HTM On The Line with BRYANT HAWKINS SR.

A New Era In Dental Repair: Bridging The Gap Between Innovation And Tradition

August 27, 2024 • Bryant Hawkins Sr. • Season 2 • Episode 14

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What if you could transform your dental practice by simply changing your approach to equipment maintenance? Join us on HTM On the Line as we sit down with Russ Baker, the Senior Vice President of Uptime Services, for an in-depth conversation about revolutionizing dental equipment repair and maintenance. With over three decades of experience in the dental industry, Russ shares his impressive journey from a territory rep to a visionary leader co-founding a company dedicated to reshaping the dental repair market. Discover the distinct roles of Uptime Health and Uptime Services, and how they're addressing industry challenges like the shortage of skilled technicians and an aging workforce through innovative training and support systems.

Don't miss out on the upcoming Dental Fix/Uptime Services Summit in Nashville from October 3rd to 6th—an essential event for anyone in the dental repair and HTM industry. Register now and use discount code BRYANT5 to get a 5% discount. Click the link to secure your spot: https://lnkd.in/e9UMHgFF

We are immensely grateful to our partners— College of Biomedical Equipment Technology, A.M. BICKFORD, INC., UptimeServices, PM BIOMEDICAL and Talent Exclusive—for their support in making this podcast possible. Their dedication to advancing the Healthcare Technology Management industry is truly commendable. For more information about their contributions and services, please visit their websites.

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Bryant Hawkins:

Welcome to HTM on the Line, the podcast that is for HTM by HTM. I'm your host, bryant Hawkins Sr. And today I'm thrilled to have Russ Baker, senior Vice President of Uptime Services, joining us. Russ brings over 31 years of experience in the dental industry and he's here to share insights on how Uptime Services is transforming dental equipment repair and maintenance. We'll discuss his journey, the unique challenges facing the dental repair industry and the groundbreaking work Uptime Services is doing to empower technicians and improve patient care. So let's get into it. Welcome to HTM On the Line. I'm glad to be joined by our special guest, russ Baker, with Uptime Services. How are you doing today, russ? I'm doing great. Brian, thanks for having me. Oh man, thanks for coming on. I'm very excited about this episode we're going to get into, but before we get deep into it, could you please tell the listeners?

Russ Baker:

a little bit about yourself and your background? Yeah, I'd be happy to so. Yeah, my name is Russ Baker. I currently serve as the Senior Vice President of Uptime Services, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Uptime Health. So I'm in the dental industry Much've much like yourself, I just learned I've actually been in the industry for 31 years.

Russ Baker:

You know, right out of college I ended up working with a manufacturer of consumable supplies in the dental space that you know sold things. We have things like composites and impression material and cements and things like that Basically the things that dentists need to perform procedures in their practice. I was with them for a couple of years right out of school as a territory rep and then had an opportunity to go to work with my largest distributor at the time in Cleveland Ohio, a company by the name of Mirror Dental, which was a regional dealer, and I made the transition from selling supplies to selling capital equipment and designing offices. So I did that for a period of time. And then our company was acquired by Henry Schein, which is really one of the largest healthcare providers for distributed products, for equipment supplies, et cetera, and sold equipment for a period of time.

Russ Baker:

Then I moved into management, ended up moving into several different leadership roles throughout the country, spent 24 years there and then about five years ago, decided I had kind of an entrepreneurial itch and a fellow colleague of mine and I we kind of peeled off from the major distribution house and went to work with a company to kind of help disrupt the industry and we had a lot of fun, a lot of fun doing it. Uh, one of the businesses um that that uh that was owned, was a, was a was a repair business called dental fix and, um, so you know, been there ever since. Uh, we recently sold the company, uh, about four months ago, to to uptime health. So so, yeah, so 31, but the vast majority of it in distribution and leadership and management, and that's where we are today.

