What makes Smile Solutions an innovative business?

The setting

Dr Kia Pajouhesh was invited to speak at the 2015 Telstra Business Awards as an alumnus, having won the award the previous year. This is a summary of the address he gave. The award itself is reported in Smile Solutions named Telstra Victorian Business of the Year, and the team's own account of the win covers the night.

Society is getting more complex

Businesses are living, breathing microcosms of society at large.

Ask any business owner whether society is getting more complex and you get a resounding yes, because running a business gets harder every passing year.

Where the complexity shows up:

Compliance issues with accounts and finance
Legal conundrums
HR departments going mad
Scrutiny from all corners — insurance, authorities, governing bodies

Why is it happening? The address offers possibilities rather than an answer: population growth; increased expectations driven by knowledge; more specialisation in every field; or simply more wealth, more options, and more voice given to more people.

The paradox

Although society has a propensity for spiralling into complexity, the individuals within it yearn for simplicity.

The social and sensory experiences we cling to as human beings are the simplest ones. There is so much happiness in simplicity.

The image used to make the point:

Like pixels on a screen, the images they make as a sum of all the parts are complex — but the individual pixels live astonishingly simple lives.

And then the turn that gives the metaphor its force:

Businesses do not interact with society. There is no conduit, no form of communication with society as a whole. We interact with individual consumers — with each pixel, each yearning for simplicity.

That is the practical instruction hidden in the philosophy. A business that designs for “the market” is designing for something that does not walk through the door. What walks through the door is one person who wants their particular problem handled without having to understand the machinery behind it — which is why explaining a treatment plan in plain terms is part of the work, not an extra.

The definition of innovation

Having researched the businesses represented at that year’s awards, the address identifies a common ingredient in each of them:

They have shouldered society’s complexities, absorbed its challenges, filtered them, and developed products and services that are pure and simple.

That is the definition of innovation offered: converting complex social problems into simple solutions for the individual.

And the claim attached to it:

Innovation is an obligation on our free thinkers and entrepreneurs — not a choice.

The businesses named as examples of that conversion at the 2015 awards: Parkhound, Appster, Skin Smart and Family Time Australia.

Applying it to Smile Solutions

The address then turns the definition on the speaker’s own business. Three things, described as they stood in 2015:

The service model. Housing 50-plus clinicians — general dentists and Dental Board registered specialists in every field of dentistry — under one roof, and daily absorbing the administrative, social and system complexities that come with it, so that patients are treated in one place. See general dentistry, specialist care and dentists and registered specialists. Keeping that many clinicians working to one standard is its own daily problem, described at length in how do I manage to keep 60 demanding clinicians happy — all under the one roof?.

The building. Taking on an almost derelict, heritage-listed building and, over a period of 11 years, providing 80,000 patients with a serene environment for dental and surgical care — an environment that matters most to the people who find a dental chair hardest to sit in (dental anxiety). The location page describes the Manchester Unity Building as it is now.

The technology. Continuing to research, source, finance and implement advances in dentistry, so patients have the simple knowledge that they are receiving high-quality care. The current equipment list is on the technology page.

The pattern is the same in all three: the complexity is absorbed by the business — coordinating specialists, restoring a heritage building, evaluating and financing equipment — so that what reaches the patient is simple. A patient does not need to know how referral pathways, sterilisation logistics or CAD/CAM procurement work. They need their tooth fixed in one place, once. What that coordination actually involves is set out in complex dental cases: what happens when multiple specialists collaborate and everything under one roof.

“Innovative and disruptive to its core foundations, and therefore incredibly simple in its offerings — no different to every other business represented in this room tonight.”

Common questions

This page is a record of a business address, so the questions worth answering here are the ones a patient would reasonably ask after reading it.

Does a business award mean the dental care is better?

No, and it should not be read that way.

A business award assesses a business: its growth, its management, its operations. It is not an assessment of clinical outcomes, and it is not awarded by a health regulator or a professional body. The address summarised above is itself about business practice rather than clinical care, which is the right way to read it.

