Prevention is a Promise: How Apex Rewires Care, Communication, and Trust with Dr. Layla Lohmann-dental-patient-experience-satisfaction

Kinda Different returns with another candid, practical conversation about shifting from “watch and wait” to proactive prevention, using AI and visual tools to make conditions clear, and leading culture change that makes dental care more human for patients and teams.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, read the transcript below, or watch here:

What we cover

‍▸Why “primary care provider of the oral cavity” is more than a tagline
▸Moving from restorative-first to prevention-first across caries and perio
▸Using AI and dental health scans to replace persuasion with understanding
▸Shared decision making and plain-language scripts that raise trust
▸Culture change inside a multi-site group: coaching, accountability, and joy at work
▸Personal leadership growth that enables team growth
▸What “non-branded model” means for patient experience
▸Designing empowerment pathways for every role, not just doctors

Five takeaways

1. Prevention is a promise. When conditions are explained clearly and early, patients choose healthier paths without pressure.
2. Make the invisible visible. AI and health scans turn gray areas into understandable color, improving consent and confidence.
3. Language matters. Plain, non-minimizing descriptions plus shared decisions drive trust and raise case acceptance.
4. Leaders go first. Personal growth precedes culture change. When leaders model presence and boundaries, teams follow.
5. Everyone is a healthcare professional. Flatten the hierarchy, build connectedness, and equip every role to influence outcomes.

Connect with Dr. Lohmann at drlohmann@dallasdental.com

Transcript
What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Kinda Different, a podcast where we talk about innovation in dental care, and I would say healthcare in general. We connect with some absolutely phenomenal, amazing people.
Today is absolutely no exception to that. I'm super excited to have the conversation today. And we talk about how we all, together, it is a group effort, 100%, a team effort, how do we all together make dental care more human?
Because your patient's experience in your office becomes my patient's experience in my office, becomes their experience with their kids somewhere else. It is all of our job to work together to do that. And I am Dr. Matt Elm, CEO and co-founder of DifferentKind, your host for Kinda Different.
And today, I am absolutely thrilled to be joined by someone who I saw recently on a webinar and I was just blown away. I was like, whoa, this person gets it and is just really on point and is excited and passionate. And I thought we would have a great conversation.
So Dr. Layla Lohmann, who is the co-founder and clinical director at Apex Dental Partners, as well as being a practicing clinician down in Texas, she is joining us today and I am absolutely thrilled. So ready for the conversation. You're gonna have fun.
You're a listener. I think Layla, you're gonna have fun.
I know I'm gonna have fun, Matt.
I'm gonna have fun. We're all gonna have fun. Let's go.
Tell us a little bit more about yourself and then we'll dive into some questions.
Hi, everybody. Thank you for having me, Matt. I think what you're doing in this space is incredibly different.
Kinda Different. Love the name. And I really appreciate those kind words you said about the webinar.
My name is Dr. Layla Lohmann. I am a human, number one. I am a practicing clinician, co-founder, clinical director, like you said.
But I am a mom of two amazing humans. I've been with my partner, David Lohmann, husband for over 21 years. And we have a company that we've grown together.
But more importantly, I focus on the proactive patient care approach, health care professional. I call myself the primary care provider of the oral cavity, because restorative dentistry is how they taught us. But they really should have been teaching us how to be the oral systemic connection and how to help our patients keep their teeth till after their 90s.
So I'm excited about the conversations. I love talking. So where do we go?
Let's go. Let's dive in. Well, we always start with innovation.
And I think one of the good places to start here is what you just mentioned, right? In terms of lots of talk today about medical dental integration, oral systemic connection, minimally invasive dentistry, all that stuff. We don't learn about that stuff in dental school, right?
In general, at least I didn't. You probably didn't, right? And so I think that's changing somewhat.
But one of the things that I think is interesting is you're creating a model where people can learn that, people can come into that and not have to figure it out by themselves and whatnot. So just tell us a little bit about how you're innovating in terms of the culture that you want to create within your organization to have all of what you just talked about be the norm, be what's expected, be what people, both clinicians, patients, everyone else in the practice is used to and experiencing. To me, that's a lot of organizational change, and that's one of the innovations that I'm most interested in.
So tell us a little bit more about that.