Bryant Hawkins:

Okay, wow, that's a nice little journey you have there. Yes, okay. No it was too long for it. Hey man, you just started young, that's all. You mentioned upptime Health, yeah, but I've noticed you are a senior VP for Uptime Services. How does this work? I mean, are these two companies? Are they one company? Yeah, so Uptime.

Russ Baker:

Health is. It's really a well. So Uptime Services is a wholly owned subsidiary of Uptime Health. It was just created when Uptime Health acquired specific assets of the former company which was called Dental Whale, and so Uptime Services is really the repair and sales component and logistics. Repair and sales component and logistics I would call it for Uptime Health. Uptime Health is really an innovative SaaS platform really designed to automate and optimize management of medical and dental equipment. So Uptime Health is really a SaaS solution. And then uptime services is really more the logistics. You know, feet on the street, we go in and we work with dental practices and repair their equipment, do some preventative maintenance and things of that nature, and also when there's opportunity for replacement equipment, we will look to source that and sell capital equipment.

Bryant Hawkins:

What unique challenges are uptime services specifically addressing?

Russ Baker:

Yeah yeah it's a good question, brian. So if I kind of like zoom out a little bit and look at the entire industry on the capital equipment side of the business and repair, it's really for the most part dominated by distribution. On the repair side, the major distributors probably have about 70 to 80 percent of the market share and also perform. They have employees who are dedicated to repairing the equipment. That's in practice. So there is a bit of a challenge not a bit, I'd call it a pretty severe challenge, in that a lot of the technicians are somewhat aging out or graying out and there hasn't been a big influx of new folks into the space. So what Uptime Services is doing?

Russ Baker:

Number one we have our business model is set up under really two brand names.

Russ Baker:

One is Dental Fix, and Dental Fix is a franchise business that we own and we have quite a few vans on the road and then owners of the franchises and they have employees and they serve a market, basically small business owners.

Russ Baker:

And then we've also helped to scale the business through a group of independent technicians and they could be sole providers, meaning, like you know, they'll have like a you know one man and one van to really you know a business where you know a owner has, you know, multiple, you know vans.

Russ Baker:

I think you had Oscar Gutierrez with Elite Denelon recently and you know we partner with Oscar down in Dallas and you and he has 25 technicians out on the street. So what we're looking to solve is basically empowering the independent technicians to get access to parts, get access to training, work closely with the OEMs and to solve the issue that we have in the dental market which is not enough technicians and also the technicians who are independent not having access to training and parts and those things. So we're basically training them up. And then we're also now partnering with CBET, the College of Biomedical Equipment and Technology in San Antonio, texas, and helping them develop the curriculum for the very first accredited dental technician program in the United States, and so we want to attract more people into dental because it's a great space. You know we deal with professionals. You know the equipment is very interesting and can be challenging, but you know, if you have a strong mental appetite, you know people absolutely love working on it and it can be a very good just a career path for someone.

Bryant Hawkins:

Now, you mentioned you collaborated with the College of Biomedical Equipment Technology, and what role does education play in this effort? For you to have to collaborate, because you mentioned there is no regulation, but what made you want to get into making something more structured education wise.

Russ Baker:

Yeah. So the big thing is is getting more people into the industry. So you know, getting to people when they're younger to understand it, let them know that there's a career path within dental repair is is one thing, but actually helping to professionalize the industry because it is really falling on the OEMs and the distributors to offer training. So, you know, by partnering with the school, you know we really want to raise the professionalism in the dental arena and then ultimately bring more people in. And this is not like an altruistic type thing. We know that certain number of people will come and they'll be independents or they'll work with dental fix or they'll work with uptime services. Many of them may go to work for the distributors, which we actually think is a great thing. So we want to basically solve the issue of downtime in a dental practice, because oftentimes it could take three, four, five, six, seven days to get a technician on site to work on a piece of equipment that's down. That's causing an access to care issue.

Bryant Hawkins:

This program you established with CBET. You know of any other schools out there like this, or is this a one of one?

