The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry – Episode 141

On this episode of the Group Dentistry Now podcast, Dr. Clifton Cameron, Chief Dental Officer at Lightwave Dental, Sandi Synstad, Director of Clinical Support, at Lightwave Dental, and Bonnie Wilson, Director of DSOs at Garrison Dental discuss:

• Key values that contribute to a successful partnership between a DSO & vendor
• Implications & strategy to address current market conditions.
• Vision & aspirations for the future of their organizations & the industry
• Much more

To find out more about Garrison Dental please visit https://www.garrisondental.com/. You can also contact Bonnie Wilson at bwilson@garrisondental.com.

To find out more about the dental leadership organization, Lightwave Dental visit https://www.lightwavedental.com/. You can contact Sandi Synstad at sandi@lightwavedental.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 Transcript:

Bill Neumann:

Welcome, everyone to the Group Dentistry Now Show. I’m your host, Bill Neumann, and as always, thanks for joining us today. Whether you happen to be listening in on Google, Apple or Spotify, or maybe you’re watching us on YouTube or groupdentistrynow.com, we appreciate your support. We’ve got a great topic today. We’re going to talk about building the DSO community. We’ve got a lot to discuss today, but that’s one of the topics, and we have some great guests. I’d like to make some introductions now. We have Dr. Clifton Cameron. He is the chief dental officer at LightWave Dental. We have Sandi Synstad. She is the director of clinical support at LightWave Dental. And thank you to Garrison Dental for sponsoring this podcast. We have Bonnie Wilson, who is the director of DSOs at Garrison Dental. So welcome, everybody. I appreciate you being here today.

Sandi Synstad:

Thank you.

Bonnie Wilson:

Appreciate that. Good morning.

Bill Neumann:

So let’s start with some introductions. Bonnie, why don’t we start with you? A little bit about your background, if you don’t mind, your position at Garrison and a little bit about Garrison Dental.

Bonnie Wilson:

Sure. So background, 26 years in the healthcare industry. The latter 22 have been in the dental field. Worked for corporate America for most of that time, and for the latter two and a half years or so, I’ve been with Garrison Dental. Garrison Dental has a really great story, a great history. They’re 27 years old now. Dr. Edgar Garrison was the founder of the company and started the first sectional matrix ring in the basement of his dental practice. He has since passed, nine, 10 years ago, but his legacy lives on. A couple of his sons and another partner still run the business, and we are worldwide known. First class in sectional matrix innovation and technology.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks, Bonnie. Sandi, you’re up. A little bit about your background if you don’t mind, and then a little bit about LightWave, and then we can let Dr. Cameron fill in any blanks on LightWave that you may leave out.

Sandi Synstad:

Sure. So I was a clinical hygienist for 32 years for the same office in Centreville, Virginia. Absolutely love clinical hygiene, and my practice actually partnered with Lightwave Dental as a founding office in 2016. Really hard for me to see us go from a private practice into a DSO space at that time, but I learned that LightWave was a really amazing company and all the promises they made to our office were true, that nothing really changed, we could continue to give the same great care we gave. So in 2018, I left Smiles for Centreville where I’d worked at for over 30 years and made the transition to Lightwave Dental. Really hard to leave clinical hygiene, but I absolutely love my job. I love supporting our practices, supporting our teams, and building up amazing dental community within Lightwave Dental.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks, Sandi. Dr. Cameron and I had the pleasure of actually watching Dr. Cameron present at the DSO Leadership Summit. There was a breakout session that a couple of vendors had put together, and you did a phenomenal job. So I have a little insight as to your background but the majority of the audience doesn’t know it, so maybe how you started out and then how you became part of LightWave, and anything before that because you have a pretty interesting background prior to becoming a dentist.

