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

Chidam Chidambaram, CEO and Arlen Hurt, Chief Clinical Officer of Specialty Appliances are joined by Dr. Jed Hildebrand, orthodontist and practice owner of Hildebrand Orthodontics & Walnut Central Orthodontics and the Director of Specialty Acquisitions at MB2. The trio discuss:

The latest orthodontic lab solutions
How DSOs can support clinicians
Clinical Advisory group
Continuing Education
The future of Specialty Appliances & MB2 Dental

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

You can contact Chidam Chidambaram – chidam@specialtyappliances.com or Arlen Hurt – arlen.hurt@specialtyappliances.com

To find out more about specialty partnerships with MB2 Dental visit – https://mb2dental.com/

You can also contact Dr. Jed Hildebrand – drhildebrand@mb2dental.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 Bill Neumann, and as always, we really appreciate you listening in, or maybe you’re watching us on YouTube. Without a great audience like you, we wouldn’t have great guests like the next three guests we have on here. We’re really going to focus today on lab innovations, and we’re going to specifically focus on orthodontics. So again, three guests here. We have Chidam Chidambaram, He is the CEO of Specialty Appliances. We also have the chief clinical officer, Arlen Hurt, of Specialty Appliances. And he has several titles here. We have Dr. Jed Hildebrand. He is an orthodontist, a practice owner at Hildebrand Orthodontics and Walnut Central Orthodontics. And he’s also the director of Specialty Acquisitions at MB2 Dental. I think I got most of that right there, Jed. But anyway, thank you all three for joining today. It’s going to be a really exciting, interesting conversation we have not had before on the Group Dentistry Now show. So, Chidam, why don’t we start with you? A little bit about your background and maybe discuss specialty appliances and maybe what you’ve done in the past.

Chidam Chidambaram : Sure. Thank you for having me on the show. I’ve been working in marketing, sales, and running businesses for over 30 years. Before coming and joining Specialty Appliances, I was most recently at Dents by Sirona where I was their Chief Digital Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, and actually I had responsibility for Shoresmart Aligners as I helped take that from a small business to a pretty large business while taking care of growing pains to grow the business. I joined Specialty Appliances in November of 2022, mainly because the brand was a phenomenal brand. All in a team, have a great reputation with doctors. We are well known in the industry for what we bring, and that’s the kind of team I want to be a part of. So I joined the company to help take of raw material, which is a phenomenal product, and help grow it and serve the orthodontic community and help people and patients have better smiles.

Bill Neumann : Thank you, Chidam. Arlan, a little bit about your role at Specialty Appliances and maybe a little bit about your background, how long you’ve been at Specialty and

Arlan Hurt: Yeah, sure. I’ve been with the company nearly 40 years and it’s just been a wonderful journey. I really love this industry, love the doctors in it, working with them. I’ve been very blessed to invest some things along the way that have helped patients and look forward to more designs and technology advances. Well, I just, you know, there’s so much to learn on how dynamics of 3D industry is changing, uh, or even our business. So look forward to it and, uh, look forward to joining you guys today.

Bill Neumann : Thanks Arlan. Jed, so you, um, you have a couple of practices, uh, right? You’ve got, you have, um, Let’s see, you have Hildebrand Orthodontics and then Walnut Central Orthodontics. And then you joined MB2. So can you talk a little bit about your practices and then joining MB2?

Dr. Jed Hildebrand: Yes, for sure. Thanks for having me today. And I’m glad to be on with Specialty. They’re been a partner with them. They’ve been creating my Hyraxes and Herbst for 20 years. I developed Hildebrand Orthodontics in 08 and then brought over MB2 to be my partner, which they had about eight orthodontists at that time in 2021. And now we have 120 orthodontists. So I try to be instrumental in helping them pick the correct orthodontic partners to join the group. It’s more of a dental partnership than it is a DSO because there’s still full autonomy. We can choose any lab that we want, any treatment plan, any pricing. And so it’s been a blessing bringing on specialty into the MB twofold and teaching other doctors like the practice I bought at Walnut Central Orthodontics this last year to then bring on specialty to be their number one, you know, appliance maker. So it’s been really fun to teach new doctors about all the things going on in the digital world of orthodontics.