Russ Baker:

One of one, one of one, and Dr Gonzalez has been fantastic. He shares the same vision that we do. He's looking to solve a problem that exists today and also to provide another course load for people who may be looking to come into dental, that may have an HDM background or a biomed background, that haven't even considered dental as an industry unless a career path.

Bryant Hawkins:

Do y'all have some type of preventive maintenance program you can offer to the practices?

Russ Baker:

Yeah, I tell you that is one of the best questions because traditionally the dental market has been a break and fix mentality, meaning we come out to fix it after it breaks, and preventative maintenance is rare and we're trying to solve for that problem as well. And that's actually where uptime health comes into play Because with its SaaS platform, more and more of the equipment is you know, quote unquote smart. You know, through IoT connectivity. That's throwing off error codes, throwing off different things, and a lot of the OEMs have created their own apps to do this. But the issue has been that every manufacturer has their own app and what happens is the customer doesn't use it.

Russ Baker:

So Uptime Health has created this portal called the Universal Device Hub. So now all the smart equipment can basically feed into one central area so that we can understand and have really predictive analytics on wear rates et cetera, so that we can go out there and take care of issues before they're issues but also put customers on preventative maintenance plans so that it doesn't become this break-fix thing. It's more predictable. But also just by flipping the mindset in dental, we think would solve like a significant issue with the shortage of technicians. But you know we have to basically do both at the same time, you know, shift the mentality of the dental practice operator and then also create more, really increase the labor within the space.

Bryant Hawkins:

I looked you guys up, did a little homework for this interview and I love this saying I saw on your website equipped, educate and excel with uptime services. What's the meaning behind that there?

Russ Baker:

Well, that's a good question, Brian. So you know, basically we want to move things forward, right? We want to ultimately, like, give our providers the ability to treat their patients without the worry of equipment failure or compliance issues compliance issues. So we're going to equip them and accelerate them, excel them to be able to do what they do best, which is to provide patient care. So really, we're a supportive company to the industry, whether it be medical or dental. My focus is really on the dental side of the business, but Uptime Health is really bringing a different level of professionalism into the dental space that didn't really exist before. Dental has always been, like I said, break and fix, but also, when you look at compliance things, it's been very analog, and so now we're actually bringing a different level of professionalism to accelerate things, to excel things, to actually be more digitally based for compliance issues as well, to keep people safe.

Bryant Hawkins:

And I love the professionalism part you keep touching on, because that's a challenge we have within the hospital. We have within the hospital. So I know out there in the field that has to be increased because you have to be very engaging with the client, because when you walk in that door you need it. So you would have to have that professionalism, that soft skill to be able to communicate with the client, to build that relationship for them to, I guess, want to trust you, to even provide them with service.

Russ Baker:

The technicians who are in the field today do a very good job at that, you know, like connecting with and communicating with the office, with the team, with the staff. You know the customers for the most part are still small business owners. They're sole proprietors, they have a practice. You know we have seen more and more consolidation in dentistry through group practices or looking to acquire and grow and we are seeing, you know, more and more private equity kind of coming in into the office, and so what we see with the small business owners is really that that relationship is critical right, because they want to be able to trust the people that are coming into their office you know they're very much on first name basis and really get to know them so that they can take care of them in the future as well.

Bryant Hawkins:

Now I saw this on YouTube. You was on a panel, oh boy, and the discussion. The panel was oh snap. You know it's a family show. It wasn't a snap. What was the meaning behind it? Let's share the experience of this panel. What was the purpose of or the goal of being on that panel?

Russ Baker:

It was basically underscoring the deficiencies in the dental market and it being a break fix like emergency type world, meaning something goes down in an office piece of equipment, snap moment Everyone has a snap moment Right and and so the customers of snap moment becomes really the technicians moment, because we're downstream and it has a lot to do with such a lack of preventive maintenance and so things break down and it becomes an emergency. Down and it becomes an emergency. So so, yeah, we hosted a panel with some of the OVMs that we work with. Also you know some large customers that we work with and also a compliance officer and and basically you know the whole narrative was around how do we prevent these moments from happening?

