The Doers Podcast | Episode 5 | Rasheeda Johnson, DentCare Now

The Doers Podcast just landed a new episode, press play.

This time, Dan Hall sits down with Dr. Rasheeda Johnson, the powerhouse behind Dent Care Now, a same-day, after-hours, emergency-first dental practice that’s rewriting the rules.

She’s not just treating toothaches.
She’s delivering relief, restoring confidence, and proving that “urgent” can also mean exceptional.

From serving a single patient a day to running multiple high-demand locations, Dr. Johnson’s journey is a masterclass in hustle, heart, and scaling without losing your spark.

Hosted by Dan Hall, VP of Sales at CareStack, this episode gets real about building a practice around people’s lives, the challenges of growth, and why going the extra mile might just be the future of dentistry.

It’s fast-paced. It’s inspiring. And it’ll make you rethink what’s possible when care comes first.

Transcript

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Welcome back to The Doers, the podcast where we dive into the real stories of building, struggling and thriving in dentistry. I'm your host, Dan Hall. In each episode, we explore the challenges, victories, and lessons learned from the leaders in the trenches, doing the work and shaping the future of dentistry. Today, I'm joined by Rasheeda Johnson, the founder of Dentcare Now, an emergency focused dental practice that's redefining accessibility and urgency in care. Dr. Rasheeda Johnson, welcome to the show and thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Dan. How are you? I'm doing well. So let's go back to the beginning. Okay. Rasheeda, what inspired you to start Dentcare Now and focus specifically on emergency care? It started at a bar, to be honest. Just putting it out there. Me and my business partner, we were friends in dental school. We both went to Howard Dental. I was kind of like her mentor. She was my mentee. She was two years under me. And, dental school is really hard and rigorous. But afterwards, we go to a happy hour. So our friendship and our partnership built upon that type of bond. And after residency, we're both hanging out. In this bar with a mechanical bull having a great time. And we were just kind of talking about work and we were associates and being dentist and what we saw happening, like in the area. We both did our residencies in New York City. Well me New York, her New York City and in New York, there's all these programs and these hospital systems that have like emergency care. So if you go to the emergency room, there's a resident doctor on call that can see you, and kind of funny, you do a clinic or kind of give you some treatment. But in the DMV area, that's not the case. Because the dental schools are either in Baltimore, in DC proper or Richmond, but in the suburbs around DC, there's not really anything. So we're like, oh, there's like an urgent care for medical and like, every block wouldn't be cool if we started one. So, cheers. Let's do this thing. I called the bank the next day, and that's kind of how it started it. It was just like a fun conversation, a great idea. What if, I was working in corporate dentistry. She was working as an associate at a private practice. And, it's like someone comes in and they have an urgent need, but it's like the way dentistry is set up, you have to look at them comprehensively, and you're talking to them about this filling over here and Invisalign and these crowns, and they're like, hey, but this is bothering me. And it's like, okay, great. So I just looked at everything. Come back in a week and I felt like we weren't necessarily hearing the patients. So when we started this practice, we're like, we want to hear our patients. We want them to come in comprehensively, but we also want them if they have an urgent need. We want to give them care now. And that's where the name Dentcare Now. Yeah, I love the story. I love that you're your mentee and you, you're at a happy hour and come up with this idea. So many great companies are built off of a napkin, right? If people are out enjoying themselves, but also to the the see the need in the community in comparing it to health care. I've had some other people on the podcast in the in the past, and, that might be everyone kind of views. Dentistry is not part of health care, even though it is part of your body. Right. Exactly. And it can be the gateway to a lot of items there. So awesome story. So. With that, I just want to know with emergency care, it's got to come with a unique pace and pressure. How did you personally prepare yourself and not just yourself but your team to work in that type of environment and be ready for that every day. We have a sign in the break room that says“You have to be crazy to work here.” And there's also a sign in my office that says “Be nice to people.”, so anytime we add a team member on, we, we want them to be open, positive and flexible. Like, hey, anything can happen here. So we know how dentistry normally works, but here we say, yes and not just yes because we want to say yes, but yes because the person is coming here in need. So that's kind of how we prepare the team. If I'm honest, I personally, as a dentist, was not prepared for what this office needed. I kind of had this, dreamer's mindset, like, oh, it's going to be great. We're going to open a practice, people will come and everything will just go amazingly. And a lot of times it was like chaos and confusion. We had to kind of figure out some systems, put out some fires, and kind of go, okay, so what does the demographic or the patient need? So if I'm a patient and I'm going into urgent care, sometimes I would go into an urgent care. There's a medical. How are their systems working? How are the patient's checking in? What are they asking for? What does their paperwork say? What what are their offerings in medical? And then I would look around and look at other urgent cares or even emergency dental practices. What are they doing? And kind of just taking all these things and putting them together. Okay. We got something that's working here. So every day it's like a learning process because some days we walk in and it's nobody on the schedule, and then by the end of the day, we saw 15 people. So it's prepared for everything. I love it, though. You're not reinventing the wheel. You're going out there and just taking a system that's already working and applying it to dentistry. Exactly. And making it work for you. But that's got to be shocking, though, to sit there for part of the day and there's nobody. And then all of a sudden by the end of it, you've seen 15 patients. I'm never especially on the weekend, because I have a social life too. So someone's like, oh, you want to do Sunday Funday like brunch or something? And I'm like, yeah, I'll look at my I'll pull up my schedule on my phone like, like two patients might be a light day. Maybe I can meet you at two and then like by 10 a.m., I'm like, yeah. So. Not going to make it. And there's some days where we leave early and there's some days