Dr. Clifton Cameron:

That’s right. Yeah. I guess going all the way back there, I shared I was a marine biologist before I went to dental school, but from North Carolina and a GP by trade. Did a residency at a VA health system in North Carolina and came out in 2008, which was a really difficult time to get my vision really going, really. And that vision was building an experience around the patients, not necessarily the dentist. I know that might come across a little weird, a little wrong, but we were the first in our area to break down those barriers, to provide a wow kind of high-tech, high touch patient experience for PPO patients, opened 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM and even on Saturdays.

And luckily, gratefully, I was able to expand that vision with a group that I started in 2013 called CarolinasDentist. Just had our 10-year anniversary for the CarolinasDentist Group. And then five years later, in 2018, we knew we were onto something really unique, a dentist owned and dentist led culture and vibe, and that’s when I went on a nationwide search to look for really my next level investment partner. And that’s where I found LightWave and Sandi. They were up in Virginia. LightWave was about 10 to 12 offices at the time. I was six offices in North Carolina. We brought our forces together officially in 2019, and then in 2021, we rebranded as the Nation’s first and only DLO, Dental Leadership organization.

And that’s really where I believe that the first and most important tenet of our DLO, is we’re super excited to have true doctor ownership, not only for a selling doctor, partnering doctor, or maybe a de novo doctor, but really for all of our doctors based on a sharing of best practices, objective and subjective leadership criteria. And happy to report, today, I have the privilege of leading our 220 doctors across LightWave, and over a hundred of those are owners on our cap table, so super excited about that setup.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks, Clifton. Yeah, that’s great insight there, and I think let’s start with this because you touched on this DLO term, which I think you’re the only dental leadership organization out there. I don’t think anybody else has grabbed that one from you yet.

Dr. Clifton Cameron:

Not yet.

Bill Neumann:

But it’s an interesting space, the DSO space, because it is every DSO, and I think it might’ve been Dr. Mark Cooper was the one that said, “When you’ve seen one DSO, you’ve seen one DSO.” And I think in order to separate yourselves apart and the fact that you are doing things differently, you actually created a new term, right? Instead of DSO that does things differently, we’re a dental leadership organization, so maybe we could drill down on that a little bit, what that means to you and Sandi and what that would mean to a partnering dentist and some of the dentists and even nonclinical staff that comes to work for you.

Dr. Clifton Cameron:

Yeah, definitely. I’ll hit the nuts and bolts of it, and Sandi certainly can pick up on the educational piece, but I think, as I mentioned, over a hundred of those 220 doctors are true owners in a pari-passu structure with our investment partner, Lindsey Goldberg, who we just partnered with on June 30th of this year. So fresh off an investment round, so we’re super excited about our growth potential there. But I think, Bill, the thing that really separates it the most is really the power of ownership thinking. And again, I came from an employee / associate driven organization for the first four years of my career, and again, not that anything is wrong with that. It’s just that I chose a different model.

And I think with partnering with the best of the best as LightWave had done originally as part of Sandi and her original office, and then for me to then go out, recruit, train, develop straight out of residency, or maybe two, three years of experience, what I found early in my career is that dentists do crave that opportunity to be owners, directors and leaders inside their practices. So our why statement at Lightwave is that we believe the dentists are the natural leaders of the dental practice, and it’s our job, Lightwave’s job, my job, Sandi’s job, and indirectly, Bonnie’s job with Garrison, one of our partners, to help and help and allow our doctors to execute on their personal, professional and financial goals, so we are incredibly intentional about that.

So all 220 doctors, I can go to a document file and I know exactly what Dr. Smith, who might be 29 years old, what his top three personal, professional and financial goals are for the next 36 months. And that’s how we build and shape our organization into a very customized approach. For GPs, we’re primarily GPs. We also have orthodontists, pediatric dentists, oral surgeons and endodontists. We are 80% GPs, 20% specialist, but when you look across that landscape, we do not take a one size fits all approach, because again, everybody’s different. So that allows us to shape our educational pathways, but then by having those personal, professional and financial goals, we’re able to celebrate, execute and share in a wealth creation vehicle that is, again, very, very important in this entire industry.

