Voices in Health and Wellness

Building a Patient-First Pediatric Dental Network in Rural Pennsylvania with Dr Alesia Walsh

• Dr Andrew Greenland • Season 1 • Episode 42

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A stage 3 cancer diagnosis during dental school could have ended a career before it began. For Dr Alesia Walsh, it lit a fuse that now powers four paediatric dental clinics serving mostly underserved families across Northeastern Pennsylvania—without sacrificing kindness, safety or standards. We talk about why she traded a big‑city career for her hometown, how COVID exposed a deep access gap, and the patient‑first systems that let her team treat every child the same whether they’re on Medicaid, private insurance or self‑pay.

Alesia opens the door to her morning sedation list—six or seven oral conscious sedation cases run like a calm operating theatre—while a second paediatric dentist keeps hygiene and smaller restorative care moving. We unpack the choreography behind that flow: ten‑minute staggered blocks, Slack‑based operatory updates, AI‑driven insurance verification, and a remote billing partner that frees clinicians to focus on the child in the chair. She’s candid about the hard parts too: offloading HR to protect clinical energy, hiring as the true capacity constraint, and the delicate balance between standardising protocols and keeping them simple enough to use across four sites.

Beyond operations, we get into culture and policy. Alesia explains why green coats beat white coats for flattening hierarchies, how office leads and equity opportunities keep each location aligned, and why she resists DSO production pressures in favour of access, empathy and outcomes. We also bust a few TikTok‑fueled myths—from U‑shaped toothbrushes to magic rinses—and make a clear case for insurance coverage of hospital anaesthesia for complex paediatric dentistry when restraint isn’t humane. If you care about healthcare leadership, dental public health, or building teams that scale compassion without losing it, this conversation will stick with you.

If this resonated, follow the show, leave a rating, and share it with a colleague who cares about access and paediatric oral health.

Guest Biography

Dr. Alesia Walsh, DMD, is the co-founder of Sprout Pediatric Dental, a growing pediatric dental network serving families across Northeastern Pennsylvania. A native of the region, Dr. Walsh returned home after completing her training in Philadelphia to address the gap in pediatric oral health access for rural and low-income communities.

After surviving ovarian cancer during dental school, she’s become an advocate for empathy-driven care and for creating dental practices that treat every child — regardless of background — with equal attention and dignity. Today, Sprout operates four offices, employs nearly 100 team me

About Dr Andrew Greenland

Dr Andrew Greenland is a UK-based medical doctor and founder of Greenland Medical, specialising in Integrative and Functional Medicine. Drawing on dual training in conventional and root-cause medicine, he helps individuals optimise their health, performance, and longevity — with a particular interest in cognitive resilience and healthy ageing.

Voices in Health and Wellness explores meaningful conversations at the intersection of medicine, lifestyle, and human potential — featuring clinicians, scientists, and thinkers shaping the future of healthcare.

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Dr Andrew Greenland :

Welcome back to Voices in Health and Wellness. This is the podcast where we spotlight leaders in healthcare who are balancing patient care with the challenges of running a modern practice. Today I'm joined by Dr. A lesia Walsh, a pediatric dentist and the founder of Sprout Pediatric Dental in Lake Horiel in Pennsylvania. Alesia's journey is nothing short of inspiring. She overcame a battle with ovarian cancer during dental school, and that resilience has carried into her work today, where she's dedicated to serving families in the community, including many from underserved and low-income backgrounds. Alicia, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the show.

