← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, this is Ariana Portolatten with the Becker's Dental and DSO Review podcast. I'm thrilled to be joined today by Phil Cassis, the co founder and CEO of Providence Dental Partners. Phil, thank you so much for being here today. It's great to have you on the podcast again.
- [00:14]
B
Thanks for having me Arianna. It's good to be back.
- [00:16]
A
Great to start us off. For listeners who haven't heard from you before, can you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us a little bit about your background?
- [00:24]
B
Hey Arianna, thanks again for, for having me. My name is Phil Castis. I've got the, the privilege and the awesome responsibility of being the CEO at Prof. Providence Dental Partners. We are an emerging group here based out of Georgia. For me, I grew up in the dental industry. My dad's a dentist. He's been practicing for 45 years now. My brother's an endodontist, sister in law is a dentist. I've got a lot of cousins who are dentists, so it's the only thing I've ever really known. I did spend 12 years at Henry Schein prior to starting Providence Dental Partners. Most of that time I spent consulting with dental practices all across the us Mostly focused on the business side of dentistry, helping them with everything from insurance, reimbursements, marketing, hr, more so helping dentists run a profitable dental practice.
- [01:13]
A
Thank you so much for that introduction. First question here, what are some of the biggest issues you're following at the moment in the dental industry?
- [01:19]
B
Yeah, so some of the big things that we deal with day to day, but we also follow in the larger industry right now, obviously workforce shortages and wage inflation in particular with hygienists and assistant short shortages. That remains one of the top constraints to Tara growth and just the stability of our businesses. And while it impacts our businesses, more importantly it impacts the overall health of the communities we serve. We've got to have the team members in our practices to be able to serve patients and make sure they've got the overall health and wellness, you know, that, that they need as well. So things are always changing. You got rising wages, people are getting creative with like sign on bonuses, more competition, you know, makes retention strategies and culture building even more critical to our organizations. Some other things that we are following and we're starting to see some of the impact from the tariffs just in rising supply cost. I wouldn't say that it's impacted us a lot yet, but certainly something that we're keeping a close eye on. The tariffs, cuts to Medicaid. While we particularly don't see Medicaid in our practices. We're keeping an eye out to see if there's a ripple effect in the dental industry from all the clinics that do. And so those are kind of the two big things with workforce shortages and then the cuts to Medicaid as well as the tariffs that we kind of keep an eye on in the bigger industry.
- [02:44]
A
Yeah, thank you for sharing those. A couple follow up questions for me. Just on some of the details you shared. Is Providence doing anything different this year as far as trying to attract more hygienists, retain them a little bit? I know you mentioned wage inflation and sign on bonuses. How's your company kind of navigating that this year?
- [03:03]
B
Yeah, so we're, I'd say throwing the kitchen sink at it. You know, we, we love to hear from our teams and in particular the hygienists. Right. We want to understand where we're at and what we could be doing better to attract more top level hygienists like the ones that I feel like we have in our organization. So we're very engaged with the hygiene schools, the hygiene associations. We do work closely with the teams that we already have. You know, we put in place referral programs, things like that. You know, it's not just about having someone who's licensed in that role. It's about having the right people on board. And so we've got a great team at Providence, in particular, our hygienist. And so we want more like those. Right. And usually the ones who are already here and working with us and know us, we want them to refer and recommend more of their friends who bring the same level and commitment to quality that they bring to our practices every day.
- [03:56]
A
Okay, thank you for sharing some more information about that. Also, to your point about tariffs, I know you mentioned that hasn't been too much of an impact just yet. We are seeing a lot of back and forth about the tariffs. A lot of new developments that have come into play here. Is your company, you and your colleagues, when you're kind of discussing tariffs, are you starting to think about some of where you can adjust, where you can cut costs just to kind of prepare yourselves? If tariffs were to have a larger.
- [04:24]
B
Impact, I would say we're always ready and always willing to be flexible. You know, while I don't know that it's impacted us in our day to day yet, we have gotten notification from some of our manufacturer partners and distribution distributors that some of those price increases are coming. And you know, those are where we have to make hard decisions. And we always make those hard decisions on what's best and, you know, best for our patients. And so if it means that we have to end up paying a little bit more for the best products in the industry, we're more than happy to do that. But at the same time, there's always alternatives that we can look at, and that's where we really lean on our clinical leaders to be able to evaluate different products and see if we can get the same or better results with something that's a little bit more cost effective. But I would say, overall, we typically don't run our business with just, you know, some of the smaller cost in mind. We always put patient care first. And so that's what we'll continue to do, and we'll just continue to monitor the tariffs and the impact of it and make decisions accordingly.
- [05:29]
A
Okay, and next question here. What are you most excited about when it comes to dentistry right now? And second part of that is what makes you nervous?
