexible enough to care for the patient on a one-by-one basis is really key.

Tim Jackson: Well, Tim and Arlen, you heard what Dr. Wah said about the value of a lab partner. Tell me a little bit about how it feels from your perspective and what value you provide to DSOs, OSOs, like Smile Doctors and other partners. Tim, if you want to start.

Tim Jackson: Yeah, sure. So I think, I mean, first of all, Dr. Wah said it perfect. Don’t have to overcomplicate things you have to build a quality product that’s going to be there on time when they’ve asked for it, and you have to pick up the phone on the other end. And for us, we needed to maintain that while we scaled up to be able to service those type of organizations like. Smile doctors, so that’s where we use technology Knowledge within the industry and but also we need to do the steps in the background that nobody sees which is becoming FDA GMP certified having our ISO certified having our licenses to the FDA MD SAP and doing all the testing in the background that really is there to ensure patient safety. So doing cytotoxicity testing and all of those steps along the way to ensure that not only are we providing it, but what we’re providing is safe all the way through. And then using that technology that we’re doing also to gain some advantages that will help the doctor with patient visits to use less chair time and make ourselves a value asset to the DSO.

Tim Jackson: And Arlen, I’d love to get a little bit of your feedback and why you think relationships like the one you have, partnerships with SMILE doctors, are so successful.

Dr. Arlen Hurt: Really, it’s that we were able to grow to be scalable. That’s a key factor when you look at an organization like Small Doctors, obviously has grown tremendously over the past seven years since Dr. Wah joined. And if you look at the, you know, I think it’s key that we communicate with each other and we want to make sure that we have, you know, what do they need to help, you know, data-wise to help them and then how can we do that besides just the lab work? We want to do everything on the lab side, though. We’re going to invest in whatever we need technology-wise to make sure we can fulfill their needs and get those appliances back to them in a very timely manner.

Tim Jackson: So I touched on this earlier when I made the introduction, but This is a partnership, and we hear that the word gets thrown around a lot. And there are especially, I think, with some of the larger groups out there. And like I mentioned, I was at the Dykema meeting, and there was a lot of talk specifically about one group. and how transactional their relationship was with a lot of the vendors, and several vendors were talking about it. And Dr. Wah, I mean, you really talk, you talked a lot about the long-term relationship you’ve had with specialty appliances, but it’s not a transactional one, it’s a true partnership, and there’s a real clinical focus. Can you talk about that clinical relationship that you have?

Dr. Bob Waugh: Sure. We go way back, of course, but the relationship just starts with trust and accountability and people owning the responsibility of the lab work they provide. I’ve always had that relationship with specialty. So you mentioned it’s a partnership. I consider them a true partner. A true partner doesn’t just give you the best price. They’re there through the thick and the thin. I’ll give you an example. We recently acquired a group of orthodontists, and we rallied to get this done in record time. But the addition of 80 offices is no small undertaking. And so this particular group came in under our wing. We wanted to show them our culture. We wanted to introduce them to our partners. And a group like Specialty is always there. There’s somebody who you can count on. I’m sure in the course of business, things are going to ramp up significantly because of that acquisition. So I know that on their end, they’re they’re willing to meet that demand. Meeting the demands of the day in, day out is really what you count on when you have a partner. They’re listening and they’re willing to flex and they’re willing to build the system to fit what you need. So meeting demands is kind of the key for us.

Tim Jackson: I think Arlan touched on that, that the organization, especially appliances, is scaling as you scale up. And you mentioned that being really important to your success. Let’s talk about, and Arlan, we can start with you, the clinical support that you provide to DSOs, as we’re really focused on that.

Dr. Arlen Hurt: Yeah, I think one thing unique to Specialty Appliances is we do share a lot of knowledge with our technicians. They go through formalized training, and we always try to help them grow, which helps everybody in the organization, helps our customers. And then we also have a tech rep team, and they’ve went through a lot of training. Most of these people have been office assistants and been taught in the lab world. So they have a lot of knowledge about the office, how it operates. And then, you know, we look, when we design products and things, we’re always trying to think about how can we help the patient experience, the doctor and the staff to treat the patients, you know, more efficiently. And that’s why we try to get our products and services even to focus on that.

Tim Jackson: Tim, did you want to add anything?

