Dr. Jason Auerbach, a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon and CEO of MAX Surgical Specialty Management, shares three transformative lessons that shaped his practice.
- Build the experience. Patient and referral experiences extend beyond the procedure to include phone responsiveness, office environment, team communication, and how patients feel during stressful situations.
- Hire complementary talent. Surround yourself with experts in operations, finance, marketing, HR, and technology who understand their disciplines better than you do, then give them autonomy to lead.
- Balance metrics with mission. Track KPIs like production and collections, but equally value qualitative indicators such as team pride, referring doctor trust, emergency availability, and long-term reputation building.
- Avoid the founder trap. A business that requires your personal involvement in every decision isn't truly built -- it's just a demanding job that limits growth potential.
We recently sat down with Dr. Jason Auerbach, founder and CEO of MAX Surgical Specialty Management and founder of Riverside Oral Surgery, to talk about what has shaped his approach to running and growing an oral and maxillofacial surgery practice.
A board-certified surgeon, national speaker, and frequent contributor to Dental Economics, Auerbach also shares insights with a global audience through his @bloodytoothguy platform. Here are the three biggest lessons he says changed how he built his practice.
Build the experience, not just the practice.
Dr. Jason Auerbach.
In training, I thought being an excellent surgeon was the most important ingredient in building a successful oral surgery practice. Obviously, clinical excellence is nonnegotiable, but when I conceived of Riverside Oral Surgery, I focused on marrying hospitality and healthcare by defining and cultivating the optimal patient experience.
Over time, I confirmed that patients and referring doctors experience your practice through far more than the procedure itself. They experience how quickly the phone is answered, how they’re greeted, how the office looks and feels, whether you’re available when there’s a problem, how your team communicates, and how you make them feel during what can be an incredibly stressful experience.
At Riverside, we became obsessive about the patient and referral experience. I wanted the level of hospitality you’d expect from a great hotel combined with exceptional surgical care. When you start looking at every interaction through that lens, it changes the business. Patients remember it, referring doctors recognize it, and your team begins to understand that everyone in the organization is responsible for the experience.
Hire people who are great at the things you aren’t.
One of the biggest transitions for me as an entrepreneur was becoming aware that I didn’t need to be the smartest person in the room, and in many areas, I shouldn’t be. Surgeons are trained to take responsibility and solve problems ourselves, which can become a liability when you’re trying to build a business.
Growth really accelerated when I became intentional about surrounding myself with people whose skill sets complemented mine. Operations, finance, marketing, HR, technology: I wanted people in those seats who understood their disciplines better than I ever would.
The goal isn’t to hire people who think like you. It’s to build a team of people who bring capabilities you don’t have and then give them the autonomy to use them. That may sound cliché, but if the business can only function because you’re personally involved in every decision, you haven’t really built a business. You’ve built yourself a very demanding job.
Measure what matters, but don’t let the numbers become the mission.
I believe strongly in data. You should understand production, collections, case acceptance, referral patterns, staffing costs, profitability, and the other KPIs that tell you what’s happening inside your practice, but I’ve always believed, and even more now, that some of the most important indicators of a great practice don’t fit neatly into a spreadsheet.
Is your team proud to work there? Do referring doctors trust you enough to call you when something goes wrong? Will you see the emergency patient at 4:30 p.m. on Friday? Do patients feel like they matter? Are you building a reputation that compounds over years rather than maximizing this month’s numbers?
The quantitative metrics tell you how the business is performing today. The qualitative ones often tell you what the business will become tomorrow. I’ve always believed that if you focus relentlessly on doing the right things for patients, referring doctors, and your team, the financial results tend to follow.
Dr. Jason M. Auerbach is a nationally recognized oral and maxillofacial surgeon, healthcare entrepreneur, and thought leader in the business of specialty dentistry. Board certified by both the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and the National Dental Board of Anesthesiology, he has spent more than two decades performing complex surgical procedures while helping shape the future of surgeon-led healthcare.
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