Pacific Dental Services (PDS), one of the nation’s leading dental support organizations, today announced a key milestone in its growth journey. Cumulative revenues for calendar year 2021 exceeded $2 billion, marking yet another significant achievement in the privately held organization’s 27-year history.
PDS’ revenues for 2021 exceeded $2 billion, marking a significant achievement in the organization’s 27-year history.
PDS’ unique business model enables dentists to own their dental practice and empowers them to spend more time with patients and less time on the administrative responsibilities of running a practice. PDS calls this their Private Practice + model. Because its supported dentists can leverage the operational support of the large business services organization, they have the freedom to focus exclusively on patient care while PDS remains focused on the business aspects of the practice.
Building upon this successful foundation, notable innovative technology implementations made to the business support platform in 2021 — particularly with the Epic electronic health record system which integrates a patient’s medical and dental records and KaVo OP 3D cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) systems — fueled PDS’ unprecedented growth. Additionally, the organization remained focused on raising awareness on a national scale about the critical link between oral health and overall health – what PDS and its supported practices call the Mouth-Body Connection.
Commenting on the milestone, Stephen E. Thorne IV, PDS Founder and CEO said, “Surpassing $2 billion in revenue in one calendar year is a benchmark that few privately held companies achieve. While we appreciate this moment, at PDS we are mindful that our success is not found in any aggregated number, but in the success of each individual dental practice, each owner dentist, and ultimately within each patient interaction. We know that the best clinicians don’t seek us out because of our size.
They come to work alongside our supported owner dentists knowing that they will receive mentorship and training from the best dentists in the world. They will have access to the best tools, systems and technology available in the industry. They will thrive in an environment that helps them elevate their role as a healthcare professional – not only in assisting patients with their dental needs but truly improving their overall health.”
Other key milestones for Pacific Dental Services in 2021 include:
First dental support organization in the world to implement Epic, the most widely used comprehensive health records system, into supported practices. Through Epic, dental practices can easily exchange patient data with other health care providers for improved overall patient care.
Implementing CBCT technology in 365 supported practices and using 3D imaging to help more patients with improved diagnoses, precise implant placements, and better clinical outcomes.
Producing and placing 468,211 dental restorations (crowns, inlays/onlays, and veneers) in 2021 alone using CEREC CAD/CAM technology.
Launching a one-of-a-kind dental-medical practice in support of whole-body health with the opening of three practices in one – general dentistry, pediatric dentistry and medical care. The innovative, integrated approach offers patients a holistic strategy to managing their overall health care through a variety of services.
Partnering with the American Diabetes Association to increase awareness of the link between oral health and diabetes.
Having a PDS executive serving on the CDC’s 10-person National Association for Chronic Disease Directors Medical-Dental Integration Steering Committee.
First in the dental industry to offer free college tuition to its team members through its College Advancement Program.
Partnered with Envista on a multi-year agreement to combine their independently developed machine learning capabilities into Envista’s sophisticated DTX Studio Clinic assisted intelligence (AI) software platform which PDS will deploy to its supported practices to bring the full benefits of AI-supported image sorting, interpretation, and analysis to its supported clinicians.
Opening its 863rd supported dental practice nationwide and contracting with its 683rd owner dentist.
First dental support organization to join an accountable care organization with a focus on improving the health of the diabetic population.
Serving as a collaborative medical and dental care team on Harvard Medical School’s Teaming and Integrating for Smiles and Health (TISH) initiative focused on strengthening primary care and oral health partnerships.
Launching a specialty dental support organization, Periodontics Health Group, in central Florida.
Creating a quarterly digital magazine, Generations of Smiles, focused on educating patients on how they can use good oral hygiene practices to improve their overall health.
By Dr. Suzanne Ebert. Dr. Ebert built a successful dental practice from scratch. After selling her practice, she became the dental director of a federally qualified health center where she provided high quality care to underserved populations. She joined ADA Practice Transitions (ADAPT) as the ADA Advisor to provide real and tangible benefits to dentists as well as helping to address access to care issues across the country. She is currently ADAPT’s VP of Dental Practice & Relationship Management.
