Think beyond “quick fix” staffing to improve long-term recruitment, retention, and patient access to care.

Traditional temporary staffing solutions may fill a short-term need—but a consistent, contingent labor workforce can maximize capacity for existing operatories, flex to address evolving patient needs, and encourage long-term resilience and growth.

Acquisition, new builds, and capacity expansion: What’s the most strategic growth option for DSOs?
In the rapidly evolving landscape of dental care, dental service organization (DSO) leaders are confronted with a critical dilemma: how to most effectively grow revenue while mitigating risk. Should they acquire existing practices through due diligence, accurate valuation, and successful integration of leadership and staff? Should they invest time and money into new build-outs— which require capital-intensive site selection, construction, permitting, and hiring of new staff?

Could it simply be less risky—and more cost effective—to increase capacity within their existing practices?

Many DSO leaders do see the opportunity to expand operations wherever they may have under-utilized operatories or additional time slots on evenings and weekends. However, these opportunities are frequently hindered by staffing limitations, or the fact that existing full-time employees often do not want to take on these additional shifts. This brings to the forefront one emerging strategy for effective capacity expansion: contingent labor.

How dental practices use contingent labor to tackle staffing challenges
Temporary staffing once served as a mere stopgap to ensure continued production during employee absences. These days, it’s increasingly recognized for its ability to enhance flexibility and boost productivity in unused operatories during non-peak hours.

With access to vetted, trained, and W-2 compliant staff—who are willing to work as little as a single shift or as much as three to four days a week—practices can create more sophisticated staffing plans that fill the gaps, increase appointment availability for patients, and capture production with just a few new investments in operating overhead. This approach evolves temporary staffing into a more flexible and sustainable staffing strategy—one that relies on a contingent labor workforce that can regularly fill staffing needs for the long haul, without running afoul of any contract labor laws or regulations.

Investing in a mutually beneficial relationship: recruitment, retention, and employee value
Recruiting and retaining skilled staff (particularly hygienists) remains a significant undertaking; according to a recent study by the ADA Health Policy Institute, 88% of practices describe this task as “extremely challenging.” Issues of training shortcomings, salary dissatisfaction, and burnout are pervasive, with over a third of dentists feeling overworked. To address these challenges, DSOs must invest in their staff—and demonstrate how an employee’s value is inextricably linked to personal career development.

High-retention practices support their teams through training on new technologies and the creation of work environments where staff feel
genuinely valued. Yet temporary staff members are often left out of these retention efforts, though they experience the same issues of dissatisfaction and burnout when they feel undervalued or overwhelmed.

For every single place of employment, temporary dental workers must become deeply familiar with unique cultural and behavioral dynamics, the objectives and priorities of the business, the collection of tools and software, and ways to effectively contribute to the success of the practice. (This applies even when a temporary staff member works only sporadically for a practice.) When practice owners and managers acknowledge this reality—and choose to see “temps” as a consistent, contingent labor force worth investing in, both the practice and the dental professional will see significant growth.

Flexibility, stability, and increased access to care: The industry trends that point to contingent labor
Trends in the landscape highlight the necessity for DSOs to embrace more flexible staffing models that effectively meet both operational demands and patient expectations. A contingent labor model is particularly relevant for today’s workforce (ranging from students to long-serving professionals) — which increasingly values flexible employment that offers the stability of healthcare benefits, paid time off (PTO), and a predictable workload. Labor-compliant part-time roles not only accommodate these needs; they also mitigate patient cancellations and help manage the ever-fluctuating schedules of dental practices—ultimately protecting practices from lost revenue.

Contingent labor also addresses the needs of the patient community, which now demands shorter wait times, greater adaptability to their schedules, and more convenient appointment slots. As of March 2024, the average wait time for an initial appointment stood at 14.6 days. A contingent labor force can close this gap in access to care by opening up capacity for available production, or by taking on evening and weekend time frames.

With a contingent labor strategy, practices can respond to the growing demand for more dynamism in scheduling—increasing production for the practice, flexibility and stability for the dental professional, and access to care for the patient.

Successfully implementing a contingent labor strategy
At onDiem, we’ve made it a best practice to regularly collaborate with the leadership of the most successful DSOs in the country. It’s how our team can best understand the internal objectives and communication challenges DSO leaders face when optimizing staffing for production potential.

