The Dental Jobs Diaries
Here, we pride ourselves on providing you with insightful and informative podcasts, discussing everything from oral health to job opportunities in the dental industry.
Our mission is to equip you with the latest news, updates, and advice so that you can stay informed about the world of dentistry. Whether you’re a dental professional, student, or enthusiast, we have something for everyone. So, sit back, relax, and tune in as we delve deeper into the world of dentistry with our recent Podcasts with Clyde Munro Dental Group & Scottish Dental Care & Advanced Dentistry.
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The Dental Jobs Diaries
Revolutionizing Dental Care with the Principal Ownership Plan
Unlock the secrets to advancing dental care in Fife with insights from Jim Hall, CEO of Clive Munro, as he shares his vision for transforming the local dental landscape. Jim reveals the challenges of attracting dental professionals to the picturesque region and presents an innovative answer: the Principal Ownership Plan. This initiative offers dentists a stake in Novodent, a newly established practice in Glenrothes, equipped with cutting-edge digital technology. Discover how this forward-thinking approach is set to not only enhance patient care but also foster a motivated team dedicated to family-centric dental services, supported by the Child Smile program's commitment to oral health education.
Explore Novodent's revolutionary integration of digital labs, enabling efficient in-house production of dental essentials like crowns, bridges, and dentures. Jim discusses Novodent's role as a key partner for local sports teams, crafting state-of-the-art mouthguards for athletes, including Scottish rugby players. With a strategic growth plan geared towards serving over 10,000 patients, Novodent is poised to make a significant impact on community health in Scotland. Tune in to hear about this exciting journey of embracing advanced technology and entrepreneurial spirit to redefine dental care, led by a team passionate about making a difference.
Welcome to the Dental Job Stories podcast in association with DentalJobscom, a leading job board for dental professionals. Please sit back and relax and listen to some of the thought leaders across the dentistry sector. Hi, everyone, I do hope you're keeping well. Welcome to a further episode of the Dental Jobs Diaries in association with dentaljobscom. Over the moon again to welcome Jim Hall, CEO of Clive Munro, onto the podcast to specifically talk about a new idea, a new initiative, in particular Novodent Family Dental Care, Practicing 5. Jim, what can you tell us about that? But also, firstly, how are you keeping?
Speaker 2:I'm keeping fine. Thank you, lewis, busy as ever, looking forward to Christmas with my grandkids. So yeah, the excitement is building in the whole household. But, yeah, doing fine. Delighted to talk to you and tell you a bit about what we're doing in Fife.
Speaker 2:Fife has been really challenging for us and for many dental providers. It's proved very, very difficult to recruit new dentists into the area. I don't know why, because it's one of the loveliest places to live. I live in Fife and I think it's a great place to be and to bring up a family. But there's no doubt about it, we have a problem with the care of oral health for patients and you know we've faced some real challenges over the last couple of years with providing care from our practices. We lost dentists. We've had to look at different ways of how we go forward and one of the things I was determined to do was to try and find an answer and try and find something that will just make even a bit of a difference to the families that live in Fife.
Speaker 2:Following the challenges we had, I decided to look at really reinventing how we would attract the right dentist to Fife and how we would provide care. We have an excellent facility in Glenrothes. It's right next to the doctor's health centre. It's essentially a building and a practice where we can invest for the future and, given you know some of the latest information that has come out about families and the distress that families have about not being able to see a dentist, I felt that the very least cloud and row can do is give it our absolute best shot to attract the right kind of of of team for this new practice. That will be very family centric. It will be based on supporting families across Spice.
Speaker 2:We will make sure that we have the very latest digital equipment.
Speaker 2:We are the leading groups in Europe in terms of applying digital technology and that does two things.
