Expert Dental Surgery Solutions and After Sales Service [Interview Transcript]
Guest: Tanya McRae
Presenter: Wayne Buckla
Guest Bio: Tanya McRae is the General Manager of Dental Installations (Australia) Pty Ltd which is based in Sydney, Australia since 2008.
Segment overview: In today’s Health Supplier Segment, learn about the wide range of products and services being offered by Dental Installations (Aust) Pty Ltd. General Manager Tanya McRae talks about their firm’s background and provide helpful information regarding dental care. Among the products they offer are Adec dental chairs, dental curing lights as well as digital and XRay equipment. Their services include equipment onsite repairs and maintenance.
Wayne Bucklar: You’re listening to Health Professional Radio. My name is Wayne Bucklar and my guest today is Tanya McRae, the general manager of Dental Installations Australia. Tanya welcome to Health Professional Radio.
Tanya McRae: Thank you Wayne. Happy to be here.
W: Now Tanya for many of us of course talking with the dentist is not the favorite thing to do, but tell us what is it that your firm provides and what geographic footprint do you service?
T: My husband and I own the business together, so it’s a family business. And we distribute Adec dental chairs, Handpieces and Sterilizers and Imaging products throughout the dental surgery. Our company’s main focus is not just selling products to the dentist, we have a team of qualified service technicians so anytime something breaks within the surgery, we’re out there assisting them to reduce their downtime, making sure that the surgery is as efficient as it possibly is. And one of the other roles that I play in the industry is I’m the business affairs committee for the Australian Dental Industry Association.
W: So you’re at least busy, there’s no doubt about that.
T: (chuckles) There’s never enough hours in a day in the dental industry, whether you work for the dentist. So whether you’re a dentist, dental professional yourself.
W: So Tanya, do you service clients Australia wide?
T: We predominantly look after the New South Wales arena. Although I do work with a number of affiliates in Queensland and Victoria, so we look after sort of the East Coast of Australia.
W: Okay. Now I’m a little confused about this I guess, because I’m not someone who has anything to do with the dental industry or at least as little as possible to do with the dental industry. They’re on my phobia list.
T: I think they’re on everyone’s phobia list. (laughing)
W: It never occurred to me until I just heard you speaking, there must be a lot of implications about getting the equipment and keeping it working in a dental practice.
T: Absolutely. I think the main focus to our company is working side by side with dental professionals. What we try and do is improve the efficiency within their practices. We do this by working with not only the dentist, with their assistants, with their client. We go through and have a look at the entire surgery. As you can imagine, a dental surgeon predominantly heated anywhere between 8 and 12 hours a day. So they really need to have the most ergonomic and technologically advanced equipment within their surgery and not only for them but also their assistants to make sure that their practice is not only profitable but it’s comfortable for the patients because as we all know most people that goes to the dentist are quite anxious about going to the dentist. So we try and make the surgery look and feel as accommodating as it possibly can but also making it as comfortable for the practitioner as well.
W: Now Tanya if you would look at your product range and go “These are the most important pieces in our range.” What’s I guess it’s not I called a specialty but what are the bits in your product catalogs that you say this is what people really need to know and pay attention to.
T: I would say with the most common product that you find in the dental practice would be the dental chair. However I would say the most efficient piece of equipment that is a little bit underrated would be an intraoral camera. When most people go to the dentist, the dentist says to you that from you know you have a hole on low tooth using the layman’s terms. You know you say to your dentist “Oh look, no I’ll worry about that later” next visit, next visit, next visit. Because it’s just a verbal confirmation of what’s happening within our oral cavity. However if you’re using an intraoral camera, as soon as that film is taken or that image is taken, I beg your pardon, the image pops up on the screen in front of your and you can see visually the size of the hole and with some of the features of the camera that they have recently they advances they can actually detect caries which are holding your teeth. And they can also detect plaque. So it’s very much a visual representation of what needs to be done and things like cameras acts as an independent survey and by having intraoral camera introduced to the practice, the practitioner can increase their revenue from between 17 and 30% which is a huge increase for the practitioner.
W: That is remarkable, isn’t it? A colleague of mine who deals with lung cancer particularly in smokers were saying “If the lungs were on the outside, no one would ever smoke.” The visual impact of being able to see the disease progress would just eliminate smoking overnight and I guess that’s the same point you’re making here with the cameras.
T: Absolutely. If once you actually use these amazing cameras, you can actually see and it’s very, very good with orthodontists, with children that have had braces on for a long time. And you know the importance of brushing twice a day and after meals. They can see with the software care camera you can actually visually see where your plaque is just sitting on your teeth. So you have a child walk into the dentist and everyone brushes their teeth before they come go to the dentist. And the dentist will say to you, “Are you brushing well?” And of course every child says “yes” and the minute that camera sits on the tooth and they take an image, it’s as they say “the picture tells a thousand words.”
W: Yeah, that’s a very useful insight I think into some efficiencies with handling patients. Now if you have a message for clinicians about your product range, is there anything particularly you’d like to say to them?
T: I would definitely say that the best thing a practitioner can do before they purchase their equipment is to contact someone like our company and have them come out and actually do what we call a health check on their surgery. We walk around the surgery, sit and talk to the dentist, sit and talk to the dental assistant and also the reception staff, all the staff within the surgery, see what works within the surgery and what doesn’t work. In that way we can design cabinetry, we can design the equipment selection for them to make them work more efficiently that they can probably feel a lot less stressed and a lot less fatigued. And with the way the dentist work, I know through the ADA surveys that they do that over 70% of dentists work in some sort of pain and that sort of is between that range of shoulder pain or neck pain. It usually relates to poor equipment choices and poor surgery design. So if we get in with the surgery at the beginning of the process rather than at the end which a lot of practitioners do, they think about the design, they get their builders in and then they engage the dental equipment professionals like ourselves and it sort of a little bit of too late. So if they engage our services at the beginning of the process, they’ll find that their surgery’s a lot more efficient, with the staff are a lot safer, it reduces their staff turnover and also sick leave and they have a much more profitable surgery.
W: That’s a very good insight. You’re listening to Health Professional Radio with Wayne Bucklar. I’m in conversation with Tanya McRae, who is the general manager of Dental Installations Australia, a New South Wales based firm of I think we described it as be suppliers to the Dental Industry and experts in dental equipment supply and repair. Tanya if there’s one misconception about your product and services that drives you nuts and keeps you awake at night, what would that be?
T: I would say that would probably be lack of education of practice on it and the importance of the ergonomic and the technology that within the surgery. There are so as many dental professionals that just as I mention before, purchase equipment at a particular price point rather than considering the benefits of each piece of equipment and how that can add or the detract or frustrate the practitioner and choosing the wrong type of equipment. So their surgery, they’re locked in normally with leases of financing their equipment up to 5 years so one wrong choice you can get stuck with that for a very long period of time.
W: That’s a very, very good point to end on I think. A little bit of care for consideration upfront might save you five years of paying for a box next in shoulders.
T: Yes.
W: This is Health Professional Radio. If you just joined us today we’ve been talking Tanya McRae, general manager of Dental installations Australia Proprietary Limited. A transcript of this interview is on our website www.hpr.fm and also an audio file if you’d like to have a listen to it again. My name is Wayne Bucklar, this is Health Professional Radio.