Bill Neumann : So your role at MB2, just so I’m clear and the audience understands, is you’re an orthodontist, you have your practices, and then you’re also working with MB2 to find other orthodontic partners that will be a good fit for MB2 and help mentor them.

Dr. Jed Hildebrand: Yes, that’s, that’s the goal is as, as people look for partners or look to sell their practices, I’m, you know, looking at the practices, meeting the doctors, meeting the orthodontist. And once they’re on board, I’m explaining the partnerships that we have with specialty, with Invisalign, with other brands. So I’m helping, you know, pre them, pre joining to vet them, to make sure that they’d be a good partner. And then post-partnership, I’m really helping teach them about the innovations that are going on with the partners that we have and the special partnerships where we can do CE with our partners like Specialty.

Bill Neumann : So I’ll start with you, Dr. Hildebrand, first question. Super hot topic. It should always be, but it seems like with inflation, it’s become more of a focus. We focus on organic growth, profitability, things like that. So at the practice level, can you talk a little bit about some of the solutions that you find labs are providing to really help increase at your practices, revenue and profitability?

Dr. Jed Hildebrand: Yeah, what we find in what Invisalign did so well was they want to limit the number of patient visits. And so if you’re in a price per chair visit, if that’s the key metric that we’re all looking for, Because if I have to see patients twice when I could see them once, you know, that costs me a lot of staff income to book the patient, the mom drive there, get the separators, drive home, come back in next week, deliver the appliance. It’s a functionality of Price per patient visit. So labs are creating a digital workflow just like invisible. I did back, you know, in the early 2000s and they were saying if we can see the patient last visits, the practice will be more profitable. So what we found is anybody that is using an Itero scanner or other digital scanner, now we can make appliances off those scans. So we don’t have to do impressions and pour ups and remakes. And we also don’t have to be doing one other step for like separators to create space with the digital workflow and digital appliances.

Bill Neumann : So I’m going to move on to Chidam for this question. From a DSO Dental Group perspective, what do you, should they be providing clinicians to really provide that value and support? And Dr. Hildebrand, you can even chime in on this too, since you have that DSO perspective. Go ahead, Chidam.

Chidam Chidambaram : As you can imagine, right, doctors are looking to provide their patients with the best clinical outcomes while they can grow their businesses profitably. One of the things that a DSO can help provide a practitioner, because they have the benefit of scale, is to think about things that normally a doctor who’s trained and focused more on the clinical side doesn’t think about. Things like, what are potential risks that can be mitigated, and those kinds of things. The most obvious answer for any DSO is, hey, can I provide good pricing? But the best thing that the DSO can do is focus on can I provide my doctors the best value versus the lowest price. The second thing I think DSOs can provide is access to a vetted group of vendors who Do all the things to protect the DSO as well as the practice owner from risk. Is the vendor FDA certified, ISO certified? Have they passed FDA audits? Are they doing toxicity testing and appliances so that the doctor doesn’t have to worry about any kind of contamination or risk when they put an appliance in a patient’s mouth? So that’s the kind of things that you should be thinking about. Can my suppliers provide education? So what are the things that I, as a DSO leader, can provide with my scale that an individual practitioner cannot do themselves? And as a result, the individual practitioner has choice, but also has peace of mind.

Bill Neumann : Dr. Hildebrand, do you have any thoughts on that?

Dr. Jed Hildebrand: Yeah, I think that’s something that a lot of doctors don’t think about with the FDA approval, making sure it’s safe for their patients. Sometimes we get caught up on the bottom line, but the bottom line is a price. but it’s also convenient, so not having double appointments. But then another one is remakes. Like if you’re having a lab have to, something doesn’t fit or something breaks and you’re having to remake appliances, you’re losing the goodwill of the patient. So it all factors into like your practice feeling like it’s an elite practice with providing the best service at a normalized fee, you’re not paying a premium because it’s laced with gold or something, but you’re getting the DSO bulk discount with a preferred vendor that is vetted. So if Specialty or another lab was to, we start having remakes or things are breaking or things aren’t fitting, they wouldn’t be a preferred vendor. So being a preferred vetted vendor, it hits all the tiers of quality, precision, delivered in a timely manner, saving us on no remakes and customer care and customer fit.