Yeah, that's a long answer that I'm going to illustrate. We can break this up.
We're going deep right now.
We're going deep right now. Well, really after COVID, we had this epiphany that life was changing. I mean, it was utter chaos in the world, and I was always a restorative doctor.
I was a conservative dentist, and I always thought that was ethical. And then as COVID happened, and just different things happened with our organization, I realized that nothing is safe. But in reality, if you come from a preventative standpoint, proactive healthcare professional, that I could help my patients have a better, healthier life.
And not just my patients, my family, right? Because all of my patients are my family and my friends. Everyone in my community, my kids' school, they come to me.
And so when I thought about I was helping them, I was just waiting and watching everything get worse. And it was really humbling to say that because as you know about me, like I love people. I love dentistry.
And so over the last four years, we've developed programs. I went through my personal leadership program from Guiding Leaders from Glidewell and it changed my life. Understanding that my communication style was so different than my patients and even my husband.
And part of the problem and challenge was the roadblock was me and how I was communicating the conditions. And even with my teams, like most of the miscommunications was I wasn't holding myself accountable to communicating the way that you needed to hear your condition. So I leveraged AI and I did not like it at first.
I wanted to throw it out the window. I perfected the art of discussing shades of gray. Okay?
I was really good at it, Matt. So are you probably. But AI helped us bring color for my patients to understand this is a cavity.
And I didn't want to trust it at first because it was like I can't even see it. But the cool thing about AI is we are trained to see up to 30 to 50 shades of gray. Just studies show that.
And AI can see up to 800. So if I can be that much more preventative for my patients, for my family, for myself, why are we not having those conversations? And then dental health scans.
I remember before dental health scans, I would try to convince the patient with intra-orals and show them the breaking the tooth and trying to explain your other side looks the same way. And then I was always convincing them. So a lot of our energy was trying to educate, but I was literally trying to convince them, right?
So then the dental health scans came and I was like, it reduced the burden of convincing because it's your condition. So as I started learning communication, inward and outward mindset, relational leadership, and tying in all of those things and being the professional I always should have been without worrying, my patient is going to think it's going to cost me a lot. It's going to do this.
My insurance doesn't cover it. I still, my job is to explain what your condition is and tell you the resources I have to help you and support you, whether it's to fix it, whether it's to prevent it. And that's where I started saying, let's always look from prevention.
So we created this proactive patient care playbook that has from all the three top three conditions, right? Caries goes, traditional was fluoride, strengthening teeth. Great.
Now what? And then I've done silver dimine for over 10 years before the ADA approved it. And everyone was like, oh my gosh, it's awful.
They're turning it black. And I'm like, but I'm arresting the disease state. So like it's reframing what I was doing.
And then Sure Not Repair started that two years ago. It's a guided regeneration of nanohydroxyapatite. I laughed at them when they first came to me.
I was like, they never taught me that. That you're liars. No, Gordon Christian said to cut.
No, I'm just kidding.
Yeah.
And so it just started becoming so natural for me to prevent disease as my promise, which reduced the stress of things. So I treat the same way with periodontal disease. I used to say, my patients are just a little bit of bleeding.
Or I used to say, gingivitis is a fancy word for bleeding gums. I was trying to minimize it so it made my patients feel good. It's a condition.
It's reversible. I caught it early. And now here's how I treat it.
Cervitech Plus, Laser, Arrestin, all of the things that cost money. But that's the resource I have to treat your condition. What was cool, Matt, was they can always say no.
And I'm not going to get offended, but I should always have that conversation. So, we created a doctorate development program, and we're building in 2026, we have an empowerment program for career development for all of our professionals that we support. It's over almost 750 team members.
And we just find that this is now our culture. This is now what we believe is how we should treat all our patients, all our team members, because our team members are our patients. Like, that's, you try to humanize this.
And everyone is just like, restore, restore, restore. I'm great at restorative. Why don't we become preventative and focus on that?
And then what you do is get payers to start paying us to prevent the disease instead of paying three times as much to fix the disease. So that's a little bit about what we're doing in our organization. We're not perfect.
It's not like we're human and we're going to continue to fail forward, which is the cool part about it. And as a practicing clinician who's still doing this, I still don't love change. But now I embrace it that like I ask from curiosity.