where we're open till 5: 6:28

00, but we're leaving at seven. So you never know. You just prepare to be there and be available. So yeah. That's a lot to balance. So I'm going to roll into this and kind of tease up this next question here. Every founder faces that moment with everything feels like it's on the line, right? Can you share one of those intense, uncertain moments that you were facing as you were building Dentcare Now? COVID. We opened or we had our grand opening October of 2019. Just bright eyed, bushy tailed girls like, yay! We're going to take over the world. And the office was doing good. There was a slow build getting our name and our brand out there. And then COVID happened. And what was good about COVID? COVID wasn't good, but what was good about that time period was everyone was closed. And emergencies, doctor's offices were open for emergencies. And it was like, oh, great, we're already doing the marketing for that. We're already prepared for that. So that happened. What we were not prepared for. It was like the side effect of employees, just this like mass flight of employees, like my assistant coming in with no experience, demanding $10 more an hour. I wasn't prepared for that. So it was a point in time where, in 2021, we lost all our employees. So we had to go. Okay, we're going to learn from this. We're going to survive it. My business partners Dominique Bonner, Dr. Bonner, and I were like, I'll come in and assist you and I'll check the patients. And she said, she'll come in and assist me and check the patients in. And we were in there every day together. And so we got a team. But then we said, okay, how do we prevent this from happening? So then that's when we started looking at outsourcing. Like our answering services VirtualAssistant, Revenue Care Management outside just anything that can be done without depending on maybe one person or two people in the office. And then let's make it so easy. It's one, two, three. Press this button. You do this no matter who's at the front desk. They can check the patient and it can be done. Okay, so yeah, it sounds like a challenge. I couldn't even imagine losing the whole staff and then having to function. Well, you're probably busier than your peers because you're in emergency. Yeah, just for my own education. Like the the remove some of the geek speak and maybe some of our listeners know what you mean when you say VirtualAssistant or Revenue Cycle Management. What did that mean? What are they doing for your practice? That is your safeguard against losing your staff. So because we're like outsourcing those tasks, no matter if the building is burning, someone's like verifying our insurance. Someone's answering our phone. So our virtual assistant is just, someone outside, maybe in the country or outside of the country, and they have access to our, our phone system. And when the phone rings, it brings to the VirtualAssistant first. And they are trained to be, like, kind of in the office a little bit better than an answering service. Answering service. We have two. They just kind of take messages for us. But the virtual assistant is able to schedule able talk about billing, able to look in the patient's chart and like really identify issues, in real time, message us or message someone in the office or call into the office like, hey, this patient needs X, Y, and Z. And on our revenue care management side, like I said, the insurances are verified. It's put in the chart properly. It's consistent. So there's like the standard when I know that insurance is verified and I look in that patient's chart, I'm very confident that the numbers are right. They just have a great system, without me thinking the claims are being generated, they're being billed, someone's following up, and I don't have to manage that. Okay, so you must not be alone, because I hear this pretty often. People looking at services like that, what did you find successful? To fold them in and make them as part of your team? Because it sounds like you've really got it figured out here. You never want to lose control, right? You always want everything in-house. You want to watch over things. And I read a book I can't remember. It's like, something like, get the monkey off your back. Friend of mine gave me the book because I was micromanaging. I was holding on to everything. I'm afraid that, was going to happen. They said, read this book. And what I realized is I had to give the task over to other people. So if I'm using a third party service, they have the system in place. They are training the people, they are managing and watching over it, and they're reporting back to me. I had to trust that that system would work. And it has. So I have less headaches. Not sure if I answered the question, but know that that does. So that's a good point. So think through your system and your processes and then hand it over and, and let the employees or the staff that you're outsourcing to run the system. And then like the third party they're working with other offices. So sometimes they're teaching us best practices like, well, I have this office that's doing this, you have this problem or you have this concern or this need. We see this. How about you guys do this? And we've been very open, positive and flexible to changing things. If someone's like, this isn't working, we see this issue. We're open to making an adjustment. And being that way has helped the practice evolve, significantly, very fast. And I think the problems that we have is not like patient care managing the staff or like these third party things. It's like we're growing so fast, we don't know what to do. It's just us too. And it's seven days a week. Okay? We need an associate. We don't have time to, like, look, we don't. So, we've invested in the practice. We've invested in these, like, third party services, but we've gotten the return on our investment, Yeah. Like 10 times. So shifting gears for one second, looking at leadership style, you told me you had your signs up in the practice. And when you're building a team in that high pressure environment where you're going from maybe no patients to all of a sudden 15, it’s not a small task. How would you describe your leadership style and how do you keep your team grounded in those moments of urgency when the waiting room is full? Actually I did like this leadership like summit and like they do your DISC and kind of tell your weak points. I'm a “D” strong big “D”, doers dilemma.