How long have you been with MB2 Dental, and what were you doing before this?
I joined MB2 in early 2018. Before that, I was VP of Operations at a company that helped patients choose good doctors and forecast costs before seeking treatment. Helping patients navigate an already broken healthcare system is what pushed me to MB2. With MB2, I saw the opportunity to help grow a company that was proactively addressing what’s been wrong with other healthcare models and ensuring dentistry does not experience a similar fate.
Tell us a little about your role at MB2 today. What are your main responsibilities?
For me, along with everyone on our executive team, my primary responsibility is ensuring our 560+ doctor partners achieve their goals and experience value creation as part of the MB2 partnership. Beyond that, I lead many of our teams that provide central support services for our doctor partners and their practices, such as Revenue Cycle, Credentialing, Human Resources, and Payor Strategy. I also spend a fair amount of time traveling to meet with doctors considering an MB2 partnership, which is a valuable way to understand each individual’s needs and continue growing our services to be the best-in-class partner.
You’ve significantly grown MB2’s Payor Strategy team over the last few years, can you tell us a little about that?
Back in 2018, we had ~85 locations, and I was able to analyze and negotiate fee schedules on behalf of the group. As we grew, so did our bargaining power and our opportunity to optimize our insurance participation strategy. It was clear we needed to build a Payor Strategy team from scratch, and we are now up to 11 people on the team with very relevant backgrounds, such as fee schedule consulting and prior roles with insurance carriers. Candace VanCamp, our Director of Payor Strategy, has done a fantastic job leveraging her decades of insurance experience to grow the team and create tools and processes to maximize value for our doctor partners. In the meantime, we also built a proprietary software tool that analyzes mountains of claims data to support the Payor Strategy team’s efforts. All of this resulted in an industry-leading group of in-house experts who manage the unique needs of each MB2 partner.
What has been the greatest accomplishment of the Payor Strategy team in the last year?
Certainly, the wide variety of fee schedule improvements for our partners—who wouldn’t want to get paid more for work they’re already doing? Additionally, I’m particularly proud of the development of our proprietary Payor Strategy software tool mentioned before, as this will maximize our analytical opportunities into the future, and we know there is nothing like it out there.
What can new doctors joining MB2 Dental expect to see the largest change in after joining MB2?
I consistently see new doctors experience a feeling of relief just knowing they have a partner—they’re not in this alone anymore. The partnership mentality frees up new doctors to pursue opportunities and growth strategies with the support to execute successfully. Our doctors join MB2 with countless ideas, and it’s fantastic to see the results when we collaborate as partners to put ideas into action.
You also oversee the Revenue Cycle team. What technologies has the team brought in to increase efficiencies?
There are many, but I’ll focus on a recent example. We collaborated with an AI company to build an enterprise workflow tool that saves roughly 40% of the time spent on insurance aging. It automatically downloads EOBs to match with claims and helps the team prioritize their work while also providing reporting transparency we didn’t have before.
MB2 Dental adds an average of 12 new partners per month. What plans does MB2 have to grow its infrastructure over the next five years in order to keep up with its fast-paced growth?
First and foremost, I’d note that growth is in our DNA, so we are no strangers to managing growth. It is always a challenge to find the right people, but because we have such an established history of growth, we are consistently able to hire well ahead of need, keeping us in front of the curve. We are also highly responsive to the evolving needs of our doctor partners and, as a result, have (and will continue to) establish entirely new departments to support these needs. Finally, technology is always an area of focus; dental has historically lagged on the tech evolution scale, but it is catching up. We are consistently testing and deploying new technologies to support the business and drive results.
Lastly, one fun question: What is the most recent book you’ve read / podcast you’ve listened to?
I’ll spare you the details of my favorite fishing podcast… On the book side, it’s currently hurricane season, so I’ve been rereading Stormy Weather by my favorite author, Carl Hiaasen. It’s a satire that comedically reflects the opportunistic chaos that ensues after a hurricane passes through Florida. Hiaasen’s books are great vacation reading for anyone heading to the beach.
