The Time is Now: How Dr. Scott Drucker is Changing the Way You Run Your Dental Practice
Supply Clinic is disrupting the traditional dental products consumer experience, delivering dental supplies around the nation, and changing the way practitioners run their dental practices. Read more about how Dr. Scott Drucker is changing the way you run your dental practice.
The phrase, “Do Something That Matters” plays on big screens and is displayed as an oversized art installation at the entrance of MATTER, the healthcare innovation workspace in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, and home of Supply Clinic.
However, the creator and President of Supply Clinic, Dr. Scott Drucker, Periodontics and MS Oral Sciences ‘16, lives by a different man
tra. “The time is now,” are the words which resound in him and serve as the driving force in his decision to forgo specialized dentistry full-time in order to start his own marketplace business. Supply Clinic is disrupting the traditional dental products consumer experience, delivering dental supplies around the nation, and changing the way practitioners run their dental practices.
Dr. Drucker came upon this business idea as a newly graduated DMD looking to purchase instruments for his residency program. He found the run-around inherent in such a straightforward task to be riddled with problems, including opaque and inconsistent pricing structures and inefficient ordering processes – all things that could be streamlined on a user-friendly platform. In the age of e-commerce and marketplace consumption, this supply sourcing problem was the perfect place to add some fine tuning.
Together with his brother Jacob Drucker, Dr. Scott Drucker began Supply Clinic, which links product manufacturers and distributors directly to users at a competitive price point that is often 30-35% below distributor pricing. Because Dr. Drucker is himself a dentist, he takes very seriously the need to vet and research each of the 65,000 products that reach his e-shelves. This way, dentists around the nation are assured of the highest quality control, transparency in market pricing, and access to information regarding how products are utilized in the office. “Dentists can learn about new items and compare products right alongside their purchase,” Dr. Drucker touted.
Supply Clinic is also great for his 120+ sellers because they are able to reach a much larger audience, capturing more of the buyers’ market across the country. Supply Clinic also works to help the seller’s companies with content-rich product pages, which provide dental education on product use and specifications.
So where did this all begin? Dr. Drucker’s interest in dentistry began with a childhood interest in sciences, a little nudging from his parents, who are physicians, and an auspicious shadowing experience with Dr. Jeffery Ganeles, now a member of Supply Clinic’s Board of Advisors. “I realized I wanted to pursue specialty care after shadowing Dr. Ganeles, and there were a lot of attractive aspects to the UIC College of Dentistry residency programs, including comprehensive patient care, clinic rotations outside of the College, and a great mentorship and research experience with Dr. Lin Tao,” UIC College of Dentistry Professor of Oral Biology.
While in residency Dr. Drucker definitely leaned on his faculty and co-residents through it all saying, “I'm not sure if I would have made it without the help of Dr. Jennifer Adhami (née Shango), ‘16, Dr. Ankur Patel, ‘16, and Dr. Samia Suleiman-Ata, ‘16. I'm thankful that UIC brought such an amazing group together and I learned the importance of working closely with a team— patient care simply cannot be delivered without a number of key participants. Good team dynamic is equally as important when running a startup, or any business for that matter.”
Aside from successfully running his business, Dr. Drucker practices periodontics, taking on unique patient cases. He also finds time to speak at organized dentistry events and is even making his rounds in media outlets as a top change-maker in the Chicago business scene. “I bring a very different perspective to the table than most dentists, and am always happy to chat or share things I've learned,” noted, Dr. Drucker.
hen asked what drives Dr. Drucker’s operations and decisions day in and day out, he said, “I love both of what I do. I genuinely like the surgeries that I perform. The patient interaction is super special and an absolute privilege. I am also very attracted to the opportunity to change an inefficient system that needs a lot of work. I’m actively tackling and solving a problem every day by providing the supplies and instruments necessary for patients to be cared for. It all ties together.”
And while “the time is now,” future endeavors for Dr. Drucker and the team at Supply Clinic include streamlining other management operations in order to free up time-consuming tasks. Dr. Drucker said, “At the end of the day, our goal is to assist practitioners in refocusing back to delivering the most excellent care possible.”
To see how Supply Clinic can change the way you run your dental practice, check out the e-marketplace at www.supplyclinic.com
Story authored by: Jessica Mueller.
Captions: Dr. Scott Drucker. Photo credit: Tricia Koning.; Dr. Scott Drucker (shown on right) with brother, Jacob Drucker at the Chicago Dental Society Midwinter Conference.; Dr. Scott Drucker working at MATTER.