Stephen Thorne’s company provides management, administration, and IT services to its affiliates so they can focus on being dentists.

Running a dental practice involves more than cleaning teeth and filling cavities. Recruiting and hiring associate dentists, tracking down patient information, and managing the office are just a few of the aspects of owning a practice some dentists may not be prepared for. According to Stephen Thorne, president and founder of Pacific Dental Services, his company can fill in the gaps.

Stephen Thorne, President and Founder

“We have dentists who call us because they have heard of us and want us to provide services for them. I get at least one call a week,” Thorne said. “If one call a week gets to me, I know they’re getting to some of my other senior executives, too. We can’t even tackle that business yet, we just don’t have the resources.”

As PDS works to develop those resources, it does so in a highly fragmented industry. Unlike a cardiologist or a PCP, private practice dentists do not have the same kind of quality control usually associated with healthcare providers. Pacific Dental created its own quality improvement system to tackle this problem.

“We are still developing the system; it isn’t ideal yet. But private dentists in the US have no real oversight as to how they practice dentistry. Large groups like ours bring good quality assurance programs to the table,” Thorne said. “Collectively, our affiliated dentists have a reasonable expectation that the other dentists in the group are practicing at the same high level.”

PDS contracts with full-time auditors to help improve quality. It has a strict training program for all dentists that come into the organization, regardless of whether they just graduated from dental school or have been out of school for decades. And it can track its dentists’ performance electronically through the PDS computer system. For example, if an affiliate hired a new dental school graduate, the owner-doctors or the auditors can link to information about the first 10 root canals the new dentist performed.

“They can go on and see the quality of that work, including after-photos and X-rays. I don’t think there is another organization in the country that can do that—we’ve spent years investing in our infrastructure,” said Thorne.

PDS also has an understanding of changes happening within the industry. People are living longer and keeping their teeth, and some studies have shown a decrease in the supply of dentists. This indicates private practice dentists should have no problem setting up shop. But according to Thorne, the reality is different than the studies imply.

“We aren’t seeing a shrinking supply of dentists. Some of the studies are flawed because they are guessing when dentists are retiring. Some don’t take into account that new dental schools are opening up or the influx of foreign graduates coming into the US to practice,” Thorne said.

But one aspect Thorne said is altering the industry is the changing nature of the demographics of a dentist. More women are pursuing dentistry, and Thorne said some dental schools now enroll more women than men. The PDS model allows female dentists to own their own practice, but with the flexibility to set their own hours and raise a family.

“Our owner-doctor model and our IT and infrastructure systems are critical, distinguishing factors for us. Other companies are trying to play catch up,” Thorne said. “We could easily grow faster through acquisitions, but that isn’t our goal. We know if we’re the best in the industry, we can get pretty big. We want to be a national player, and that is what drives us.”