In 1994, Kiss.com, the first modern dating website, created an entirely new type of experience. When Kiss.com launched, we could not have imagined how our routine interactions would change from face-to-face to digital over the years. Artificial intelligence (AI) was still science fiction. In less than 20 years, AI has changed how we shop, how products are delivered and how we find our life partners.
Dental practice transitions have traditionally been accomplished by a low-tech process, just like dating used to be.
By using a primarily digital environment, today’s dentists can now find the perfect match (whether practice or person), manage the evaluation, and complete a transaction with greater efficiency and success. AI has the potential to uncover great opportunities a dentist may have overlooked, similar to Netflix, StitchFix, Priceline, or other tech-first companies.
By integrating AI into practice transitions, dentistry can achieve three goals:
Better matches
Reducing the cost of the average practice transition
Providing coaching to help dentists navigate their transitions
Why it’s vital to find the correct match
Picture your dental utopia. Now imagine what happens when your utopia clashes with established office norms. Perhaps you expect the office to run highly efficiently with shorter appointments, but your patients and staff expect you to listen to all the details of their personal life. With that kind of mismatch, someone is bound to be unhappy. You may dread going to work, your staff may quit, or your patients may go to another dentist.
It is why a dental practice transition model should be rooted in matching dentists with shared philosophies of care.
In talking with dentists, I have heard far too many stories of those who settled in a practice that wasn’t quite right, only to leave a year or two later. When that happens, everyone loses: the practice, the staff, and the patients.
Blending technology with a human touch
At ADA Practice Transitions (ADAPT), when you create a profile to buy, sell, join, or hire, you fill out an in-depth questionnaire that enables you to share your personal preferences. A series of filters then process the profiles to show the (human) ADA Advisor several potential matches and rank them according to how well the profiles align. Next, the Advisor validates the suggested matches, applying feedback and additional input they have received from you and the other dentists, ultimately enhancing the matching algorithm with a transition expert’s human touch.
Spring Dental, founded in 2014 by Dr. Creed Cardon and Mike McInelly, announced today that it has rebranded to Lumio Dental. Rated as one of the fastest-growing dental groups in the nation for the last three years, Lumio Dental is a dental partnership organization that owns and operates more than 60 dental offices throughout Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.
Spring Dental has existed as both the name of the parent company as well as the name of one of the company’s more than 25 regional brands. In order to have a name that encompasses all of its regional brands, the parent company has been rebranded to Lumio Dental. Spring Dental will remain as one of its regional brands.
“As we continued to grow, we recognized we needed a parent company name to represent all of our regional brands,” McInelly stated. “We’re excited to have this name grow with us throughout the coming years.”
“We derived the name ‘Lumio’ from the word ‘illumination’,” noted Dr. Creed Cardon. “The name signifies our goal to light the paths of our partners, associates, and team members in both their personal and professional lives. We’re excited to see what the future has in store for Lumio Dental, and thankful for the hard work of our incredible team for helping us achieve this exciting milestone.”
Headquartered in Tulsa, OK, Lumio Dental is passionate about providing the communities they serve with exceptional, affordable and convenient dental care. Lumio Dental employs over 500 dental professionals and offers comprehensive family dentistry, including cosmetic and restorative, pediatric dentistry, prosthodontics, endodontics, oral surgery, and implants. Learn more at LumioDental.com or linkedin.com/company/lumiodental.
Vyne Dental, a leading provider of revenue cycle, claims and practice management solutions, and electronic health information exchange for all-sized dental practices, announces sweeping, comprehensive enhancements to its Vyne Trellis platform.
Vyne Trellis, one of the dental industry’s most comprehensive revenue cycle and communications engines, provides a robust end-to-end dental billing solution for dental claims management, including simple, integrated electronic attachments, batch and real-time eligibility and benefits verification, all in one intuitive, easy-to-use solution.
