Dental Bun Podcast
Embrace the sassy, classy and messy bits of dentistry with the perfect blend of life and work wisdom.
Dental Bun Podcast
Hope for Health: The Mobile Approach to Holistic Dental Hygiene
A conversation with Janet Madrid, a veteran dental hygienist who's revolutionizing oral healthcare through her mobile holistic practice. After 46 years in dentistry, Janet discovered her true calling when she established "Hope for Health" – a business dedicated to the critical connection between oral health and whole-body wellness.
Janet's journey began with a revelation: traditional dental settings rarely address the complex relationship between oral health and systemic conditions. Her approach represents a paradigm shift in how we understand dental care – not as isolated treatment of teeth, but as an essential component of overall health optimization.
Janet bridges this gap through comprehensive testing, affordable advanced treatments, and patient education that empowers rather than shames.
What truly distinguishes Janet's practice is her role as a "health quarterback" for patients from all walks of life. From those living in vans to individuals in subsidized housing, she demonstrates that quality holistic care isn't exclusively for the affluent – it's for anyone committed to their wellbeing. Her newly published book, "Hope for Health: Illuminating the Foundations of Health and Wellness," extends her mission beyond clinical practice, offering readers a roadmap to better health through body, mind, and spirit.
Janet's Mobile Dental Hygiene Information:
Website: https://hopeforhealthco.com/
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Welcome to the DentalBund podcast. My name's Janice, and today I'll have a special guest, janet Madrid. She is a Colorado dental hygienist who practices holistic care in a mobile dental hygiene business. So today we're going to dive into what is holistic dentistry, what is that, what does it look like to be a holistic dental provider in a dental setting, and how you care for your patients. Janet, I'm so excited to have you here on the Dental Fund podcast today. Well, thank you for having me. It's good to see you. It's so good to see you too. So you've been in dentistry for 46 years. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. And at what point in your career did you? I want to open my own business.
Speaker 2:Well, that was actually in about 2009. I started thinking about the oral systemic connection and how we don't really have enough time in our regular day-to-day to talk to patients about the oral systemic connection and to be able to kind of go outside the box. That's when I developed the name for health for my business, because that is what we're doing we're generating hope for our patients, that we can help them with their overall health through improving the health of their oral microbiome, their mouth, because it's all connected and that connection is getting more and more exciting all the time. I'm just learning new things, and so I decided in 2009,. But then I met my husband in 2010 and we got married and that dream just went right out the window. I had already registered my business. I didn't know exactly how that was going to look, but I registered the business and then that was it. It was dropped. I had been single for 16 years and raised my daughters on my own.
Speaker 1:Oh, we were 30 up then.
Speaker 2:Hygiene, school, everything and I thought, oh yeah, love is not in the stars for me anymore. And then my girls left home and I was like, what am I going to do with myself now? So then I met my husband on Matchcom and then that was the beginning of the next phase of my life In 2019,. I went to Rocky Mountain Dental Convention and I listened to DeWitt Wilkerson, who has a book out called Shift, and he's very much into the oral systemic connection and how dental providers are a frontline healthcare provider for patients, and so I read his book. I listened to his lecture and I thought, you know, we have to do better, we need to start doing more of this. And so at that time I was started working for a dentist that actually had started a practice in the apartment building on the lower floor in Castle Rock where I was living, and I thought, man, all I have to do is go downstairs from the second floor to the first floor and I'm at work. So that was going to be so cool. So I helped her start her practice.
Speaker 2:And then March of 2020 hit and, you know, covid happened. My dream got reignited because I was on social media a lot and I was doing webinars like daily, three, four a day, and I ran across iHeart Mobile Dentistry, which is one of the Facebook pages for the American Mobile Teledentistry Alliance and also the National Mobile Teledentistry Conference, I was like, wow, businesses are shut down, dental offices are shut down and I'm like this is crazy. So I heard of a dentist that was still seeing patients during COVID because he had a Mercedes Sprinter van and he was going to people's homes and treating them at their home Mostly emergencies. But I thought where is the danger if I'm going to someone's home and I'm just seeing their family that day and then I'm sterilizing my van and I'm using these UBC lights like they do in the hospitals? There's not this cross exposure of people in the waiting room. Plus, I still wanted to be able to care for my family, my own family, who knows how long the office is going to be down. So I said this is the time for me.