Tim Jackson: I would say one of the things that I’ve enjoyed, and this is mostly being around Arwen and having the pleasure of going to so many of these DSO meetings and with Dr. Waz, We’re partnered with them also just for the training that they’re gonna do with their clinicians. So an example would be last year, Dr. Wah was doing a training for teaching about how to place the brackets and to optimize as I’ve seen their clinical leader. And we had the opportunity to partner with them and print all the models and come there and be with them and help set it up. And I thought that was a great partnership where specialty can be there contributing to help One, and provide the data and support for them to train everybody so they keep that consistent treatment that Dr. Wah talked about at the beginning, and we can be there to partner and help support that.

Tim Jackson: So Dr. Watt, how do you and the team at Smile Doctors, how do you go about evaluating new products? Maybe you can use specialty appliances as an example, but do the products, the solutions normally come to you first, and then you have a clinical board, or what does that process look like?

Dr. Bob Waugh: Yeah, that’s great. A good question because every organization runs things differently, but I’m on a regular weekly call with our procurement team for products. So I’m listening with my ear to the ground to see what is it that our doctors are asking for? What is it the next thing that’s coming that we need to prepare for either to add to the catalog or as a lab appliance? And I guess I could just walk you through it with an example, for instance, In the lab world, last year, we started up our 3D laser printed metal appliances. And so you would think that’s been around for a little while, but we will not be the first one to jump on board with something that’s a big implementation process. So it just takes a little bit of time. But just to look at that, we were having doctors join our group who were asking, can I continue to make these printed metal appliances? they weren’t on our catalog at that time. And so we used the EZRX lab platform, which has a list of all the preferred templates that we have, and we hadn’t entered into that arena. But the more I heard about it, I knew well over a couple of years ago that this was coming. So it comes to me first. I do. I check in with the leadership to make sure this is something that we want to pursue. And then I get some direction. But in that case, just taking that example, I would rely on a lab like Specialty Appliances to tell us all the people that are using those appliances in our organization. And we would reach out and understand the whole clinical implementation process for that, what the techniques were. We have so many members that are already using these type things, so we can rely on our internal doctors for this. It’s very rare that we’d have a trial, but we wanted to actually go to school on who was doing what already. Then we’re able to pull off the key or best practices that we have. And then with specialty’s help, actually, so they helped us design a product test, more or less an implementation for doctors who had no experience delivering these appliances so we could learn from this small group. So I think we did appliances for a month or so in the summer last year, and we got, I think, five or six doctors to be involved. And we went through and allowed them to test in their own hands how it went and get the reaction of their team. So I also run a group called Fixed Champions. This is the key opinion leaders for small doctors on the clinical basis for fixed appliances for braces and related appliances. And so I would always use them as a sounding board. They get a chance to handle the appliances and see firsthand how things are made. They help me give opinions, receive opinions, I guess, on all the appliances and things like that that we want to review. And then we develop a written protocol for rolling it out to the group. And we’ll use our administrative team to help with that. But they will plan either a bulletin or communication or an online doctor CE event to roll things out like we did for this particular product. And then it launches. And so it could be six months. from start to finish before something could be launched. But you know you’re going to do it right and you’re going to have fewer remakes and you’re going to have a lot more satisfied doctors and patients and team.

Tim Jackson: Once you go through that process, what does that buy-in look like? I mean, do you typically see like a slow uptake from the docs or is it pretty quick? And it’s always a question you have, you know, you get some, as a lab or a vendor, you get, you become part of the formulary, right, in quotes, and a preferred partner. And sometimes things don’t always work out the way, you know, you expect them to.

Dr. Bob Waugh: Yeah, you nailed it. You’re trying to avoid a disruption in their clinics. And so you want it to be as neat and clean a transition as possible. And every step is thought through and tested in a variety of doctor’s offices before we launch anything like that. require that we have, you know, we’re not trying the latest material and rolling it out the week it comes out. You know, we look at a lot of different new materials that hit the market and a lot of products are presented and they have to kind of get through the gate for review. And then once they’re reviewed, they’re reviewed by a team of 12 doctors, you know, that are going to put their hands on it and test it and try it, like I mentioned. So just know I think everything’s given a fair shake. When people reach out to me, I do my very best to respond to them and let them know if there’s an opportunity or not. And then if there’s something that really looks like it by demand, by doctors reaching out to me specifically or our procurement team, they want to see this added to the catalog, we’ll consider it. And we have a general catalog for all doctors. And then there are individual doctors that have specific things that they need and want and work best in their hands. And so we consider each of those requests.