Bill Neumann : That’s a great point. And I kind of go back to this best value versus best price, which is what Chidam said. And I think you’re right. A lot of times you’re focused on price, which sounds great. But if the solution isn’t something that works for your clinicians, you talked about remakes, then the price doesn’t really matter now, does it? So all great points. So we can build on that a little bit. So how can a group practice or a DSO or a DPL, MB2, help clinicians so that a DSO can really make better decisions that are driving that ROI. Of course, keeping those clinical outcomes in mind, too, because we always want to make sure that the clinical outcomes and, you know, the patients are taken care of. So, we can start with you, Chidam.

Chidam Chidambaram : So the thing is this, right, as business person, I don’t sometimes perhaps understand as much what the doctors and clinicians want. So I think in order to really truly provide value, I think it’s listen to the doctors. I would encourage DSOs, especially if you’re starting out, create a clinical advisory group. Have doctors like Dr. Hildebrand and others who know the space be there to be your partner. Second, Dr. Houderman talked about this, which is remakes and those kinds of things. So ultimately, what’s important is what is the total cost of treatment, not the cost of the initial appliance. So a lab that gives you lower remakes, much better fit, precise fit, will therefore reduce having to ask patients to come back based on dissatisfaction, chair time. If you get innovation that reduces appointments, all those things do reduce total cost of a treatment. So I would say sometimes when you talk to your practitioners, they may not be able to talk everything in terms of a P&L. but they can talk about frustrations, where they have issues, and listening carefully to what they have to say there will really be able to help you use your practitioners as partners to drive a win-win in terms of effective clinical outcomes and effective financial outcomes.

Bill Neumann : Anything more you’d like to add, Dr. Hildebrand?

Dr. Jed Hildebrand: Yeah, I love that. I love the clinical outcomes. I love the patient satisfaction. Parents being happy that things are running smoothly. And I love that looking at the P&L. I mean, if we’re able to provide a service at X dollar, charge the patient, you know, Y and get the delta in there with with the staff, I think the staff is got to be key because if the staff can be trained, and the trust in the appliances to work clinically and to work mechanically. It’s just, it’s a win-win. I think all the parts of the equation come together, you know, if monitored by the doctor and the DSO and the bottom line.

Bill Neumann : All right, we’ve had Arlen sitting there patiently for a while. So we’re going to get you involved in this next question, I promise you. So let’s talk about products and solutions that clinicians in our audience, you know, whether they are the chief clinical officers or whether they’re, you know, the orthodontists at the practice level. Let’s discuss, and we’ll start with you, Arlen, products that they really should be aware of now, because you touched on this earlier when we made the introductions. There’s so, everything’s so dynamic now, the change, you know, on the lab side, the digitation of everything, everything’s digital now, or worse, or shouldn’t say everything is, but we’re slowly moving in that direction. So let’s talk about some innovations and some products that our clinicians should be aware of.