Speaker 2:So my wonderful husband allowed me, or agreed with me, that I could take out a home equity line of credit on my house, which was pretty substantial, and I just bought a van and and actually to step back just for a moment, the dentist that I was working for was pretty new. She was younger and I was so excited about the oral systemic connection that I had been talking to her about it. We could do this, we could have a nutrition, we could do all these things. And she's like that's not our, that's not what we do, we're just focusing on the teeth. And I was just like, oh, this is so disappointing.
Speaker 2:I re-established my license, my business name, with the state and everything and we registered my business and just kind of got the ball rolling Just like boom, boom, just started doing it and I was calling different people asking for advice and other people who had mobile practices, but everyone does it different. So most of the ways that they were saying I was like no, that's not for me. So I kind of did my own thing. Dental offices opened back up the doctor, since it was a brand new practice. She said I'm only going to be able to fill your schedule two Mondays a month and I had been working for her full time at a reduced rate, marketing the practice, doing the hygiene, doing the assisting, doing the front desk, everything for like $25 an hour. But I was working 50 hours a week and it was felt to be just for three months until we got the practice more established. I set up the operatories, I ordered the supplies and everything, and then I got out of it because I was like, okay, well, she doesn't have any commitment to me.
Speaker 1:I just like, am shocked of your giving nature to help someone else succeed in their business and by you extending the olive branch, of saying I'm going to work for you for $25 an hour as your hygienist because I live a couple couple floors up and this is convenient for me and I'm going to take over your marketing and do all these things because you were excited about their business and I know that when you started to get excited about it, the things that you were interested in that you felt that were great to incorporate they were shut down and what a blessing that was.
Speaker 1:In hindsight, it's like I need to take my gifts elsewhere and there are so many hygienists that are in that position right now. They feel like they care more than the dentist. They're wanting to provide better care, they're wanting to go the extra mile, reduce pay, whatever it is to see things grow. And you decided no more, I'm going to be my own boss, I'm going to pour into myself and I'm going to care for my patients the way I want to care for them. And you opened your own mobile dental hygiene practice. That's amazing, yes.
Speaker 2:I did Not to throw the dentist under the bus because they have tunnel vision when it comes to how much are we paying our hygienist, what's the bottom line, what can we get from insurance for this appointment? And they're not thinking outside of the box of the potential that educating the patient and really caring for them on a deeper level will actually bring the revenue in, because they will be willing once they understand the need for it and the connection and how their health will improve. They will say, yes, I want to do the saliva test. Yes, I want to take these probiotics or prebiotics. Or yes, I want the laser. Yes, I want the periodontal therapy. The money comes, but not when that's what you're trying to, that's what your goal is. If your goal is the money, you're just like speeding your wheels. For example, a couple of days ago I had a really bad day because I went to an office that I was temping at and every single patient because the dentist has been cleaning the teeth and periodic hygienists coming in and out and every single patient was a bloody perio mess. I just want to talk to dentists and hygienists to say we can do it better and more differently, because if 80% of the population has chronic disease and they say it's more. They say only 12% of our population in the United States has metabolic health. 88% have at least one metabolic disorder and the disease is so rampant now. So why aren't we doing 80% of our patients, treating them for periodontal disease? It's not a prophy. Prophylaxis is preventive. If there's disease, then we shouldn't be doing that. It's really hard because the dentist has to see the bigger picture. The hygienists have to get on board and say look, this is against my principles and my code of ethics that I can't just keep doing the status quo because I don't have enough time. Like, don't sell out to the schedule, don't sell out, talk to the dentist. Do continuing education. Belong to your professional organizations, get the continuing education to be able to talk to your dentist and explain that by doing the best for the patient, the bottom line will not suffer.
Speaker 2:I see that there is profit to be made for doing the right thing. It's a hard transition. And people just for doing the right thing. It's a hard transition. And people just they're stuck in a rut and they just want to keep doing the status quo and grumble and complain about it, but nobody's really doing anything about it.
Speaker 2:In my opinion, it's public health. Public health is the whole public. When COVID hit, it wasn't just the underserved, that was the public. We are all the public, I'm the public, you're the public, so I'm in. People say, oh, do you go to nursing homes? What do you do? And I'm like, no, I just treat the public anybody.
Speaker 2:Now I used to take insurance and that was really hard for one person to manage and plus, I don't want patients to be driven by their insurance, and so my patient base is a little more health optimization seekers. Where they are doing all the things. They're seeing functional providers. So they're already of the mindset that I want to improve my health and I know that the oral systemic is a connection. I just don't know what to do about it, and so they partner with me and I sometimes will have them.
