Bringing High-Tech Dentistry to Rural America

Dr. Jonathan Ehlers

Growing up in a small town in West Central Missouri, I have always had a passion for the people of rural America. My town of Cole Camp, MO, hovers around the 1,200 mark depending on the most recent census. It is filled with farmers, bankers, mechanics, small business owners, and most importantly, a sense of pride and love for our country.

One thing that always stood out to me though was the idea that there were certain amenities that we did not have access to because we were not in a large city. Whether it is the big shopping malls or the fancy IMAX movie theater, it was always known that those things were not a part of everyday life for a small-town boy from rural Missouri. I wanted to change that.

My path after high school took me to Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO where I played baseball in college. Whenever I am at speaking engagements or talking with dental students, I always circle back to athletics, college athletics, in particular. Athletics instilled a drive in me to compete to win, and to strive to be the best version of myself regardless of the circumstances. To work in a team setting to achieve a goal greater than yourself. These values shaped my career and how I view my practice.

The next stop after Lindenwood was UMKC School of Dentistry. I received my DDS in 2010 and knew that surgical dentistry was going to be a focal point in my career path. 3D and digital dentistry were gaining a footing in the industry at that time, but I also had a desire to pursue the latest technology to enhance my ability to practice dentistry.

I graduated and started practicing in the summer of 2010. Still unsure how to best carve out my path in dentistry. I knew that I had to serve in a federally qualified health center, but what next? I decided to take an intern year in the Oral and Maxillofacial

Residency Program at Truman Medical Center in Kansas City, MO. This position typically leads to matriculating into the 4-year Oral Maxillo-Facial Residency Program. It was a year of great learning with challenges, it also became clear that general dentistry was going to be my path. Although OMS was not, it certainly gave me surgical skills and knowledge to help shape how my general practice would look.

I associated in an office for a couple more years before the voice inside my head all those years ago spoke up and said its time to go home. The countless hours of training, the ten-weekend intensive implant residency program in Bessemer, AL, the late nights developing a business plan for a potential startup…Tiger Family Dental was born.

In October of 2016, I opened Tiger Family Dental in Sedalia, MO, a town that is about 20 minutes from Cole Camp, where I grew up. I had a vision of bringing high-tech dentistry back to my hometown and changing how people in my area viewed dentistry. I always say, “Just because you live in a small town, doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve the absolute best!”

My business plan was conservative. I leased a small 1,300-squarefoot office with three treatment rooms and a mud room as my personal office. I had one front desk, one hygienist, one chairside assistant, and myself. The start-up was going to be efficient from a build-out cost perspective, but there were things that I knew I was not going to compromise on…technology. I budgeted into my start-up an intra-oral scanner, a CBCT, digital radiography, and intra-oral cameras. I knew that the blueprint for my practice was to educate patients on the risk factors, what was going on in their mouths, and how that affected them systemically. We were going to comprehensively diagnose and treat our patients, no more single-tooth dentistry with a “drill and fill” approach. We believe that the teeth are a smaller part of an integrated physiological process and we as clinicians must holistically treat our patients.

The start-up was a success and after six months, I realized that my conservative estimations were just that, too conservative. I began the process of developing a commercial strip center that would house our new location in Sedalia, with ten treatment rooms and 6,000 square feet of total space. Patients were responding to the technological investment that we made in our practice. You can tell a patient that their upper right molar is cracked, or their amalgam filling is leaking, but if you can show them with an intra-oral photo, or a slice of the CBCT showing decay around a restoration, or a chronic lesion associated with a root, it begins to click. This resulted in growth for a practice that was hard to imagine.

Shortly after we launched our new location, it was also time to add to our team. We now have a full-time associate that we hired in January 2020, four hygienists, and a dedicated office manager. Our staff had grown to 15+ and we were off to the races…until the world shut down. Business across the world suffered through the pandemic, but it eventually ended and Tiger Family Dental, with the same principles of comprehensive diagnosis and treatment planning, was stronger after than before.

A key factor in our practice exhibiting sustained growth since our launch was the continued investment in technology and expanding our service mix. My associate, Dr. Erin, focuses on cosmetics and restorative dentistry, where I choose to focus on the surgical aspects, in particular, implant dentistry. Full-arch implant dentistry is a passion of mine and developing a digital workflow to make the process more efficient has been something that I have worked to implement since I began full-arch implant dentistry…welcome Yomi.

I remember in November of 2022, a rep who sold me my latest CBCT called me up and asked if I had any interest in a robot to help me with my implant placement. I thought about it and although I agreed to listen, I thought to myself there is no way that I can afford the investment in a fully guided robot that will provide haptic feedback and allow you to preplan the entire surgery and make any changes intraoperatively. A couple weeks later, the robot is sitting in my parking lot in a bus that allows you to demo the robot and test its functionality. It took about 10 minutes of demoing and I was sold.

I purchased the robot and began my robotic implant path in January of 2023. I have placed thousands of implants over a tenplus year period and used static guides, but nothing compared to the precision I saw with Yomi. Circling back to my passion of wanting to provide the most technologically advanced dentistry, it became clear that Yomi was the next step in that process. We have now placed nearly a thousand implants since adopting

Yomi and it’s obvious that robotic implant dentistry is the wave of the future.

Utilizing Yomi, we now can scan our patients, pre-plan the surgery, and pre-design the provisional prosthesis based on a records appointment that takes 30 minutes. We can complete our full-arch surgeries in less than 2 hours per arch and deliver an in-office, 3D-printed provisional that is directly seated onto multi-unit abutments the same day. A process that used to take 4, 5, or even 6 appointments, is now streamlined into as little as three. Yomi allows for precise implant planning, real-time flexibility to make changes, if need be, and the confidence that when there are tight windows for implant placement, I have confidence that the implant is going where it is planned every time.

Yomi has been a key part of our practice growth and because of embracing technology, we are now in the process of expanding again. We are adding four more treatment rooms and a dedicated surgical suite. This will give us the ability to bring on another associate and two more hygienists. We are nearing the 10-year mark of Tiger Family Dental’s inception and I look back on the growth curve we have experienced. From a small three-treatment room space to a fourteen-treatment room and surgical suite space with revenues well surpassing 5 million, investing in technology has allowed our practice to grow and stand out in the crowd.

Digital dentistry, robotic dentistry, 3D printing…these are at the forefront of what dentistry looks like in 2025. Highly advanced procedures will shape the care that we deliver to our patients centered around technology. The mission of Tiger Family Dental and myself is that those things can ALSO happen in rural America. I think back to when I was a kid growing up here with a dream of bringing the things that were out of reach for rural communities. I have great pride in knowing that high-tech dentistry can be accessible to people everywhere, it just takes the investment.

Dr. Ehlers graduated from UMKC School of Dentistry in 2010. He opened his practice in 2016 in Sedalia, MO where he owns and operates Tiger Family Dental. He practices with a surgical focus, full arch implant dentistry, in particular. Adopting the digital workflow is a passion of Dr. Ehlers as he has implemented technologies such as Yomi Robotic implant placement, 3-D printing, and intraoral scanning. He has been placing dental implants since 2012 and has extensive training in the field. Working as a KOL for Neocis, Dr. Ehlers enjoys educating and mentoring dentists to expand their knowledge with robotics and digital dentistry.

Photo credits: Holly Hatfield