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Lovely. So maybe we could start at the top. Could you share a little bit about your role at Sprout Pediatric Dental and what inspired you to launch your own practice?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Yeah, so I am a pediatric dentist. This is my hometown that I'm back practicing in. I grew up in this like Scranton, Northeastern Pennsylvania area, and moved to Philadelphia for dental school, for my training, residency, all that. And, you know, when I came out of school looking for a job, um I kind of wanted to stay in the big city, but there was something that felt compelling to move back to my hometown and serve that population. And I met my now partner and uh close friend and colleague, um, Dr. Katie Slosher. Um, she had a small office in the area. And as I was moving, you know, would potentially move back, she was opening a larger office. So it just seemed to work very natural that, you know, two doctors, bigger office, serve more patients. So I ended up moving back home to serve this population. And that was right in like August of 2019. So, right as kind of I was getting, you know, my sedation and my hospital privileges and everything worked out, we kind of hit COVID times then that spring. Um, and that was just like really eye-opening at the need that this area had for a healthcare provider and just the complete lack of I mean, access to care, kind of compared to being in Philadelphia. Um, no children's hospitals, um, not a lot of providers that would do like in-office sedation. So I feel like that's where I really saw the need. And then once we reopened after COVID, there was just this huge backlog of patients that hadn't been seen, you know, procedures that we had been putting off. Um, but then also children that had been home, had different diets, more grazing, eating, snacking throughout the day, and that put this population at like a higher risk for developing cavities. So all of that kind of combined in a year created this just large number of children that had these immense dental needs. There were two of us, maybe 15 or 20 hygienists and assistants. And we realized that we couldn't really do it on our own. So we really started networking with our residency, meeting doctors at conferences, national conferences, um, finding people who shared our same values, um, just of this empathy, this high quality care, and serving a population. You know, we see a lot of um Medicaid, state insurance patients, but we also see a lot of private patients, private insurances, self-pay. And the biggest thing in our model is that every child is treated the same. So, you know, we see a lot of patients a day. We're very efficient in our scheduling, but it kind of grew beyond us. So in the in the last couple of years, we've brought on seven other pediatric dentists, and our staff has grown to now we have just under 100 employees. We have a human resources department now to manage our employees versus the doctors doing it, so that we are really able to focus on patient care and doctor things, being a doctor rather than just like those business owner components and standardizing protocols, um, being as efficient as possible, keeping up with the latest technology, incorporating AI whenever we can just to deliver this high quality care to patients that are in need of it.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

That's amazing what you've created. I'm super, super impressed. Would you mind taking us back um a little bit further to dental school if you would? And um tell us a bit about how your cancer diagnosis shaped your outlook and your approach to dentistry because I know it was quite a sort of seminal time for you.

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Yes, yes. Um, so I guess when I was in college, I felt like I was very achievement driven. I was a double major, I did the honors program, I wrote a thesis. You know, just it's like you go to college so you can go to dental school. You go to dental school so you can get a job, and everything felt like it was very structured. And I started dental school right after college. And after my first year of dental school, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and it was stage three. Uh, I had to have surgery, I had to have chemo, so I had to take a year off of school, and I kind of just did what I had to do to survive. And I didn't really think about the time that was passing really until after I was wrapping up chemo, and I kind of realized that my class had moved on without me and I would be starting into a new class. And obviously, I'm happy that I had such a successful outcome. I had such amazing doctors and nurses and people looking out for me throughout the process so that I could really focus on my health. Um, but I feel like one of the biggest obviously people that were impacted by this were my parents. And so when I returned to dental school, I kind of discovered the field of pediatric dentistry. I had some great mentors along the way. I did some mission trips in Peru and in Mexico for a couple summers. And so that really kind of solidified that just um direct patient care, my love for pediatric dentistry. And I feel like pediatric dentistry, the biggest component that I can bring in for my cancer journey is obviously the way it feels to be treated as a patient, having been a patient, but it's not just the patient, it's the patient's family, it's the patient's parents, and it's having everyone feel comfortable and trusting and just knowing that their child is in good hands. So just kind of the big picture, treating treating everyone that's in the room, not just the child.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Got it. And in terms of your that personal health journey that you very kindly shared, I mean, how does it at the ground level influence how you connect with the patients and their parents? What is it that you do differently that you perhaps wouldn't have done had you not been through that? That's a good question.