“D” and, but I have like a little baby “I”, so I'm like, fun and great. So we're having a good time. We're doing good. The patients are happy. I'm happy. And you're doing your job. I'm doing my job. Everything's great. But then when things are kind of going wrong, my “D” comes out. That's when my business partner comes in. Because she's a really nice, soft spoken “S”, very loving, very, team oriented. So I think our two personalities because I'm like, let's get it done, let's do it. And she's more like, how's your family doing? So I think merging us together has created like a leadership in a sense, where we balance that out. In the leadership conference that I did, my weakness was team building. And I knew that going into owning a practice. And that's why I picked the partner that I did, because that's her strength. So as far as building the team, I build the structure, and then I kind of step back and let her lead that and lead those bonding moments. But we do. Every month we have a team like outing to kind of just build that up, and that's where my “I” comes out and I'm like the fun doc and the fun time. I'm doing TikToks and videos and dancing and singing. As long as everything is. Well, though, it's great that you're self-aware and think you actually took the training. I'm familiar with DISC, right? So it sounds like your, co-founders, higher I perhaps right. And that “D” got to tap it out a bit not be so directed and dominant and demanding, but great. You'll find a lot of leaders don't have that self-awareness to then step back and say, okay, great. I'm going to let her check in with all the employees. How was the weekend? How are the kids doing it? Versus, okay, let's get down to business. I'm like, that's great. So did we get that task done? Did we call the patient back? And sometimes that can come off insensitive. But when I walk into the office, I've already logged in to CareStack and I'm already look at the schedule I've already done notes, I'm already working while I'm driving to the office. So when I get there, I'm like, all right, let's get it done. We have this, that, because sometimes in these quiet moments, we need to talk about things, before the chaos starts. So I want to, like, get to it, but I'm learning balance. Okay, let's talk about our days. How was your weekend? Mine's was crazy. I saw 20 patients yesterday. Great. So, I'm working on it. But it's good you got to have that “D” come out once in a while. I mean, the patients don't know that you're going from 0 to 15, so I'm guessing for that patient experience, it's everything's got to be dialed in. So that way when it's full you're there seeing them right. Taking care of their needs. Exactly. And then the systems, those things like those things I don't know, patient care and patient satisfaction. You can't get me to, like, flex on that like that person needs when they walk in. You need to greet them and say hello. And how can I help you and be a big smile and great energy? And then how the person greets them and brings them to the back and all the steps, and it has to be in that order. Because when it does get hectic, to answer the question before, if we're not following the system, if we just miss one step, if we miss one handoff, if the assistant like just starts the patient and walks away and doesn't transfer, communicate to the hygienist or to one of the docs and the patient's just sitting there, then the patient will have a bad experience. Or I'm asking the patient again all the questions. The assistant just acts. So the note template needs to be filled out. They need to communicate the transfer in front of the patient like hey, she's here for an emergency. This tooth, said she fell. That kind of thing needs to happen. And when those things don't happen, then that's when it's really kind of hectic. Okay, this goes into the next thing. So the industries change changing rapidly right from DSOs to digital workflows, patient expectations. Right. You just brought that up. What changes have you seen in how patients access or expect care, especially in emergencies. So people want care like right now like some people don't want to fill up paperwork. They don't want to provide the insurance information. They think it's I can't say for regular practice before my practice. They kind of sometimes see it as an emergency room, sometimes going to emergency room and they just take you in and get the information, on the back end. But no one's coming into our office that needs, like that type of care, like, it's not life or death. So it's like, I understand you have the abscess, you're in pain. But we still need to , guess I'm about the following the steps. So what I see with people is, like, they're wanting it to be easier. They're wanting to be able to access a portal. They're wanting to be able to call if they have an emergency or wanting to talk to the doctor. We do Tela, like Teller health visits, like post-ops. They're wanting their prescriptions sent off right away, just kind of right now, like, literally, I'm seeing that I started dentistry in, high school working at, like, a mom and pop office. So I've seen with the technology. And just like the