Quality leadership talent for your Community Health Center

Dental Operations Director | $35MM Federally Qualified Health Center

Dental Operations Director | $35MM Federally Qualified Health Center

A Bay Area Community Health Center (the largest in the surrounding 4 counties) had a dental program that enjoyed steady growth over a 10-year time period. However, over the past two years, they saw a sharp spike in demand as another local organization stopped providing dental services. As a result, our client’s dental patients panel increased by over 25%.

Though this is arguably a good problem to have, the organization was not operationally equipped to efficiently handle the new influx of patients. The health center’s Chief Dental Officer started the dental program going back 10 years and had done a terrific job building the program to what it is today. However, being responsible for 30 dentists, 100 RDAs, 3 Clinic Managers, and another 40 support staff was no longer sustainable while still maintaining the organization’s rigorous standards of quality patient care.

To relieve the Chief Dental Officer of her heavy operational duties and allow her to focus more on clinical leadership, a decision was made to initiate the recruitment of a non-clinical, Dental Operations Director. It was imperative that this person be able to 1) provide mentorship to the organization’s 3 clinic managers, 2) develop standardized training protocols for front desk staff, 3) substantially reduce patient wait times, 4) optimize provider scheduling, 5) and successfully open a new dental center within a six month time period.

Though the position was submitted to all the largest job boards, after 5 months, no suitable candidate was found. The health center was experiencing the problem of ‘limited visibility’. It is not uncommon for as few as 5% of the talent market for a given position to respond to a job posting; they simply don’t know you are hiring.

There was a lot riding on this recruitment as a new flagship dental center was set to open within six months. Without a dental operations director, the organization faced costly delays, fractured relationships with the patients and community, and a sharp impact to the bottom-line.

Within one month of beginning the search, Centermark had made their initial sweep through all like-type organizations within a 50-mile radius of the health center. Armed with a thorough understanding of the potential opportunity across a 4 targeted candidate profile sets, a short list of candidates was created.

In particular, one candidate stood above the rest as truly exceptional. Her broad scope of experience included 9 years of progressive responsibility in a health center environment with 2 years’ experience in a Director-level role where she was responsible for 80% of the organization’s total budget including leadership of 4 clinic managers and a wide range of primary care and specialty services.

The candidate had been passively considering new opportunities ever since a new CEO was brought on with at her organization. The organization was experiencing high turnover as a result of this change and the candidate was looking to plug into a more stable group with better opportunity for continued career growth.

As it turns out, this was a phenomenal fit on both sides. After an initial meeting, the client fast-tracked the interview process and it was all hands on deck for what turned out to be the second and final meeting the following week. Both client and candidate are thrilled with this new partnership and look forward to their future success.