Sterilization & Buying Power: Tuttnauer and Dental Collective | Part 2 of 4

In Part 2 of our special four-part series from the Uptown Services Dental Summit (Charlotte, NC – Sept. 18-20), host Bryant Hawkins Sr. sits down with two leaders shaping different but equally important areas of dentistry.

First, Ed Morrill of Tuttnauer shares how over a century of sterilization expertise has evolved into cloud-connected, technician-friendly solutions that make maintenance and compliance easier than ever.

Then, Michael McCoy of Dental Collective explains how his group purchasing organization is helping independent practices gain the same pricing and leverage as the largest DSOs in the country.

Big thanks to our partners: College of Biomedical Equipment Technology, A.M. BICKFORD, INC., UptimeServices, MD Publishing, Innovative Radiology AND GMC Healthcare Solutions. Your support keeps the HTM mission alive!

HTM On The Line is produced by the B-Hawk Network.

Transcript

Series Setup & Today’s Focus

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome back to HTM on the line. I'm your host, Brian Hawkins Sr., and this is part two of our four-part series from the Uptime Services Dental Summit in Charlotte, North Carolina. Yesterday we started with DEX and their game-changing approach to digital imaging. Today, we're shifting gears to talk about something just as essential sterilization, efficiency, and buying power.

Meet Tuttnauer’s Ed Morrow

SPEAKER_02 0:30

First, you hear from Ed Morrow of Tutin Hour, a company with over 100 years in the sterilization business that continues to innovate with cloud-connected solutions like T Connect. Then we'll sit down with Michael McCoy of Dental Collective, who's helping independent practices across the country level the playing field with the same pricing and partnerships the biggest DSOs enjoy. Let's get into it. Okay, we're back again on HTMLine. I have another special guest, Mr. Ed Morrill with Tuten Hour. Tuten Hour, you got it. How are you doing, Ed? I'm doing well. How are you? Great, great. You enjoying the conference so far? It's off to a great start, yep. Have you been to Charlotte before? First time?

SPEAKER_01 1:17

I've been to Charlotte. It's a great city. Yes, yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

My second time here, first time actually exploring it. I came in for a game and shot back out the next day, so I didn't really see much. But let me get into the reason we sit in here. Of course, we had Uptime Services Dental Summit. First summit? You've been to a few?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I've been to this is my first uptime. I've been to dental fixes before. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Okay, great, great. Now, what problem does your company, Tutenhour, solve for technicians or healthcare facilities?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

So Tuten Hour is sterilization experts. I've been in the sterilization business for a hundred years. And basically we represent every market you can kind of think of for sterilization. So not only are we a medical, laboratory, vet, industrial, but we focus on dental as well. And over the years, I'm sure your technicians know our units historically, they're still in the, you know, our manual units are still in the marketplace today, and they are workhorses and really important to a lot of

Cloud-Connected Sterilization with T-Connect

SPEAKER_01 2:23

dentists. But where we, I think we can help the technician is with our newer unit, the T Top, which is an electronic unit which conforms to all the regulations that are out there, closed door drying, the ability to log all the data and cycles for the end user from a regulatory standpoint. The way we do that with T Top is with our T Connect software, which we hope to incorporate into the Uptime system soon. But basically, what Doctor would do is get his unit connected to Wi-Fi, and then every cycle is logged onto the cloud for free for them. So they have it for regulatory purposes, but also for the uptime guys, basically now they have the ability, as long as they have a dashboard which we would provide them to look at every cycle. So if there's a problem with a cycle, it's not only going to tell them where the problem resides, it's also before they even go out to the office to meet with the dentist and to look at the unit, it's going to tell them what parts to bring. So potentially, and we see this a lot, they'll be able to fix the unit in that first visit instead of having to pull it out and get a loaner or do all the stuff that you have to do when you don't know what you're diagnosing.

Class S vs. Class B Explained

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Man, wow, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

I mean y'all put those units in hospitals also.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yes, the same teetop that we sell into dental, we also sell into medical. But because there are different types of sterilization, there's class B, which is pre- and post-vacuum sterilization, which means you use a vacuum pump to pull 99% of all the air out of the unit before you sterilize, which is super important if you because steam does not work in an air environment or a water environment. So you really have to get all the air and water out of a machine before you sterilize. But in dental, you don't have to go to that standard. It's a little bit lower than that. So we use class S. So same machine, but two different kinds of sterile sterilization are happening. And but if a dentist needs to do class B medical grade because they're doing surgical cases, or their instruments tell them they need to, our instruments are, I'm sorry, our units are a bit like Tesla. And the idea is they would call your tech would call into us, we would get a PO, and we could actually turn on the vacuum pump and make their existing dental unit into a true medical grade class B unit. It's the only one that does that.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

So all the software and everything will come to the hospital.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

And they don't have to insert anything into the machine. They don't have to, it's just basically a a code we give them. They enter it into the display, and immediately they're running class B. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Well, good. That goes into my next question.

