OTHER PRODUCTS Appliances * Standard Herbst appliances * SureSmile aligners Bonding agent Band Loc, All Bond Burs AC adhesive-removing burs Brackets and wires GAC Omni Arch Brackets (.022 slot) Chairs Ross Ortho Cements GC Fuji Ortho Band Handpiece Medidenta Impression materials ā—¸Impressix Patient finance In-office Practice management Orthominds Technology Planmeca ortho/pano What do you think is the biggest challenge orthodontics will face in the next five to 10 years? What do you think the solution is or could be? A couple of thoughts come to mind: One challenge is the viability of stand-alone specialty practices, with so many dentists practicing orthodontics. The other big one is the threat of DSOs coming into the market and taking new grads from private practice opportunities, leaving solo practice owners with staffing issues. What's your current marketing and community outreach strategy? Largely word-of-mouth, radio and social media. We also give patients incentives to refer patients to the office. I also felt that I needed to go directly to the public to inform them of our services, so our office decided 38 to participate in several large expos and festivals during the year. We chose these festivals because of the large number of attendees who are in our target demographic, and also there were no other dentists and orthodontists attending these festivals. We found out that many attendees didn't know the difference between an orthodontist and a general dentist. Once we educated them, these festivals contributed to a large uptick in new-patient visits and starts. We visit several schools in the area to market and hire high school students as interns for the summer. I talk to a lot of my younger patients about the importance of higher education and tell them to consider a career in dentistry. We are also one of the only privately owned offices that accepts Medicaid for orthodontic treatment, to help low-income patients. NOVEMBER 2020 // orthotown.com OT1120_OV_GriffinBurress_AG.indd 38 10/27/20 2:44 PMhttp://www.orthotown.com