You want to be an orthodontist? Perhaps you’d like an MBA, too

By Stephanie Tavares

Saturday, Aug. 15, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Two years ago as Philip Kierl was wrapping up his dentistry degree, he endured pointed teasing from his father, a CPA, and his businessman cronies.

Dentists, they told him, make terrible businessmen.

So he figured someday, probably after he finished his orthodontics residency, he’d have to get a master’s degree in business.

It meant at least four more years of school.

He’d be 32 or 33 by the time he got out of college and actually started tweaking teeth.

When he was admitted to the University of Southern Nevada School of Dental Medicine last year, that time was cut almost in half.

USN, a private nonprofit college based in Henderson, is into the second year of its novel dual MBA-orthodontics, post-doctoral degree program. Kierl is expected to be one of its first graduates next summer.

Now, if all goes as planned, he’ll be out of school and practicing orthodontics at 30.

USN School of Dental Medicine, Nevada’s newest dental school, is one of about 60 in the United States licensed to provide post-doctoral orthodontics and dentofacial orthopedics education (jaw cracking versus teeth wrangling; dealing with face bones in the wrong place versus teeth in the wrong place). UNLV provides a dual MBA-Doctor of Dental Medicine program but no dual MBA-orthodontics program.

USN focuses on advanced and medical education with doctoral programs in pharmacy and now orthodontics, an MBA program and a bachelor’s program in nursing. It has campuses in Henderson and outside Salt Lake City.

The college’s maiden class is full, with 10 residents and three interns working toward the residency program, with a goal of accommodating up to 30 residents.

It isn’t just Kierl’s dad and his buddies who think dentists need better business training. In a world of large-scale medical groups, dentistry — traditionally a one-person business — is one of the last cottage industries in medicine. The dearth of business training in dental medicine school has long been a complaint of private practitioners. They’ve been trained to repair teeth and are being asked to run an office. It doesn’t always work out well.

That’s why when USN decided to open a dentistry school, it chose to focus on post-doctoral work and made the MBA a mandatory part of the coursework, Dentistry School Dean C. Lynn Hurst said.

“If they’re running a sound business, they’re going to have a better practice, that’s why we did it,” he said. “They’re going to have more satisfied patients. Nothing drives away patients like a chaotic front office.”

The three-year program is a mix of business and economics courses, orthodontics courses and work in the school’s orthodontics clinic.

Orthodontics is the most popular post-doctoral specialty for dentists, so it’s one of the most difficult to get in to. That makes it a good business proposition for USN, which must be self-sustaining.

USN’s tuition is $50,000 a year, compared with $30,837 for in-state students and $53,337 for out-of-state students at UNLV’s dentistry school. Most of the residents in the USN program are not Nevadans.

They practice on as many as 300 patients at the school’s clinic, which opened in March.

Kierl has about 40 regulars. He spends so much time with them during their monthly appointments, he said, no patient is anonymous. At the USN clinic, doctors are with their patients from the minute they walk in the door to foster the patient-dentist relationship and develop empathy for patients that will help in their private practices.

“In the residency it’s a lot different than medical school, you’re essentially running your own practice,” Kierl said. “You’ve still got instructors looking over your shoulder, but you’re in the driver’s seat. We run everything for our patients, from billing to screening to the actual orthodontics.”

And their patients get high-tech orthodontics care, with the latest in diagnostic and treatment equipment, at about half the going rate.

Patients range from the indigent — who might not otherwise see a dentist — to the wealthy who could afford to be seen at a private dental practice, Hurst said.

“We’re developing our clinic not as a second choice for those who can’t afford a private doctor, but as the best choice,” Hurst said. “We want to be the first choice of all patients.”

It was the first choice for Henderson mom Mary Helmick, who brought her 15-year-old son, DJ, to the USN clinic. Her two older children have had braces and when it came time to pick an orthodontist for DJ, they consulted with doctors across the valley.

USN had the most advanced technology, it was significantly cheaper and the teenager actually likes his orthodontist there, which she thinks will make the process easier on him.

“It’s hard enough being in high school, but to be in high school with braces? Poor kid,” she said. “But he had instant rapport with his doctor and the treatment he’s getting is phenomenal. He can deal with it.”