A patient recently paid more for treatment… and didn’t blame me for it. He came in with crowded teeth and an unbalanced bite. During the exam I pointed out a few cracks forming in his molars. Nothing catastrophic yet, but the bite was clearly putting stress on those teeth. I explained the bigger picture. If we balanced his bite with aligners, we could likely prevent those cracks from getting worse. If we did nothing, the chances of future fractures were high. He listened. Then he said he...

I recently met with the CEO of a DSO with over 100 locations. And I walked away with a few realizations that most dentists don’t think about. Not every DSO is bad. But every DSO is different. Dentists love to generalize. “DSOs are corporate.” “DSOs don’t care about doctors.” “DSOs only care about numbers.” Some do. Some don’t. The real issue isn’t whether DSOs are good or bad. It’s whether you’ve done the work to understand how a specific one operates. If you’re considering working for a DSO...

I just got back from the Chicago Midwinter Meeting. It’s one of the biggest dental conferences in the world. And three things became very clear to me. There are more people trying to help dentists than dentists trying to receive help. That’s not a bad thing. It means there are solutions. It means innovation exists. It means people care. But it also means something else. When the market gets crowded, quality gets diluted. A lot of people from outside dentistry see opportunity here. Dentists...