Plug-and-Play Install & Smart Maintenance

SPEAKER_02 5:10

How does your equipment make installation and maintenance easier for the technicians?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Great question. So our units, you know, being small equipment, our plug and play. Basically, take it out of the box. The setup is mostly through the display. We make it easy for the technician. So if an office has a water filtration system like a VistaPure or SteroSil type system, all you have to do is punch into the display that it you are going to be doing autofill and auto-drain. And automatically, then they just need to, you know, connect the tubes to the uh unit and they can do autofill, auto-drain. There's no extra work on their part to install anything. It's just plug and play that way. Then they would have to enter into the display, you know, any any information time, connect it to the Wi-Fi so that those cycles can be thrown up to the cloud, and that's it. And then we work with a sales team called PSA. They will come in and do the in-service. So I recommend that the tech make sure they know who their rep is, coordinate with them, and that we come in right behind and we do the full training for the reps. From a maintenance standpoint, because we have that T Connect that I mentioned earlier, you know, you don't have to kind of put a yearly reminder to do maintenance. It's actually going to count every cycle that the practice does. So as you know, ortho practices might do fewer cycles. It's going to count, and then when it's time for that maintenance, it's going to send out an alert and say, I need a maintenance.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Now, what are you showcasing at the summer today?

Faster Cycles via Data Updates

SPEAKER_01 6:47

So pretty much the T Top that we I spoke of. We have the unit on display at my uh booth. I also will talk about our high disinfection washers, which are our Tiva washers. If there's an interest there, we can discuss that as well. Plus, our biological spore testing, which we have, which is an in-house system, allows users to do a spore test and know the result within 20 minutes instead of having to mail it out and wait a week.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Oh, that's awesome. So you gotta have a software and everything. Yep. I might have to come check you out. Okay. Now you've been in the industry. How long? Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

More years than I won't care to remember, but about 35 years now.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

Oh, so you've seen it evolve. I have. So what trends do you see shaping the industry in the next few years?

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Well, it's funny. I was just at a DSO summit earlier this week, and the buzzword is AI, AI, AI. And you know, things are getting more electronic. Certainly, the days of simpler is kind of gone, I would say. I know coming out of COVID, for example, most of the regulatory standards that the dental ADA are doing are being looked at. They're going to be kind of consolidating that and making sure that coming out of a virus like we had with uh COVID, that the standards are where they need to do to keep patients safe. Additionally, with AI, you know, things like RT Connect, which isn't quite AI, but it's AI-ish, I guess you would want to say. The idea there is because we throw, you know, we collect all this data up to the cloud and our machines are self-diagnosing and they're getting better. We actually put out an update remotely for our last version of the Top. And basically, we found that because of the data we collected, we could actually make our cycles a little bit faster for everyone because efficiencies were found within the machine to make that happen. I see that kind of technology going through a lot of dentistry where you're gonna get better at what you do due to that technology.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

Very, very awesome, man. Oh man, well, I appreciate you sitting down with me, man. Anytime you want to come back on the podcast, maybe we ought to do a whole episode. I mean, 10 minutes seem like not long enough for 35 years of experience. But I appreciate your time and keep doing what you're doing, sir.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Thank you. Appreciate it. Yes, sir.

Enter Dental Collective’s Michael McCoy

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Okay, we had another live episode here at Uptime Services Dental Summit. I'm here with Michael McCoy with Dental Collective. How are you doing, Mike?

SPEAKER_00 9:22

I'm good, Brian. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 9:23

Great, great.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

What's going on, man?

SPEAKER_02 9:24

Not much, man. Well, tell me about Dental Collective, man.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. But yeah, so I'm the I'm the one of the co-founders of Dental Collective. We are a group purchasing organization or a dental buying group. So essentially, our entire purpose is to help the independent practice owners get the same pricing and benefits that the largest corporate DSOs get in the country. As an independent dental office, you're just getting, there's just a lot of challenges that they're facing today from decreased, decreased reimbursement rates, increased supply costs, increased service costs, equipment costs, you name it, right? So they have companies like us out there that help them create buying power for the entire group so that we can go on behalf of all of our members and negotiate better pricing. And that's what that's what we've done for about the last two years.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Oh, wow. That's pretty interesting. So keeps you busy?

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Oh man, keeps me really busy. You know, we we always say I'm the president of the company and I'm the janitor of the company and everything in between.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

So this negotiating, so that's more on the dentist side. I know we had a service summit here. So how can we put the service side come to you?