Bill Neumann:

Sandi, do you have anything to add to that?

Sandi Synstad:

Yes. I would just say I take care of most of the education for our professionals, our doctors or hygienists, and like Clifton said, we try to customize that to our clinicians. So we provide them a LightWave implant academy each year, an endo academy each year. We provide our hygienists with at least one to two CEs every month from someone. Garrison Dental is one of our partners that helps provide that education as well, so we’re just continually seeking to give our clinicians and our offices and our teams more education that makes them better clinicians, like Clifton said, helps them meet their goals, and therefore, gives better patient care. So we’re very proud of the fact that education is such a huge part of how we grow our doctors and our hygienists.

Bill Neumann:

Well, that leads into the next question, Sandi, so thank you. I don’t know if you meant to do that or not, but let’s talk about key values and traits. When we’re looking at a partnership, the theme is building A DSO community, and that includes your vendor partners. So let’s talk a little bit about what a successful partnership looks like, and maybe we’ll go to Bonnie first, and what does a successful partnership look like to you from the vendor side of things?

Bonnie Wilson:

Sure. Sure. Thanks. I believe LightWave and Garrison do share a lot of these same values. I’d have to start with quality assurance, huge, down to the patient level. Innovation and technology obviously. Reliability and consistency. For me, communication and transparency is very big. Being open and transparent and having that communication is key. Both parties should be able to discuss concerns and needs, and obviously potential improvements openly. Cost-effectiveness. While quality is paramount, I do believe that cost-effectiveness is also crucial.

Sandi mentioned the educational platform within LightWave. We also pride ourselves on our training and support here at Garrison. We offer training and ongoing support to our DSO partners and their providers, just basically to ensure that they can effectively utilize and maintain the products and what we could be doing.

Long-term relationship building is also very important to me. Both my DSO partners and us being a manufacturer should view the partnership as a long-term commitment, just encouraging mutual investment in each other’s success. I feel that by prioritizing these values and traits, A DSO and a manufacturer can build a strong and mutually benefit partnership that ultimately benefits the patients they serve.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks, Bonnie. Let’s talk about that vendor relationship and what you’re looking for at LightWave and maybe some best practices. It sounds like Garrison certainly has some of those. Sandi?

Sandi Synstad:

Yeah, I’ll pick that one up. So Lightwave prides ourself on our values – hardworking, honest, caring and growth-minded – and I think I keep that in mind whenever I do anything within Lightwave and within my workspace. But what we really look for in a partner is someone that respects our values and respects how we treat our doctors and our teams. We don’t dictate what our doctors purchase. We don’t dictate where our doctors buy. We don’t dictate any clinical care. They have complete autonomy, so having the respect of a partner for them to understand, we’ll provide the education, we’ll provide amazing pricing. We will do what we can do as far as their support community to give them the best resources to get the best products and to be educated the best, but ultimately, it comes down, lik Clifton said, the doctors are the leaders of their practice. It ultimately comes down to what the doctors prefer to utilize within their practice to give that great clinical care, and just having a partner that respects that is very important to me.

Having partners that are honest, that support us all the way around, like Bonnie said, all that, I will echo that completely. They’re a great partner and we have lots of great partners that respect our position on how we treat our offices and our teams and our doctors, and that’s just really important to us.

Bonnie Wilson:

Dr. Cameron, I don’t know if you have anything you’d like to add to that.

Dr. Clifton Cameron:

Yeah. No, I do. I think one thing that I think DSOs in general have done a great job doing is really protecting the clinical autonomy. I think that’s a learning lesson that the industry had to learn the hard way back in the nineties and 2000s. And I’m stealing this from Steve Jobs, I just finished his autobiography, but my approach really on these vendor relationships is that, kind of as Steve’s jobs was saying, as he started to see this and learn this at Apple in the early days, he started taking a longer term view on his team members and his partners. Obviously, Apple has a ton of international partners.

