Rising Tide blog

“We strive, with excellence, to serve our patients and our community with the highest quality of dental care possible, while creating a compassionate and relaxing atmosphere of trust.” 

That’s the mission statement we built Bonham Dental Arts around. It’s on the wall in our office. It’s the first thing I tell new team members. And it’s the sentence that determined whether I’d say yes to Rising Tide. 

When I was evaluating the partnership, I didn’t start with the financials. I didn’t start with the overhead savings or the EBITDA analysis or the equity terms. I started with one question: will this help me serve my patients with greater excellence, or will it compromise that? 

Everything else was secondary. 

The concern I had

The most common objection to joining any kind of partnership organization or DSO is the fear that clinical quality will be compromised. I had that concern too. 

It’s not irrational. It’s based on well-documented patterns in the industry. Traditional DSO acquisitions have sometimes resulted in supply chain mandates that push clinicians toward cheaper materials. Corporate staffing models have sometimes reduced chair time per patient. Standardized protocols have sometimes overridden the clinical judgment of the treating doctor. 

I’ve watched colleagues go through those experiences and I wasn’t going to put my practice or my patients in that position. 

So the question for me wasn’t whether partnership is compatible with clinical excellence. It was whether the specific partnership structure I was evaluating was designed to protect it. 

How I evaluated Rising Tide

My mission statement was my decision framework. Every conversation I had, every document I reviewed, and every partner I talked to ran through the same filter. 

When I was evaluating other partnership groups, I felt like I would just become a “cog in their wheel”.  When talking with the other founders of Rising Tide, it was clear we would be building something together…by dentists, for dentists.  We are all in it together using the entrepreneurial skills we honed building our practices to now build an amazing organization. Building it with dentist owners and dentist leadership really allows us to do what works best for everyone.  

We all have a likeminded approach to dentistry and business and are building something that we would not be able to do individually. The sky is the limit. 

How better operations make me a better clinician

This is the thing that surprised me most. I’d always experienced operations as the thing I did between treating patients and which I thought was the administrative burden that competed with clinical work for my time and attention. 

But the relationship actually flows in the other direction. Better operations enable better clinical care. 

Better financial management means less stress walking into a treatment room. When I’m confident about my practice’s financial health, I treat patients from a place of security rather than anxiety. That changes the clinical experience for both me and the patient. 

Better hiring means a better team at the chair. When my practice has access to professional HR infrastructure, I attract and retain better clinical staff. A better team means better patient care. Period. 

Better vendor management means access to better materials at better prices. When my lab costs drop because of network leverage, the savings don’t just improve my margin, they remove the temptation to compromise on materials. When I’m paying $39 for a crown, I have no reason to consider a cheaper alternative. The owner who’s paying $120 might. 

Better peer relationships mean better clinical decisions. When I can call a peer who’s seen a case like the one I’m planning and ask how they approached it, my clinical outcomes improve. When I can learn from a colleague’s clinical mistake without having to make it myself, everyone benefits. Especially the patient. 

It all compounds back to the patient. That’s why I said yes. 

The structural protection that matters

Beyond the operational benefits, the structural design of Rising Tide creates a governance framework that protects clinical quality at the highest levels. 

Clinical direction is set at the practice level by practicing dentists. There is no corporate clinical mandate that overrides my judgment as the treating doctor. Our Clinical Director, Dr. Cedric Lewis, is a practicing clinician, not a former dentist turned executive. The feedback loops between leadership and clinical practice are direct and continuous. 

In an organization where the board is controlled by financial investors, clinical protections exist at the discretion of those investors. In an organization where the board is controlled by practicing dentists, which is how Rising Tide is structured, clinical protections are structural defaults. That distinction matters more than most practice owners realize when they’re evaluating partnership options. 

My advice for patient-first practice owners

If you’re a practice owner with unwavering commitment to patient care and you’re evaluating any partnership organization, use the same filter I used: will your ability to serve patients with excellence go up, stay the same, or go down? 

And the way to answer that question isn’t to ask the organization’s leadership team. It’s to ask the partners. 

Talk to the dentists who’ve been in the organization for a year or two. Ask them whether their clinical quality has improved, held steady, or declined. Ask them whether they feel pressured on materials, protocols, or patient time. Ask them whether the operational support they receive translates into better patient experiences. 

At Rising Tide, we facilitate those conversations because we know what our partners will say. An organization that’s genuinely built around clinical excellence isn’t afraid of its own partners’ honest feedback. 

If that’s the conversation you want to have, we’ll set it up.