Speaker 2:Like a couple of nights ago I had someone sitting at my dining room table for a couple of hours going over some new cure props and picking up their perio protect gel and then going over some new home care.
Speaker 2:And I'm there showing her here use this single brush to go around where you have all this sprouting and get these prebiotics and stop using that and just following this health journey with these patients and she was so excited she's like, well, every time I come it's like Christmas, you give me new stuff. And she's like just really excited and they order the things I recommend. They do the things I recommend. They're ready to pivot. Not everything is black and white for each person and each person has to have an individualized plan, like, okay, we're going to try this, but if it doesn't work, we're going to try something else. I'm constantly doing research. It's a very exciting time to be in this hygiene world because we have such a honor and privilege and power to help people, empower them to improve their overall health, what you do as a practice owner, because when they're listening to this, they're going oh, she owns a mobile hygiene practice, but she's still temping.
Speaker 1:What is she doing? And so it's good to hear that, even though someone owns a business in Colorado as a mobile provider, there are things that we have to go through as a business owner to keep moving forward. And for you, because of the style of dentistry that you do, you, because of the style of dentistry that you do, you are going out and marketing. You're going out and trying to find new patients, networking and building that, and that takes time. It takes time to be on this. You know the treadmill of awesomeness where you have patients just clamoring outside of your door and you don't have the luxury of being stationary. They're like, hey, just go down the street, just go down the street. It's a very different business model. And so when you're talking about caring for your a overly what is the word? I'm looking for A very intentional and very educational way. They're coming to you to get care like no one else.
Speaker 2:I am tempting because the bottom line matters and I still have to pay my bills when I don't have enough patients, and because I like to go to conferences, I take time off.
Speaker 1:But that's the reality of business ownership and that's why, when you said that, I loved it, because business is not glamorous and sometimes you have just in dentistry we have those high times and those low times and you're as a single business owner. If someone's thinking about opening a hygiene practice or a mobile hygiene practice, you have to understand that that takes time. It takes time and we are very fortunate in dental hygiene. We make a really great salary. To walk away from that as a substitute on building your business would be crazy. You're still building your skills as you're working with your patients. Then also you're building your business skills and educating people as you're temping, but then you're also still running your practice. You're still a business owner. You're running your practice and you were probably putting in like 80 hour work week.
Speaker 2:I work seven days a week, just FYI, and but not every week. So that's the thing. You know how it is. So the glamorous part is oh yes, I get to have two hours with my patients. Oh yes, I only see two patients a day generally. Oh yes, if I go see one family, that's my work for the day. Sometimes four to six hours is max. I work in a day. In my practice, However, I don't have very good business sense and I am not very adept in social marketing and all that. So I think the younger hygienists have a better chance of marketing themselves than I do, because I don't really myself that well.
Speaker 1:Now you are doing what you need to do. In the time that you're doing it, marketing for anyone is hard, whether they're in clinical care, in any business. That is one of as a business owner myself. Marketing is super hard and when you start looking into owning your own practice, you start to recognize that, yeah, you know how to be hygienist, you know how to do make treatment plans, you know how to do all those things, but when you you are responsible for the entire organism, then you're like well, there's more to this. So when you started your practice, what was that like reality check for you? I mean, obviously, the business sense to it. That's super challenging. But then there's so many other facets of owning a practice. Where would would you if you could talk to your younger self back in, you know, 2019 and go? Hey, before you get going, you might want to learn a little bit more about this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, first of all, you have to decide if you are willing to play the insurance game or not. Because I thought I would be able to to do insurance and I really wanted to see a lot of Medicaid patients and I wanted to go out into the public and I was a Medicaid provider and I was a Delta provider, but as far as Medicaid goes, I wasn't getting any patients from them. Every once in a while I would get a call from somebody that needed an extraction or something oh, I have a toothache and I need this tooth pulled. But because I live in Douglas County, I really didn't get a lot of patients County and put out flyers at the annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway and talk to people and schedule some days that I would go down there. Here is the number schedule an appointment. I went down there for three or four days. Not one person called to schedule.
Speaker 2:What is crazy is that they need the care because I think, like San Luis has one, a dentist that comes in like one day a week or something, and they, you know, and I would be going to these people's homes, they wouldn't need the transportation and it was heartbreaking because it didn't happen.