Tim Jackson: So you have this formal process, and I think it’s really important. And we’ve got a lot of what I would call emerging groups that listen to this podcast. So they, you know, really a group of whether it’s orthodontists or whether it’s, you know, general practitioners that may have 3, 4, 20 locations. So they might not necessarily have that formal process built out yet. So maybe share with us in just the importance, like why do you need something like this, especially as you get to scale?

Dr. Bob Waugh: Yeah, I think just looking at it from our history, you know, we start with a half dozen doctors and grow to this size. There’s got to be a formal process. There’s got to be someone who’s approachable. to come to to say, hey, can you consider adding this to the catalog? And so we are always interested in our best price, but we also want to not allow things on the catalog that are poor quality or something that would fail in every doctor’s hand. And so there’s got to be a formal process by which things are decided on. And for our My recommendation for any small group, like you’re mentioning, would be to control the quality from the beginning, and then never let your catalog open to any lab or product that’s gonna not serve people well. So if you can stand on that on a day-to-day basis, you’re gonna move forward as a group, just like Smile Doctors has, and have the trust of the members of the group.

Tim Jackson: And Tim and Arlen, from a lab perspective, what does that product approval process look like, Tim? Maybe we can kick things off with you.

Tim Jackson: Yeah, I mean, there’s both an internal and external. So we work very closely with the procurement department at Smile Doctors. And when there’s new products that need to be brought forward or ideas that we have, We we bring those to them and we share what benefits we think that this will bring whether it’s a new treatment program If it’s new parts, whatever or maybe it’s a new process, but we will bring that forward To them, but we won’t have done that until we’ve done the work ourselves so when we develop many new parts and products and treatments inside the the building, and if there’s new research and development that we do, which we do all the time, it goes through a phase gate process. So we take it all the way through doing a very structured design, testing through KOLs, taking it through the process, creating design history files, and really validating that what we’re going to bring to them will bring value, and that it’s not just another Me Too, but there’s something along with it that’s going to deliver value to the office. or to the patient. And that process takes time. And it’s very important because this is where we’re going to do all that testing that I talked about earlier, where you’re going to spend things like $1,500 just to do cytotoxicity testing. And those are investments we want to take so that we can be confident in what we’re delivering. But when we get that handed over to them and the procurement department works with Dr. Wah or the clinical advisory boards of other DSOs, we can be confident and give them the data they need to know why they should try and try this and what it’s going to do for the office and for the overall organization to help either improve their techniques, improve the quality, improve the treatment or profitability.

Tim Jackson: Arlan, anything from you on this?

Dr. Arlen Hurt: I just want to add that, you know, we would be happy as well. We’ve done this in the past, but, you know, we can help with training materials or, you know, creating bonding instructions, for example, if you’re going to be placing it in the mouth or do videos with Dr. Wah, for example, or somebody to just show how the technique is done. But that’s what we want to do. We want to be like a partner in the whole process. It’s really important to that. So we make sure that that’s how we support each other, truthfully.

Tim Jackson: And I mean, I think that what you provide at Specialty Appliances, I mean, you’re really helping people like Dr. Wah and the team at Smile Doctors vet a lot of these products already. You may have already had experience with some of these, with some of your other customers. Maybe you haven’t, but it’s, you know, so you’re actually, I mean, can we get back to that partnership word? And I mean, it’s really, is I’m not sure all the labs out there or other partners do things like that where you’re actually helping, you know, customer vet products, which can take a lot of time. And to Dr. Wa’s point, you know, you’re not going to be the first to jump in if it’s something new. You want to make sure that it’s tested and specialty may be doing it, have done already, have done that testing already. So. Yeah, exactly. Let’s move on to another point, which I think is really interesting because we get to this, you know, it’s about, and cost is important for sure, but when we look at, you know, the cost, it’s not just the actual price of an appliance, but there are other things that are involved, you know, whether it’s, you know, things like it might be easier for younger clinicians to use, it may be faster, it may be better for the patient, it may be more reliable. There’s all sorts of other things that go into it. So let’s talk a little bit about that. Maybe from your perspective, Dr. Weil, how do you look at cost of something, an appliance?