“I can’t confidently count on my area managers to give me an accurate perspective on who’s available to work, and when,” one executive told us. “I know my team members are taking additional shifts on temporary staffing platforms. I know they’d be willing to work in more flexible ways if I only had insight into their availability.”

This conversation, among others, helped us understand a key component of a successful contingent labor strategy: Practice managers must have accurate insight into when dental professionals are willing and able to work. Our team responded by developing the onDiem availability calendar—a platform feature that not only records a professional’s availability to work, but also dynamically updates a practice’s open shift calendar to optimize for the most effective and productive staffing mix. The same executive is now looking at ways to take advantage of our platform for their entire staff—not just for insight into overall availability, but also to take advantage of a cost-controlled way to ensure W-2 compliance and provide employee benefits such as health insurance and PTO.

How organizational leaders can start gaining the benefits of a contingent labor workforce:

1. REVIEW CURRENT ORGANIZATIONAL NEEDS.
Understand your existing staffing strategy to find the right contingent labor solution.

2 .DE-RISK BY GRASPING 1099 V. W-2 DISTINCTIONS.
Hiring a 1099 worker as an “easy fix” can lead to a costly, long-term headache. Turn to leading partners on this topic such as onDiem to navigate complexities and mitigate risk.

3. IDENTIFY YOUR BEST INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL PARTNERS.
Traditional temporary staffing platforms are not always built for long-term staffing needs. Use an external partner who thinks beyond their own business value and invests in yours.

4. CREATE A COMMUNICATION STRATEGY FOR YOUR REGIONAL AND PRACTICE MANAGERS.
When they clearly understand the value of contingent labor, managers can help communicate needs and objectives at the staffing level.

5. COMMUNICATE YOUR PRODUCTION AND BUSINESS GOALS IN YOUR KEY MARKETS.
A platform like onDiem will assess your business goals in order to connect you with qualified professionals in your markets on and off platform.

Dispelling the myth: Contingent labor is expensive.
When comparing hourly rates with traditional temp staffing in mind, platforms such as onDiem, which focus on providing a contingent labor workforce, may appear to be a more expensive solution. However, the daily cost of our contingent labor is comparable to what a DSO would pay their own employee. After factoring in fringe benefits—including but not limited to healthcare benefits, PTO, and state & federal taxes, the daily rate for onDiem is within 5% of a fully loaded W-2 employee.

The real benefit for practices within a DSO comes from the incremental production driven by a supplemental workforce. A contingent workforce solution such as onDiem can foster a consistent and dependable professional community within your practices, forge mutually beneficial relationships between practice management and staff, and allow for increased productivity and satisfaction for all. Reducing vulnerability to sick days, vacations, and run-of-the-mill employee turnover with reliable contingent labor will drive an optimized dental practice.

Contingent labor: the key to successful staffing and DSO growth
As DSOs navigate the complexities of growth and market potential, the key to their success is within their ability to staff in more sophisticated and dynamic ways. By leveraging contingent labor solutions in response to new industry trends and demands, DSOs can ensure sustainable growth and continued excellence in patient care. The future of DSOs will depend significantly on their ability to integrate these staffing dynamics into their operational strategy.

Executive Summary

• By embracing contingent labor, DSOs can gain a workforce that grows revenue and expands capacity while mitigating risk.
• To successfully implement a contingent labor strategy, invest in your supplemental workforce and in solutions that give accurate insight into staff availability.
• Contingent labor addresses key industry trends: the professional’s demand for flexible employment with comprehensive benefits, and the patient’s need for improved access to care.
• The incremental production driven by a contingent labor workforce outweighs the cost of implementation—and leads to long-term business value.

Connect with a member of the onDiem team.

Daryl Freier

Chief Product Officer

onDiem™

Vyne Dental’s Game-Changing Impact on Dental Practices

All it takes is one patient encounter to illuminate broader challenges within the dental industry. For Steve Roberts, CEO of Vyne, this pivotal moment came early in his career when a 22-year-old man walked through the doors of a dental clinic he was working in. The man was seeking dentures despite his young age. His family history painted a picture of generational reliance on dentures, a trajectory he seemed resigned to uphold and ready to accept.

But good news was in store: This patient would not need to live the rest of his life with dentures. Instead, he could receive therapy to treat his periodontal disease.