Dr Alesia Walsh:

That's a good question. Um, I feel like I am very intuitive, and I feel like I've learned to rely on my intuition a lot and just kind of reading the room and knowing what each parent, each grandparent that brings a child in needs. So it's two parts, right? I'm a pediatric dentist, so I treat baby teeth. And it's the kid being nervous in the chair and calming them down and helping them get over that anxiety so they have a good experience and they continue to like coming here and they don't, you're not screaming, crying coming through the door. But then it's also the parent who entrusts their child's health to you, and they're scared and they feel responsible for the kids' cavities, or they don't want their kids to have bad experiences like maybe they had in the past. So it's just helping them to feel comfortable and I guess like not overlooking that part. When I started as a pediatric dentist, I wasn't a parent. So I had to kind of get that like mom knowledge from somewhere. And I just rely, I just look to my parents as examples of how they, you know, helped make me feel comfortable, how they made decisions for me, how they felt comfortable with providers. So I just want all of the families that come into our doors to feel that comfortable feeling that safety that they're gonna be getting the highest quality care and I'm gonna do whatever I have to do and do the best thing for the child. Every decision I make is for the best decision for the child. So whether they agree with my treatment plan or not, I'll kind of work with them a little bit to see if we can kind of find some middle ground sometimes. But ultimately, they know that what I do is for the best of the child.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Amazing. Um, so what does a typical day look like for you at the moment? I know no two days in this world are going to be the same, but I can kind of get a sense of you know, you've created this sort of massive operation with a hundred, hundred staff. Obviously, there's clinical responsibilities, there's leadership responsibilities. There is probably some administrative and um I know you've talked about you had other people to do some of this stuff, but what is what does your typical day look like for you at the moment?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

I am at one of our four offices. We get our schedules kind of monthly. Um, typically I'm scheduled in the mornings. I kind of get in um a little bit later than the first doctor that comes in. So I primarily do these oral conscious sedation procedures. So I'm scheduled about six or seven of them from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. And I solely focus on those. The other doctor that's in the office with me, the other pediatric dentist, she runs the hygiene columns, the cleanings, the smaller operative procedures, which um is great because it allows me to focus on the sedation and being safe and um doing the best for the child. And so that's usually the half day. Then some days I will do admin work in the afternoon. Some days I'll see the hygiene patients and work with the other staff members kind of throughout the afternoon. Um, we do a lot of like lunches with the leadership team that we've created. Each office, we're kind of, you know, we take a hygienist who's been with us for a couple of years, really knows our mission statement, really embodies our core values, and work with them through um, you know, maybe different challenges that they face throughout the day with managing staff and just kind of coaching, talking to them, um, a lot of that so that they can manage a lot of those more smaller issues so that you know you're not constantly getting people at your door, like, hey, I have a question, so-and-so said this, so-and-so's room wasn't stocked, like people um kind of it doesn't get to us until it's like a bigger problem, which kind of helps us focus on the patients. So it's just a lot of like mentoring and things like that, too, throughout the day.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Cool. What are the um the biggest shifts you've seen in pediatric dentistry over the last few years?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

I feel like um pediatric dentistry is becoming kind of corporate. Um, it a lot of these smaller offices are being bought out by these dental service organizations, these DSOs, and essentially they're being run by, you know, no offense to anybody, but individuals that don't always have a dental background, and so much as they have more of that like finance background, that business background, which is great. But to me, I feel like I like having the dentist background, the patient care background, and that's kind of what really guides our decisions. Um, because you know, this this the patients are there, the money comes, like all of that. And so not having production goals as your goal for the day, but rather having just like how many patients can we see in a day? Because like this parent took three different public transportations and walked two miles to get here and it took them two hours. So, can we accommodate them for treatment today? It's like it's always doing things like that. Um, and I feel like when a lot of the other models that I see, um, which is where pediatric dentistry is heading, um, don't always allow for a lot of flexibility like that, which our practice does allow for flexibility. And um there's definitely a big shift with this like in-office sedation, general anesthesia, a lot of the rules are changing. So we're trying to keep up with things like that, but it's definitely a challenge for us being in this more rural area where patients don't have the access to care. The children's hospitals are two for two hours away, so they can't, they just can't get there.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

So you'd want to resist that kind of um corporate takeover. You know, you build up something which you have a person you're personally invested in, you have your kind of ethical framework that you like to work within. What is it that um makes people go into this then? Is I is it a money thing? I mean, what's the kind of the deal here?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

