Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep. # 55 From Psychology to Dentistry: Dr. Kathryn Frey's Journey in Family Practice and Embracing Change
What happens when you blend family ties with professional passion? We sit down with Dr. Kathryn Frey, who shares her remarkable journey from psychology major to joining her father-in-law, Dr. Elliot Frey, in their thriving family dental practice in Wyckoff, New Jersey. Dr. Frey opens up about the dynamics of working within a close-knit team committed to personalized patient care and navigating the challenges of accepting insurance in a competitive environment. Learn how their practice stands out with a comprehensive range of services and a firm grasp on the latest dental technologies, ensuring that patient care is always front and center.
Our conversation with Dr. Frey is not just about dentistry; it's a heartfelt story about embracing change and finding fulfillment. Discover how a move from Massachusetts to New Jersey and a significant career shift led to unexpected joy in the world of dentistry. With flexible hours and emergency care, the practice adapts to the fast-paced modern world while maintaining its community roots. As we reflect on the impact of local businesses, Dr. Frey's story serves as a testament to the power of resilience and dedication. Tune in and consider nominating your cherished local enterprise for a chance to be featured in upcoming episodes!
Elliot Frey, DMD
Dr. Kathryn Frey
11 Wyckoff Ave Wyckoff, NJ, United States, New Jersey 07481
(201) 445-4144
dentist2thestars@gmail.com
wyckoffnjdentist.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Good Neighbor Podcast coming to you live from Bergen County, in the snowy and cold environment of Harrington Park, which is on the other side of Bergen County, from Wyckoff, new Jersey, where our guest today, dr Katherine Frye, is joining us from. Welcome, dr Frey.
Speaker 3:Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Kathryn, she is new to the practice. So the name of the practice, not to be confusing, is Elliot Frey DMD. But tell us what the relationship is between having the same last name and why you just joined the practice.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, so I'm Dr Catherine Fry and Dr Elliot is my father-in-law. He's the practice owner and has been in that location in Wyckoff for over 40 years.
Speaker 2:Wow, Wow, yeah. So you know there's a lot of dentists, a lot of dental practices in Wyckoff. I know this because one of the magazines that I publishes goes to the community of Wyckoff and I'm always somewhat shocked because some towns are not like this. But there are a lot of dental, some within walking distance, Like you just go, you know, 20 feet down the road and you're in another one, and then across the street there's another one. So how has your father-in-law managed to be successful and be in business for almost 40 years?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question and it is funny I do see that with dental offices in several different communities, it seems like there's pockets where there's one every couple of blocks, so you do have to try to stand out a bit.
Speaker 3:So, like I said, dr Elliott's been there for 40 years and I think the most important thing is that he built such an incredible team. He has two staff members who've been with him for over 25 years and the biggest thing also is that he tries to personalize the practice so much he cares about each patient, really knows them well and we're a small group. It's a small family business. We have two dentists, two hygienists, two assistants, two receptionists and I think that that's key keeping that small team where we really know each other and know the patients well, and I think that's what helps us stand out, that we really know each other and know the patients well, and I think that's what helps us stand out, that we really are personalizing the care and we know patients' unique situations, whether it's financial constraints or complex medical conditions. We need to be talking to their doctors or they have a tough schedule with work, things like that. We really try to work around that and make ourselves available.
Speaker 2:Now one of the you just mentioned. You know financial and insurance. So one of the trends I'm seeing, if you want to call it a trend, is that a lot of dental offices stopped taking insurance. Like they'll. You know, you can file out a network but they're not going to take Delta, metlife, which I have, or Horizon United. So your practice does accept insurance.
Speaker 3:We do. We do accept insurances and I understand why so many dentists do not. It does complicate things a bit and sometimes dictates the treatments that patients are willing to accept.
Speaker 3:right, Because they want to go by what's covered rather than often what they really need and what's best for them. So it does complicate things, but we do want to continue offering these insurances because it often is what gets patients in the door. You know, they know that they have their routine exam and their cleaning coming up and that's so important to keep going on with routine care. So we do like to accept the insurances for that reason to make sure patients are covered and can still come in and see us every six months.