A few of Vyne Trellis’ most innovative enhanced features include:
Batch and real-time benefit plan eligibility verification to reduce the time practice team members spend on the phone with payers — office managers and billers receive verification of patient benefits within seconds through the Vyne Trellis web-based platform;
A robust electronic attachment submission solution, that’s connected to more than 800 payers across the country;
A feature-rich portal that integrates a practice’s submitted, processed, and paid claims, supporting attachments and documentation, and eligibility status — to each patient and their respective payer; and
Intelligent validation engine to identify potential errors, such as missing subscriber IDs, claim form information, attachment requirements, and patient and provider detail, before electronically submitting claims to a payer — reducing rejected claims, creating efficiency in the billing workflow, and accelerating reimbursements back into the practice.
Vyne Trellis continues to evolve and, in so doing, redefine what “revenue cycle management solution” means to the dental practice. Throughout 2021, Vyne Dental strategically expanded its portfolio to add simple, customizable electronic forms, text and email reminders, online reviews, and secure communications, including email and inter-office chat portfolio.
This strategic shift allows dental practices on Vyne Trellis to initiate the electronic, automated interaction with their patients much earlier in their journey, thus ensuring a timely resolution to all revenue collection attempts, while simultaneously improving patient experience, reducing friction, and cutting costs.
Marquee Dental Partners announces the launch of its consumer-facing dental brand, Marquee Dental. The Marquee Dental brand will be used to directly expand Marquee’s industry-leading approach into select communities. The new brand operates with the belief that better smiles lead to better health and that better health leads to better lives.
“I am proud of the work our branding team did to create and launch Marquee Dental,” said Fred Ward, Marquee Dental Partners’ chief executive officer. “We have an ethos at Marquee Dental Partners of healthiness and happiness that gets passed onto patients. We are proud of that. More functionally, this branding work will help inject numerous efficiencies into our De Novo strategy.”
The first Marquee Dental office will open in late December 2021 in Smyrna, Tennessee; a bedroom community of Nashville, TN. The office will be led by Dr. David Dewberry and a team of highly trained dental professionals. Dr. Dewberry joined Marquee Dental after practicing for several years in Southern California.
Marquee Dental also launched its consumer-facing website, MyMarqueeDental.com. The site focuses on providing its users an easy and efficient way to access their dentist.
“We want an experience that makes our patients feel welcome and cared for. We also want a culture that acknowledges and honors the great work that dental professionals do every day. With the Marquee Dental brand, we get to do both,” said Marquee Dental Partners vice president of marketing, Rich Palumbo. “We are excited to be able to speak directly to these patients and communities through this new brand.”
The new Marquee Dental office in Smyrna is scheduling appointments now.
Marquee Dental Partners now operates nearly 60 dental offices across five states and supports more than 100 dentists.
Vyne Dental, a leading provider of revenue cycle, claims management, and electronic health information exchange for all-sized dental practices, announces that it has acquired Onederful, Inc., a suite of APIs that connect to hundreds of dental payers companies for eligibility and benefits, claims and electronic remittance advice (ERAs).
The Onederful solution set provides dental practices the ability to efficiently verify patients’ insurance coverage levels, determine eligibility and benefit levels and follow up with payer’s real-time statuses through its API.
Most importantly, Onederful solutions will be paired with Vyne Trellis, a comprehensive, web-based dental billing platform designed to help dental practices improve and manage their revenue cycles and exchange encrypted health information.
Onederful’s solutions connect to more than 240 payers. Its strength lies in its ability to collect eligibility benefit information from payers in a standardized and structured manner no matter the payer’s information formatting or how it is conveyed to practices.
With Onederful, providers receive the same formatted response from payers in the structured manner in which they hope to consume data that otherwise would be an unstructured and copious mess.
By utilizing Onederful’s API ecosystem, dental practice leaders enjoy each payer’s fully digital experience when they service patient plans. The solution’s benefits include patients not receiving a surprise bill, practices collecting payments faster, and payers not receiving phone calls from practices.
According to Stephen Roberts, president of Vyne Dental, Onederful standardizes and files patient eligibility data in a synchronized way no matter the payer, patient, or practice. Similarly, every payer’s data is standardized for the practice so that every patient’s data is in the same format.