Because we’re putting something together really special, that’s how we view the Garrison’s of the world is saying, “Hey, be patient with us. We’re not going to come in.” It’s myself, Sandi, and we have five other clinical team members. But ultimately, it’s our job to find what’s working in either one or 10 or 50 of our practices, and then share appropriately through education, through our event cadence that we have. We have a very robust event and community building cadence, to then allow Garrison to then roll into 50, 70, 80%, maybe eventually a hundred percent of our practices across the LightWave setup.

\So at LightWave, we are playing the long game. We’re not just trying to say, “Hey, top down, this is what you’re doing because we negotiated a great discount.” No, the patient experience comes first, and then of course, 1A, 1B is then going to be the doctor’s personal, professional, and financial goals.

Bill Neumann:

Sandi, I’m curious on the education side of things because that seems to be like a cornerstone of this relationship that you have. Can you talk a little bit more about what type of education, and Bonnie, you can certainly include yourself on this, what kind of education is Garrison providing to you? Is it online or is it in person? Is it supporting the events that Dr. Cameron mentioned? What does that look like? What’s the best practice? Sandi, if you want to go with that?

Sandi Synstad:

Sure. I’m sorry. I was waiting for Bonnie. So as far as our educational platform, we work really hard to make sure our doctors are educated in the best the business has to offer. As far as Garrison Dental, they have provided us CE. It’s usually online because we have such a huge footprint. Our offices, we have 86 offices between Northern Virginia and Alabama, so by having it online, it just works well for our teams. More people can get on and share that information. But overall, we have in-person CEs. We also have online CEs like Garrison can provide for us, and we have vendors that support both of those types of opportunities.

Bill Neumann:

Bonnie, anything you’d like to add?

Bonnie Wilson:

Yeah, sure. It’s interesting, Bill. When I talk about education, it has been a very important aspect throughout my entire career. I actually was on the National Clinician Speaking Bureau for 11, almost 12 years, and so I find that education, really in any industry, is very important. Even back to the interviewing process between myself and Garrison, I really dove real deep into their history and what they had to offer to providers, clinicians, and partners. So again, priding ourselves. And again, it’s not just our US market that we provide CE credits for. It’s virtually worldwide. The calendar events is a plethora of information, and it’s not just specific to Garrison Dental or a sectional matrix system. We have a wide, vast group of KOLs all around the world that lecture for us, and it can be really on all kinds of different subject matters.

We are AGD PACE accredited. We view that very highly and respect it as much as possible. I know that if I were to ask any of our partners, what do you think? What’s your feeling, a concept within the education that Garrison brings to the table? They would be very honest and say that we are very non-biased. We will never ever see an infomercial that we deliver. We handle all of the backend. For me, with clients like Lightwave, I start from the very beginning, have a lot of communication with them to really find out, what the providers of my clients are looking for? What are their needs? And we just really tailor to that and make sure that what we are delivering, whether it be in person, because we also do that too, but with the group size, DSO sizes, it makes more sense to offer them even in the evening.

So our production studio is downstairs of the headquarters and our director of education, Kevin Wahlberg, he’s been doing… Actually, he’s one of the longest employees. He just celebrated 25 years with Garrison, so it’s a happy place to be. We all love the education aspect of it. Thanks.

Bill Neumann:

So moving from the vendor relationship, the partnership there, to really the community itself at LightWave. Sandi, talk a little bit about that concept of community within your organization. You had several different groups come together and you’re still acquiring practices, so as you grow, what does the community look like as you grow?

Sandi Synstad:

So we feel very strongly about our community. I love the word community. I actually looked it up last night because I thought I knew the right definition, but it’s a group of people that are working for a common goal and working together for one thing. And I feel like that when you look at a dental leadership organization like us, that’s what we are doing. We’re working for a common goal of giving great patient care, like Clifton said, of giving our doctors the opportunity to meet their personal, professional and financial goals, so community is just a word that really works well for us. We do a really great job of keeping our community together. We do lots of communication. Clinical newsletters that shares community news, kind of like a neighborhood newsletter would be.