The Dental Board of Australia's guidelines for advertising a regulated health service are explicit about the boundary. Advertising must not be false, misleading or deceptive, must not use purported or real testimonials about the service or business, must not create an unreasonable expectation of beneficial treatment, and must not offer a gift, discount or other incentive unless the terms and conditions are stated. An award mentioned as an award is a fact about the business; an award presented as evidence that treatment will go well is the thing those rules exist to prevent.

What does bear on clinical care is registration, qualification, and whether the particular service you need is provided by someone trained to provide it. The next question covers how to check that yourself.

How do I check the clinicians for myself?

On AHPRA's public register, free, in about a minute — and it is worth knowing what it does and does not tell you.

Search a practitioner's name and the register shows whether they hold current registration, the division of that registration, whether any conditions or undertakings apply, and whether they hold specialist registration. In Australia that last term is tightly defined: the Dental Board of Australia states that “there are 13 dental specialties in Australia which are approved by the Australian Health Workforce Ministerial Council” — dento-maxillofacial radiology, endodontics, forensic odontology, oral and maxillofacial pathology, oral and maxillofacial surgery, oral medicine, oral surgery, orthodontics, paediatric dentistry, periodontics, prosthodontics, public health dentistry and special needs dentistry. Anything outside that list is not a dental specialty, whatever a website calls it.

Two further details from the Board that are useful to hold. A dentist applying for specialist registration “must have general registration and be on the Register of practitioners under the division of dentists”, and must have “completed a minimum of two years general dental practice” before specialist training counts. So specialist registration sits on top of general registration rather than beside it.

What the register will not tell you is how good someone is, how many of a given procedure they have done, or whether they are the right person for your particular problem. Those are questions for the consultation, and they are fair ones to ask directly.

Is a bigger practice actually better for a patient?

Honestly: size by itself is not an answer, and there is no independent evidence in the reference material behind this site that a practice's scale predicts a better clinical outcome for an individual patient. What scale does is change the trade-offs, and those are worth weighing on your own circumstances.

What a larger multi-disciplinary practice can make easier:

Referral without re-explaining. Where several fields are needed in one treatment plan, records and imaging stay in one place.
Availability. More clinicians generally means more appointment times, including for urgent problems.
On-site services. Imaging, laboratory work or sedation being in the building removes trips and delays.

What a smaller practice can make easier:

Seeing the same person every time. Continuity is often simpler where there are fewer clinicians.
Knowing who is accountable. In a large team it is worth asking explicitly who is leading your case.

The questions that actually decide it for you are narrower than the general debate: can this practice provide the specific care I need, will I be told who is doing what, and what happens if the person treating me is unavailable? The site puts its own case in is a bigger dental practice better? Part 1 and Part 2 — read those as the practice's argument rather than as settled evidence.

The figures here are from 2015. What are they now?

They are historical, and deliberately left as spoken.

The address quotes 50-plus clinicians, 11 years in the building and 80,000 patients — all as at 2015. Later material on this site quotes different numbers for a later date, which is why how do I manage to keep 60 demanding clinicians happy? says sixty rather than fifty. Neither figure is wrong; they describe different years.

For the current position, the source of truth is the our team page, which lists the clinicians by name, and the specialist care pages for which fields are provided. If a number on any page matters to a decision you are making, ask the practice to confirm it as at today rather than relying on an archived address.

Practical details

Delivered by Dr Kia Pajouhesh, Managing Director.

Smile Solutions, Level 1, 220 Collins Street, Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne VIC 3000. Phone 13 13 96, or theteam@smilesolutions.com.au; full details on the contact page. Monday–Friday 8.00am–6.00pm, Saturday 8.30am–1.30pm, Sunday by appointment. The current clinicians are listed on our team.

The regulatory statements in Common questions are from the Dental Board of Australia's registration information and its guidelines for advertising a regulated health service, as quoted in the Dental Board and Ahpra practitioner guidance.

Published 26 August 2015. All figures quoted are as at the date of the address in 2015 and are historical statements rather than current numbers. General information only; it does not replace advice from your treating practitioner.

Smile Solutions trades under ABN 28 193 514 103.