Speaker 2:The same thing happened when I went up to Teller County. I was going up to the casinos in Purple Creek and parking and they were getting word out in employee newsletters to schedule appointments and I would have one here, one there, even though the need is there and they don't even have a dentist up there and all the people need the care like they probably haven't been to the dentist either in their life or very often that's a hard part, because even trying to reach the people who need you and they have benefits like insurance or Medicaid or whatever, trying to get them to come because actually I think it's the statistic is that only 40% of the population go to the dentist. Is that only 40% of the population go to the dentist? So that brings me to another subject. Is that there is no such thing as saturating the market because there's such a high need and different?
Speaker 1:styles, because some people are unable to leave their home, live in a hard-to-access area, like how you were going to those different counties, live in a hard to access area, like how you were going to those different counties.
Speaker 1:And also, too, everyone has a choice on how they want to get care, and when you're talking about caring for your patients for two hours and you're being you have this very close connection with your patients and that you know in the business world that your time is money and the way that you've set up your business model is you don't take any insurance, so you are looking at a particular clientele, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you're like oh, I'm only going for rich people. No, that is such a stereotype when it comes to that type of service, and I think that is a very small-minded thought process, because there are so many people that are going to pay for their healthcare. They just want to be treated like a human and they just want to be heard, and that's what you're doing for these patients. There are many people out there that make less money but have more money to give to care for themselves, exactly, and I'm going to tell you a couple of my patients.
Speaker 2:So I did take insurance for two years, meaning that I still see patients that have insurance. They just file their claims themselves. So I give them their super bill and then they get some reimbursement. But in the beginning I was filing claims and that's the hard part is trying to file the claims and then trying to get Medicaid to cover for periodontal therapy for people who have early perio. All of my cases that I was submitting for scaling and root claiming were being denied and I was still doing it for a patient because I'm like I'm not going to just do a pro fee. So anyway, that that that's another thing, but I do.
Speaker 2:I have one patient that lives part time in Washington and part time in Colorado and she lives in her van and she's in her 70s and she is like this spunky hippie that weighs maybe 90 pounds. She's like me, you know gray, curly hair, she's always got it up in a bun, she's got these colorful outfits on. She lives in her van because she's on fixed income, but she gets her saliva tests, she takes her probiotics. She'll text me a picture of her tooth or her gum. She's just so sweet and she always gives me a tip and I'm just like, don't do this, they're hugging me and stuff. And she just tells me about how no one has ever cared for her mouth the way and she has. Basically all her molars are gone because she lost them due to periodontal disease. But she's also going to see a holistic dentist that I refer to, which his fees are really high but she still goes there because she knows how important that oral systemic connection is. I wish I would have known this when I was younger or else I wouldn't have lost all these teeth and have root nails everywhere. But she lives in her van.
Speaker 2:Then I have another patient that is on Medicaid. But she found me I didn't even know she had Medicaid because she never told me until recently. She doesn't have a car. She lives in Section 8 housing. She used to ride the light rail to and I would go pick her up and bring her to the van and see her, because I don't travel. If I'm going to just one person, I have to be going to a group of people, at least three people to go somewhere. Otherwise my other patients are seeing me in my van in front of my house, so I would go pick her up and bring her and take care of her teeth.
Speaker 2:She goes to the periodontist. She does the functional stuff. We've done that microbiome testing on her. She's constantly sending me emails about this and sending me articles. What do you think? And this, like she's totally focused. I told her she needed a sleep test. She went and got a sleep test and so I'm working with people for their whole health, like I'm kind of like their quarterback, their consultant for their health and and this lady is on a fixed income but she saves for this test or that test.
Speaker 2:And, of course, a lot of my patients that are like that I give them like for testing or for products. I give them at my cost, like they just paid for whatever. I would pay for it and my profit margin. I don't really charge. I charge a reasonable amount that people will do, like for LBR. Everyone does laser the cost. To me the cost is like $10. And so I charged 25. But if you go to other offices LBR, nobody does it because it's $75 or whatever out of pocket. It only takes five minutes to do less than that. And so the thing is we have to make things affordable and we have to really if we believe in a service, then we have to make it reasonable for the patient, also make a little bit of a profit and not put it at such a high price that nobody's going to do it.
