One of the most beneficial resources offered by Aspen Dental has become its educational programming to support doctors' continuing education.
The Aspen Group, which is the parent company of Aspen Dental and ClearChoice Dental Implant Centers, launched TAG University in September 2023. The educational division provides clinical, business and leadership training to providers, and has become a big selling factor for the DSO.
Jaclyn Tomsic, DMD, MD, joined Aspen Dental in May 2023, and has lauded the program as a huge advantage for doctors within the DSO's network. She recently spoke with Becker's to discuss her work with Aspen Dental and some of the challenges facing oral surgeons.
Editor's note: Responses were lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What are some of the biggest ways Aspen Dental has supported you and other oral surgeons?
Dr. Jaclyn Tomsic: We have a dedicated specialist team. We have a dedicated specialist onboarding manager, but he's really not only dedicated to onboarding. He's a support for us any time we need anything, which has been really good for me because I'm part time. I do work with other offices, so it's helpful to have a point person who I can just reach out to and be like, "Hey, I need this implant ordered," or "I need this product ordered," and he just gets it done for me. He's just a really good resource ... That's a really big improvement [and] definitely a big help for specialists because there are a lot of us who are part time, and even if you're full time, you're usually traveling to more than one office, so it's helpful to have someone on the ground who isn't traveling, who can be there and do things for you. That's one of the biggest ways Aspen supports our specialists, and just all the other ways they communicate with us. We always have all these resources for anything we need to help make our day run smoother.
The biggest advantage Aspen has is the continuing education they offer their doctors. We have The Aspen Group [University] and the clinic in Chicago. There's a huge educational center there where they offer educational credits pretty much year round. Obviously, you have to travel to Chicago for that, but it's open to all Aspen doctors. We also have resources online for online CE credits. Specifically for specialists, we also have a dedicated implant team ... So there are a lot of resources they provide to their doctors to stay up to date. That's a huge asset to the company because as a healthcare worker, we're dedicating our lives to be lifelong learners, so to have all of that available to us is really great.
Q: What are some of the biggest misconceptions about DSOs that you've heard in the industry?
JT: One of the biggest misconceptions is that it's just a factory, that the doctors and the employees don't really care about patients. All we care about is getting things done, getting as many patients in and out as we can just to make a dollar. That definitely has not been my experience. Every single staff member, every single doctor who I've worked with truly cares about their patients. They have rapport with their patients, and the patients want to come. They come because they want to go there. A misconception also is that only patients who can't get into a regular dentist come to Aspen, and that's not the case. A lot of patients come to Aspen and they like the doctors. The dentists are like any dentists. They've just chosen to work in a DSO model, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's a lot of advantages and reasons why people choose to go that way.
I think another misconception is that you get maybe lesser care, or inferior care, or different care at a DSO. That's definitely not the case. That can be the case pretty much anywhere. You can [go to] Dr. Smith, who opened his office on Main Street, and still get inferior care. Location does not determine the type of care you're going to get or the type of treatment you're going to receive.
Q: What trends are you currently following in the industry?
JT: One of the biggest trends in oral surgery right now and for the foreseeable future is what we call virtual surgical planning. We basically collect information from the patient, usually in the form of digital scanning, both an X-ray scan and an intraoral scan, and we input that information into a software program, and together with the team of planners, we essentially plan the implant placement. We essentially do the surgery virtually. We plan where the implants are going to go, and from there, a surgical guide is created, and with the technology now, those are usually 3D printed, and they're sent to us for use during surgery so that we have the most up-to-date and ideal information to do our surgery.
The influence of what we can do with technology, it's just so much more accurate and it shows us that there's human error and no matter how good you are of a surgeon or clinician, there's always going to be human error, and the software is going to be more accurate, down to the millimeter.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges facing oral surgeons?
JT: Some of the biggest challenges facing us are the aging patients and just the more medically complex patients. As we all know, over the last 20 years or so, the average life expectancy has increased. People are living longer, which is great, but that means people also have more medical conditions. They are on more medications, and then there's always emerging medications [and] treatments out there that patients are on. I graduated medical school in 2010, I graduated dental school in 2005 and then I graduated residency in 2012, so it's been over 10 years. Even in those 10 years, what I learned in medical school and dental school has changed, so you really have to keep up to date. Even though I feel like I'm very well educated and I feel like I have a very good knowledge base, I still have to look up medications [and] I still have to consult with other doctors. That takes time, and that's what's challenging, because we're in a very fast-paced specialty and fast-paced world, so you do have to step back and take the time to do research and stay up to date on that in order to deliver quality care and safe care. That's a challenge for us because we want to be very efficient.