I think that the people just feel fulfilled and they feel like work isn't work when they come. Like they work and the people that work with us, they work hard. But the biggest thing that we like to focus on is like we're all a team. And it's not like we're the doctors in the white coats that come in. We wear green coats and we are kind of like equal with the with the staff. And I think that that just makes people feel like valued and important and that they have like just as important of a role, whether that's the front desk that greets the patient when they come in, whether it's the assistant that walks them in the back, whether it's the hygienist that cleans their teeth or the doctor that checks their teeth. Like everyone in that office creates this experience for these patients. And I feel like collectively it just makes it sets us apart and it makes us unique. Um yeah.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Okay. And how have um family expectations and awareness of oral health changed in recent years from your perspective?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Um, I just feel like there is a lot of stuff on social media now, a lot of stuff on TikTok, a lot of new changes in, you know, guidelines on fluoride, a lot of new products that come out that just make things try to make things easier for kids. And so there's this like weird toothbrush thing that they have in two different sizes, and you're supposed to just like put it in your mouth. It's like a mouth guard, and you just lay it there, and it's supposed to just like brush your teeth for you. But everyone has a different size mouth and it doesn't fit everyone's mouth the same, so it doesn't brush the whole tooth. And so people are just looking for something like this to make it easier to brush their kids' teeth. But it's like all you need is a toothbrush, the soft bristle toothbrush, and the right amount of toothpaste, and you can do the same thing for two minutes. Um, and I just feel like people are kind of looking for like an easy way out, looking for a mouthwash, it'll just prevent cavities. But it's like just brush your teeth for two minutes twice a day. So, you know, eat a good diet. Some people haven't prone to cavities, but you know, for the most part, these like new technology things are just a waste of money.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Basically gimmicks is what you're saying.

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Yes, yes, and they look cool and like the kids want them, but it's like no.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Are there any um challenges unique to um serving underserved populations that you wish more providers um understood?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Um that's a good question. Uh just dealing with insurance companies, just dealing with like what you can bill, collecting. You know, it's just it's difficult to get these patients to show up on the schedule. You can't charge them if they don't show up. You also don't want to overbook because you want to deliver the same great experience to everyone. So it's definitely a challenge. Um especially because our office sees about like 85% of this underserved population. But I wish other providers understood how rewarding it was to not I don't know, not to sound judgmental, but like discriminate for lack of a better word, or just to kind of like serve any patient that walks through your door like they're just another human being with like a need. And obviously, there's people that we can't see, there's financial limitations to things, but we really do our best to work with like payment plans, what the parent could afford that day, and just figuring out something for them. And I just wish a lot of the providers, um I wish everyone would see everyone, you know what I mean? Because it's just it's it's not always the kids' fault that they're in that position, you know. It's just so you kind of have a little bit more empathy for it when it's they show up an hour late or you know, something like that that can be frustrating to your day.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

I presume you don't do this because it's um it's harder work, perhaps not as lucrative, perhaps as the work you're doing. I'm just trying to say that.

Dr Alesia Walsh:

That's exactly what it is. It's you know, I feel like I don't want to like say it like that because a lot of people in you know, bigger cities, more affluent areas, they can like charge cash basically, and they have people coming to their doors and they're busy and they're full. But like in our practice, like just we are so focused on efficiencies and systems and just maximizing time and maximizing, you know, it's not necessarily that I need to do all the things I have trained assistants and trained hygienists that can help me. And I think that makes me more efficient and that makes me able to serve more patients. So essentially it's like, you know, the money comes if you're just efficient and you do the right thing for the right reasons. So I feel like I'm I'm very um, you know, happy with the results of what we do. So I wish other providers could see that too.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Actually, on that subject of efficiencies, can you talk a little bit about the way in which your practice has used technology or digital communications to get to get these efficiencies? Because clearly this kind of the area that you or the model that you're in, you've got to be efficient because you have got all these other bottlenecks elsewhere. There's a whole thing with insurance and billing and what have you. How do you use technology to help?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Yeah, so we are insurance and our billing, some of it's done in office, a lot of our insurance stuff, but we've used a lot of insurance verifications that are AI. We do a lot of our billing through a third party that is remote. We all of our inner office communication is all digital. We don't leave post-its on people's desks, we use Slack channels, we obviously our software is digital, digital x-rays. Um, and a big thing is we use like digital interoffice communication where we kind of send messages to each other, and that's like on every computer. So for like every stage of the appointment in like every single room, you kind of always have a pulse on what's going on. And there are hygiene leads, there are clinical assistant leads that guide the doctors where to go. All the appointments are really staggered in 10-minute intervals. So it's like, you know, a patient comes in at two o'clock, at 2 10, at 2 20, and it's a one-hour blocked appointment, a 30-minute and a 30-minute. So kind of as you're finishing up one, you're starting the next. And it's just kind of like if it's just this flow that you get into once the day starts, where you're just working very harmoniously, and you have team members to help you. If you get stuck somewhere, you have the other doctor to um reach out to, you know, hey, I'm stuck in this room. This patient's taking me longer than I expected. Can you cover for me for five, 10 minutes? And there's always kind of that person to do that for you. So it's just makes things work very well.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Brilliant. Um so what would you say is perhaps one of the biggest challenges you've had to overcome in getting to this point where you've got all these efficiencies in? What's the kind of biggest thing that you've had to solve to make this operation the what it is today?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

That's a good question. Um I think a big thing that kind of pushed us in a good direction is having someone else that we can trust manage a lot of the administrative part and the human resources part. Because as we were growing, you know, there's just there's employee reviews to do, which we used to do. There are a lot of the hiring, firing we used to do. And we used to waste a lot of energy and tension on those conversations. Like, you know, you know, at the end of the day, you're gonna have to fire this person and you don't want to, and you have something written up, but then you know you have to read it at five o'clock. And I just feel like that's draining in the afternoon when you have a patient that came in an hour late, they're not cooperative, and mom wants the work done anyway, and then you know you have to fire this person at five o'clock. So that was very stressful. And I feel like now having this person in place who manages a lot of this, who works with a lot of this, these leadership teams, and not having to do these things um really helps me just focus on providing the dental work.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

So it's about the team, really. You've got the right people in there to kind of support your whole process. Yeah, who are the who are the key players then? I mean, you mentioned HR. Who are the other kind of main players in your um kind of management team that really make things work for you?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Yeah. So in each office, we have like two leads, we call them, and they work together kind of like in a yin-yang kind of relationship where they, you know, work with each other's strengths, with their weaknesses. You know, one person's good at managing call-offs in the morning, the other person has to get her kids to school. So they work together very well. Then this other person maybe can stay a little later and do the ordering versus the other person has to kind of get out. Um, just little things like that. And each office has this dynamic, and it's they're like the go-to people that if you have a problem, if you have a question, if a team member has an issue, like the team, the assistant doesn't go directly to the doctor. The assistant goes to their lead first with the question. And if the lead can't answer it, it gets escalated to the doctor. But it just helps streamline and keep things efficient, minimize the drama, um, and just makes everything pretty standardized. And the more standardized we are, I think the more simply things flow and things just kind of start to make sense. So once we have these like go-to people for these assistants, these hygienists, these front desk people, then um that really just takes a lot off our plate.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

So with the you've got this team in place, you've got various efficiencies in the way that you run your operation. Is there anything that you haven't quite sold yet? Anything which is a bottleneck or a challenge for you and your colleagues?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Um, I guess it's just it's people kind of falling back into their old habits. It's we do a lot of leadership training, a lot of mentoring, but you know, we want to see people grow within the company, start off as like a sterilization tech and then grow into a finance role. We want to see an assistant go to hygiene school and you know, continue her career. But sometimes there's people that just fall into like old habits. And as much as we try to tell them, be patient, your time is coming. People just like want more and they're impatient and they want it now and they want more money because you know, there's all these jobs on Indeed, and they find out they can make five more dollars if they go to the office down the street, and then they come to us and they're like, I'm gonna go here if you don't give me this, like just very demanding. And it's like, whoa, like it's not gonna be the same there, then go, you know what I mean? Like, and I just feel like there's a lot of that just like I don't know, lack of respect or just lack of patience and that like generation below mine, I think, where people just like want it and they want it now and they think they deserve it. And it's like, I showed up to work for the last four days, like I deserve a five-dollar increase. And it's like, no, you don't. So just a lot of like managing that, um, just expectations, um, and just that like other generation that I'm just beginning to see kind of come through.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