Arlan Hurt: Sure, absolutely. You know, one of the things I think with just on taking records, For example, if the doctors want to do a split or something like that, for example, we can now just take the upper and lower scans, take a registration bite with a vertical opening, and you can record all that in your Artera or other scanners. Send that to the lab and then we can actually resimulate that so that we 3D print the split. So there’s really minimal chair time for one example. Another thing I think is much more relevant in orthodontics, which is a huge factor that’s changed in the last few years, is that we can 3D print metals. We’re 3D printing chrome cobalt originally and now stainless steel. But we can 3D print the band or even the entire appliance. And 3D printing a band is a huge, huge benefit to not only the practice, but also to the patient. One of the most painful parts of orthodontic treatment is actually having separators placed With 3D printing bands, we eliminate that. You don’t need to place separators. We simply print across the embrasures. That’s the strength of the material. We can print the entire appliances so that, again, reduces anything with remakes or breakage. It’s a benefit, too, because the 3D printing appliances, due to their strength, we don’t go subgingively. So we’re not blasting tissue or getting a little carotid artery ligaments. It’s really a huge benefit. That’s just one thing. It takes a lot less time. It’s easier to deliver and easier to remove. The other thing that we’re doing that I really believe in a lot is what we call hybrid treatment. Aligners have become so popular in the world today. So what we do with hybrids is we actually incorporate The benefits of fixed appliances, and we do that with 3D indirect bonding trays with custom bases on the brackets. So you deliver the fixed appliances with 3D indirect bonding, which literally cuts the appointment down to a third of time, which saves a lot, gives you more time to appoint patients in your practice. and the accuracy of digital technology lets us place that bracket in the ideal position. The doctor can go in and change those brackets because the software is obviously not an orthodontist. The doctor can move the brackets for over-corrections or things of that nature. Once we do that treatment, what we’re trying to do with the fixed appliance part is get the best out of the fixed appliance, which is expansion, tip, torque, rotations. which you just takes way too long with aligners and patients get burned out. So we’re gonna leave those brackets only on for like three to six months. Take them off and then go into aligners. So we do up to 30 aligners after that. Rarely do we need that many, it’s usually 20 or less. So the patient gets the aligners, which what’s the benefit of aligners? You can do much better finishing. It’s very difficult, you know, to bend wires through the finishing bends. So the patient goes through this treatment with, you know, ceramic brackets, of course, it’s all aesthetic. We can do all of that, including retainers at the end for like $799 with, you know, if you want to provide your brackets. So that’s one thing I think that we’re going to see more of because, you know, you’re looking at treatment times of 12 to 18 months is much more beneficial to the patients and the practice because you can get patients in and out of your practice to generate revenue. Another thing we’ve been doing for years that has been a big hit with all customers has been our Guardian program. With Guardian, what we do with that program is you send us a visual scan. We’ll remove attachments and or brackets digitally. We’ll print the model and we’ll make you two invisible retainers made out of Zendura material for about $39 an arch. And that’s a huge value. So not only do they have the initial retainer, they have a backup. That way we make sure we retain the treatment that the doctor had. And if they ever want to order another retainer, they simply just call in and get another one ordered. So there are some things I think that are really beneficial as far as eliminating appointments and giving the doctor benefits. We’ve eliminated separate appointments. We’ve eliminated appointments for retainer impressions or scans. And we’ve eliminated two appointments for the hybrid process.

Bill Neumann : Thanks, Arlen. Dr. Hildebrand, You’ve been working with specialty appliances for a long time now, so can you talk a little bit about what you’re using as far as products, maybe some newer solutions that they have that you’ve embraced recently?

Dr. Jed Hildebrand: Yes. You know, it was funny. I was all stuck in my old ways where we were doing, you know, impressions and separators and the regular bands. And I saw Arlen at the AAO one two years ago, three years ago. And he asked me, like, why weren’t we doing the digitally printed bands? Why are we still doing the old school way that they’re trying to fit? And sometimes the fit didn’t work. And it was just, you know, by blind luck, like I didn’t know that existed. So we’ve incorporated that, incorporated it almost every office at MB2 because it’s such a better product. Using a Digleap metal printed band. where you’re not going interproximal is not only saving you a chair time with not having to put a separator in, but the general dentist isn’t complaining about residual band space later on. You’re not having to clean sub-gingivally any glue, any glass ionometer. And in between, interproximally, cleaning any type of cement, glass ionomer, anything, It was that was like the worst thing about almost the appointments besides the separators was trying to get the glue in approximately out. So then it can be just to structure. So I think like a game changer for my office for everyone’s office that’s using it. is the technology to do a digital scan on iTero during a consult and the next visit deliver a digitally printed metal band for a Hyrax or some type of Expander or a Herbst. That fits perfectly because it’s from the digital scan. It fits like a clear liner. I mean, that’s a game changer. If you’re not doing that, you’re really missing the boat. What I’ve heard with the hybrid, where you’re doing some braces and then finishing with the clear liners, That’s been a game changer for a bunch of offices and it’s just you have to get in that system because you’re getting better bracket placement from day one and then yeah, the patient’s not getting burned out with braces on for a year or two. So I think that’s gonna be like the next phase. The first one was the digitally printed bands for sure. The next one’s gonna be this hybrid treatment to save chair time. So patients, when you’re not able to raise your cost of treatment, you need to figure out how to save time where they’re not doing 20 visits but doing 10 visits or less.