Speaker 2:Right. And then, aside from that, even though, like you mentioned, sometimes it dictates the type of treatment they get, your practice does offer a whole kind of list of different services, right From restorative and general dentistry.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, we cover the full scope of general dentistry, you know routine exams, cleanings, everything from fillings, crowns, bridges, root canals, extractions, whitening and veneers and all of that. So, yes, there are always options, even within constraints. You know, sometimes someone will say I've hit my insurance maximum for the year. What can we do and we can talk through? You know these are your options here. This is what we recommend, and we'll figure out what's best for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now are veneers covered by insurance.
Speaker 3:They are not often covered by insurance. That's usually considered, considered cosmetic.
Speaker 2:Cosmetic right. I mean, as with anything you know, plastic surgery and stuff like that it's rarely covered.
Speaker 3:Right the elective. Things can be tough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be great if it was Right. So tell me a little bit more about yourself. So you didn't grow up in New Jersey, you're from New England, new England.
Speaker 3:Yes, from Massachusetts. Yeah, so I grew up in Massachusetts. I'm also the child of a dentist. My father is an orthodontist. He does braces. So I never had any interest in dentistry growing up at all. Quite the opposite. I would assist, you know, and help out in my father's office on the summer, during the summer and over the weekends whenever they needed me. Had no interest in it. I went to school to study psychology and then one summer back home working, I said, oh no, I kind of like this.
Speaker 3:When I was volunteering at my dad's office and I said, oh, you know, I'm too far into my psychology degree here. That's okay, and I continued on, graduated with my degree, found a job in Washington DC, but I just couldn't shake the feeling that I was in the wrong field. So I ended up going back to school, which my father was very excited about originally to pursue orthodontics.
Speaker 3:Like him, I wanted to go into ortho, but about halfway through the program I realized I liked general dentistry more. I was able to do a broader variety of procedures through the day, whereas ortho is so much more of a singular focus. So, that's how I ended up in dentistry and then, through that process of going back to school, met my now husband, and he was also the child of a dentist, funnily enough. So ended up working out. You know perfectly for me to join forces with Dr Elliot long-term.
Speaker 2:So what was it that made you change, Like the one time, the one summer you're working with your dad, where some kind of switch went off? It said yeah, I could really enjoy doing this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I really enjoyed how much you could connect with the patients, and I was studying psychology. Of course you're connecting with the patients as well, but it's a much different relationship. Whereas with dental patients especially in ortho you see them so frequently, Patients are coming in once a month.
Speaker 3:You really, really get to know them and their family. Often it's families with multiple children that are all in middle school. You know that age to be getting braces, so you really can be with a family for 10 years sometimes, as they're bringing in all the sequential children. I liked the close relationships and just being able to show someone their new smile, have someone gain confidence. It was just very, very rewarding work and I liked the hands on aspect of it as well. There's a lot of mechanics and art involved in dentistry and that was something I wasn't getting in psychology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, psychology, I always felt it must be tough to listen to people's problems all day long. Yes, and the anguish some people go through and then not take that baggage home with you, right, it's a different kind of client interaction.
Speaker 3:Right, it takes a special type of provider.
Speaker 2:Like you said, for the moment, listen people to. You know going to the dentist may not be high on your list of things you want to do but at the same time you know most times you walk out you feel better, as you said, if you're improving your smile. Definitely Dealing with a cavity that's been hurting you right, it's kind of instant gratification whereas when you work with the psychologist it's it's a long-term process.
Speaker 2:That definitely yes, years, yeah, yeah, so I mean. So what is it like working for your father-in-law? Um, you know that's always a dynamic. I speak to a lot of, uh, family businesses, you know, whether it's husband and wife or generational. So what is that like?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I really hit the jackpot with my in-laws. I don't know many people that would like to work with their in-laws, all day. But working with Dr Elliott has been awesome. We share a very similar dental philosophy, I think you would say we treat our patients similarly and we also understand that there are some patients who they don't want much work done.
Speaker 3:They may not go with the very first treatment that we're recommending. But we both like to sit down and say, okay, how can we make this work? What would you like to do? What's important to you? So I think that's been very important that we approach dentistry in similar ways. So, and we like to sit down and look at things together. You know he has 40 years of experience before I became a dentist, so we can bounce ideas off of each other.
Speaker 3:Whereas, you know, I was more recently schooled, I've seen a lot of the newer technology and the new things that are coming out, so we we've enjoyed sitting down and going through cases together.