But then something unexpected happened. Roberts was disappointed that the patient’s excitement did not match that of the provider team because of one question: “Does insurance cover it?”

So, amidst the optimism of a possible therapeutic solution, Roberts could not overlook a glaring reality. The decisive factor in this patient’s willingness to pursue an alternative hinged not solely on a clinical recommendation but also on insurance coverage.

What we do matters – maybe even more than you realize. It matters so much that I have dedicated nearly my entire career to solving problems in the insurance reimbursement space. Vyne is here to revolutionize the way care is delivered and practices are paid,” Steve shares.

– by Steve Roberts, CEO, Vyne Dental

“In that pivotal moment all those years ago, I realized the profound impact dentistry has on people’s lives,” Roberts says. “What we do matters. It matters so much that I have dedicated nearly my entire career to solving problems in the insurance reimbursement space. Vyne Dental is here to drive a paradigm shift in the way dental care is delivered and practices are paid.”

Another defining moment came just months ago, when Roberts first learned of the Change Healthcare data breach. As the leader of Vyne Dental®—a provider of end-to-end revenue acceleration that engages practices, payers, and patients via vendor-neutral connectivity, claims and attachment management and facilitates secure communications solutions—he knew Vyne had to act to ensure patients received care and practices were paid with minimal disruption.

Ultimately, Vyne Dental emerged from the Change Healthcare situation as a vital lifeline for the dental industry, expediting the launch of a new digital, self-service experience to accelerate onboarding more than 10,000 new customers within three weeks, enabling them to continue serving patients. The new service empowers prospective and existing customers to independently manage onboarding, implementation and training.

With easy access to extensive resources from online training courses to contextual guidance within the application to process improvement webinars, customers can be as autonomous as they wish, while maximizing the benefits they gain from Vyne Dental’s solutions.

In addition to the new self-guided experience, Vyne Dental also took several other steps to continue delivering exceptional customer service during the data breach, including: scaling its workforce by adding permanent and temporary staff to help new and existing customers with onboarding and support, enhancing call management to more accurately route customers to the proper support team in order to facilitate faster, more efficient resolution for all customers, and expanding digital resources to all customers that empower process optimization and revenue growth initiatives within their practices.

Tammy Barker, Vyne Dental’s Vice President of Customer Success and Women in DSO® Advisory Board Member, attributes these achievements to the hard work and commitment of the customer service and success teams.

“We are grateful for the trust our customers have in Vyne Dental,” Barker says.

“Vyne Trellis has a passion for listening to their customers and using feedback for continuous reinvention of their services. ”

– by Stacy Piskun of Heartland Dental

Vyne Dental’s robust platform, Vyne Trellis®, is designed to seamlessly support the operational complexities of emerging and mid-market DSOs. With a suite of tools encompassing practice management, revenue cycle management, patient engagement, and practice marketing, Vyne Dental empowers DSOs to streamline operations across their entire network. With centralized access to essential resources and insights, DSOs can better optimize efficiency and standardize workflows, fostering consistency and cohesion across all locations. This inclusive approach resonates with multi-location practices seeking a partner capable of supporting their growth and scalability without compromising on quality or efficacy.

“Vyne Dental’s end-to-end platform has been a game-changer for our multi-location DSO,” says Lori Brady, the Insurance/Revenue Cycle Manager for New England Dental Partners, Inc. “By streamlining workflows and providing comprehensive solutions, Vyne [Dental] has accelerated revenue and enhanced operational efficiency across all our practices. Their software has become a necessary tool in driving success and growth for our business.”

Vyne Dental is also dedicated to providing unparalleled support and customer service. The organization won The LiveHelpNow Challenge Best Customer Service award and has been named to the Inc. 5000 annual list of the nation’s most prestigious and fastest-growing private companies for 15 consecutive years.

As he leads Vyne into the future, Roberts remains steadfast in his commitment to leveraging his diverse experiences to drive positive change across the dental healthcare industry. “Every day, I draw on my past experiences to inform our strategic direction,” he emphasizes.

“Vyne Dental’s end-to-end platform has been a game-changer for our multi-location DSO.”

– by Lori Brady of New England Dental Partners, Inc.

“By combining insights from both corporate leadership and frontline practice administration, we are developing innovative solutions that empower dental practices to succeed in an ever-changing landscape.”