Russ Baker:

And and you know, the industry is really, I think through the, really the leadership with Uptime Health is looking to change the way things have historically happened. Number one it's changing a mindset, it's a paradigm shift on actually moving to preventative maintenance and now, with Uptime health and understanding the actual equipment, that's all kind of reporting in, it's giving the the data that's necessary to prevent those you know down moments or, oh, snap moments as well. So that was really kind of the purpose being behind it and to help really our customers, and we did did this at a convention called DICAMA, which is a large DSO conference for group practices that they host annually in Denver, colorado. It was very well attended and it was kind of a fun breakout.

Bryant Hawkins:

Great, we're talking about conventions. Is Uptime Services involved in any conventions? Do they attend or do they host any? Are you aware of any?

Russ Baker:

Yeah, we do both. So you know, we absolutely attend meetings. Typically we'll have a you know a booth. If not, we have a presence at the meetings to go out and visit with customers or our vendor partners.

Russ Baker:

But you know, really the real exciting thing that we do is we do an annual dental fix slash uptime services summit and that's actually coming up the first week of October, october 3rd to the 6th, at Nashville, tennessee, and that's an opportunity for technicians to come and learn and also, you know, build relationships, get closer to the vendors, to the OEMs, get exposed to training, get exposed to business solutions, because most of the people that we work with in our network are small business owners and they come, they build, you know, they build out camaraderie, you know, they share their war stories right, they learn from each other and it's really just.

Russ Baker:

It's something we look forward to every year and that's right around the corner. We, you know, if we this year, we actually started last year where we started to open it up to the biomed community and what we call ERTs equipment repair technicians, which are essentially independent business owners. Historically the meeting has been for our franchisees, but we really wanted to have this continue to build and grow and be the premier training opportunity for technicians in the dental industry once a year, and so we're excited about it. It should be a lot of fun.

Bryant Hawkins:

So this is open to Biomed Techs, along with the ERTs, correct?

Russ Baker:

And also with the franchise owners, and so it's going to be fun. Brian, I'd love for you to come out and and take a look at it.

Bryant Hawkins:

I'll definitely put the registration in the link so everyone can get out. If they get the interest, they can come register. Now let's just dig a little bit more into. I know you mentioned you said in the past it was mainly for franchise, franchise, franchisees. However, you say that word, but yeah, let's just, let's just, let's tap into it a little. Did you attend last year? Yeah, it's our meeting. Yeah. Yeah, baume tech was to walk in. He registered. What would a morning look like to him if he walked into the hotel? Just give them an idea of what they're going to see when they come into the place. Yeah, what to expect.

Russ Baker:

Yeah, so you know not to get too granular, but we'll kind of give you a little bit of an overview. So you know it's really a Thursday to Sunday meeting. Most of the you know our team. They prefer to do it more over the weekend so that they it doesn't impact their business as much from, you know, not being able to service their customers. So it's one of the things you come in on a on a thursday midday.

Russ Baker:

We have a welcome reception on thursday evening. You know drinks, orders, things of that nature. Everyone kind of gets to you, just kind of catch back up with each other. From there, you know, there's a welcome reception and, I'm sorry, like a registration desk and all that good stuff and we'll have our vendor partners at the welcome reception. So people like to go around to the booths and talk to the vendors and kind of learn about the equipment and talk and all that good stuff. So that's really Thursday night, then Friday and Saturday. Friday, saturday and Sunday are really the training sessions and there's six different hour and a half training sessions with different OEMs and so those are obviously very well attended.

Russ Baker:

People want to learn the latest and greatest with technology, they want to learn about the equipment. The vendors enjoy it because they want their equipment to be represented well in the field and maintain its working status. They also teach them things that are differentiated about their equipment because they want to drive sales as well. So if you have things going on for the next two and a half days doing things like that, we have a hands-on course on Sunday learning about handpiece repair, small equipment repair, which is hosted by another one of our companies, florida Dental Repair, and we, you know, then we kind of sprinkle it in with business solutions. So everything from you know companies that offer like a group discount for like merchant processing or a group discount from being a part of our association to get you know like discounted accounting services, you know business development opportunities to work with different dental labs to help promote things. So we try and sprinkle in business solutions as well as equipment training.