Dr. Bob Waugh: Well, every doctor’s got their experience with the things that work best for them and their hands, and they know the course of treatment, if they’ve been at it a while, they know what’s working well, what’s not working well in their hand. I think when you look at efficiency, we’re focused on visits, number of visits. We’re looking at the rotation, the remote care is certainly a strong concept for what we’re using as appliances. And so for me, I think the cost is a very important factor. We want to make sure we’re not getting overcharged, but we just want a fair cost, something that we can rely on, something that is not going to be volatile or change on a regular basis that we can sort of say, well, we know if we start in with this lab, we’re going to continue with this lab. We’re going to see the results from this lab. And then we’re going to be able to hang our hat on that appliance from this lab from now on. And that consistency comes from just having people like Arlen and Tim. And Arlen and I go, I know way back. So I just feel like the cost is for the for our profitability, an important part of it, but I would put quality ahead of price.

Tim Jackson: Arlan, what do you think about that? I mean, I know there’s a lot of considerations that specialty appliances takes, and you’re also providing, I think one thing that you touched on, Arlan, was really the education and the training behind, especially if you’re making some, you know, a change, right, in an organization like Smile Doctors, where you, you know, we’re not, it’s not just one clinician, you’ve got hundreds of them. So then that education becomes paramount.

Dr. Arlen Hurt: Yeah, exactly. And it’s something that when you’re willing to step out and do that and help with that and make sure that everybody understands the process, it’s just a win-win for everybody involved. And, you know, Tim reiterated on the quality and the concept of that, but this company has been based on quality since day one. I’ve always been focused on it until, you know, he’s done an amazing job. He’s continuing on how we, you know, look at, we’ve had four or five FDA inspection with zero signings, which says something to itself, you know, ISO certified and, you know, those signings. So that’s really show you like we’re just dedicated to it. Something you don’t get with some of the other labs, especially a small lab, but it’s just something we’re dedicated to. And then helping the doctors, again, in that partnership type role, like what do we need to do to help you be successful? And that’s where we want to be.

Tim Jackson: Anything you want to add to that, Tim?

Tim Jackson: Yeah, I think the one thing about cost is it’s deceptive. So if somebody is charging so little that it seems that there should be a red flag, there probably should be, because that means they’re probably not taking all those steps, right? So the cost should be fair, but it’s also about the value delivered. And I think one of the things that we’ve focused on is that quality aspect, remakes. For every time you reduce remakes, you’re reducing the number of visits per case, which is increasing the profitability. It’s also about how well they fit, because you’re not having those adjustments of chair time, number of visits, all that creates the total really treatment cost. which is a lot different than just looking at the price of a device. And so I think for us, that’s why we focused on it. So we’ve taken our remake rate down by over 80% in four year period. So through technology, using AI and really focusing in it. And that is something that we think creates more value than potentially lowering that price on that device again and again and again. And one of the things we respect with Smile Doctors that maybe some of the other DSOs aren’t doing, which is, it’s not about can we get to that lowest price, which is what Dr. Wallace said. It’s about, can we get to the best price that delivers the overall value to the entire organization and to every clinician? And that’s really where we focus. We are focusing on delivering value. So we might not go down to the very rock bottom, but if you have, 20% less remakes than you would have with somebody else, and you don’t have to adjust it at chair side, then the profitability of the business is significantly higher than you would have ever achieved by just getting a lower price point on your device.

Tim Jackson: As we wrap up this podcast, you know, you’re both Smile Doctors and Specialty Appliances. You’ve had a lot of growth. You’re really both powerhouses, both on the OSO side of things and on the lab side of things. Talk a little bit about the future of your organizations and then also the future of the partnership. Dr. Boyle, we can kick it off with you.

