One of the great joys of my job is working with leaders who are changing the face of their field. In healthcare, this can be young entrepreneurs developing ground-breaking technology, clinicians whose expertise and compassion improves people’s lives daily, or visionary CEOs who are transforming traditional institutions.
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Julie Ross, Managing Director at Portman Dental Care UK & Ireland. As MD of the privately-focused dental group, Julie is integral to delivering the company’s exciting mission: to transform dentistry.
It was inspiring to speak with Julie, and to learn about the clarity of vision and scale of ambition at Portman. Through a relentless focus on the patient, a commitment to digital innovation, and a thoughtful balance of clinical and operational priorities, Portman is reinventing the customer experience of visiting the dentist.
“I’m attracted to businesses with a problem to solve,” Julie told me when we met at her offices in Paddington. Julie has been with the group since 2019, leaving her role at Pets at Home’s Vet Group to become Chief Commercial Officer at Portman. She was promoted first to Chief Operating Officer, and latterly to MD in January of this year.
The problem to solve – the opportunity to seize – at Portman was an exciting one, she explained. “The company was at the tipping point of moving from a small to a medium-sized business. I really bought into that, and could see the trajectory to continue rapidly scaling into one of the largest healthcare organisations in Europe.”
But more than growing in scale, Julie tells me she was drawn to the consumer journey that Portman was embarking on. Over the past few years, it is this transition that has sat at the heart of Portman’s determination to transform dentistry. “We’re taking a three-pronged approach,” Julie said, “focusing on our consumers, our clinicians and our colleagues.”
I’m particularly interested in this first ‘prong’: the consumer. As the healthcare sector and patient expectations evolve, there is a growing need to think deliberately about consumer-centricity in healthcare. Indeed, regular readers of my column will know that one of my convictions as Director of Healthcare at MBS is that sharing learnings from our adjacent consumer-facing industries, such as hospitality, travel and retail, can be transformative to the success of healthcare businesses.
“There’s a historic tendency in private dentistry for the consumer to be overlooked,” reflected Julie. “While patient care sits front and centre, many clinicians aren’t thinking about their patients as consumers. We’ve got such a long way to go in the industry, to the point that many dentists still don’t work evenings and weekends, despite those being the times that the patient would typically be free.”
“There’s a historic tendency in private dentistry for the consumer to be overlooked” – Julie Ross, MD at Portman Dental Care
With a background in veterinary services at Pets at Home, Julie is well placed to lead Portman into its next – more consumer-centric – chapter. She recalls a similar journey in her veterinary career, telling me that her team used in-depth research and customer data to encourage practices to extend their opening hours. “It’s the same process we need to go on in dentistry,” she said, “but we’re not quite there yet as an industry. For now, at Portman, we’re focusing on really showcasing the consumer-centric clinicians we do have in our business, and the impact they have, and investing in technology to create the best possible customer journey before the patient is in the chair.”
Digital transformation is a critical step. “A big inflection point was realising that we couldn’t do anything without much better technological capabilities,” Julie told me. “We appointed a new CIO and for the last ten months we’ve had really great digital leadership.” In fact, a new talent strategy has sat at the heart of Portman’s mission. By deliberately hiring people from outside healthcare, Julie has built a team of leaders who are taking new, creative approaches to problem-solving in dentistry.
“Something I was clear about changing when I arrived at Portman was our attitude to hiring. I wanted to shift our thought process away from ‘let’s get the best person in dentistry’ towards ‘let’s get the best person’. We have the dentistry expertise, and the ambition to do better, and bringing senior leaders in from consumer and retail can be incredibly valuable.”
Julie tells me this approach is applied right the way through the business: “Many of our Practice Managers come from customer services or retail. They’re brilliant because they bring a different set of skills.”
Beyond focusing on the customer, Portman is thinking carefully about ways to support colleagues and clinicians across its practices. Something we both agreed on is that fatigue and frustration can set in in healthcare, both for practice staff on the lower-end of the pay-scale, and specialist clinicians performing the same tasks day in, day out. “We really want to reinvigorate these roles,” said Julie. “For practice colleagues, that means designing long-term career paths that people can get excited about. A lot of our Practice Managers, for example, have been in dentistry for many years, and it’s been wonderful to see them recognise their own value, be challenged in their roles, and feel motivated to grow their careers.”
For clinicians, Portman has designed an innovative programme to upskill junior dentists and avoid a skills gap when lead clinicians retire. “We’ve created a role called Practice Clinical Lead,” Julie explained, “where we take a cohort of our dentists, usually younger associates, and provide leadership training. They work alongside the Practice Manager for a few hours a week, and we teach them about P&Ls and about the commercial and operational elements of running a practice. We’ve had three waves, and it’s going fantastically. For the dentists, this programme has re-engaged their love for the profession because they’re suddenly looking at it completely differently.”
“For the dentists, this programme has re-engaged their love for the profession because they’re suddenly looking at it completely differently” – Julie Ross, MD at Portman Dental Care
This combining of the clinical with the commercial is integral to growth at Portman, yet is something I routinely see many healthcare businesses struggle to get right. I was keen to hear how Julie and her team approach balancing clinical expertise with broader commercial drive and operational excellence.
Julie tells me that the business used to consider Clinical and Operations as two distinct pillars, with two distinct teams. “We knew both were equally important, and we were determined to balance them. But what we came to recognise was that this thinking was driving a wedge between the two parts of our organisation. Now, we talk about a clinical/operations ‘double helix’ – both elements of our business entwined, and working hand-in-hand.”
The clinical/operational double helix is central – axiomatically! – to Portman’s DNA, and has had a real cultural impact in the business. An ongoing challenge for healthcare leaders world-over is fostering workplaces in which any hierarchy is healthy, and doesn’t inhibit open communication, and Julie tells me that their philosophy has levelled the playing field between clinicians, practice colleagues and the support office team. “It’s really changed the tenor of how we work,” she explained. “We’ve got more healthy challenge, and there’s not an expectation that only clinicians sit at the top of the pyramid. Everyone – from receptionists to nurses to the central support office teams – is operating together.”
“Everyone – from receptionists to nurses to the central support office teams – is operating together” – Julie Ross, MD at Portman Dental Care
I came away from my conversation with Julie inspired, and excited for the future of our sector. It is uplifting to learn about the scale of ambition at Portman, and the buy-in it has achieved from each and every ‘Portmanite’. As patient expectations continue to evolve, Portman is setting the bar for successful healthcare organisations: digitally-minded, consumer-centric, and balancing well the commercial, the operational, and the clinical.