Speaker 2:So let's speak to that with the newer technology, because I know, um, you know, when there's a, when you hear that, oh, this guy's been in practice for 40 years. There's one dentist that I know that my wife goes to and it looks like her equipment hasn't been updated since the 1970s. My wife goes to and it looks like her equipment hasn't been updated since the 1970s. It kind of scares you a little bit, Right, yeah, and there's a lot of new technology that makes it less painful for patients, Certainly x-rays, the way you could do those kind of 180 x-rays now with your head sitting in that you could explain it to me better than I'm trying to butcher it.
Speaker 2:How has your staff like over the 40 years or so? How has the office evolved with technology?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So that's something I think Dr Fry did a really good job of is keeping current with everything he goes. We're actually going to one tonight. He goes to, you know, all of the local CE courses. He really keeps up with being current with the technology. There were things that even when I came fresh out of school that he introduced to me that I had never seen. One of the best things I think that we have and that we get good feedback about is he has a single tooth anesthesia system that, instead of you know if we're working on a tooth on the lower right, typically you know the way to do to do it right. Your whole face is numb, you have the drooping lip and you're drooling and all of that this we're able to target each tooth and you go home.
Speaker 3:You know, you may have a little numbness, we'll tell you. We'll tell you to chew on the other side, but you're not having that profound anesthesia of the whole side of the face like you're drooling or you're.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you're a Seinfeld fan, but there's a funny episode with Kramer.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's been great. He's really kept up with that and the x-rays like you were mentioning. That's huge. They've really the size of the sensors. The pieces that are going into the mouth are much smaller, much easier than they used to be for the x-rays and, in terms of safety, the amount of radiation is so negligible.
Speaker 3:And that's something patients worry about as well, that we're able to educate them on. You really are not putting yourself at risk here. It is so small and the ones that do go all the way around the head the panoramic X-ray, like you were stating always make it very easy Nothing to bite on, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then do you get to see the x-rays on screen when you're in the office with you or Dr Fry?
Speaker 3:Yes, we can pull them right up. You know there's a computer monitor in every operatory. The patient can see the x-ray. We recently got a new intraoral camera that we can take a picture of the tooth. Put it up on the screen so that you know. Last tooth way in the back.
Speaker 2:You can't see the cavity. That's there, but here I can show it to you and have you understand. And that's when I appreciate you being a dentist, because I look inside my mouth and I'm like oh. God, no, thank you. I was explaining to my son, who's 11, he has not had a cavity yet, but talking about dental hygiene and I had a lot of cavities as a kid and I said you do not want to have that, that sound of the drill, or even just the Novocaine, I don't even think you use Novocaine anymore whatever, but that needle in your mouth.
Speaker 2:And I've had some bad dentists. You know where my jaw was like. I couldn't open my mouth for a couple of days, or at least a day, because of the way they shot the you know the needle into my mouth. So I'm trying to tell them look, you do not want to go Right.
Speaker 3:Some good scare tactic yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and he recently had an appointment with an orthodontist and they did one of those x-rays and they could show him his whole mouth and it was pretty cool Right.
Speaker 2:And that's great because when we were talking ahead of time and doing some research, that was one of the questions me as a potential patient, like how up to speed are you with the newer technology. But I think it's also great that your father-in-law has been in business for 40 years and now he's hiring a somewhat recent graduate. I want to go back to graduating because this is going to go a little bit off topic, but we have a lot of people who listen to the show, that are entrepreneurs or starting their own business. And I mean, you went to college for four years to become a psychologist. Was it four years or there's more to it than that?
Speaker 3:I had done four years at the point where I made the switch.
Speaker 2:So, yes, four years, so four years you graduated. Now you're working down in DC and now you have to go back to school. For how many years?
Speaker 3:So dental school itself is four years, but there are prerequisite courses that you need to take to be able to apply to dental school, which I didn't have. I had that hadn't overlapped with my psychology major. So I did two years of schooling just to be able to apply to dental school and then the four years of dental school. So I went back for six years.