Like I don't correct things anymore. That's old version of Layla. This one is like, help me understand a couple more things.
This is confusing to me.
Yeah, that's so good. I love that. I love that.
Like, I feel like same tell a similar story, right? In some ways around just that professional development. And I don't think I ever when I was probably younger would have started a sentence with, I'm curious, you know, tell me more about this, right?
And now I say that all the time because I really am curious. And it's like, I want to learn and I want to know. So I absolutely love that.
Tell me a little bit more about. So thinking about this from the patient perspective, and obviously we'll talk about making health care more human and whatever. But just from the patient perspective, how have they responded to that?
So you obviously went through this whole change with your staff and all of that. And you probably had some of the same patients, right? And I found myself when I was in clinical practice is like, hey, this might feel a little different, just since like not the shot or anything like that, right?
Or whatever we're doing. But like, hey, like this interaction, your experience here might feel a little different. And you know, that's we would kind of talk about it in that way.
But tell me how patients have responded to, hey, this is probably going to feel different than where you, you know, other places that you may have been or other experiences that you may have had, or other, even another experience that you may have had within our organization, because now we're different than we were five years ago.
Well, so we're a non-brand model. So most patients were private practice, we imagine. So most, it will never touch that patient experience.
It's supporting the practices. So I will talk from my practice level, because I didn't treat malocclusion for 10 years. I mean, I sent them to ortho, straight teeth were pretty, and now straight teeth are healthy.
So it's really, it makes my dentistry more predictable. So it was really uncomfortable at first, because I had to go tell a patient who's been with me for 10 years that they need clear liners, and it's also gonna cost five grand. And so it was, there was a learning curve.
And so the patient experience was they've loved the technology. I haven't had one person say they hate it. It's added to my patient case acceptance.
Like I went from 22% to 55%. And I just keeps going up, because it allows me to not like use all my words, because it's right up there. They see the black, they see the tartar, they see the redness.
And so, the patient experience elevated, which most of them like my other person's never done this. And I say that these can detect things 10 times quicker than me, and I'm prevention is a promise. And so, even for patients who have been for 14 years, right?
Like, it's very humbling to say, once I know better, I have to do better. And also holding my team accountable was a little rough for like 18 months, if not longer. Like full disclosure, in the grand scheme of things, every day felt like a really long day until like I finally got it smooth.
There's times where my team doesn't have the AI or the dental health scan on the patient facing screen. And we'll be walking and they'll be transferring the trust and telling me about the patient. And I'll be like, is everything up on the patient facing the screen?
And they'll say, oh, no. And I literally just walk back to my room. Because I can't be this truest version of myself for my patients without those tools now.
And so my team accountability had to get a little bit of a jump start. I don't know if that answered your question.
No, totally. I think it's great. It's like the real stuff, right?
Like that, you know, that's the real journey through that. And I think one of the things as we think about, you know, what that means for you, right, personally and who you are right now, I always tell people that, you know, like one of my promises in making this podcast is like, look, like you're going to learn stuff about the people that join as guests, like who are, it's not on their LinkedIn, all of that stuff, right? And I think your personal development journey in that is all really interesting as well, right?
Because it sounds like the ability to, you know, do what you, you know, kind of know, do, I don't know exactly how you said it, but essentially like once you know better, you got to do better essentially, right? That requires courage.
That was Maya Angelou, by the way. That was not me.
Okay. There you go. Thanks, Maya.
But, you know, the ability for, you know, to lean into that and like to be uncomfortable, to be courageous, to be brave, you know, to do all of that stuff. It sounds like you went through this program at Gladwell. Talk to us a little bit more about that kind of personal journey.
So you've kind of given us like, hey, this is what it felt like in the office. This is maybe what it felt like from staff or patients. Like, walk me through what it felt like for you.
Not, you know, not the outside, but the inside.
No, that's a, it's actually like one of the most things that I'm passionate about was everything in my life is my choice. And I had to understand what that meant. When I went home to my kids and like I'd been with 15 patients and given them all my energy.
And then I come home and they're like, mommy, and I'm like, like, my energy was just drained. And I, it was years, years of that, like eight years. And I just, I felt like my life was happening to me.
And most people who know me, I went to OU, I'm very outgoing. No one would have imagined this. And I wouldn't even have imagined it, but I'm a recovering people pleaser.
