Western Dental Services Inc. in Orange named Dr. John Luther chief dental officer to replace Dr. Ronald Inge, who left in April to take a similar position with Delta Dental of Missouri in St. Louis.
Luther is the latest of multiple recent hires at Western Dental, which offers dental plans and runs about 200 dental and orthodontic offices in four states. Eight of 11 executives have been with the company 18 months or fewer:
• Daniel Crowley, chairman and chief executive, who joined in July 2015.
• Preet Takkar, chief information officer, who joined as senior vice president in March 2015 and was promoted in February.
• Lisa Dawe, chief operating officer, who started in May 2015.
• Brad Fleiss, senior vice president for benefits and payor relations, who came on in June 2015.
• Bill Dembereckyj, senior vice president and chief financial officer, who joined in September 2015.
• Debbie Golanka, senior vice president of human resources, also a September 2015 addition.
• John Duncan, senior vice president of government relations, who came on in May.
Three other execs—Jeffrey Miller, senior vice president and general counsel; Joshua Marder, chief marketing officer; and Andrew Eddy, vice president of real estate—have tenures of three to five years.
Golanka has local ties. She was vice president of human resources at Smile Brands Inc. in Irvine for about two years before joining Western Dental, and previously held human resources roles at St. Anne School in Laguna Niguel and at the former Corinthian Colleges Inc. in Santa Ana.
Luther was a consultant for 11 months after serving as senior vice president of dental management and chief dental officer at DentaQuest in Boston, which owns California Dental Network in Laguna Hills.
He was a dentist in private practice in Placentia earlier in his career.
Medtronic Adds to Robotics Play
Medtronic Plc doubled down—nearly literally—on its stake in Caesarea, Israel-based Mazor Robotics Ltd.
Medtronic makes devices and develops therapies for cardiac, spinal and diabetes applications, among others. It’s based in Ireland, operates out of Minnesota and has about 1,500 workers in OC.
It agreed in May to buy up to 15% of Mazor and 15 of the company’s second-generation robotic systems for spinal surgery to be rolled out this year. The systems use 3-D imaging during surgery to place spinal implants and screws. Mazor plans to develop the product for other types of surgery; it runs its U.S. efforts from Orlando.
Medtronic bought 4% of Mazor in May for $12 million and another 3.3% for $20 million in mid-August. Its current deal with Mazor allows for a third $20 million investment.
A different division at Medtronic involving minimally invasive therapies and treatments is independently developing a robotic general surgery platform and said in June that it expects the product to begin bringing in revenue in fiscal 2019.
Salary Scale
Local salaries stacked up well to national numbers in a Health eCareers survey of 20,000 U.S. healthcare workers, with some variation.
Orange County physicians and surgeons earned an average of $248,000 annually compared with $256,000 in the U.S. on the whole. Healthcare information technology roles were each at about $92,000, and nurses in both O.C. and the U.S. overall were in the low- to mid-$60,000s.
Nurse practitioners here bested their national counterparts—about $123,000 versus $101,000—while healthcare executives here lagged national numbers—$79,000 a year versus $135,000 on average.
Health eCareers is part of DHI Group Inc. in New York, which runs websites in healthcare and other industries and traded recently at a $376 million market cap.
Bits & Pieces
Molina Foundation gave away 120,000 new children’s books to 120 Southern California schools, clinics and community groups. OC recipients included Big Brothers Big Sisters of Orange County, Blind Children’s Learning Center in Santa Ana and James Madison Elementary School in Anaheim. The foundation is backed by Long Beach managed-care provider Molina Healthcare Inc. … Irvine testing lab PacificDXX added an assay for breast cancer from Targeted Genomics in San Antonio, which creates genomic tests. … ATP Clinical Research Center in Costa Mesa wants “cognitively healthy older adults” ages 65 to 75 “who may be at high genetic risk” for Alzheimer’s for a new study. … Long Beach Memorial, Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley and Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills got a U.S. News & World Report shout-out as “high-performing” providers. The three are part of MemorialCare Health Systems in Fountain Valley.