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Absolutely. So when I started this, I wanted to find partnership that covers just about every single space that touches the dental office, right? So kind of how this thing works. We've

How Group Buying Levels the Field

SPEAKER_00 10:50

got close to 300 independent practices now that are a part of our group across the country. So it's kind of like joining a Costco. You join Costco, you get both discounts and everything, right? So that's what we've done. But what we do is we partner with specific companies across the industry. So we've got like our main supply house, which is dental city, we've got Burr manufacturers, and we've got marketing companies, IT firms. But then we also know that equipment is really important and equipment service is really important, which is why I'm here because we're partnered directly with Uptime Services. So when our members come to us about any equipment or service needs, that all goes right to uptime services. And they're the company that actually helps them walk through the purchasing process, or your their technicians are the ones that actually go out and service our member practices.

unknown 11:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Wow, that's pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

So through our bulk purchasing power, we do have kind of negotiated rates on both the equipment side and they're able to help us on the labor side as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Okay. So where's your company based out of?

SPEAKER_00 11:49

So technically, our our virtual address is in Maryland. Okay. But I'm based in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is really convenient for me to get to this meeting today in Charlotte. And then my business partner is up in Maryland. And then we have a managing partner who's a big prostodontist up in Massachusetts. And uh he runs the Dentlet Academy up there.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Oh, right, man. That was my first time in Charlotte. Are you a Panthers fan?

SPEAKER_00 12:15

No. And I've only been there about a year. Okay. And I don't know many Panthers fans.

Partnering with Uptime for Service

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Yeah. I'm not everybody's a fan from somewhere else. I'm an Eagles fan myself. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

So switching to a little bit here, Dental Collective, we kind of touched on it. You have a podcast. I do. I do. What's your purpose behind creating what was the name of your podcast?

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Yeah. So we kept it real simple. Uh we we own Dental Collective, so it's the Dental Collective podcast. And basically what we wanted to do, so we've got all of these great companies that support our group, and we've got all these dental offices across the country. And we knew that there was kind of like a gap in information. So we wanted to create a place for our partners to come on and kind of share their story. And one thing I like to think about is we are in such a technological era of dentistry that it's so easy to forget about the people behind all the technology. So when we have our guests on, it's it's a lot of our partners. So like Uptime Services would come on, but it's who are you? Who's the person? How'd you get to do into the role that you're in now with Uptime? And then we get into who is Uptime, what's your guys' place within dentistry, and what does our partnership look like? And how do you guys support the dental collective community? So that's kind of what we do.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Oh, I like that. So now all out of all your episodes, which guests have stuck out the most? And you don't have to say James.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

No, he actually hasn't been on yet, so I'm waiting for that one. Okay. Because I'm sure that would be the answer.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

He's been on mine, too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

So yeah, that's we're getting there. So I'll say two. Okay. Our first actual guest was my dad, which was really cool because he's been in dental uh my entire life. He's worked for a bunch of different dental companies, and we've actually worked for the same company for a time period, and and now we've gone in different directions. But to be able to have him come on as our first guest, that was that was very cool. And then one of our clinicians, his name is Dr. Savon Finkel out of Manhattan, and just his story is incredible.

The Dental Collective Podcast Vision

SPEAKER_00 14:15

His just is he's just a brilliant person, and just his thoughts on dentistry, like philosophy, just the conversation was just really interesting and just really valuable.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Oh man, that's awesome. So I'm going back to the dental collective.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

If someone okay, someone was curious about you, what would be your I don't want to say sales pitch, but I guess what would be your pitch to this person to tell them why dental collective is a great choice for them.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah, I mean, if you're a clinician in the United States or Canada, most likely you are experiencing some of those struggles I talked about earlier, right? The easiest thing is just the increase in supply cost. Yeah. If you're just sick and tired of paying more than you have to, and you're tired of seeing that these massive DSOs are getting 20 to 30% better pricing on everything and they're doing the exact same job. And oftentimes it's these independents that provide even better levels of patient care. You know, if you're just in that umbrella where you're frustrated by that and you want to run a more profitable practice, that's that's who should come have a conversation with us. And we were dental reps, me and my partner, for about 11 or 12 years. So we have worked with thousands of offices across the country. So we know what this relationship's supposed to look like. And because we were on the vendor side of things, we also know what that relationship's supposed to look like. So I think we do a really good job of satisfying both sides of our business, whether that's the independent practice or it's the company that we've partnered with.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Great, man. Well, Michael, it was great having you on, man. Thank you so much. Wish you the best on your podcast. Thanks, Brian. Take care, man. Same to you. That wraps up part

Who Should Join and Why

SPEAKER_02 16:02

two of our Dental Summit series. From Toot Novers Century of Innovation to Dental Collective's mission of empowering independence. Today's conversation reminded us that progress in this industry comes from both technology and collaboration. We're not done yet. Tomorrow, in part three, we'll hear more voices from the summit floor as we continue exploring the people and companies reshaping dentistry right now. You don't want to miss it.