And in that journey was like, your identity was to like get people what they needed. And whatever your identity is, I lost Layla somewhere in there based on like, I'm an Iranian-American, I'm a twin. Like all the circumstances like shaped me.
And then my son had serious medical conditions and had to have six surgeries his first year of life. And that was one year after we started our company. So I was really hands-off because I was managing like patients in life.
So I feel like I lost part of myself. And then after COVID and seeing my husband have anxiety, and I've never seen that before, he's the strongest human I've ever known. And I was like, got to figure something out.
And I think everyone had that little epiphany. And so I changed how I approached dentistry in more proactive way instead of conservative. And then in 2023, like my chief clinical officer sent me an email.
And he's like, hey, look into this. And I thought he was telling me I was a bad leader. Like, you know how you like make a story up in your head?
Like, hey, you should read this book, right?
Because because obviously you're deficient in that area, right? It's like when you tell one of your kids that, like, they look nice or whatever, that one's like, wait, what are you like? So I don't look nice.
Like, did I say that? No, I just complimented the other child.
Like, yes, exactly the same way. And the funny thing is, is I've asked him since then. I'm like, hey, did you mean?
Then he goes, no, I just thought it looked cool. And I sent it to you because it was for females. And I was like, oh, well, you changed my life with that email.
But it was a six month process. Like it was six weekends. You had to fly out.
All the CE was covered. So the program still exists. And now they actually invited men to join it too.
So that they expanded their cohort. And I think I went into it to being like, what's next? Like I'm tired of dentistry.
I need something to reinvigorate me. It's 13 years in. And I had to talk to my husband because I was leaving my kids like for two full days for six months.
It was 70 hours almost. And he was like, why do you want to do it? And I was like, oh, you would ask me that.
I don't know. Make money a different way? I don't know.
I don't know. But he said, do you want to do it? And he's always supported me even if I didn't know my why yet.
So that's been great. So I've always had that safety net. So I did it.
And I think I was also still in my own head originally. Like we did Inward and Outward Mindset from Arbinger Institute, DISC, communication workshop, and then they sprinkled in clinical for the time. And it really started compounding.
I had to let go of controlling everything, of what other people think of me, about what my patients think about me. And I just, that journey gave me permission to be me. And if you don't want to have that conversation with me, I respect that.
We can be acquaintances. And I realized I was draining my energy. I was a recovering overthinker, a recovering people pleaser.
And really, I let people do that. I let people trigger me. And once I learned how to learn about my triggers, and this is like a two-year journey, I'm still living it.
I'm still learning. I'm no longer my own roadblock. And so that's been freeing to me.
It's like liberating. One day, I was flying back from California, and I said, I'm not gonna control it. You know how your kids knock on your door when you're in the bathroom, and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, hold on.
Or you're brushing your teeth and you turn it off, and even just in two minutes, right? You turn it off and you're like, yeah, yeah, I'll go help you. I no longer let them do that.
I do the two minutes. I go when I'm ready. And you can see the energy change from who I used to be to who I am today is like a game changer.
And it's only been made me more effective. Like I became a more effective clinical director wife because I never lost Layla. Like I've never lost her for two years.
So that's been a cool interpersonal journey for me. And it's going to take me a lifetime to continue that. But I'm excited.
Yeah, it's like the beginning of the journey right now. You're like, okay, cool. Like, what are the next years hold, right?
With this like old, like new mindset, right? I love that. Well, one of the things is to me, this is interesting through line here.
So you talk about like, kind of realizing that from a clinical perspective. And it sounds like it's somewhat coinciding, right? But then like leading your organization through that, figuring that out for yourself of like, hey, here's what I've been doing.
And then, you know, how has that impacted your team? I guess, you know, the question here is really around as we think about, like, then making health care more human, right? Like we can't have these human experiences with our patients if we're not authentic to ourselves and we're not, you know, our team are not able to be their best selves and all of those things.
So how have you then taken what you're learning, you know, personally and helped your team and the organization that you lead kind of say, okay, cool. Like, yeah, we did that clinically, but here's the next step for us.
Yeah. So I'll start with my team first because you have to get data to support it. So I had to show my journey and I was the case study.
I sat them down after my let go moment of control, be present, stop seeking other things. Everything will come when you're ready. You know how people say like, you keep trying to open doors?