Through the Vyne Trellis platform, dental revenue acceleration is evolving. Today, Vyne Dental serves more than 800 hospitals and health systems, 84,000 dental offices, and 800 dental insurance plans and payers across the U.S.

Vyne Dental is leading a paradigm shift in the dental industry toward real-time claims and payment resolution to improve provider and payer financial performance while fostering patient satisfaction and loyalty. As it looks to the future, Vyne Dental is eager to pioneer advancements to help patients improve their smiles and providers enhance their profits.

Straumann Group launches the very first brand dedicated exclusively to supporting enterprise-level customers in an ever-evolving market.

The history of Straumann Group is one rich with innovation and steeped in a reputation for quality and precision. While our company got its start in dental implants, our brand has evolved over the past seven decades to include a diverse portfolio of solutions and services with each one maintaining our commitment to quality and to unlocking the potential of people.

Today, Straumann Group, one of the most established companies in the oral healthcare sector, is proudly supporting a dedicated brand
developed to address the needs of dental support organizations (DSOs) and large account dental groups. Our tradition of innovating
in response to growth and change has led to the recent formation of a most extraordinary entity: Straumann Group Enterprise Solutions.

According to a report by Precedence Research, the size of the dental support market is forecasted to increase significantly by 2032.

The data bears out the fact that we are witnessing a shift from solo provider practice to the dental support organization (DSO) model
on a large scale, necessitating a fundamental shift in the way industry providers, suppliers, and consultants assist these organizations.

Why Straumann Group Enterprise Solutions?
DSOs are inherently complex—a single entity must strive to generate profit through the mitigation of highly variable factors across a range
of diverse holdings. Implementing workflows, processes, and systems equally across every dental practice in a DSO is a formidable feat. Many solutions currently available for DSOs may not fully address the daily complexities these organizations face. The portfolio offered by Straumann Group Enterprise Solutions, however, provides DSOs with a holistic and harmonious range solutions and services all in one place.

Additionally, DSOs today face uncharted waters when it comes to scaling and growing market share. Despite experiencing prolific growth, the DSO market is a neonate with little established precedent for DSOs to follow. In a very real sense, the leaders of successful organizations today are pioneers who push the boundaries and sometimes struggle in the face of unanticipated challenges such as establishing a brand identity and strategy, recruiting and retaining employees, scaling sustainably, and pivoting in times of economic uncertainty.

Straumann Group has always embraced innovation and so we celebrate the DSO leaders who do the same. This new customer group is very important to us and we strongly believe that it also plays a critical role in improving access to oral care. In light of the rapidly expanding DSO market and the ongoing challenges these organizations face, Straumann Group has dedicated a large part of our organization to serving the DSO customer group. We have developed specialized teams, clinical digital workflows, and services that focus on helping DSOs to activate growth potential, elevate clinical excellence, and enhance operational efficiency.

A recent review of the branding and positioning for our DSO portfolio indicated a need for expanded efforts to ensure that forward-thinking leaders can fully benefit from Straumann Group’s expertise and insights.

“Straumann Group’s commitment to serving the fast-growing DSO customer segment dates back approximately 6 to 7 years, with the establishment of a specialized DSO organization in 2017,” says Straumann Group CEO Guillaume Daniellot. “As the dental industry undergoes transformation and the demand from our DSO partners becomes increasingly distinct, we recognized the importance of formalizing our dedication to this target group. Our customers can expect highly customized solutions, including digital workflows and related services that we are actively developing.”

“As the dental industry undergoes transformation and the demand from our DSO partners becomes increasingly distinct, we recognized the importance of formalizing our dedication to this target group.”

– by Guillaume Daniellot, CEO, Straumann Group

A Closer Look at Straumann Group Enterprise Solutions
At Straumann Group Enterprise Solutions, our aim is to support dental support organizations and other enterprise-level oral healthcare providers in transforming oral care specialties and the delivery of oral care as a whole with our customized, scalable, and digitally-powered solutions and services and our dedicated team of experts. We provide a holistic portfolio of resources tailored to support DSOs at all operational levels and stages of growth.

We are among the first movers in the industry to effectively accommodate the scale and needs of DSOs, offering them bespoke resources in the form of clinical solutions, comprehensive digital workflows for specialty treatments, on-site training, clinical education, and consultation services with industry experts. We serve as the comprehensive resource and strategic empowering partner for leaders aiming to develop more resilient and growth-oriented enterprises.