“By adding Onederful to the Vyne Dental portfolio, we’re continuing our mission of becoming the foremost provider of fully automated revenue cycle management solutions in all of dentistry,” Roberts said. “Onederful joins a successful roster of innovation, alongside our other, recent acquisitions, including Renaissance Electronic Services, Tesia Clearinghouse, and OperaDDS. With Onederful, we are one step closer to accomplishing this goal.”
By acquiring Onederful, Vyne Dental continues to establish itself as the industry leader in end-to-end information exchange and communication management solutions for healthcare, serving more than 74,000 dental practices.
“Onederful is a special technology that normalizes the response data and maps it into structured fields,” said Vance Taylor, Vyne Dental’s vice president of sales and marketing. “Regardless of how much or how little information a payer gives a practice, that data is parsed, mapped, then rendered in the same format for all payers regardless. So, if I’m tracking eligibility responses, I know exactly where to go to discover exactly the information I need.”
Rodeo Dental & Orthodontics, one of the fastest-growing multi-disciplinary dental group practices in the country, has several major achievements to celebrate as 2021 comes to a close. Though the COVID-19 pandemic created significant challenges for the dental industry, Rodeo Dental never wavered in its commitment to provide high-end dental care and community support for underserved communities.
Rodeo Dental was founded in 2008 in the heart of Fort Worth, Texas, with a mission to provide every child and family the key to access high-end dental care—regardless of status, means or location. That mission has been the catalyst for major growth this year, as Rodeo Dental expanded operations into regions in Colorado where access to high-end dental care is a challenge. The group opened six new locations in 2021, including three practices in Colorado, with plans for further expansion in 2022.
“It is truly our mission that makes Rodeo Dental stand apart from the rest. We strive to be the one-stop shop that provides high-quality affordable dental care and an exceptional experience for the entire family,” said Dr. Yahya Mansour, Chief Dental Officer at Rodeo Dental & Orthodontics. “Our award-winning team members do everything we can to deliver on this mission, from volunteering services and teaching proper dental care to offering flexible payment options and more.”
In addition to giving every family the key to access high-end dental care, the Rodeo Dental partners are also committed to running a practice that allows for the betterment of their local communities. Since its inception, the group has made it a priority to use its business as a force for social good by supporting charitable organizations such as Dentists Who Care and the LEAP Foundation.
Aspen Dental announces a partnership with MyLabConnect – in an effort to continually advance technologies, improve processes, and bring better dental care to more people across nearly 1,000 Aspen Dental locations nationwide.
The partnership with MyLabConnect, which goes live on Dec. 6, 2021, will allow every Aspen Dental practice across the country to communicate and collaborate with their preferred dental labs, through a simple, common front-end interface software platform, in real-time.
“Aspen Dental is continually improving its technology and innovating in the clinical setting,” said Gina Bruzzichesi, chief operating officer at The Aspen Group. “This partnership with MyLabConnect will allow better, faster, and more efficient internal and external communication and collaboration between Aspen Dental practices and their preferred dental labs – resulting in better care for more people.”
The new cloud-based platform offers a single source for Aspen Dental doctors and staff to:
Electronically order and track the status of Rx
Manage integrated IOS digital and chairside service workflows
Digitally integrate with their preferred dental labs
Track and manage communications with dental labs and design centers
“Having a single platform to manage the flow of communications will allow the doctors to spend less time on paperwork, so they can have more time to focus on what matters most – patient care,” said Bruzzichesi. “And, what makes the MyLabConnect platform even more convenient is that it is a multilingual platform that doctors and their teams can use on desktop or on mobile.”
“When we set out to create this platform, in partnership with The Aspen Group, we knew we needed to make it convenient for the doctors,” said Niranjan Ramakrishnan, CEO of MyLabConnect. “This is a major milestone and proud moment in the MyLabConnect journey, as we work together with Aspen Dental to break down barriers and bring simple yet comprehensive communication solutions to more than 3,800 doctors at nearly 1,000 dental practices across the country.”