So, in a similar vein, if there was a m if you had a magic wand and you could fix one thing in your practice tomorrow, what would it be? Would it be that or would it be something a bit more fundamental?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Hmm. Probably not that. It's definitely just probably more of like a current issue. Um I just I don't know, like it's just a different, there's like a different feel in each of the offices, and it's just like different personalities. Um, some of the offices that we've had, two of the offices that we they're like our first offices, I just feel like function in a different way than the other two. And I don't really know what that is necessarily. They're like only half an hour, 40 minutes apart from each other. So geographically they're very similar. Um I guess just I would love to just like standardize things and have someone come through and kind of make these protocols. But sometimes in like trying to make standard, sometimes in trying to standardize things, making these standard operating protocols, sometimes we make things more confusing. So I guess just finding that like balance of standardization, but also clarity. Um, and just like having all the answers for like all the problems that we have, like right now, like, you know, I don't know, there's like too many calls coming through, or the patients aren't filling out their forms. What's the best like AI to do that? Like, what's the best software? And everyone wants to advertise all these different platforms, and then you're like comparing them all, and you don't know it until you try it. So it's almost like if there was just like a wizard that could just come in and like wave a wand and identify the problems without even having to identify them, would be the solution.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

I mean, how easy is it is to keep a handle on I think if you had four offices, don't you?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Yeah, yeah.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Um that are okay, they're close but still geographically disparate. I mean, yeah, how easy is it to keep a handle on everything that's going on across four sites when you know you're working, you know, you're pretty busy yourself in the work that you do.

Dr Alesia Walsh:

I mean, it's definitely challenging. It's something that like if I don't go to one office for two weeks, I kind of feel like I know I haven't been there. Um, so it's definitely has its challenges, but I think we're moving towards offering more doctors equity opportunities. And I think that makes us unique because if we have this lead doctor that's invested in the office, I think that that helps keep things in check a little bit better. And I think that that makes us unique because a lot of these bigger offices they might want to like pay big salaries to these doctors, but people like to feel like they're part of something and that like what they say or do matters. And I think it's very unique for our office to have like seven or eight pediatric dentists, doctors, females that all collectively want to work together and we don't get frustrated and we're like, well, I don't care what you like, I don't like what you're saying, so I'm just gonna go open my own office down the street. Um, I think that is very unique because we all know that we're better together than any of us would be separately. So I think that that is the direction that we're really trying to like focus on. So offering other doctors these ownership opportunities is definitely a way to like kind of stay ahead and keep a pulse on what's going on because you put someone in charge that you really trust and cares as much as you do.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

So um it was obviously a massive need for what you do, but if you had a sudden influx of 100 patients next week, what would be the first thing to break? And don't say you.

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Um I don't know. I feel like we have the rooms. I think the assistants and the staff, I think we just like need more manpower. We just need more like people to clean and sterilization. We just need more people to answer the phones, we need more people to check them in, we need more iPads, we just need more manpower. Um, because I think our offices are not running at its their complete full capacity because it's just that there's like the hiring that you just can't keep up with and turnover of employees. So I think that just manpower.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Okay.