Speaker 2:I really want to just keep encouraging people in dental offices. Dentists, I'm like, are you guys doing salivary testing? Well, you know you could get a lot more people to accept treatment plans for periodontal disease if you were showing them that they had high levels of periodontal pathogens. So I still go, not only because I'm trying to pay my bills and pay off my loans and stuff for my business, but I also like to get out in the community and get to dental offices and encourage the hygienists there to join ADHA and Colorado Dental Hygiene Association and can do their continuing education and learn about airway. And are you guys screening for airway and are you screening for myofunctional disorders? So I still am trying to spread the message, because I'm only one person and so my patients are getting the benefit of this care, but everybody deserves that care and so that's why I constantly out there just trying to spread the love.
Speaker 1:Well, you are spreading the love in a different way because you have written a book. You have written a book and the book title is Hope for Health Illuminating the Foundations of Health and Wellness. And when is your book? I know there's a pre-order.
Speaker 2:It's going to be available hopefully by the end of this month, and so whoever does a pre-order, I'm going to autograph it and I'm going to emboss it, because one of my hygiene friends, lani McBeth, gave me a gift of an embosser, so I'm going to send personal messages to everyone. Then it'll be available on Amazon, barnes Noble, when it's ready. So people keep asking me what the book is about, and I've always wanted to write a book. So the reason that I wanted to write a book was when I first started thinking about my business, hope for Health, I wanted to have a resource book for my patients. That was a global thing that talked about everything oral, systemic. This book is broken down into three sections, which is body, mind and spirit. So we're not just talking teeth and microbiomes, we're talking what people should be doing with the resources that God gave us on this earth. He gave us everything that we need to have an abundant, healthy life we have engineered ourselves out of the lifestyle. It's kind of an existential book because it talks a lot about my philosophy of life, and so I am biased because I'm a Christian and so there is some referencing there. But you can call it God or you can call it the creator of the universe or whatever your higher power is, it doesn't really matter, because there is a spirit inside of us and a light, and that is to be of service to others. And a mechanic is a service to me because they change my oil, they fix my tires, they repair my car. Everyone really is in the service business. Every business is a service business, because you are providing a service for someone else and that's why we are a community on this planet and we are one people that are supposed to be contributing to each other in some kind of a way. It's a book about hope. You're not a victim of your biology. There are so many things that we can do to be healthier. It just covers a lot of ground, but it's from a very high level and it gives you things to think about and resources, and there's no condemnation.
Speaker 2:I was old school. I've been a dentist for 46 years. We used to be. You're not flossing. Well, if you would floss your teeth, you wouldn't have all this bleeding kind of thing. That was the old school way, and now we've learned different ways. The bottom line is that we have to give the patients hope and we have to give them grace. We have to say, hey, you didn't know any better, and now you're going to learn better and you're going to do better. It's mostly a motivational book about life and it's a hope-generating exploration of ideas and topics that kind of make you think and make you kind of evaluate okay, where am I in this area? And so it's just planting seeds of hope and giving resources of where you can go to get more information and do a deeper dive.
Speaker 1:I love the planting seeds. I love that to where, when you talk about just building hope, there are so many people out there that need that motivation to just wake up and to kind of touch base on multiple facets of just being a human. When we're pouring into ourselves and dentistry we always talk about like education and constant learning, but there are other things as being a human that we need to pour into, and it sounds like you touch base on these other things that we need to focus on as we grow as a person so that we can have fulfillment. I just I'm I'm excited to read a book. I already bought one. We'll have the link on where you can go to purchase Janet's book in these show notes.
Speaker 1:I have just been so blessed with this interview, with the transparency of opening your business, kind of going through that process and your journey, and then, of course, now, with all the things that you've learned and engaging with all these people, you have a book coming out. What an amazing career. I am just so thankful that you took the time to be here with me on the Dental Bun Podcast to share your story, janet Well thank you for asking me.
Speaker 2:I'm just thankful that you had me.
Speaker 1:How can we? How can we reach you if someone has questions or just wants to visit with you? What is the best way to contact you?
Speaker 2:Text me and we'll make an appointment. My phone number is my cell phone for my business. I'm to practitioners, public patients, anybody. Time is short. I'm 62. And I feel like I still have so much to give to the world that I want to be available to whoever might need my help.
Speaker 1:Well, there you have it. If you're interested in holistic dental hygiene, have questions about anything and caring for your patients, just want to meet a good person, connect with Janet Once again. I'll have all her information in the show notes. So thank you everyone for joining us here today on the Dental Bun Podcast. Bye.