Speaker 2:One, it provides a really great service to our patients, but secondly, it's great for attracting new dentists that are really keen to get access to the very latest technology, but not just get access to the technology, get access to a team of people in Clyde Munro and the training center that we have to make sure we can use that digital equipment and apply it to patients. And in that way, with that level of investment in the practice, we're looking to see if we can attract a really good team of service providers there. So that's really the whole idea about what we're trying to achieve. There's a great program in Scotland called Child Smile where we provide education and support to families as well as providing them with access to a dentist, and again, that will form a key part of what we're doing and we'll be looking to have an education suite and practice for families where we can actually help them to make sure that their children have the best possible oral health that we can.
Speaker 1:So obviously, jim, there's been many sort of specific factors that have influenced this key decision. You used the word a moment ago that you're going to give this your best shot. You're going to make a good crack of it. So what does that look like? I mean, what kind of key foundations have been put into place to make sure that? Hey look, patients are obviously very important to your business. Obviously, however, you know recruitment's a challenge in Fife, as we know. So what are you going to put in place?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a couple of things we'll put in place. So we've talked a wee bit about the facility itself, the physical facility, and make sure that that's up to date, that it has the best possible equipment in there, that we have the latest digital equipment in there. So that's something that we really got well advanced in terms of our plans. But one of the key things no matter how good your facilities are, your equipment is you need to have the right people and you need to have people that are motivated to really take a brand new concept and build on that with the support of the Clyde Monroe team, to create something, hopefully, that will help make a difference in price. So, to try to try and make sure we attract the right kind of person, something that's a bit entrepreneurial I mean, I love entrepreneurial dentists, I love being able to support new ideas, I love being able to provide the latest technology and understand from dentists how they can apply that to patients, and I love hearing the feedback from the patients when they get access to the latest digital scanning that's available to them. And so, in order to get the right team, I thought, why don't we try and get someone, or more than one person, perhaps even a practice manager and dentist combination, or a couple of dentist combination that know each other and work together. Why don't we try and get a person or a team and actually encourage them to act like owners of the business team and actually encourage them to act like owners of the business and for the right team? We can then look at sharing some of the benefits of being owners, because we will make this successful with the right practice team. We can make this an excellent facility to provide the best possible patient care and it can also be financially strong so that we can keep reinvesting in the business. So what we have is a new scheme called Principal Ownership Plan, and this would be made available to the successful candidates for Novodent, and what that means is that they will get a percentage ownership of the practice and then, when we come to the end of a three-year period and we'll do this every three years we'll go in and look at valuing the practice and I am pretty sure with the right team, the value of that practice will grow and the team can share in it. Patients are getting a great service and it works for everybody. So this principal ownership plan is a unique opportunity there are no one else doing this. It's a great opportunity for someone who was thinking about owning and being entrepreneurial around how they provide family patient care, but doing it in an environment where they've got great support, they've got great investment. They can focus on their patient care whilst getting the right HR support, finance support and technology and training and development support. So that's what it's all about.
Speaker 2:Pretty special, and one of the things that we have been looking at within the group is using this latest technology to do their own lab work. Now what does that mean? That means that if someone needs a bridge or a crown or dentures, then we have got the digital technology to actually make those in-house. So rather than sending them out to somewhere across the UK the latest technology we've got we can actually do a lot of that work in-house. Now that also means that we can provide a unique patient care service when we have that capability in a practice, and what I've decided to do to try and just make Novident work and just make it really attractive for the right dental team and to make sure patients get all they can is to have one of our first digital labs in that practice too, and that would be quite unique. We've already invested in the printers. We've got a facility in edinburgh where we're trialing this.
Speaker 2:We also, interestingly enough to fit in with the family theme, we have the facility to make mouth guards for sports. Now these are mouth guards that are fantastic at protecting children's teeth and indeed adults teeth. We are actually the supplier to scottish rugby. We've been working with other team sports across scotland and what I've decided to do is to locate that capability in Novodent. So not only will the practice provide the support to Pfizer, it will support families right across the breadth of Scotland and it's a great opportunity for the right team to be part of that, as well as the mucheded and essential standard dental care. That is the first priority. But it's got that little bit extra special capability there to do this and I think you know families in faith. As well as getting basic dental care, it just gives us a wee bit extra capability locally to support local sports teams and so on with our mouthguards, which are really state-of-the-art technology. So quite excited about it, quite excited about attracting the right team there and working with them to provide a great service.