Speaker 2:So in all in all, you did 10 years of secondary or higher education, yeah, so it was all worth it, but it was a long road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's amazing and I think that it uncovers the passion you have because to say and at the time you admitted, like when you first thought about it it's like, well, I'm already deep into my psychology program here, I'm not going to change. But then you think the older generations of people in their careers, like stuck with the career, because this is what I do, even though they hate to go to work every day, right, wfan? And they're saying yeah, how many people are calling in sick on Monday after the Superbowl? And then there was a comment like yeah, imagine, you know, if you hate your job, you know you're probably more likely to call in sick, and how many people really just get stuck.
Speaker 2:And they do something because this is what I studied. I spent all this money or time or for whatever other reason, and you had the courage really to say you know what, no, this is not. Um. You know what I really feel like I'm called to do and yeah, well, thank you.
Speaker 3:It was definitely a big, a big decision, but one that I'm so happy that I made. And it was just undeniable how much more I enjoyed going to work when I was even just assisting with my father, my father. So I couldn't, I couldn't really deny it anymore and I knew I needed to make, to make a change, and the second round of, you know, making a change was deciding.
Speaker 2:I think I like general dentistry more than ortho and that would require a move, move to New Jersey to pursue the opportunity with my father-in-law, with Dr Elliott, and I was going to say, and it also required sacrifice, moving from Massachusetts to New Jersey, and you're probably not a Giant or Jet fan.
Speaker 3:I'm not. My husband is Okay. Which one Big Giants fan?
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah Well he's probably not happy today.
Speaker 3:No, no, he's not.
Speaker 2:I'm a Jet fan, so I'm not a New England Patriot fan by any means. Right, that's great. So where are you located in Wyckoff and how would they find you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we're located at 11 Wyckoff Ave. We're directly across from TD Bank, right by the Acme there. You can also find us on Facebook. Visit our website. Our website is wyckoffnJDentist. com and we are accepting new patients. If anyone wants to give us a call, they can call the office at 201-445-4144.
Speaker 2:And what are your business hours? Are you open on the weekends?
Speaker 3:So we are not open on the weekends. We are open Monday through Thursday. Wednesdays is our late day. We have evening hours to accommodate those who need to come after work, where they're 12 to eight, the rest of the week, where they're nine to six. But we are available on the weekends if there's an emergency. We don't have an answering service or anything like that. All of our calls go directly to our receptionist. Our office manager monitors those over the weekend. I just went in Saturday morning. Someone was up all night with a toothache. We went in and met them, did an emergency root canal. So for as needed you know we are we are able to come in on the weekends. Both Dr Elliott and I live very close to the office and we're willing to do that.
Speaker 2:So before we go, I want to go into the root canal thing, because so now are. Are there other types of dental practices that just focus on root canal? Because I know there's. There's periodontics, endodontics, maxillofacial, something or other. You know orthodontists, so is it rare for general dental practice such as yours to do root canals, or is that sometimes referred out to people that just do root canals? What does oral surgery deal with and is that someone that would sometimes do root canals?
Speaker 3:Right. So the oral surgeons they are dealing more with extractions. Or if we were to find any lesion that we were concerned about malignancy, oral cancer, something like that we would send to the oral surgeons For the root canals.
Speaker 3:the endodontists are the root canal specialists and yes, they do only root canals. There are certainly patients that we refer to the endodontist. That's most likely. If it's a molar tooth way in the back, has multiple roots, multiple canals, they can be more involved. So for that we'll often send to a specialist. But for any more anterior teeth we do those right in our office and I'm not sure that that it's rare. There are certainly general dentists that will do that. But there are also general dentists who refer out all of their root canals. It's really a matter of preference and our office.
Speaker 3:Dr Elliott does not do any root canals, so those would all come to me. But I do enjoy the endo yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. So, catherine, I mean this was great. Is there anything else you'd like to add that we haven't touched on? I mean, I think obviously we talked why you're a dentist. It's clear. You know, you guys have a welcoming office where it's a small staff but people come in and it's welcoming, it's calming and you know, I think it's funny, you guys have a joke of the month on your website too.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's all, dr Fry, I've been asked so many times by patients when they're meeting me for the first time. Oh, do you tell jokes too?
Speaker 2:Oh, do you tell jokes too?
Speaker 3:He always has a joke ready. Yes, so I got to work on, work on my routine a little bit, but no, I think, I think that that you touched on really all the major, major points of our office and I think what makes us special. Yeah that's great. All right, catherine. So thank you so much for being on the show and just we'll right back. We're just going to have Chuck take us out, alright, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thank you thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.