Bryant Hawkins:

Wow man, I never imagined this much went into dental repair. Wow man, I never imagined this much went into dental repair. That's awesome. The fact that you guys are supporting the community like that is amazing. So there are a lot of parts moving around. When y'all have this summit, it's not just to get together. It's like a lot of planning hasn't been involved.

Russ Baker:

So yeah, and it's really the only thing like it, brian. And so you know, unfortunately, a lot of the independent technicians kind of kind of live in the shadows in a way, you know, because they may have not have had the access to the OEM trainings. They don't, they didn't have access to certain parts that they need to perform repairs, and so we're helping them gain those really valuable resources. And so that's really the big thing behind it. And our vendor partners, they're all for it because they recognize that there's a shortage of technicians, that the dealers can only do so much, and it's not always I'm not bashing the dealers in any way, shape or form.

Russ Baker:

There's. You know they have limited resources and you know they're focused on sales and service and support, but there's only so much they can do. So now you know, if you take it, call it, you know 3,000 or a little bit over 3,000,. You know technicians that are out there, about 2,000. A third of them are independent. So we're solving for that, and then we want to attract more people into the industry to really help the customer at the end of the day, Wow, you guys are doing a lot To say nobody knows you're doing it.

Bryant Hawkins:

That's amazing. Hopefully we can fix that. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. Let I appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. Let's touch back on technology. You was mentioning the technology that Uptime Help provides along with Uptime Services. With technology advancing so quickly, I mean, how does Uptime Services stay ahead and ensure that you know the solutions, that your solutions continue to meet the needs of dental practices?

Russ Baker:

Yeah, that's a good question, Brent. So a couple of things that we're solving. Well, several things, because it's multi-tiered. One is partnering with the College of Biomedical and Technology right and then connecting the vendors to the college. That's one very significant avenue. And then we've also created an LMS solution, so learning management system for technicians to go on and consume basically training at their own time, at their own pace you know online, own pace, you know online. So that's available as well. And really the third aspect of that is actually going to the OEMs themselves. So we help coordinate classes with the various vendors to be put on, and the vendors, you know, love hosting the technicians out at their site to actually, you know, really tear the equipment apart and dig into it. So it's really multi-tiered.

Bryant Hawkins:

And that's amazing, I mean I love it. What is your long-term vision for Uptown Services? How do you see the company shaping the future of dental repair and maintenance? Because you mentioned a lot of things. So let's say five years.

Russ Baker:

I mean I don't want to say 20 years, I mean, yeah, let's just go five years, the I think the, the, the what would be a highly tangible, realistic result is changing the, the, the, the mindset of the, the, the practice owners, the dental practice owners, from being reactive to being proactive.

Russ Baker:

And so we have the tools to accomplish that, and, as we work with our vendor partners and we do integrations to the Uptime Health SaaS platform, we think that's going to really ultimately professionalize the industry and give the correct data to allow for better patient experience.

Russ Baker:

Unfortunately, what happens today, in the current state, is a piece of equipment especially if it's a critical piece of equipment like a compressor or vacuum goes down, the office is shut down, they're flat out shut down and they can't see patients. That's a real problem on a lot of levels, and so what we want to ultimately do is reduce and ultimately eliminate the downtime in dental practices. Of course, we're helping on the medical side that's really where Uptime Health came from but my five-year goal is to really change the mindset from break-fix to preventative maintenance and moving from an analog world of compliance and people jotting down notes to actually moving it to a digital where everything is captured and we have the information to keep the practices up and running. So I think we can do it. Five years might be a stretch, but I think we can do it.

