Hello and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. My name is Chanel Bunger and I'm recording live at the Becker's Healthcare Future of Dentistry Roundtable in Chicago and sitting down with Alexa Bracken, the VP of Communications and Business Development at Houston, Texas Dental Spa. Alexa, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me, Chanel. I appreciate it. Perfect. Well, to get us started, could you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background? Yeah. So, again, I'm, Alexa Bracken and I'm out of Houston. My dad is a, general practitioner. We specialize in all facets of dentistry and we co own Houston Texas Dental Spa. We have, started to develop and grow that. That's why I'm here today is to hopefully have some nice expansion into the DSO space. We'll see. But I got started in dentistry, not on purpose as probably most of the people that I've spoken to here other than the docs. So about 10 years ago, we started working together and it's been been a fun journey since. That's exciting. Yeah. But moving forward, can you talk about some key experiences that have shaped your leadership journey in the dental space? Yeah, sure. So we together, my dad and I traveled for many years teaching. So teaching implant placement, on his part, of course. And then I would do the admin and and help docs that were taking his courses, to implement that into their practices. So it was it was such a great opportunity to see where practices were falling short for their patients and how how so many smaller private practices operate. Some of these were groups, but it really gave me the opportunity to see the need that we have for not only efficiency and, you know, tightening up ship in in terms of clinical operations, but the need that we have for true clinical excellence. And so that's that's very important to me and something that I stress a lot. So Got it. And you guys already mentioned expansion, but can you maybe go into more detail about, what strategic initiatives are you prioritizing for growth and patient care? Yeah, absolutely. So again, you know, we center around clinical excellence and how how can we how can we do the best thing for the patient, which I I think is all of our goals. Right? I fully believe that as as dentists and dental practitioners, like, we are the the physicians of the head and neck. Right? So that's our space. And how do we better serve our patients? There's such an inequity and where healthcare ends and where dentistry begins. So trying to marry that and trying to, make our patient care much more comprehensive is so important. And and I think we're starting to to dip our toes into that. But in our in our own practices, we've we've really taken the initiative to expand into chronic pain management and, some of those more traditionally medical centered services that are well within our scope. And that nobody's providing to patients really, truly taking care of TMJ in a way that, that gives patients relief, you know? And, and of course these things work out really well for your business structure. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, can you talk about some of the challenges that dental and DSO leaders are facing currently? And how are you addressing them at Houston, Texas Dental Spa? Yeah. You know what? I think so much of it is patient education. Right? We're finding ourselves in this really cool moment where people of our generation are now the people that are spending money on their healthcare. Right? And we want knowledge. We want to research everything. We we don't just believe the physician when we go and they tell us to give us a tell us to take a shot, you know? So we as a profession, I think are are starting to utilize AI better. But what what I'm seeing is that we're leaning too much on it. So we're not marrying it in a way where, you know, we're overlapping symptoms with what we see on an x-ray that the AI has identified, you know. So I think if we can better figure out how to, utilize that in our patient education, more than anything, it'll help us to not only, you know, get better outcomes for the patients, but also follow those patients through their journey and have better patient retention. Obviously, we make more money by doing that and, and all of that. Absolutely. Well, Alexa, I wanna thank you for your time today. But before I let you go, can you talk about what essential qualities or skills should emerging leaders in this industry cultivate? You know, I mean, I I think that that so many of the leaders that I've met here today are are so sharp. Right? They're they're so good. And I think we get so wrapped up in in the business side of things, the finances, and that's what we have to do. Right? That's that's literally our jobs. But at the end of the day, I think we really have to remember that the journey of the patient is the most important thing. You know? Clinical excellence is the most important thing. And so if we can if we can really help to develop more of those fundamentals and not just lead that for just the doctors in our organizations to handle, it makes us better leaders and, and everything will fall in line from there. Of course. Well, Alexa, I wanna thank you once again for your time today and for joining me on the Beggar's Healthcare podcast. Thank you so much.
