4 questions for the Dental Director
What are some things that have surprised you in your 10 years with OneWorld about community-based dentistry? shared reflections on his time with OneWorld and his hopes going forward. This interview has been lightly edited for space. We had an opportunity to chat with OneWorld Dental Director Brian Penly, DDS. Dr. Penly
Brian Penly, DDS, Dental Director 2024 Clinical Excellence Award • Health Center Association
What are some ways that you’re thinking about workforce retention and development? One of the things that we try to do is be flexible with our team members and try to grow people from within. We’re always looking to see if we can promote somebody from a position to give them upward mobility. Lots of times what that means is that for dental assistants, we look to our front desk or we look to our phones team or other places that maybe somebody is in a position where they don’t feel like they have a lot of upward mobility and try to train from within. The same thing goes for dental hygiene. When we recruit people, especially when we recruit people that come to us from outside, it doesn’t scare me away when they tell me they’re trying to go to school for dental hygiene. Rather, our goal is to get them in the door, have them become part of our team, let them see what a great place this is to work, and then hopefully we can hang on to them. What else would you like people to know? One of the pain points that we have is with our pediatric clinic. We see a lot of cases that need to go to an operating room – a lot of young children that cannot sit for dental care but need extensive dental rehabilitation. Unfortunately, not every single one of those children that pass through our clinics qualifies for Medicaid, and the cost to have somebody go to an operating room … it’s quite expensive. I sure would love to find a way to fund that. This is the very base level safety net where kids are in very rough shape and it’s going to affect their growth, their development, their ability to learn.
The thing that surprised me the most was there’s such a focus on doing things the very best that you can, and I think that’s not often associated with community dentistry or the public health industry. … The reality of the situation is that we’re Joint Commission accredited, and we have the highest level of infection control that I’ve ever worked in before.
Brian Penly, DDS Dental Director
There’s a lot of dedication to making sure that we do things safely and correctly for our patients, not just in the dental chair but behind the scenes as well. We work really hard to make sure that things are fair for the patient. There’s a certain level of justice in terms of everything we do. Could you tell me about what you’re looking forward to over this next year, or some of the things Dental has planned? The Expanded Function Dental Assistants are a key thing we’re going to be working on this year. Part of that goal is to spend more time developing [them] so that they can start to work to the top of their abilities. The second thing is that we’re going to be trying to transition into a more digital office in terms of patient care. Our goal is to be using digital scanning, where you take cameras into the mouth … and I’m so excited about that because I think that’s going to change a lot of things for our patients.
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ISSUE 1 2025 | EXCHANGE
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