Bill Neumann : Chidam, maybe focus on some of the other benefits of working with specialty appliances when it comes specifically for DSOs or emerging dental groups.

Chidam Chidambaram : So you know what? I think at the highest level, you get three things. The first thing that you get is the best value. With specialty, I think DSOs get access to high quality appliances that are precise. We also give you access to continuing education. In fact, yesterday evening, we had a webinar on hybrid, where we offered that to one of our customers. And we, as a lab, provide you technical support. You call us. We have people and staff who work either in the offices or work across different departments in our lab and really understand what the doctor is trying to do clinically and are able to converse with doctors and their assistants to help them with their appliances. The second thing you get is you get a partner who leverages technology and innovation to keep you relevant and always looking for ways to give you best value. You continue to get new products that help reduce share time and treatment times. Last but not least, you get peace of mind. The people working in the business offices in the center get peace of mind. They are working with a company that is clearly vetted, the best in the industry, has scale, can grow with you and always be around. The doctors get peace of mind because they’re working with a lab that gives them the lowest remake in the industry. They themselves voted Specialty as the best orthodontic lab in the AO last year. We are a five-time Tony winner for innovation and new products. So I think peace of mind for every person at ADSL from corporate center to the practitioner and their staff, that’s what you get with Specialty.

Bill Neumann : Continuing education is so important and I think it becomes a real challenge. The more clinicians you have, the more practice locations you have. So, Dr. Hildebrand, how do you handle CE and can you talk a little bit about your experience, specialty appliances and CE they offer?

Dr. Jed Hildebrand: Yeah, I think I think you nailed it. CE is, I mean, we’re learning and learning and learning, then we get a private practice. And I feel like back in the day before zooms or technology, it was very difficult to keep learning, you had to go to the AO for three days and cram all your learning in. But the nice thing about technology is MB2 can organize with our preferred vendors and they make it mandatory that their preferred vendors provide the most up-to-date CE courses to use their products to their best ability. You know, we may have 300 doctors jump on a CE about this hybrid new technology where they’re using indirect bonding and then the clinical finishing with clear aligners. So MB2 will partner with our preferred vendors, set up a one-hour Zoom to learn new technology, create CE that will count for you for your license, and everyone can jump on. It’ll be also recorded and then hosted on our internal social network called Cerebro. So then it sits there where anybody can access it at any time throughout the year. And the information, the contacts of Arland and other people at specialty can be contacted to even learn more or get the flyers on that. So having a preferred vendor that will provide CE for their products, especially if they’re innovative, and can help reduce cost or help the cash flow of the office because of reduced appointments or better quality. It’s the number one criteria to become a preferred vendor of our group.

Bill Neumann : Arlen, can you talk a little bit more about continuing ed at Specialty and how you work with MB2?

Arlan Hurt: Sure. Yeah. you know, we develop or work with the doctors on whether it be the 3D printed metals or the hybrid or guardian or anything that we’re looking to develop in the future. Because one thing about us is that we, you know, we always looking forward. So we’re definitely looking at what can we do next. But what we want to do with that is we want to make this a win-win situation. So you just don’t bring out a product and say, here it is, figure it out. You know, we want to help the doctors be successful. And how we do that with these webinars and take the time and commitment to put them together and deliver them, get the right speaker for the webinar as well. But that’s, you know, very beneficial. Something we really enjoy. Not only do we enjoy learning as a company, but we enjoy sharing that knowledge as well because it’s the The 3D digital world is one thing, it does change almost daily.

