Clinical Excellence Presidents Mentorship: Rejuvenating the fun in dentistry

An all-on-four is one of the most complex cases a dentist can face. But for Dr. Matt Cavendish, it’s also one of the most fun cases.

Fun?

“Yeah, I like the challenge. It’s rejuvenating,” he said, smiling. “When you’ve been in dentistry for 20 years like I have, sometimes it’s not as fun as it used to be. So to be able to do a complex case like this, with somebody who is also working at a very high skill level, it is fun.”

Dr. Cavendish, who leads Matthew J Cavendish DDS in Phoenix, AZ, is learning all-on-four (a technique in which a full-arch prosthetic appliance is mounted on four implants) under the mentorship of Dr. Bryan Shanahan, who leads Peak Family Dental Care just up the road in Flagstaff, AZ. Both are founding partners of Gen4 Dental Partners, and while the mentorship opportunity was not a big reason Dr. Cavendish originally joined the two-year-old DSO, it sure is now.

Recently Dr. Shanahan placed all-on-fours for both upper and lower arches for a Vietnam-era veteran who had lost his teeth over time. Dr. Cavendish sat in to observe the single-day procedure.

“I was able to review the treatment plan he had prepared, watch the surgical technique he used, and confer with the lab he used” to custom-build both appliances, Dr. Cavendish said. “His lab is very skilled in those kinds of appliances and has a more reasonable fee. So just to pick his brain on his surgical technique, treatment planning, and the way he works with his lab – that’s something I would have never had an opportunity to do if I were still in a solo practice.”

Mentorship is a key component of the Individual Growth Engine (IGE), a personal-growth program developed by Dr. Mitch Ellingson, Chief Clinical Officer of Gen4. Each dentist in Gen4 identifies an area in which they want to grow – implants, say, or orthodontics – and is matched with a senior dentist with expertise in that area. They develop the IGE together, then meet weekly to review progress.

Dr. Cavendish’s mentor is Dr. Shanahan – and in turn, Dr. Shanahan’s mentor is Dr. Tom Chamberlain, an orthodontist in suburban Salt Lake City, UT. “I guess it’s kind of ‘pay-it-forward’,” Dr. Cavendish said. “Bryan is somebody I respect, who I know does a very high level of dentistry. So I can bounce ideas off him, which I couldn’t do if I were still in private practice.”

His IGE gives Dr. Cavendish a road map toward three goals: grow his clinical skills, increase his productivity and decrease his office costs.

“We meet every Monday for, like, 20 minutes. We go through the growth plan to see where we are. We look at the metrics – monetary, number of cases, number of patients, etc. And if something's not working, then we can discuss what we can do to tweak those goals. So the plan is a multifaceted pathway towards growth.”

Metrics show Dr. Cavendish’s clinic is performing even beyond his IGE plan:

• Revenues TTM (trailing twelve months) compared to the same period last year are up 16.5%
• EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes & amortization) year to date (YTD) are beating his plan by 2.3 pts and beating last year’s performance by $45,266
• Total payroll expenses YTD are 0.5% or $1,250
• Staff retention is at 100%
• Cost of dental supplies YTD is beating his plan by 6.4 pts and last year’s costs by 10 pts
• Cost of Labs YTD is beating his plan by 2.4 pts and last year’s costs by 6.4 pts

The mentorship also provides support for managing staff “and that was a big deal for me,” he recalled. ”I had issues with staff that needed to be corrected and before I had a mentor, I was just trying to figure out by myself what I needed to do. It was very difficult. So it’s not just advice on dentistry, it’s help with HR and PR and all that stuff I used to have to do by myself.”

As new dentists join Gen4, Dr. Cavendish said he highly recommends the Individual Growth Engine, especially mentorship. “Don’t push back,” he advised. “There’s no downside to having a mentor.” If your mentor turns out to not be a good fit, or if you decide you want to grow in a different direction, there are other clinicians you can turn to.

That’s one advantage of Gen4’s growing collection of top-tier clinicians. The promise of the Collaborative Doctors model – premier clinicians challenging each other to raise the bar – is being realized, he said. If he decides to focus on cosmetic dentistry, for example, he could learn from Dr. Brian Harris, one of the best in the nation who also practices in Phoenix.

For associates beginning their careers, the advantages of mentorship are obvious: “If you want to know what is the best surgical techniques, best continuing education, best labs … or say you have a case you’re confused about and don’t know how to present it to the patient, well, you can talk to someone who’s done it thousands of times.

“But there's also an advantage for someone like me,” he added, who after 20 years “maybe was in a spot of complacency, not being challenged as much, just getting through the day and not enjoying it as much … and then finding these doctors passionate about dentistry – well, that might kind of rejuvenate you a bit. Make it fun again.”

Sidebar: The Individual Growth Engine at a glance

The Individual Growth Engine has five parts:

• Mentors. Each doctor is paired with a mentor to chart a professional growth plan.
• Hygienists. In a typical office, dental hygienists provide 70% of interactions with patients, so enlisting them in the plan is critical.
• Operations. Corporate helps the doctor structure their plan and set metrics.
• Office managers. The local team is aligned to support execution of the doctor’s plan.
• Patient experience. Patient satisfaction is tracked to measure quantitatively the success of the plan.