It's like, well, take a minute and look for a second, like that door might be open, right? And I think it's a more thoughtful approach. So I sat them down.
And here's the thing. I used to go through dental assistance and wonder what was wrong with me every two years. Like, I would empower one to go to real estate, the other one would retire.
And I'm like, what's wrong with me? Like, how do I not keep a team? I'm really good at my job.
I'm so flexible. And then I realized people need a little bit of structure. I was so energizer bunny that it made their life a little bit harder and I didn't realize that.
So I sat them down in July of 2023. My two dental assistants are still with me today. I didn't go to my whole team.
I like start off small. And I said, hey, I'm gonna slow things down. I'm gonna be more thoughtful.
I'm gonna stop rushing. I'm still always gonna have the energy. I'm still gonna be the same person.
But I'm going to be present instead of worrying about everything about what's happening next. Are you guys in this journey with me? And their faces were like, yes, yes, yes.
I don't know what to say to this.
What do you want us to say? Yeah, I guess. Yeah.
And you will see that I've now helped them be that version of themselves for two years. And I've translated that into the organization because now I'm a case study of supported practice with Apex Dental Partners. And what are they supporting my professional and personal development?
So I leveraged vendor relationships to offset some of the costs. I understand the business side. I understand we can't lose production all the time.
But our doctors grew 24% of personal income by going through our journey. And now it's a life-changing experience because now they're going to do it within our practices. So the two year is I first had to show the ROI from our doctors.
And then now we're doing the business managers, the leadership teams. And then they keep telling me no. And then I say not yet.
What more information do you need? And then now we built this program because I was like, I want every person, every professional in our practice, like I mentioned earlier, we were all recording. But I think everyone in our practice is a healthcare professional.
And there's administrative professionals, there's clinical professionals. But building that confidence to give that patient the care that they need and the experience, you have to build confidence in the people around you. And then you have to combat their life, their outside, their problems.
It's not my problem, it's not my job to make you happy. It's my job to foster a relationship in an environment that supports collaboration about my patient's conditions and they accept the care I prescribe. So now, in 2026, we've got an Empowerment Growth Pathway program for all professionals.
If you want to learn PNLs, you got to do the prerequisites. You got to do all the prerequisites at college, but you can learn everything that I'm teaching a doctor by doing the prerequisites. It's going to be an open forum for any team member that wants to learn.
You have to choose to invest the time. You have to take that step forward, and that's what you can't train.
Right. Yeah, the attitude there. I love that.
Just the idea, I think even of, it's a flattening of the hierarchy in so many ways, right? Where I think so many practices, especially in healthcare just in general, people feel like, and I don't know. I just think there's so many places where it feels like people feel like they're up in the ivory towers and then you got the front desk and people are like, I don't feel at all remotely connected to that person even if we're working for the same organization.
And so to me, it feels like that flattening of the hierarchy has got to create more efficient, more friendly, more happier people in general.
We use connectedness too. So a lot of this is everything is in relation to each other. We also are trying to say we're two separate things.
There's a space in between. I'm reading this book called You and We from Jim Farrell and it's interesting because you try to separate things, right? Like, well, you're different.
What are you thinking about? Well, why don't we embrace the differences and see like, what's the space in between? And so I'm halfway through the book.
It's really interesting, but I think that's what's gonna elevate even my organization to the next step is I did communication. I did mindset. Now it's actually about relationships and how do we measure that?
And they have a measurement and diagnostic tool to measure connectedness. And it's like really interesting to like start realizing, like we would have never met had I not become this proactive professional. And people always like, do you get paid to do this stuff?
I'm like, no, I get paid to do my real job. This is sharing your story to do the impact. Like information should be free.
I don't compete with any other DSO. I compete to be the best for my people, for my practice, for myself. And if I do that, it's the ripple effect that I need.
That's the impact I can make. Everyone starts worrying about that next stuff. You can't control that shit.
Like that really steals my energy. No thanks.
Well, and I love what you continue to say to just about like, hey, this isn't for everyone, right? And that actually, like, I mean, my brother-in-law, I coach my son's soccer team, like competitive soccer team. And, you know, there's always like parent dynamics that are interesting.