Bill Neumann : Let me ask you, this goes back to you, Jed. There are a lot of options in the market. I believe you mentioned earlier that you had been working with specialty appliances even prior to joining MB2, so quite a while, right? So what was the original decision? How did you find them and why did you decide to work with them? then you didn’t only just work with them at your practices, but you really incorporated specialty appliances within a lot more of the practices at MB2 once you got over there. So talk a little bit about the decision-making process and why you work with them.

Dr. Jed Hildebrand: For sure, I think when I first got out, it was fun because I was doing my own expanders. So soldering, pouring up, and then they became late nights and then some wouldn’t fit. So I had to find a solution that would take, not cost me all of my income, but that would create a benefit of time value and quality. So I went on search for time value and quality, so being able to get a turnaround time, and something that fit better than what I was producing. I tried a bunch of labs, some local labs, because the turnaround was a little bit faster, but the quality wasn’t there. Things were breaking, expanders were breaking, becoming unsoldered, and then I had to focus on quality after that. because if you have an expander break or one that doesn’t fit because the bands are too big, I mean that becomes a patient satisfaction nightmare and you’re almost returning the whole fee of the patient because after the second time you get something back from the lab, they’ve done spacers twice, they’re done with you. So I had to prioritize quality over price for a long time and then after I partnered with MB2, and brought on specialty as a preferred vendor, the price came down a little bit but the quality kept improving because now I’m introducing them to 120 orthodontic offices that are using them constantly and the doctors are looking for innovation, tweaking things and making sure that at that level of volume that the quality is paramount. So it was a lot about price at the beginning of my career and then it became time efficiency and now it’s really about the quality of the appliance and making sure I trust every time that one of our partners puts in an expander or herbs or any product from specialty that it works because if not I’m going to hear about it And then we have to have a discussion. So I think that’s that’s got to be our number one now, which equates to patient satisfaction, which then they refer people. And I was a doctor down the street. One of my friends went to and the separators fell out. And I was laughing and saying, like, well, that’s kind of old school that doctor needs to get on board with technology.

Bill Neumann : So as we start to wind down the podcast, a couple of questions, final questions. So we discussed, we talked about the hybrid, we talked about Guardian, we talked about 3D metal printing. What else is specialty appliances doing right now that clinicians need to be aware of? Chidam, we can start with you.

Chidam Chidambaram : Two big things. We’re always working on new products. We expect to launch several new products in the next 12 months. In fact, at the AO, we probably will be launching one or two new products, which will help our practitioners, clinicians save time and appointments. We’re looking forward to working with the DSOs as well to see whether they would like to incorporate that into their practices. The second thing that we’re doing, and I know Orleans, it’s been a dream of Orleans for a long time, we are going to be launching a product business. So we’ve always been a lab, but now we know that clinicians value our relationship. We value that as well. We’ve been working hard to source product of great quality that we can offer doctors at great good prices and give both the center and clinicians peace of mind. So we’ll be launching a products business that will allow doctors now to be able to take advantage of specialty appliances endorsed product they can buy in addition to the appliances that we fabricate for them.

Bill Neumann : Well, Arlan, since that was your dream, why don’t you talk a little bit more about that?

Arlan Hurt: Well, I think that’s, you know, Saddam said it great, you know, with focusing on quality companies that we want to partner with. But we’re also manufacturing some of our own products as well, things that we’ve developed over the years. And, you know, when you look at manufacturing, we’re only partnering with the best manufacturers, people that we know and trust, people actually we’ve known and trust for years of manufacturing a lot of our products. But that’s that’s how specialty wants to maintain the industry. How we look forward when we try to develop things, whether it’s partnerships or new products, it needs to be quality related. It needs to benefit the doctor and the patient. The products business, so to me, is something that just fits in well. It’s something that I’ve had a lot of experience in since really the early nineties with helping to design expansion screws and herpes mechanism, things of that nature. So it’s something I feel like that we we should be into. Again, it’s so we can serve, but we’d only do it with the right partners and the quality products. I think when you look at the other half of that, we’re going to continue our journey with building technology into our laboratory. We have a lot of commitment to that, and now and also in our future. You know, we’ve helped develop some 3D wire burning machines that have been instrumental in And we’re creating better quality, more consistent products. And of course, the 3d printing of metal and polymers that we’re doing as well. But anything we can look at and technology wise that will help give the customer a better experience, give us a better product. Always trying to do better. You know, we’re, we’re never going to be satisfied, even though we have the lowest remake, um, percentage in the industry, we want that to be zero. And that’s our goal. And that’s what we’re so always going to be our goal. And that’s how we look at it. So that’s something I’ve been very happy about.