The new platform from MyLabConnect will allow Aspen Dental doctors and staff to communicate more effectively and efficiently with external dental labs by creating a single platform that is simple to use.
“Dentalle believes in being at the forefront of change and revolution in dentistry by leveraging the best materials and technologies,” said Warren Su, President of Dentalle. “As Aspen Dental’s longest tenured preferred lab, we are extremely excited to have worked together with Aspen Dental and MyLabConnect to pilot the program throughout the past year to ensure a seamless integration with our Lab Management Systems to facilitate the launch of this new technology. This new end-to-end interface for Aspen Dental will continue to drive The Aspen Group to new heights under its visionary leadership team.”
“The new MyLabConnect platform will provide a seamless bi-directional integration with Intra Oral Scanners,” said Chris Lauro, president of Healthstar Dental, another key lab provider and preferred partner of Aspen Dental. “This improved process will allow our team to spend less time on booking cases and more time on providing better quality customer support to the Aspen Dental practices across the nation.”
Between patient registrations, treatment-plan sign offs, payments, and patient check-outs, a lot of signatures are required at East Carolina University’s School of Dental Medicine. So, you can imagine how Phillip Allen, director of informatics and tech services felt when his team was sending five or more signature pads out for repair each week. And then there was the time they lost electronic signing capabilities altogether—for a year—while two software companies and the signature pad manufacturer blamed each other for the outage.
In addition to hardware issues like inconvenient watch-batteries used in the pens and a weak connection between the USB cord and the unit that caused breakage, there were software and support issues. The school uses iMacs, Apple laptops, and iPhones throughout its 188,000 square-foot teaching facility in Greenville, NC and eight regional satellite offices. They run axiUm’s EHR in a Citrix environment, and the signature pads they purchased in 2010 didn’t work well with Citrix.
Allen explains that setting up a pad required a technician to initially plug it into a blade server in the main data center. Once it was moved into production in the clinical unit, each pad had to be unplugged and plugged back in each morning. Additionally, if a unit was unplugged while in an axiUm session, you had to log out of the session, plug the unit back in, and log in again.
The electronic signature system was unwieldy. Some students became so frustrated they began stashing a signature pad in their laptop bag in the hope that using the same device would allow easier hardware recognition…but it didn’t. This led to a shortage and the remaining students started competing to get their hands on a pad. Allen and his team knew they needed a new solution.
Leading dental support organization Pacific Dental Services(PDS) has announced a new partnership with the American Diabetes Association to increase awareness of the link between periodontal disease and diabetes, and how oral health providers can assist patients in preventing and managing this chronic health condition. The timing of this announcement coincides with American Diabetes Month, a month-long campaign that recognizes all forms of the disease – including Type 1, Type 2, gestational diabetes and prediabetes – along with the millions of Americans living with diabetes today and those who remain undiagnosed.
Educating others on the link between their oral health and overall health – what PDS and its supported practices call The Mouth-Body Connection – is a priority for PDS. Research shows that harmful bacteria and inflammation in the mouth can indicate and even cause systemic conditions throughout the body.Maladies of the mouth, including periodontal disease, may be linked with other medical conditions including diabetes, oral cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis and more.
According to the American Academy of Periodontology, people with diabetes are more likely to have periodontal disease than people without diabetes, probably because people with diabetes are more susceptible to contracting infections. In fact, periodontal disease is often considered a complication of diabetes.
Vyne Dental
“I am proud of the work our branding team did to create and launch Marquee Dental,” said Fred Ward, Marquee Dental Partners’ chief executive officer. “We have an ethos at Marquee Dental Partners of healthiness and happiness that gets passed onto patients. We are proud of that. More functionally, this branding work will help inject numerous efficiencies into our De Novo strategy.”
Vyne Dental, a leading provider of revenue cycle, claims management, and electronic health information exchange for all-sized dental practices, announces that it has acquired Onederful, Inc., a suite of APIs that connect to hundreds of dental payers companies for eligibility and benefits, claims and electronic remittance advice (ERAs).