You know, my brother-in-law is like a competitive lacrosse coach and, you know, whatever. And he's like, I got this director who comes in to talk to the parents every year. And he's like a, you know, was a professional lacrosse player.
Everyone really respects him. And he comes in and he sits down and he's just like, look, it's a long hallway with a lot of doors. You're welcome to choose any of the other ones.
Like next question, right? Like when a parent will be like, and, you know, just that idea of like, look, it's a long hallway with a lot of doors. This is not for everyone.
Like it's working obviously for you. Everything seems better, right? And you didn't, one of the things that I think is most impressive here, we talk about this a lot just in general about like change within the profession, is that it's easier to start an organization from scratch with like, hey, if you started today, Layla, like it would probably have been an easier journey for you in some ways, right?
To like help all these practices change, do all the things within Apex, right? Because they've never known anything different. It is very, very difficult to say like, hey, we're doing one thing and now we're going to like change what that looks like.
Yeah, take your time.
Keep everyone on the same track to keep everyone on the same path. That's really, really challenging. And so the fact that you've been able to do that in such an effective way, I think speaks to like, hey, look, like if you're going to opt out, great, like you're not forcing anyone, you're like inviting them along for the ride if they want to come, but you're not.
And it's the same thing with patient treatment, all that stuff, right? Like, here's what's going on. You're welcome to do nothing.
You're welcome to do this. You're welcome to do that.
Yeah, I really use the language. I'm happy for you to pay for it whenever I'm trying to prevent it from happening. Like I'm here to fix it when you're ready.
And it's really freeing because it's like, you don't have to do anything. You're going to have to at some point. But you actually mentioned something about the hierarchy.
I think that is even people elevate this. Like when people talk about me, I'm like, I'm just Layla. I mean, like, yes, I'm co-founder and I'm, you know, all these things.
But those are just things that I've done in my life. And I'm very free with information. You want to learn how to do it?
Call me up. Here's my cell phone number, 405-414-1083. I mean, I don't answer numbers I don't know.
But like, we all...
Leave a message.
Yeah, leave a message. But like, if we get to share this information and stop competing against each other, and same thing with the payers, and stop forcing everything to be this. It is a business.
I understand profitability. I understand I can't keep top talent unless I'm making good money. But if patients accept the care you prescribe, and you prescribe in a proactive way, profitability follows because you're always going to break a tooth.
I'm not even 100 percent compliant. I'm a patient advocate for thyroid eye disease. And he's like, put eye drops in seven times a day.
I'm like, oh, that's not happening. So I'm never 100 percent compliant. We just understand that that's just natural, but we still need to be doing that.
And you mentioned parent dynamics. That's a whole other ball game. Like trying to make friends with parents and all those other things.
There's just so many places that steal your energy, but that's a little bit where you get lost. So the hallway, put on a flashlight and open the door. And you can go put that flashlight on.
And I think that's the thing that changed about me is I get to have this life. I'm not guaranteed tomorrow. Something awful could happen.
So why don't I just make the biggest impact I can today for my patients, my team, my family, and then most importantly to myself. If you lose yourself, I can't be the best version of any other Layla's hats at all. They would all fucking fall.
That is the perfect place for us to say this has been a great episode. We could continue this conversation for a long time.
It was a pleasure.
You put a perfect bow on it right there. So I love it. Yeah, people, I know people are going to want to get in touch with you.
You've already given them your phone number. So you're going to have lots more numbers probably calling you that you don't know. If people want to get in touch with you in a way that you might respond to them, what's a better way?
And Grand said you probably would respond to that message knowing you. Tell us your preferred way for people to get in touch with you to learn more about you, Apex, whatever it might be.
So if you want to learn more about Apex Dental Partners, go to apexdp.com. Private practice reimagined, it's considered supported dentistry. I call it the third option in dentistry.
If you want to get a hold of me that I will respond much quicker, it's my email drlohmann, L-O-H-M-A-N-N drlohmann at thalasdental.com. But again, like I said, you could text me, you can call me, and I just hope that everyone who's listening just keeps doing what they're supposed to be doing. And thank you for having me.
It's really been a pleasure, like love the conversation, love the energy, excited to continue to see the impact that you make in the world and the continued change that you bring to your organization, your patients, your family, all of those things, and to Layla ultimately. So thank you so much for taking the time.
Bye, everybody.