We have Monday communication with all the hygiene community and give them CE, share ideas, share education with them. We have a coffee with the ops team. Our COO has a call once a month with all the operations team and all the offices to share what’s going on within our company. We just are really great at bringing our community together, both at educational events as well as leadership events. We have our LightWave launch once a year. That’s the leadership community at LightWave, the doctors, the practice managers, the hygiene leads, the management team. We have a Hygiene Rodeo every year which brings together all the hygiene community to learn and have fun and get to know each other. We have a new associate event every year that brings our new associates together, gets that community together so they learn about our company, get ideas on what we can offer them as support team. With LightWave Dental. We get our founder and shareholders together as that community once a year so they can learn about the new things going on with LightWave.

So I feel like we’re just really good at pulling everyone together as much as we can so they feel like they’re a part of something greater, and it gives them pride for working with Lightwave Dental.

Bill Neumann:

Dr. Cameron, do you want to add anything to that regarding community? Again, from your perspective as you continue to grow, and especially when you’re integrating new groups or new practices, that trying to keep that community and the values of the organization can be certainly a challenge?

Dr. Clifton Cameron:

Yeah, no doubt. Again, we’ve certainly been disciplined on our geographic footprint, so we’re a Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, so we certainly can take advantage of that with that. And Sandi outlined those events where we’re just off two weeks ago our new associate event in Charlotte, North Carolina, where we had close to 30 of our new associates there, and the ability to connect. One of my favorite quotes is people are going to forget what you said but they’ll never forget how you make them feel. Our events are all about feeling. We’re putting the cult in culture, to be slightly joking there.

We say if you’re not crying, we’re not crying. We have Ted Talk style events where we crowdsource this. At our main leadership event, the launch event that Sandi mentioned, we’ll have somewhere between 800 to a thousand leaders at that event this year. And I can tell you, as a leader of an organization and having to pitch this idea to my board, to my investors, it is similar to the concept of marketing. It’s really tough to nail down ROI of marketing, but at LightWave, we so believe in this concept, especially on the events side. Our events budget is very strong on an annual basis, just as our educational budget is very strong on an annual basis. So to tie it all together here, we couldn’t do what we do without the support of Bonnie and Garrison, and of course other partners and vendors out there as well that are providing that education.

We break our education into two buckets, internal and external. Internal is going to be those partnerships that Sandi does such an amazing job for us, not only in creating but fostering and then essentially growing across our footprint. Externally, all of our doctors come in and we’re really passionate about creating super GPs and really super specialists. So depending on how you come into LightWave, you’re either going to join and you’re going to have a six or $12,000 annual CE allotment. Then you’ll be able to go out and customize that educational approach to external vendors across the country. Maybe it’s a advanced implant training. Maybe it’s a IV sedation type setup. Maybe it’s a COYS or Pankey or whatever it might be, but that’s how passionate we are, that we have this budgeted every year.

So I think to really answer your question, Bill, that’s how important growth is for us and the community that is LightWave, so we can really tie this together on an annual basis and execute, and hopefully transform the industry.

Bill Neumann:

I was doing a little research on LightWave and I went to your website and I got a chance to watch some of the videos that you have of the launch meeting that you had, some of the breakout sessions. So if anybody wants to actually take a look at the community that you’re building, you can actually watch the videos and it was pretty impactful, so very easy to see what’s going on there and how you’re building things in a special way. So I’ll make sure we drop your… It’s lightwavedental.com, but we’ll drop that URL in the show notes so people can check that out for sure.

So let’s move on to some current trends that we’re seeing in the dental industry, maybe some of the challenges. One of the trends certainly is the economy or the change in the economy in the past 18 months and how we’re dealing with that. So maybe Sandi and Dr. Cameron, if you want to run through how Lightwave is handling current trends, one of them being the economy, maybe if there’s any others that you’re seeing, if you have a specific strategy as an organization?