Bill Neumann : Dr. Hildebrand, our audience, I’d be remiss not to ask, where does the future look like for MB2? I mean, you just had some news recently. It seems like there’s always news. We track all the partnerships that you do every single month with our DSO deal roundup, and it’s hard to keep up. A lot of people partnering with MB2. But what does the future look like for MB2?

Dr. Jed Hildebrand: You know, uh, it’s, we had our 700th office, um, join, you know, this last couple of weeks, uh, we’re looking at our third recapitalization. So, um, that’s big, big news for our partners. All, all the 700 dentists are going to be able to capitalize on selling down some MB2 stock. So that’s a financial win. Uh, personally, I’m just excited to see that. the core team, the execs and the main headquarters just expanded to double the space just to provide support. As a practitioner, I want to do just more clinical and less admin. So I see that in the future as our partners continue to grow and our headquarters continue to grow. It’s taken the burden of administration, peer strategy, out of the clinician’s hand. We got a $2.3 billion infusion of capital to help continue our quest to be the number one dental partnership organization in America. We’re expanding to all states. It’s going to the next five years, 1,500, 2,000 offices, 3,000 offices. It’s the small individual private practices grouping together, fighting off the DSOs and the Heartlands and the Aspens and fighting off the insurance companies. Our two latest big wins for all the partners has been an increase in comp from insurances. So as they try to squeeze us and lower the fees, if we become a big group and fight that together, we’re able to actually increase the fees that the PPOs are trying to squeeze us on. So I think five years from now, we’re just going to keep on growing individualized private practices, better partners like with specialty who are providing CE and innovation and providing lower costs to, you know, groups of practices because we know we can trust them and they can trust us to keep using their products.

Bill Neumann : Thank you, Dr. Jed Hildebrand. If people in the audience want to contact you or they want to learn more about MB2 Dental, how do they do so?

Dr. Jed Hildebrand: Uh, yes, you can post my email address. It’s, you know, Dr. Hildebrand at mb2dental.com. Um, and post that below there. I’ll, I’ll send it a link. I’d love to, you know, talk and help, you know, talk about the appliances we’re using and specialty or talk about, Hey, what services does, uh, the part, a partnership look like, and is it right for you? We would never want anybody to ever. Go blindly into a partnership of with us or anybody else So we educate you and we really only take you know 3% of the people that we look at because we know We want happy providers and a lot of times it’s better to stay solo or if you’re retiring It’s better to sell to your associate Excellent

Bill Neumann : Thanks so much. Chidam and Arlen, if they want to find out more about specialty appliances or they want to reach out to either one of you, how do they do so? Arlen?

Arlan Hurt: So they can reach me by email at arlen, that’s A-R-L-E-N dot hurt, H-U-R-T, specialtyappliances.com. I’ll be happy to share some of the new things we’re doing and how we see the future. Great.

Chidam Chidambaram : And people can just reach out to Chidam, C-H-I-D for David, A-M, at specialtyappliances.com. And also, if you go to our website, there’s an easy way to contact us. And from there, we’ll direct you to Courtney Shokides, who is our head of sales or a critical team. Whatever your questions are, we’ll be able to help you.

Bill Neumann : Excellent. We’ll make sure we drop those website addresses in the show notes. We also include those email addresses. Great conversation today. We appreciate the three of you joining us. I thought it was very thorough. I think a lot of people learned quite a bit about specialty appliances, a lot about MB2, and specifically about the orthodontics on the lab side, I think the innovation there, and also how much ortho MB2 is doing. It’s really impressive. But that’s all we have for today. We appreciate everybody listening in or watching us on YouTube. Until next time, I’m Bill Neumann, and this is the Group Dentistry Now Show.