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Yeah.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

And um obviously this has been a journey in what you've created, which is incredibly impressive. But if you were to do it all over again to know tomorrow, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently, if anything?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

I mean, honestly, I don't know if I would do anything differently. Um one of the biggest things is I really like doubted coming back to this area, which is like my hometown. I knew I always wanted to come back, but I was scared that when I did, if I didn't make the right decision in the right practice. That all of the like non-competes and contracts and all these problems would um come to fruition because I just assumed that I would like leave at some point. Um but I kind of always envisioned having like my own office, and I always thought it would be smaller. I never thought that I'd be like a part of something like this. Um and I just feel like having this big of an office with all these doctors also gives me like a ton of flexibility just to be a parent, um, to see my daughter for dinner two days a week, um, to see my husband, um, just to kind of do all those things that are also really important to me, um, have time with my family because other people are managing a lot of the um administrative work. Um, so I think that, you know, I always would say, like, oh, I could have done this on my own. I could open my own office, you know, I could have 10 great employees and have a tiny little office, but I don't think at the end of the day, like I would have just been like happy with that. There'd always be something else that I was chasing. And I feel like now this like growth, this ability to serve more patients is just exactly where I'm meant to be.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

So um what do you look for in terms of um metrics? In terms, I mean, obviously, you're a business owner, you've got four sites, there's lots of things going on. But what are you most focused on when you're looking at how things are going in your business from a metric point of view or outcome point of view or employment?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

That's a great question. That is something that we are really working on. Um, kind of this idea of a scorecard and having these, you know, five to ten metrics that if we were on a deserted island, I could still know how my practice is operating. Um, I feel like this was never really like a problem before, but maybe in the last like six months, I've we've kind of realized we're not necessarily like operating as efficiently as we could, maximizing each office. I mean, I feel like metrics right now that we focus on, we're just very much focused on like the good and the patient experience and the staff experience. I mean, we look at Google Reviews, um, just getting really good reviews is like a really big deal. We share those with our team. I think we do a good job at not getting a lot of bad reviews. If we get a bad review, which we do, like we deal with it, we talk to the parent, we say what can we do to make it better? Um, or we if they if it's just irreconcilable, then we just try to improve our system. So I think that's like a good metric that we've been using and just like uh staff satisfaction. We were trying to do more like surveys, more check-ins with our staff and make sure they're happy, you know, they don't feel overworked, they don't feel underappreciated. Um, so that's a big one. And then as far as like from like a financial standpoint, um that is an area that we are working with a lot of different like AI softwares now to kind of come up with these measurable goals and figure out what those numbers are. So we're working that towards that.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Cool. And what's um what's for the future of uh Sprout Pediatric Dental, perhaps over the next six to 12 months? Where are you looking to take things?

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Um, I guess we would really like to have each of these offices like operating very efficiently. And then with the idea that let's say we find another doctor in another remote part of our state, we can open up another location, maybe an hour or two away, a little bit further away. And it, you know, ideally you could say, like, oh yeah, have like a sprout office everywhere, kind of like a like a Chick-fil-A or a McDonald's, you know, but that might not be as possible. Um, but obviously it could be like a big goal. But I just think as we grow, as we have more locations, just maintaining that like our state, our same core values, our same ethics and standards, and just not growing too big where we um kind of lose control and quality goes down. So quality is very important.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Of course. And finally, um, is there any change that you would like to see in pediatric dentistry nationwide? If you could name one.

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Um I know there's a lot like going on now with um sedation, anesthesia uh guidelines, you know, what's covered by insurances, what's not. I know currently a lot of times the anesthesia for providing like dental treatment in a hospital is not covered because it's deemed not medically necessary. Um and I just feel like it is medically necessary because like the alternative is like holding a kid down and like doing treatment when they're not cooperative. Um, and so I think that that makes things like very prohibitive to a lot of parents. Um I think it's just like that access to care. It's like whether it's like a financial impediment, whether it's you know, uh location, that you know, transportation issue that they can't get to. I think that those are big problems. And I just think increasing that access to care would make things better and have help kids have like better experiences and prevent a lot of problems.

Dr Andrew Greenland :

Alicia, thank you so much for your time this afternoon. It's been wonderful talking to you, hearing about what you've created, the journey, the inspiration, uh, what you're doing in terms of serving underserved populations quite remarkable. And I'm really grateful for the honest conversation. So thank you so much.

Dr Alesia Walsh:

Thank you, thank you for the opportunity.