expectations, like, things have changed from when I was like a teenager. I won't say it when, but when I was a teenager to, like, now, dentistry has changed like, a lot with just the technology. Just like, I mean, you can just type something into Google or take a picture or something and it pops up like we're like in a microwave instant now type of like era. So I'm noticing that it's a lot more if you don't do what I want now or how I like it, or if it's not the cost or the value that I see, I'm going to go across the street to someone else. And with corporate dentistry, they've made it very competitive in that way. Well, what are you doing to stay ahead of that? I mean, what are you adopting within your practice and to put Dentcare Now on the cutting edge and stay ahead of those changes and the competitors? So I'm listening. So if there is a consultant or a coach, we have coaches. We like these third party, services, if they're like advising us in any way, we're listening. I go to conferences like at least once a month and I just I want to see what's out there. I want to talk to other doctors. I want to talk to other people in the industry. What's going on? Are they putting chips in this or they're doing that or this is happening with AI? I'm following different like social media accounts. And I'm seeing like how those dentists are marketing themselves on social media. I guess, just kind of watching and then taking the things that kind of work for us, for our brand. It's kind of been what we've been doing. And if anyone is like advising us like, okay, maybe you should shift this way, then we're shifting. But we're utilizing AI, AI on the x rays. AI with the phones, we're fully digital, like digital workflow, CT scan. So we try to have the latest technology that can get expensive, but we're trying to keep up with it as much as we can. Okay. I mean, it sounds like. Yeah, you're really busy then going out there and crowdsourcing as much info. What's the number one thing you've implemented in 2025? We have our like a digital lab. We're totally digital. We got, a mill and a printer. So now we're able to really say, hey, you need this crown. Now, today you have an important meeting tomorrow. I can do that for you. You need a replacement of this tooth. I can do that for you. You're whatever. Whatever broke, we can repair that before. We would have to. We had, like, kind of this working relationship with two local labs. And they would work with us on Saturday and Sunday and try to turn those things over, like a day, maybe two days. But that was still too much time. And, it cost a lot of money too. So now kind of having an in-house that goes back to your name, right. Dentcare Now. Yeah. Like now we're totally on brand because it's like, hey, I fell and I broke my front tooth. Okay, you need a root canal, buildup, and crown. I don't I don't have to temporaries you and say, come back in two weeks. Or even if I have to rush the case. A lot of times people come in, they're like traveling. Oh, I'm out of town. I'm leaving in, like, a day or, so now that just kind of takes away that, Well, we've talked a lot about operations, which sounds like you have a solid system with some processes in place and out there constantly educating yourself. Let's play a game of pretend. Let's say you have a magic wand, okay. And you can wave that one and fix one operational headache in dentistry. What would it be? Wow. Oh, if I had a magic wand, what would I fix? I would fix, like, marketing for my office. Branding and marketing. I would just say I would want everyone to know we are they're easy peasy. I just I don't want to look at the ROM. The, return on marketing. I don't want to have to try to see how we're tracking or how many impressions we have. I just would want people to know we're there and people to just come in and not be about, oh, well, do you take my insurance? It's just we're here for you now. We'll care for you. Come on by. Like that's. If I could just take away one problem that would be it. No, that'd be great. I mean, I think of, like, where you guys sit and what you want to do in dentistry. I mean, it exists in medical, right? There's the emergency room. There's a big sign in every town. Yeah. Emergency room. Is that, like what you envision one day that people know the dent care now is down the street. People say you think you need to go to a drugstore. You ask a patient what pharmacy they'll do. They say like CVS or Walgreens, like, I want one day that they're like, oh, I need to go to have an issue. I mean, let me go to Dentcare Now, we only have one location right now, but the thought is to have multiple and kind of have that thought process. Oh man, I forgot this. I need to go to target, like just they don't have to market. I know they market, but they don't have to market as much because their brand is known and the name is out there. Okay. So it sounds like you're pretty tech forward, got all the processes. What role is technology played. Because you've mentioned a few things. Digital workflow, AI clinically in the front of the office. Any other particular role that's played in helping you run your system. It makes everything so much easier, so much more efficient. So like I said, our 24x7 our phones are answered. Right? So there's two different answering services. There's two different VirtualAssistants, there's my front desk. And now we have AI to kind of monitor all of that. And it'll flag if a call goes wrong. So I can see how everyone's kind of performing and I can give feedback. Maybe not me personally. My office manager, because I'm not micromanaging anymore, but, Well, clearly you might still be looking at those calls I am or even like, because we just want to be accessible. If someone on our web chat and they have a question, AI is actually responding. So someone might