Bryant Hawkins:

I mean I'm just thinking how I guess I got my mind wrapped around a hospital, but it's amazing to think you can have a facility with no maintenance program. Yeah, it's fine, you can just do it and don't get in trouble. I'm just how are you going to have predictability of things may go wrong? You don't even have data. So that's great what uptown health's doing? At least that's getting the ball rolling, but no pms. I mean that's not preventing failures. So it it's amazing that man I can just try to imagine I get stuff break. They just push to the side, I'm assuming.

Russ Baker:

I mean and it actually, when you talk about it to you know practice owners, it makes sense to them right to actually have preventative maintenance. I mean they do it with their vehicles, you know they. They actually run a business that's also built on a hygiene program for people coming in, you know, every six months or sometimes more often, on on, you know, getting their teeth clean. That's preventative, which is basically a hygiene procedure that's preventative to decrease. You know the. You know decay, which is quote a hygiene procedure that's preventative to decrease. You know the decay, which is quote, unquote, like more of an emergency. So you know they get it when you take the time and communicate with them. I think part of it has been there's a lack of drive for preventative maintenance throughout the entire industry. So we want to turn that upside down and ultimately everybody wins.

Bryant Hawkins:

That will cut down downtime. Preventive maintenance is the number one. That's like our driver we have to get the PMs done.

Russ Baker:

Yeah, I think sometimes it's almost like slow down in order to speed up, right. So it's like you have to slow down and actually if you are an independent business owner, as a technician, and it's almost like every day of your life you're running like an emergency clinic, Right, Because you know the phone is ringing and something's down and you got to drop what you're doing to get there, to get this person up. So you're constantly triaging and so it's like, OK, if you can get your top 20, 30, 40 customers on a preventative maintenance schedule, that will reduce those emergency calls and ultimately it becomes also more predictable revenue for them as well and they probably just their quality of life goes up as well.

Bryant Hawkins:

Yeah, that's what I was about to say. From a budgeting standpoint it will definitely help them because they'll kind of have an idea of what it would cost them if failures happen. And then you have the history they provide to them. I mean, it's so many tangibles can get solved with a maintenance schedule.

Russ Baker:

Wow, yeah, we're actually coming out with our like a, like an SLA for really emergency I wouldn't say emergency for critical equipment, you know so. You know sterilizers, x-rays, mechanical room.

Bryant Hawkins:

What's the SLA Russ?

Russ Baker:

Service level agreement. So it'll be for specific equipment that we'll put on a PM on a preventative maintenance plan.

Bryant Hawkins:

Well, russ man, I really enjoyed talking with you. You really put the light on even more this dental industry. Talking with your counterparts earlier last week was amazing, but now listening to you, it's just like it's digging deeper into it and it's amazing the things you guys are doing and no one knows you're doing it. That's the amazing part. But we're going to fix that.

Russ Baker:

Yeah, we're going to fix it. Listen, brian, I appreciate this opportunity to get to know you, to learn about what you're doing, and I think you know you are definitely serving the community at large and and I just appreciate your time and this opportunity.

Bryant Hawkins:

Oh man, you're welcome to come back anytime you like. My door is open. All right, thank you. And that brings us to the end of today's episode of HTM On the Line. A huge thanks to Russ Baker for sharing his wealth of knowledge and giving us a deeper look into the world of dental repair and the exciting innovations at Uptown Services. It's clear that the work they're doing is making a significant impact not just on the dental industry, but on the quality of care that patients receive.

Bryant Hawkins:

Before we wrap up, I want to remind everyone about the upcoming Dental Fix Uptime Services Summit happening October 3rd to 6th in Nashville, tennessee. This event is a fantastic opportunity for dental equipment repair technicians, franchise owners and bio-made equipment technicians to network, learn and grow in their careers. If you found this conversation as insightful as I did, make sure to subscribe to the podcast, leave a review and share it with your colleagues. Let's continue to elevate the HTM industry and share it with your colleagues. Let's continue to elevate the HTM industry one conversation at a time. Until next time. I'm Brian Hawkins, sr. And this has been HTM On the Line. Stay curious, stay committed and keep making a difference.

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