Speaker 1:I mean you've obviously put a lot of thought, um and detail in this gym. I mean obviously having somebody entrepreneurial, um wanting to build their own practice, dreamt about building their own practice. I mean this is, this is the, this is the next best thing, right, in all honesty?
Speaker 2:absolutely. It's absolutely the next best thing. In fact, I would say you're for the right people at the right stage in their career. It's the best thing because they can apply all their ideas, their passion, their energy in terms of providing the best possible patient care, with the support of people like-minded people who've done it and other practices across Scotland, and, given our scale, we can provide support for development in terms of digital. We can even look at at some point providing implants from the practice. We can look at make sure that we develop our mouth-dark business from that practice, which would be great for the local people in Fife as well. So it's an opportunity to get a start in ownership of a practice, with unlimited support almost, and, of course, full access to our training centre, not that far away in Perth. So I think it's quite a unique opportunity. These opportunities don't come up very often and I want to make sure that we get the right team and I'm quite excited about working with a new team there to make this a big success, especially on my doorstep.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely Absolutely. And, jim, do you think this team is already going to be in Scotland or do you think this team's going to be probably outside?
Speaker 2:Well, I can address the question. I think there will be a team in Scotland. I know that there are a lot of excellent young dentists in Scotland. I know there's a lot of excellent entrepreneurial dentists in Scotland, and I know there's dentists that are frustrated and queerly work in terms of the amount of investment and opportunity to do things differently, and I just want to make sure I'm getting a message out that this is an opportunity that's here today. It's one that we can start talking about now and we can make this happen very, very quickly. Now. We've done all the preparation. We've got a blueprint of what we want to do and we would love to get input from the new team on that blueprint and what we can develop further based on their ideas. So that's all ready to go.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about Novi Den, family Care, if we can for a moment. So, novi Den, what is the background? I mean, obviously we spoke about the location, jim, but what is the background and what's your vision moving forward? Obviously, we get the right team in, get the right team in, and then where do you see it going from there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, I see it growing quite rapidly. Actually, we've got plenty of physical space there for, you know, four or five dentists. We are going to locate our, our lab there, our digital lab there. Um again, you know, having that on site is a great opportunity for dentists to learn more about the future of how lab work will be produced and how efficiently we can make the workflow having that facility on site and you know, I see it growing and I see us being able to look after, you know, over 10,000 patients more. You know 10,000 to 15,000 patients. I have that level of capability from the site. There's no question we can achieve that. And, you know, with a focus on family care, then we can make, you know, some contribution to solving the problem. It's not going to solve all the challenges there, but that's a lot of families that could benefit from this and it would make such a difference across the region if we could pull this off.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think it's a case of when, isn't it? I think it's going to be a case of when, because you guys are always coming up with ideas. So I think it's a case of when.
Speaker 2:So I'm really determined to make this work.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. We spoke about briefly on investment and everything else, but this is a state-of-the-art clinic, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, it absolutely will be. I mean, we've been investing across Scotland in the latest scanners digital scanners where you take scans of your mouth and the dentist can use that to make sure you get the best possible care. We will be implementing the latest artificial intelligence technology available for dentistry there. We've got two AI systems, one to help the dentist with the treatment planning and the other to help with the analysis of digital x-rays and scans. That will be in from day one and available for our dental team. Of course, these scanners can then talk to our digital printers, which will be on site as well, so we'll have that fully integrated facility there and, most importantly, the training to back that up.