Dr. Clifton Cameron:

Yeah, Sandi, I’ll take it first and you can follow up there, but I think, Bill, really for us, we are incredibly passionate about comprehensive care. So we know that our patients, in a consumerism driven world, that more and more patients, they just don’t want to be bounced around. They want to build a relationship, and hey, maybe it is a relationship with two Lightwave offices if it’s a GP and an endodontic office or whatever. But they’re over this model of, “I need a root canal, buildup and crown and it’s going to take me six visits, and I’m going to have to eat into my PTO that I’ve built at my workplace in order to get this done.”

So for us, we are certainly seeing the pressure from the economy. Interest rates are up, and I think that the natural first reaction, maybe from DSO leadership or from an organization, is to go to Bonnie and say, “Hey, we’re hurting. Our margins are getting pinched, so we need deeper discounts from Bonnie and Garrison.” Okay, but what comes with that? Most of the time, that’s going to be, “No, we can’t do it,” because if we’re feeling it, there’s a good chance Bonnie and the Garrison organization are feeling it as well.

So really, what we’re doing, Bill, is I would say that we have slowed our acquisition engine just from a cash efficient perspective because interest rates continue to be high with seller expectations in roughly the same ballpark that they were in ’21 and ’22. We are accelerating our de novo growth, and that’s obviously in my DNA. I’ve opened over 25 de novos in my career at this point, and so where I’m getting at is what we’re doing is we’re actually bringing purpose to this pause and we’re doubling down on our patient experience. We’re doubling down on the fact that, hey, I might have a hundred new patients this month. I might only have 75 next month. I might only have 50 the following month. We better take advantage of what we have right in front of us.

So in the business world, everybody’s focusing on same store sales growth and what can we do with those patients that already know, love us, and already have a relationship with LightWave or with a LightWave affiliated practice? So we are looking at expanding our patient financing options. We’re doubling down on our doctor education pathways. We’re looking at clinical efficiencies, for example, just like Garrison and it’s incredible matrix system, to be able to not only provide great dentistry, but dentistry in a more efficient manner that allows us to have and produce more dentistry of course.

We’re looking outside the box when it comes to perio, malocclusion, den restorative. Of course, we have a great relationship with Align as well as we’re getting into the OSA world as well, so the sleep apnea world as well.

On our specialty side, we’re looking at specialty mentors where we’re actually integrating even more our GPs and our specialist through a dental advisory board. So this is a great opportunity to just look yourself in the mirror and say, “Hey, what are some of the things that we’re missing as an organization?” By no means are we perfect. We’ve got a long way to go, but just wanted to give you my take on where I feel like things are and what we’re doing internally to combat what’s going on in this crazy world right now.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks, Dr. Cameron. Yeah, there’s a lot going on. And Sandi, I don’t know if you want to add anything more to that or maybe you could take on one of the other challenges, which is hiring and retention. So I think we’ve got, again, trend, challenge, whatever you want to call it. It seems to be the economy is top of mind, but close second is the hiring dilemma that we had. It started pre COVID, was really a challenging COVID and it still seems to continue on. Sandi or Dr. Cameron, if either one of you or both can hit that question.

Sandi Synstad:

As a hygienist, I definitely know hygiene is a huge challenge for us right now, just keeping our offices staffed with hygienists. So we have a wonderful talent acquisition team that does a really great job at coming up with creative ways to get hygienists in our doors, offer them signing bonuses, offer the teams we have currently bonuses to bring more team members on board. So that’s been a huge challenge and we are very thankful to have such an amazing team helping us with that. But that is a huge challenge because it affects your patient care. It affects the number of patients you get through your door. It affects the number of patients that are getting diagnosed, so having that shortage of your hygienist or your assistance or your front desk team, it’s more than just having fewer seats and chairs. It affects the productivity, the profitability and the care that you’re able to provide at that practice. So it has been a huge challenge, but thankfully, we have a great team that works really hard to keep our seats filled.