Dr. Bob Waugh: Yeah, well, you’re exactly right. Specialty is a powerhouse. They have always been, and they are leaders in their field, and I respect that so much. I remember visiting the lab the first time I went, and I could just see as far as I could see. the stations, the lab stations, the printers, the people, it was impressive. And so you just got to know that they’re a juggernaut of a lab and they are consistently good. And that is such a bright future. for us because Smile Doctors is gonna grow. We’re gonna continue to grow and we’re gonna bring the best doctors, continue to bring the best doctors to our group. And the quality of the results, if you come into the practices and you see day in, day out, dedication we have to patients and the care that we provide in our organization, you’re aware, you’re gonna grow. So we just have to meet the demand. And so pairing up, partnering with specialty appliances has especially been a great relationship. And I’m gonna go so far as to say that really, true partners stick together through thick and thin, through COVID, through all the onslaught of the summers together, the turnaround times, the calls, the difficult situations sometimes we get in with patients and their needs, and you won’t find a more reliable lab than Specialty. They’ve been a great partner, and together I think they help build our culture.

Tim Jackson: Oh, that’s great when you talk about the culture side of things. So, Dr. Wah, if there are any orthodontists that have practices and may be looking to partner, what’s the best way for them to find out about Smile Doctors?

Dr. Bob Waugh: Well, they certainly can reach out to me. I’ve passed along lots of names through the years and so forth, but we have a whole business development group that will respond and they can just reach out to me at robert.wah at smiledoctors.com. We can get the information to you and then I can certainly direct you to our whole business development group.

Tim Jackson: Excellent, and the website, the URL’s easysmiledoctors.com, easy enough. Arlan and Tim, talk a little bit about the future for your organization and from your perspective, the future of the partnership with Smile Doctors.

Dr. Arlen Hurt: Yeah, well, I think with the organization in general, I think that one thing we’re going to continue to do is always be looking Uh, what’s, you know, what’s next in the industry? We, you know, we try to be on the leading edge. We’re, we’re looking at things every day because. Our materials are changing. Um, they’re going to get better. That, you know, 3D printers changing, we have 3D wire vending machines, but then having that capability. to always looking at how can we do things better really with our partners. You know, that’s all we say when we look at parts or services, how’s it going to help our customers, the doctors, the staff, and ultimately the patient. And if, as long as we just keep focused on that, I mean, we’re going to keep growing, um, and growing not only internally with technology and other things like that, but growing, you know, as far as size of the company and we’ll just, you know, keep our focus. And that’s, what’s going to really kind of push us into the future.

Tim Jackson: And Arlen, what’s the best way if people wanna get in touch with you?

Dr. Arlen Hurt: It’s arlen.hert, it’s A-R-L-E-N, have a different name, specialtyappliances.com.

Tim Jackson: Excellent, we’ll put that email address just like Dr. Waz in the show notes. And Tim, final words from you, and also we wanna make sure people wanna get in touch with you or find out more about specialty, you shout out the website and also your email address.

Tim Jackson: Yeah, no, great. Thanks, Bill. So I think for specialty looking forward, especially with the partnership with Smile Doctors, I think it starts with the procurement group that we work with. They’re definitely different than what I’ve experienced, again, been in this, doing this for a long time. And it’s a true partnership looking how we can help provide data that helps strengthen the businesses so that they can help know where to make decisions and how to advance forward. And also how we can get those new products into Smile Doctors. And then also partnering up when they do bring in these new groups like they just recently did on how we can step in in a hurry and help make those the onboarding of all those doctors simpler and that and we will continue to work towards that providing the data interlocking systems to allow the businesses to grow with each other and that’s really a key aspect and then to contact us or contact me tim.jackson at specialtyappliances.com But one of the best things people can do is just also go to the website at specialtyappliances.com and explore the website, check it out, look at all the different things we have to offer. We have a lot of educational tools on there to help educate people about some of the advances that we’re doing and all the different types of products that we can provide and services that we can provide for them. and then reach out and just click the button and somebody from our customer service or tech rep teams will reach out.

Tim Jackson: Yeah, thanks, Tim. I was on your website and just looking, you’ve got your SmileSync, so you can enter cases. There’s all sorts of cool things that you can do. So yeah, make sure you go to specialtyappliances.com and smiledocs.com to find out more. Well, thanks guys. Great, great conversation, Dr. Wah, Arlen, and Tim. I really appreciate your time and thank you everybody for watching or listening to this podcast today. Until next time, this is the Group Dentistry Now Show.

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