Oral health is finally being recognized as part of whole person care and at the same time digital tools and AI are reshaping how practices prevent disease, engage patients and grow. DSOs are expanding, independent practices are proving their staying power and investment is accelerating across the sector. Dental leadership has never been more complicated or more consequential. Becker's fifth annual Future of Dentistry Roundtable brings together more than 250 executive level attendees and 90 plus speakers for two days of sessions in Chicago, all built to help leaders benchmark their priorities, stress test their strategies, and walk away with a clearer picture of where this industry is heading and how to position for it. Join us September 14th and 15th in Chicago. Register on our events page at www.beckersdental.com by clicking on the events tab in the upper right. Hello, this is Arianna Portolatin with the Becker's Dental and DSO Review Podcast. I'm thrilled to be joined today by Stan Kinder, the president of Everything DSO and publisher of Dental Growth and Exit newsletter. Stan, thank you so much for being here today. It's a pleasure to have you. Sure. Thank you so much for the invitation. I appreciate it. Yes, of course. To start us off, can you introduce yourself for our listeners and tell us a little bit about your background as well? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. You obviously mentioned my current role as president of an advisory service called Everything DSO. I work with practice owners that are interested in exploring the relationship with DSO. And then I also publish a newsletter called Down Growth and Exit that helps dentists with content that focuses on how they can grow and better manage their practices, as well as increase the value of the practice asset. At risk of dating myself, I actually started in dentistry as far back as 1981. I launched a practice in partnership with a dentist. I'm not a dentist myself. MBA by education. And he obviously was responsible for the clinical side of the practice, and I was responsible for all the non-clinical activity. Over the intervening four decades, I've worked in virtually every capacity you can imagine with the profession. As I mentioned, indirect ownership of practices directly myself. I've done management consulting. I've brokered practices. I've helped dentists implement associate buy-in, buy-out agreements. And I spent nearly 15 years working for several different DSOs in senior executive roles doing mergers and acquisitions Great Thank you so much It great to hear about your extensive experience in the dental industry So thank you for sharing that. First question for you here. What are some of the biggest issues you're following in the dental industry right now? You know, I think they're essentially the same ones that you see in the trade press and that people are generally talking about. One of the big ones, obviously, is the continued evolution and maturation of the DSO market and the consolidation that's continuing to occur. I think, obviously, one of the other big ones is the advent of artificial intelligence tools and how they're being used and developed for practices. I also think some of the changing demographic trends are impacting the profession in the short term and will continue to have implications for the long term. From my view, it's a very dynamic environment on the current planet. Just a quick follow-up question for you there. I know you mentioned DSO consolidation. What's your outlook on where the market is headed there? Sure. Well, I think if you have paid any attention historically to what happens in the private equity world, sort of the evolution of what I think is happening in the DSO environment is pretty consistent. You see early stages of consolidation that's funded by institutional investors and private equity is that it's driven very much by arbitrage and scaling at a fairly rapid pace. And that really reflected what went on in the DSO world for the better part of the last decade. You know, all the emphasis was on grow, grow, grow. And then as both the cost of capital raised, rose with the increasing interest rates and the impact on the balance sheets. Now we're seeing that there's kind of a maturation, in my view, of the DSO world in that there's a much greater emphasis on the ability to operationally drive year-over-year growth at the individual practice level. And I think also a greater emphasis on putting patients and providers at the top of the pyramid And so growth for growth sake is nowhere nearly as popular as effective And so you seen a rate of acquisition that slow a little bit over the last year or two But my belief is that it's going to continue at a fairly consistent pace over time and potentially increase. All right. And I'm curious to also know, what are you most excited about when it comes to dentistry right now? And what makes you nervous about the industry? I think on the excited side, I think the introduction of AI capabilities is very exciting. And I think we're only in the earliest chapters of that trend. Clearly, there's been a lot of focus on developing AI-driven clinical tools, and a lot of that has been where the early adoption has been occurring. But we're beginning to see agentic-driven applications where AI is answering phones, scheduling appointments, managing patient follow-up, working as the point of interface with the insurance payers in the background. So there are a lot of evolving efficiencies that are, I think, coming down the pike, and it's going to be exciting to see how that plays out. In terms of things that I'm potentially nervous about, I think is going to be, A, how effectively folks at the individual practice silver are able to adopt those tools. I also think that we're on the cusp of kind of a changing environment relative to how the third-party payers are going to continue to evolve. There's, in my judgment, kind of a diminishing rationale and taste for PPO participation, and we're beginning to see a trend away from that. And then I guess the last thing that I think is fairly exciting is the continued growth and awareness and I think responses to understanding the really powerful links between oral health and systemic health. Great. Thank you so much for sharing those. Last question for you here. What will the most effective health care leaders need to be successful in the next two to three years Sure I think let me first step back for a moment and say that I think that leadership in dentistry exists at a number of different levels. So, for example, you had individual practice owners, and they're in fact leaders at the practice level in the context of how they're driving the performance of their team, how they serve their patients. And I have long been an advocate that I think it's important for dentists to think about their practice, not just simply as the place where they practice their profession and really function on a day-to-day basis, primarily as clinicians, but that's really a business and that requires in order to be as effective as possible a different kind of mindset that they need to think about their practice not just as practice but as a business and I think that has an implication and then you have small groups that have been obviously a huge group as entrepreneurial dentists as they've seen sort of the opportunity and value creation that the DSO world represents have begun to grow practices on a local basis that are multi-provider, multi-site, and that requires a different level of leadership. And then, of course, you have leaders at the midsize and largest DSO levels where they're really driving what occurs in dozens and in many instances, hundreds of practices. And I think at that level, what we're beginning to see is that one is a responsiveness to the recognition that successful DSOs going forward have to understand that they've got to be in service to the dentist. And that closely linked with that, obviously, is patients. So I think those organizations that put patients and providers at the forefront are going to be the most successful over the long term. Well, that is all I have for you today, Stan. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been such an insightful conversation with you. So definitely a pleasure having you on our podcast today. And I'm looking forward to connecting with you again in the future. Sure. Thanks so much, Erie. I appreciate it.