Dr. Clifton Cameron:

And I want to add, Bill, that just as Sandi was saying, it is also about what are you selling? What is the value prop for the doctors, the hygienist, and personally, we’re feeling it also even with our admin leaders, our treatment coordinators and practice managers. So certainly, the lowest common denominator, you go to what’s the pay? The competitive and the competitive wage aspect out there. There’s obviously another side of that which is the style of practice, whether it’s specialty or GP. One of the things that we are really proud of is CBCT is in our offices, multiple ITROs in every office. That true comprehensive approach, and that just becomes a more fun and more fulfilling way to practice dentistry in 2023, 2024. So trying to stay on that bleeding edge of the technology, so we’re more than willing to invest in the technology, and now of course, also willing to invest in our hygienist and our doctor’s education as we already talked about.

And then throw on top, that event community, and hygiene is on top of our mind. That’s our next event coming up. Sandi, what’s that? November 11th and 12th.

Sandi Synstad:

11th and 12th.

Dr. Clifton Cameron:

In Richmond, right? So hey, if you’re a hygienist out there and you want to come see what we’re about, Hygiene Rodeo is coming up to where it’s actually on a farm with real animals, and I don’t even know what’s going to happen. I’m actually scared to figure out what’s going to happen, but it’s going to be fun. We’re always pushing the envelope, trying something new. In fact, I think we have close to 30 hygienists that are not part of LightWave that are just coming to check us out, so feel free to ping us on social media if you want to come check us out.

Bill Neumann:

That’s pretty cool. Yeah, we’ll drop a link to the, is it the rodeo? Is that what it is?

Dr. Clifton Cameron:

Rodeo, yeah.

Sandi Synstad:

Hygiene Rodeo.

Bill Neumann:

We’ll drop a link to that for sure in the show notes. Bonnie, what about trends and challenges that you’re seeing at Garrison? How’s the organization dealing with that?

Bonnie Wilson:

Yeah, it’s interesting, Bill. Garrison, our whole team, marketing, sales, director level, even our CEO, as a team, we stay up with current state of affairs. It’s interesting too, about this time every single year, we’re building out really our strategic plan for the upcoming year and really taking in effect of what is really impacting our customers and clients. The past couple of years, it’s really exciting. I get really pretty happy when I see all of the technology that’s coming into dental in my earlier days under the healthcare umbrella were in the medical industry, but it’s nice and refreshing to see some of that coming into dental.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that DSOs are venturing into the realm of AI. It’s huge. I just had a couple of meetings last week with some other clients that are in the progress of onboarding some of this. There’s definitely a shift in the traditional human-centric approach to dentistry. I believe this evolution presents a unique chance to elevate patient care and streamline operations. Clifton and Sandi just spoke of onboarding and retaining providers and clinical staff, so I do believe that there is a way to streamline some of these operations. Garrison also stands in very much alignment with this progressive move, offering cutting edge technology that promises to revolutionize patient outcomes, so we’re with them all.

Bill Neumann:

Okay. As we wind down the podcast here, this is kind of the crystal ball question. So maybe a question about what the future holds for LightWave and then the dental industry? And so we can go to your company and then maybe the bigger picture in the industry, and let us know what you’re thinking. Bonnie, why don’t we start with you?

Bonnie Wilson:

All right, thanks. I’ve had a vision for the dental industry for a long time. My cadence being both medical and dental, I really wish and hope – I’m already seeing it so I think my wish is coming true – that the medical and dental are under one roof someday. Throughout my entire career in the dental industry, I’ve harbored a strong desire for a more streamlined, or seamless I should say, integration between the medical and dental domains. It’s definitely my belief that sharing the responsibilities and fostering open communication about overall patient health and implementing collaborative best practices under the broader health care umbrella certainly can significantly enhance the quality of care we all strive to see and provide. So that’s my ultimate aspirational goal for actually both fields, so hopefully, one day. We’ll see.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks Bonnie. And Sandi?

