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Family First Health

A community health care center

The provider-driven practice

During the day at a federally qualified health center, there are many patient-care decisions to make. Therefore, our practice is heavily provider-driven: We rely on our dentists to lead the team and drive the decision-making process to achieve the best results.
As dental directors, we make this a conscious effort each day.

 

It would be very easy to minimize provider input and allow non-clinical employees to direct or manage the flow of the practice. But we’ve found that when non-clinical employees are tasked with managing clinical issues, the patient’s needs are often lost in the shuffle — a definite problem. The patients must know that their dentist is establishing their treatment plan based solely on their presented needs.
How does effort this look in practice?
We empowered our providers to be the primary decision-makers in the practice with issues that affect patient care. Our providers are encouraged to:
  • Share their clinical expertise: Explain to a front desk person why the swollen emergency child needs to be seen immediately, or take the time to develop a new dental assistant
  • Engage in system development: Decide how supplies are organized or how patient care schedules should be developed
  • Allow room for experimentation: Providers are intelligent and well-educated; their ideas should be considered and tested. 

 

According to feedback we receive from our providers, the provider driven practice allows for a high level of job satisfaction. Encouraging their participation in how the practice operates and involves intensifies the providers’ level of investment in the practice and ensures we’re continually moving toward of goals and vision for Family First Health.

 

Restructuring Our Team

In our most recent post, we made mention of the awesome dental team we have here at Family First Health. As dentists, hygienists and dental directors, we all know how important this team is! We also know that each team is only as strong as its weakest link: Each member plays an integral part in the success of the practice.
How do you establish a strong, effective team; maintain engagement; and promote job satisfaction? We have been asking ourselves and (and our employees!) these questions for years.
We’ve found that a lot of it has to do with one thing: Balance.
There are challenges in finding that balance when your team has multiple moving parts. We’ve found success thus far in restructuring the department and allowing everyone to function at their maximum potential. As a part of this process, each individual identified his or her strengths or areas of interest, and we came up with a plan on how those strengths could be used to our best advantage.
One way we’ve seen this play out was when two of our hygienists expressed interest in obtaining licensure that would allow them to administer local anesthetic. They presented their proposal to us with ideas on how this could benefit the practice — demonstrating initiative, fulfilling the CE obligations and obtaining licenses — and we played our part by offering feedback and encouragement and creating a supportive environment for continuing staff education. We’d already identified their ability to deliver anesthetic as a great asset, and our hygienists are happy to be using their new skill to help patients.
Adjusting your department’s structure can feel intimidating, but if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that continued improvement often requires adapting as you grow!

 

Kids Against Cavities campaign kicks off

It’s that time of year again, when school begins and our Kids Against Cavities campaign kicks into full gear. It’s also one of our busiest times of year, a constant bustle of kids coming in for preventative care and our providers headed out offsite for screenings and preventative exams.
Everyone in the office loves this season, because, we get to see how much the kids have grown over the summer and hear stories about their first day of school. Most importantly, we get to reconnect with the kids in our community and evaluate their oral health.
While business continues as usual in the office, we screen students offsite in kindergarten, third and seventh grades at York City School District schools.  Additionally, we provide preventative care to children in York County’s Head Start program.  At these state-mandated screenings, we utilize mobile equipment to take radiographs, perform exams and cleanings, and apply fluoride varnish. We also identify any decayed, missing or filled teeth and send home paperwork to guardians informing them of our findings and offering Family First Health as a dental home if the child does not already have one.
Coordinating these screenings requires great patience and tenacity, not to mention serious follow through — all characteristics possessed by our awesome dental team. The providers deliver the care, but our team pulls it all together to ensure that each outreach event is a success. We have extreme organizers, awesome schedulers, x-ray experts, IT magicians and an equipment guru. Every one of their skills is used at each event!
At the completion of each event, we pack up and head back to the office. Our work, however, is not complete! The team then begins data sorting, which allows us to identify children with a high number of cavities or those who are experiencing acute issues. School nurses and Head Start coordinators are contacted with this information to help us motivate the parents and encourage them to bring the kids in for treatment.
Outreach opportunities such as these are how we stay connected to our community — and they’re certainly not limited to pediatric care!
Check out our Dental Page on the Family First Health website for more details on the services we provide for the whole family.

 

A day in the life at a federally qualified health center

What’s it like to work at a federally qualified health center (FQHC)?
 
This is a question we are often asked, but it’s not easy to answer. In all honesty, it varies — and it depends on how well the health center is run.
 
If you were to visit many health centers, you would have a hard time differentiating them from a private practice. We often say to not judge a book by its cover: The outward appearance is not a true indicator of quality.  Health centers are often typecast as outdated and providing only emergency care, but private practices can present this way as well.
 
But here’s our vision for our FHQC at Family First Health: To provide comprehensive health services to those seeking accessible, high-quality and affordable care.
 
Here are a few aspects that define our practice:
  •  Our practice is modern. All sites are less than 10 years old
  • Our providers are dedicated. They work hard but are fairly compensated for their talent. The unanimous feedback that we get is how much our providers enjoy their autonomy in developing each patient’s treatment plan; the salary, benefits and paid vacations; and the camaraderie of the group practice environment.
  • Our staff is professional. We hire well-trained staff that is supportive of the providers.
  • Our patient panels are diverse. We have patients that represent all income and educational levels.  Some come to us initially because we participate with “their plan,” and many come because they hear of the high-quality care we provide. Uniquely, some patients are attracted to us because we are a non-profit and they enjoy the relationship they can establish with our providers.
 