messages at 3: 25:56

00 in the morning and the AI is able to respond. So just like those little things are just totally helping to manage I guess patient flow and incoming and our leads , our lead generations, right? AI is just changing the game. Even the x-rays is just like, whoa, wait, I didn't even really realize that that was a lesion that carries. So and being able to even communicate with the patient, like, you see this big blue mark or this big purple mark here, this is the cavity or this is the infection. It's easier to have those conversations with patients now. Yeah I've heard that a couple times on the show where it's just really an augmentation and helping the doctor and the staff be more efficient, explain it better to the patient, perhaps, or just a second opinion, but that's amazing. I want to shift gears and go a step away for business for a second. Right. We're gonna have to tap into this I for a moment. So let's wrap up with some rapid fire here. So what's one piece of advice you would give to somebody out there looking to open a practice? Don’t do it. Well, that was quick. No I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. What type of advice especially one is specialized as yours. As an associate I thought it would be easier if I owned and controlled the practice and everything would go perfect. Be prepared for the worst case scenarios. The advice I would give someone is truly prepare. If you're going into partnership, truly sit down and have conversations of, How do we exit this thing? Right? Like, great, we're we're thinking everything is going to go perfect, but what if it doesn't? Do you want to sell? What if someone comes and offers us this amount of money? Do we sell? Then, just have those conversations, have a plan. Ask for help, get mentors. Don't like, isolate yourself. I think why we've been okay is we just. We talk to everybody. Hey, we're not ashamed to be like, I don't know what I'm doing. I was talking about with a dentist recently. He open up a practice. They give you this equipment. No one tells you, like, all the maintenance. You have to have, like, a assistant that's been doing it for 20 years. And they know what to do with the chair and the autoclave maintenance or kind of compliance stuff. No one really. You don't come out of dental school and they're like, oh, this is how you stay compliant. You have to like hire a service or this, that and the third. So just kind of know what you're getting into. Talk to people that's done it before. Don't be discouraged. Don't be afraid. It's it's not as bad. There's going to be a hump. And then you get over it, and then it just kind of smooth sailing. Oh, this is kind of working out. I kind of like being an owner, but just know, like the toilet breaks, everyone's going to look at you like, hey doc, so the toilet's broken. What are we going to do? And I'm looking like, I don't know, who do we call? The roof is leaking. Oh. I guess I'll call the landlord, but I'm not prepared for that as a dentist. Dental school doesn't prepare you to manage the building. Manage the staff, know how to do the marketing, know how to manage your cash flow. Are you picking the right accountant? So just like all those little things. But we were guided by dentists who had practices, and also sometimes people are jaded. Also be careful with that. Like, oh, don't, don't do that. That's not gonna work for you. You got it. Don't go in that area, . So just taking the advice, listening and also just kind of being balance, staying and sticking to your vision, knowing yourself what you want to do. If I have a friend