Speaker 2:We've also been looking at how we can utilize dental therapists and again, I can see dental therapists playing a key role in this site too, in terms of the provision of care. The key thing is here getting the right team and quickly being able to provide some scales, because that's what's needed. I mean, it's not going to, you know, if we're going to take five years to get up to a couple of thousand patients and that's not going to do we're going to have to look at doing it properly. Make sure we get the right team in place, but with some urgency, because it's an absolute requirement for families to get access to the dentist and, you know, given that we could provide that to 10-15,000 patients, that's my goal and that's the goal of my team, and I'm pretty confident that we we can do this, there's going to be some dentists listening to this podcast and they'll be thinking what an opportunity this is.
Speaker 1:And it is a major opportunity because things that you put in place you always seem to pull off and the amount of investment that you guys do is, again, remarkable. So, again, it's going to be incredibly exciting. And, Jim, how soon are you looking to move on this in terms of we?
Speaker 2:would like to be up and running, you know, within months. This isn't something that's going to take us a year or 18 months. We're talking about getting up and running in months. We've already started the preparations and the planning and we will be ready to go. As soon as we get a team in place, as soon as we get the commitment and the timeline for that team to join, we'll be ready to open and there's no reason why we can't have this up and running by the spring. Incredible. That's my goal, yeah, and, as you say, I hope that dentists or a dentist, the practice manager team, can see the opportunities of working with us on this, because it's a great opportunity, a unique opportunity and, yeah, I want to hear from them, I want to hear from people that are interested in this.
Speaker 1:No, listen, I mean, you know you still hold the record for the most downloads on one of the first podcasts we did. So I'm absolutely sure, jim, that we're going to get people on this for sure. It's a great proposition, you know. I think, look, you know, what you've put together is very interesting, and there are people out there that are entrepreneurial within the dentistry world. Of course there are. They want to be able to build their own practice. But, again, it's that. What if you know You've got that, you've got the training, you've got the finance and you've got the investment, you've got the location, you've got all of that, uh, and the year and the years of experience and support as well.
Speaker 2:So, in essence, what an opportunity this is I agree, I agree and for the right person, you know, they can really tap into all that support and um, you know I I love, you know, people that passionate and committed and I will be here to support them, yeah absolutely, absolutely, jim, listen it.
Speaker 1:it's always, it's always an absolute pleasure just to hear the you know, the enthusiasm and the desire to to really make this a success. And you know, on other things we've discussed as well, like our previous podcast, we were discussing the overseas program for dentists Again, again, that's exciting. A lot of thoughts can be put into that. But equally, this podcast today with regards to Moby Dent and getting people in and build their own practice with the support, it's fantastic and all credit to you guys for coming up with this. So again, I'm glad for you to be supporting that.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for that.
Speaker 1:Thank you Absolutely. So, listen, it's the end of the year. What have you got planned for the Christmas holidays, which isn't too far?
Speaker 2:No, yeah, it's not too far away at all, but it's all about the grandchildren. With four grandchildren, from three to six, there is plenty going to be going on. Christmas for me is just all about family, so can't wait. We've got some exciting things for them to open on Christmas Day. I've managed to sneak in a few extras for them that nobody else knows about yet. So I mind you, I've made you. I've probably bought some of them for myself rather than the kids. That's another story, but yeah, I look forward to it.
Speaker 1:It's all about the family for me, christmas kind of week Are you going to be able to manage to wind down, because we know that you're famous, you're. You know one of your famous topics is Clyde Munro. Of famous your. You know one of your famous topics is Clyde Munro, of course, one of your. So are you going to wind down?
Speaker 2:hopefully. Well, I'll try my best. I'll try my best. I always find that, actually I always find that I never really wind down totally.
Speaker 1:But I will try and chill out for a wee bit, that's for sure, and I look forward to supporting you on these initiatives over the next six months. But again, have a lovely Christmas and I look forward to catching up with you again in the new year in 2025.