It is tricky to create the sense of autonomy with such a large group — our providers consist of seven dentists and three hygienists — but we have had success with this in leading by example and including providers in clinical decision making.  Very little that we do as dental directors is based on our personal preference. Whether decisions affect scheduling, materials used or who works where and when, we work hard to be fair to our providers. 
 
The compensation and benefits at our FQHC are a win-win for everyone, with a set-up that allows for our providers to stay fresh and focus on patient care —important because it keeps the conversations focused on quality! We all know that rest and relaxation is a must.
 
At Family First Health, we always like to say that the dental office should be a judgment-free zone. This is true not only for patients but also for staff, and it creates great camaraderie in our environments. Most providers in our group have less than four years experience, but a few of us have twice that — and then some.  This creates a great opportunity for information sharing, and continuing education is mandatory. The new providers keep it fresh by introducing what is currently being taught in school and offering a new perspective. The more experienced clinicians are always willing to share those hard-learned lessons.  
 
Our mix is great and rewarding, but each center is unique.

 

If you are interested in working at an FQHC, visit the center and ask a lot of questions to ensure it’s a good fit for you professionally and personally.

Why we chose a federally qualified health center

While we were in dental school, we began to consider what our professional lives would look like. We realized that we most desired a life that would allow for great balance and opportunity.
What did this mean?
Balance was the desire to have a rewarding personal life and career as soon as possible. Opportunity was the ability to have quantifiable, sustainable success. Basically, we wanted to have our cake and eat it too, as soon as possible!
Working in a federally qualified health center (FQHC) has allowed us to fulfill our professional goals. 
 
Before we began dental school, we considered private practice as our only option. As is the case with many dental students, that message was ingrained in us: The pathway to success was to work in private practice.    
 
By coincidence, we attended a meeting in dental school where dentists discussed their employment in non-traditional dental environments, opportunities we had not considered. This exposure enticed us enough that we began to look at other employment options. 
 
We used our goals of balance and opportunity to help us answer the question of which environment would be the best fit for us. We settled on an FQHC, and ended up at Family First Health in southcentral Pennsylvania, with medical and dental operations in York, Hanover and Gettysburg.
 
It has been a great fit for us.
We have a connection to the community we serve because our organization’s goal is to meet the community’s needs. This organizational mindset creates great camaraderie in our FQHC, with multiple disciplines all working together to provide patient care. 
What’s more, our work with Family First Health has allowed interactions with a diverse group of people in our community beyond our patients.
We have a variety of contacts in our community — local executives, small-business owners and newly employed individuals just starting their life journeys.  These opportunities have allowed for growth through mentorship. 
It has also allowed for the development of skills beyond patient care. Practicing in an FQHC has allowed us the opportunity to consistently hone our business skills and operate a practice with solid business principals with other like-minded professionals. 
Along with these accomplishments and continual work on all we’ve listed above, we’ve been able to achieve a great work-life balance.  We love our careers and love providing care for our patients, but we have always had the No. 1 goal of being excellent parents and spouses. Working in an FQHC has allowed us to make this goal a reality.

Introducing Beyond Brushing: Lessons from Two Dental Directors

 

We are on a quest to establish our dental department as a leader in affordable dental care. We know the journey will be filled with ups, downs, wins, losses, hair pulling and (hopefully) lots of celebrating our successes. Through Beyond Brushing, we’re hoping others can learn from our experiences as we embark on our journey.
 
So who are we?
 
We are Drs. Joe and LaJuan Mountain. 

We are the dental directors of Family First Health, married dentists who co-lead our dental department in southcentral Pennsylvania. Our federally qualified health center is based in York, north of Baltimore, west of Philadelphia and east of Pittsburgh. We oversee dental services at three sites with a total of 20 operatories across two counties — and that doesn’t include our outreach programs, which include a mobile, four-operatory set-up.
 
Our journey began almost 20 years ago when we both entered college as pre-med majors. We graduated from Temple University’s school of dentistry in 2004 and did our general practice residency at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pa. Over the past nine years at Family First Health, we’ve matured from staff dentists to dental directors. We find ourselves happy — and crazy busy.
 
At Family First Health, we lead a staff of seven dentists (including ourselves), three hygienists (one of whom is a public health hygienist), two expanded function dental assistants, 13 dental assistants and 10 front-desk staffers. But our driving force in all we do is our tremendously awesome patient population. They keep us on our toes!
 
Our vision for our dental operation is to be known as the best multi-site dental office in our region and as an industry leader in the delivery of quality, affordable dental care. We aim to accomplish this by maintaining a strong staff that is committed to meeting the needs of our patients in the community.
 
As we chronicle our progress, Beyond Brushing will provide a platform to talk about what we’re tackling on our to-do list. What our community needs— and what most communities need — is quality, affordable dental care.  Our quest began with identifying where to start and what task to take on first.
 

 

Stay tuned for updates on our progress, and please leave a comment sharing your thoughts!