that's like, I want to open a practice and it's like, well, what does you what do you want your practice to look like? Right? Like what services do you want to offer, what vibe, what feel and like focus on that, but just have a plan around it. That sounds like some sound advice. Well, I mean, it's like, I can't believe you and your partner sat and talked through the potential breakup. Right. We didn’t we were drinking. Oh, we didn’t. But we, during COVID when things were like a little rocky and we didn't know what to do, then we had to have the conversation. Okay. So if someone comes now and they say, hey, we're going to give you this offer, do we take it? Are we going to stick this out? How hard does it get before we quit? Are you going to quit? I'm not going to quit. Then we had to start having those conversations when we were a year and a half in. I don't know if we would have had that conversation if it wasn't for COVID, but like, the world stopped. So then we're like, oh, snap, we have to pay this business loan back. What are we gonna do? Yeah, they didn't stop collectingthe loan. So what's something about your job that would surprise people at Dentcare Now? Or in general? That I can do every role in the office, including cleaning the bathroom. I will clean instruments. I'll break down the room. I'll check the patient in sometimes I don't even wear a white coat because I'm, like, small and I look young and I'm female. And I started off in the dental practice as an assistant. I'll just check the patient in and greet them in the way that I want my staff to operate. I feel like we work as a team, and I lead by example, and I'll show them this is how I want the treatment plan to be presented. So if someone it kind of has happened that way because we lost team members. So we had to do everything, but we can do it from the start to the finish. Do everything by myself. I love that because you can put it in a playbook. But I mean, like I'm a visual person. So if I were to watch you working, I could probably replicate it more so than sitting and reading it. Exactly. That's amazing that you do that and stay like on top of what's happening in the practice. So Rasheeda, it's been a fantastic conversation. But before we close, When you look back at what you've done at Dentcare Now and the impact you've made, What's one thing that you're the most proud of? Every time on the. It's especially on the weekend, but every time someone comes in and they go, I'm so glad you guys are open. I'm so glad you're here. Oh my god, I didn't know what to do. If it's like a little kid, that fell or so it's always like a child or like, an adult with, like an elderly parent. Or if someone had, like, a, like, some type of accident with their front tooth or like a bad There's so many things. But when people were like, oh my God, thank God I didn't know what to do, I called my doctor. They weren't available. I'm so glad you're here. That makes me know that. Okay, we're doing the right thing we're here, and it's working. Every time that person shows like that appreciation, that makes me know, okay, we're on the right path, and that's enough for me. That's great. I mean, is sad. I can only imagine. It's got to make you feel good and that you chose to do the right thing and you're helping people. So thank you again, Rasheeda for being here. And thank you to everybody listening. That's it for this episode of The Doers, where we share stories behind the work, the wins, and the lessons learned. If you enjoyed this episode, follow us and stay tuned on who's next. But until then, just keep doing the work.