Sandi Synstad:

Yes. When I first joined Lightwave Dental at Smiles for Centreville, I know when I heard the word DSO or group, or I hate to use the word corporate dentistry, but when I heard those terms, it scared me. And I really am hoping that moving forward, people see group dentistry as not something to be scared of but something to look forward to for the benefits that it provides you. At Lightwave, we provide such amazing education. We provide such amazing support for our teams, for our providers. We provide great partnerships like with Bonnie and Garrison Dental and many other partnerships we have that gives us great pricing. We have great negotiations with insurance carriers that gives our doctors and our providers such a big lift in what they can collect.

So I’m just hoping that when people see the word, in our case, the DLO or a DSO, instead of seeing it as something scary or something that they want to pull away from, they look at it and think, “Wow, there’s lots of opportunities here.” There’s opportunities for growth even within the company. I mean, I was a hygienist for 32 years and look where I’m at today. It’s been an amazing opportunity for me to grow within dentistry and to just be part of something that’s so much bigger and better than you can ever imagine it being, and I’m just hoping that’s what we see coming in the future.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks, Sandi. Dr. Cameron?

Dr. Clifton Cameron:

Yeah, I guess I’d round us out here a little bit. I’m a big student of generational dynamics, and knowing where we are as far as when we look at our generation, our Xs or our Z, all of that stuff, the fact that I know I would never want to practice dentistry alone is something that is just real, right? We know the future of dentistry is in the group space, so I’m excited for us to continue to lever best practices and transform the industry together, sooner and faster than we have historically done it. I come from a family of physicians and I know where things are on the medical side of the world with insurance reimbursements and all of that, and for us to really come together and work together. That’s why I love the ADSO space.

I love being at the Group Dentistry Now meeting down in Austin and just being part of this network, to where we’re all going to learn, we’re all going to fail, we’re all going to get better together. And so that’s why I love breaking down the walls and saying, Hey, what’s working? What’s not working? And really being an open book with the ultimate goal, driving our doctor’s personal, professional and financial goals, and of course, even better patient outcomes. So to tie a little bit to what Bonnie said also, the whole health continuum, it’s here. It’s absolutely here, and I think the technology is only going to speed up for us right now.

So for LightWave in general, I think I already touched on this just a little bit, but we’re going to continue to focus our growth on elevating and executing on our doctor’s personal, professional and financial goals. In addition, we’re really going to focus on looking at the areas of opportunity in our three states of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina that have a significant need and an opportunity to bring in a wow patient experience, a high-tech, AI driven, technological based patient experience. That’s what we’re really passionate about. And of course, we’re still looking for those great existing dental practices and those partners out there that are really wanting to join a very unique community that’s focused on growth.

Bill Neumann:

And with that, I think we’ve had an incredible conversation here. I really appreciate it. Well-rounded, timely. So if anybody in the audience would like to contact any one of you, Bonnie, how do they get in touch with you?

Bonnie Wilson:

Oh, I have a very open door policy, my friend. My cell phone, you can text me, call me. My email address. Obviously, Garrison Dental, I’m the director of DSOs and very accessible, so we can put that in the footnotes or something.

Bill Neumann:

Absolutely. Sandi, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, find out more about LightWave, how do they do so?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Sandi@lightwavedental.com, and I would love to talk to anyone. I’m very proud of who I work for and the direction we’re going.

Bill Neumann:

And finally, Dr. Cameron?

Dr. Clifton Cameron:

Yeah, same thing. Clifton@lightwavedental.com. Feel free to reach out.

Bill Neumann:

Great. Well, great conversation. Thanks everybody for listening in or watching us today. We appreciate it and we appreciate the guests’ time. I will drop all the URLs so you can go to their websites or you can email Clifton, Sandi or Bonnie to find out more, have a discussion. But until next time, I’m Bill Newman and this is the Group Dentistry Now Show. Thanks for listening in.