- [05:38]
B
Oh, okay. Well, I'm gonna start with the second part first. And while we try not to get nervous about too much, there's always things going, there's always going to be things in the day to day that we have to think through and problem solve. And that's what our leadership team is here to do and we're really good at. There's always new situations, scenarios, challenges arise weekly, sometimes daily. And when my team brings those to me, I always try and take the edge off. I always tell them, you know, the first thing we're gonna do is panic and get that out of the way. And then we're going to figure out what the logical practical thing to do is. And I've been blessed to have such a great leadership team around me. And when we work together, I don't feel like there's anything that we can overcome. And so when these challenges arise, we put our heads together and we come up with the. The logical, practical solutions and then we implement them. Now, as far as what I'm excited about, there's a lot to be excited about. I would say AI coming into really all parts of our business, both clinically, but also in the business operations side, really making us a lot more streamlined and efficient. It's exciting to see where these innovators of AI have come into the industry over the last five years, where their products and services started and kind of where they're at now, but also where they're going. The more and more that these companies can be interoperable, meaning it gives us the flexibility to choose different products and they all work together just makes us all better and ultimately allows us to serve our patients at a higher level and provide better oral health care to the communities that we serve. And so continuing to keep an eye on that and make sure that we're implementing these different technologies and AIs in our organization where it makes sense, both on the clinical side, but also on the business operations side. I would also say that there's always new products every once in a while. There's products that come into our industry that really revolutionized the way that we think about and practice dentistry. We've seen that over the years with everything from intraoral scanners to digital X rays to cbct. One that we're really excited about at Providence is Curidont being able to a biomimetic product that helps regrow the enamel of tooth loss. So we don't have to wait and watch anymore. We can go ahead and treat these lesions early on and either arrest the decay or restore the enamel too. So I know that they are continuing to evolve these technologies and these are things that we're really excited about tracking over the next few years and continuing to implement in our organization as it makes sense.
- [08:18]
A
Great. Thank you for sharing those. Last question here. What will the most effective healthcare leaders need to be successful within the next two to three years?
- [08:26]
B
A lot. So first and foremost, I think we have to keep the focus on our teams. We can't serve our patients and certainly serve them at the highest level without our teams. They are the ones that make this work day in and day out. And so we have to continue investing in their training, their development, as well as our practice cultures. That's one of the things I'm most proud of at Providence Dental Partners. One of our core values at PDP is fun. I had the pleasure actually yesterday evening at spending time at topgolf with our North Atlanta teams, and we had a lot of fun together. And I love our teams. I love that we have fun together outside of the office too. We work hard, no doubt about it. We demand it of our teams. But this core value is really a reminder of us not to take ourselves too seriously and to have fun doing the things that we do day in and day out with the people around us. We have fun at being the best at what we do. And I think this fun really creates a friendly work environment where people like to be. And so when we enjoy our work, patients love their dental experience. And so we try and incorporate a little bit of fun in everything that we do. And I think that spreads throughout our organization and just allows us to be better. It allows us to recruit top talent, to retain top talent, but our patients notice it, too. The other thing I would say that, you know, in our industry or any industry that we've got to do to be successful over the next few years is be willing to change. Change is hard, and some leaders and some organizations will steer towards the path of least resistance. And I believe to be successful in the coming years, you have to be willing to lean into the change. That means being transparent and having honest, tough conversations about some of the change and some of the changes that are coming. I think as consolidation continues in dentistry, it'll be more important to set a culture of change on the front end with these teams and practices as they come into our organization. Being transparent about what changes are coming and being willing to do the hard work to, you know, change practice management softwares to change clinical or operational workflows. You know, I think it's important, and I think it's important just to be transparent with teams up front. I think over the years people have said, hey, nothing's going to change when you join our organization. And I think that that is kind of a way of doing things in the past. I think it's going to take the tough work of making the change on the front end to be able to survive and thrive in the future. I've been a fan and a student of change management for a long time. Love studying everything from Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to modern change management experts like John Cotter. My favorite, though, is Edward Deming. And one of the quotes that's been most impactful for me over my career that, that he said is, it is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. And so to me, that's a constant reminder that we as leaders have to always be willing to change and evolve forward. And that means we have to be transparent with our teams about, you know, that that's kind of part of our DNA and our organization is we're always going to be changing and evolving forward. That way we don't get left behind.
- [11:44]
A
Super interesting thoughts for me there, Phil. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for joining us again today on our podcast. Been a pleasure speaking with you and look forward to connecting with you again in the future. I know we'll see you at the event next month, hopefully another podcast interview, but we will connect again soon.
- [12:00]
B
Sounds good, Arianna. Thanks. So much for having me and looking forward to seeing you in Chicago next month.