Given our trusted Straumann Group history and our commitment to growth and innovation, it was only fitting to give our new brand a crisp visual identity that instills a sense of confidence, uniting our trusted corporate heritage values and widely respected industry experience. Our new visual identity embodies our philosophy of being powered. The colors include blue for trust, professionalism, and expertise, and mint green for freshness, innovation, and advanced technology solutions. The interconnected rings symbolize unity and integration.

Straumann Group Enterprise Solutions may be the new name, but we have already been hard at work curating insights and developing solutions for the past 6-7 years. Our team working around the globe are working hand-in-hand with DSO customers to support them in achieving their own objectives, and we leverage our deep collaboration, collected data and customers’ feedback to continue innovating and improving the solutions we design.

Among our portfolio of solutions trusted to enhance operational efficiency, is CareStack. Powered by award-winning, innovative technology, Carestack offers a holistic range of features including scheduling, clinical operations, billing, patient engagement, and reporting, all on a single cloud-based platform.

We are also dedicated to developing thought leadership materials that serve executives within organizations with the insights and strategies they need to lead effectively and to innovate. These resources are designed to enhance decision-making and drive industry advancements.

Our initiatives also focus on fostering robust engagement among C-Suite executives of DSOs. For example, we host the annual Global DSO CEO Summit which fosters a collaborative environment where leadership can exchange ideas that drive transformative change within their organizations.

“The Global DSO CEO Summit not only provides a robust networking platform for our DSO CEO customers worldwide, uniting leaders from across the globe, but also serves as a venue for exchanging visionary insights, co-creating concepts, and sharing best practices on a global scale.”

– by Marie-Rose Wagner, Global Head Executive Engagement, Straumann Group

Besides our comprehensive portfolio of trusted Straumann clinical products, Straumann Group Enterprise Solutions also offers end-to-end fully digital workflows (Enterprise Specialty Workflows) designed to improve efficiency and standardize outcomes in high-production specialty treatment areas such as restorative dentistry including implant treatments, and orthodontics.

“The Restorative Dentistry 360 workflow reduced stress during surgery and achieved high placement accuracy, maintaining the highest standards for clinical excellence,” reported one satisfied customer. These workflows aim to streamline cases for greater productivity all while boosting clinician confidence and neutralizing variables that might otherwise result in inconsistent outcomes. Orthodontics 360 offers premium, smile design through efficient workflows for a superior patient experience.

We also place great emphasis on providing consulting services and comprehensive clinical education. These initiatives are designed to empower our DSO partners, enhancing both their operation efficiency and clinical excellence.

Enterprise Consulting with our select team of knowledgeable experts assists DSOs in developing and implementing actionable plans that will help the organization achieve objectives in the areas of demand generation, case acceptance, employee retention, and leadership evolution. Our consulting services supply organizations with customized growth strategies replete with the assets, training, business education, and real-time monitoring and fine-tuning of the strategy to ensure goals are met.

Enterprise Academy equips clinicians with the training needed to work efficiently and with confidence. We have been concentrating a lot of our efforts and investments in education as we believe this is one of the most important supports we can provide to our customers’ clinicians to facilitate the delivery of high quality specialty treatments such as implant therapy and clear aligners.

“The Restorative Dentistry 360 workflow reduced stress during surgery and achieved high placement accuracy, maintaining the highest standards for clinical excellence.”

Moving into the future with confidence, together
It is with great pride and joy that we formally announce the launch of Straumann Group Enterprise Solutions. The establishment of this new brand signifies a continuation and formalization of our commitment that was initiated several years ago, acknowledging our longstanding dedication to DSOs and other large-scale oral healthcare enterprises.

We hold the strong conviction that this brand underlines the importance of responding to the unique needs of DSOs with a tailored approach. It is our hope that our ongoing engagement with executives combined with careful monitoring of the market and a proactive responsiveness will enable us to adapt to those evolving needs effectively.

We are committed to fostering innovation and sharing insights that enhance lives, and we take pride in being a trusted, comprehensive source of support for DSOs at the enterprise level. Straumann Group eagerly welcomes the ambitious leaders of DSOs of all sizes to contact our team to leverage our insights and discover bespoke solutions for success.