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Office Visit: Pennsylvania Doc Balances Professionalism and Humor by Kyle Patton, Associate Editor

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As a dentist you spend most of your time at your practice. It's understandable that you might not get many opportunities to see what it's like in another doctor's office. That's why we bring you an “office visit” six times a year. It's a chance for you to meet your peers, see their practices and hear their stories. This month we caught up with Dr. Timothy Burke, a long-time Townie and all-around down-to-earth Pennsylvania practitioner. After practicing solo for 25 years, Burke has recently joined a great team in the city of Wescosville. Here's his story.

What was the path you took to becoming a dentist? What drove you into dentistry?
Dr. Timothy C. Burke: Driven would definitely not be the word to use; it was more like dragged. Growing up, I knew that I wasn't going to be a dentist like my father. I was thinking more along the lines of a PhD and a research lab to solve something.

My main interests were in cosmology or genetics, and it could have gone either way. I ended up at Muhlenberg College, along with illustrious Dentaltown associates such as Howard Goldstein—whom I met five minutes into my college career—and Rich Rosenblatt. I entered as a biology major, so physics went by the wayside, though it's still a hobby and comprises a lot of my non-dental reading. After a late graduation, due to missed gym requirements (yes, really) I ended up working in the quality-control department at Kraft Foods for almost four years and taking grad-level classes at a local university, mostly in botany.

Eventually a former college professor asked me if I planned on weighing mayonnaise for the rest of my life. I got the message, and entered the program for Master of Science in Human Anatomy at Fairleigh Dickinson University, which was given at the dental school. Once the faculty heard that my dad was a dentist, there was no escape. After graduation, I went into practice with him, taking over after about a year, and practiced solo for 25 years.

Though I enjoyed the clinical end, I had never liked business, and occasionally wondered about merging with another office. I spoke with a few local dentists, but nothing felt right. Many of my patients had known me since I was 6 years old, so I had to think of them as much as myself. When I heard that Dr. Navid Hadian was looking for an associate, I thought it could work, as I knew that we practiced much alike. Our parents had been friends for decades but we had never crossed paths, so we got together for breakfast and it was like we'd been friends for years'.

I transitioned my practice over, and a few months later I was in a fantastic new office with lots of toys. In this new phase of my career, I'm an associate and the nice thing is, now I go and play dentist, without all the headaches. Of course, after 25 years, it's impossible to stop thinking like an owner, but it works out well. Life is amazing!



Regarding your practice, how is it laid out? What's the workflow like?
Dr. Burke: There are two full-time docs, Dr. Hadian and myself. Dr. Hackett, a second associate and also a Muhlenberg grad, is in on Friday's and at our satellite location the rest of the week. With four at the front desk, four hygienists, two expanded-functions dental assistants (EFDAs), and three assistants, the staff is complete.

The building was designed from the ground up to be a dental office, so the resulting layout is conducive to a smooth flow. The reception area has a very relaxing and homey feel, with living-room furniture, a TV and fireplace. The adjacent front office is separated into incoming and exiting by a glass door and water sculpture to maintain privacy. Entering the clinical area, you are in the middle of a hallway with eight ops opposing, and the doctors' offices, sterilization, lab and patient restroom across the hall. There is a sedation suite at each end—Dr. Hadian does IV sedation and I do oral sedation. For cases that are more complex, we have an excellent anesthesiologist with an extensive dental background who comes in.

Our workflow is surprisingly smooth considering how busy we are, but that's because we are constantly working to improve (what the Japanese call kaizen). Unending perfection is impossible but we can still try. The staff is fantastic at recognizing bottlenecks, or finding places where we can tweak a system to improve patient care and efficiency. Moreover, they are always eager to share their ideas with us. We have monthly staff meetings, sometimes with a specific topic, sometimes just to talk about what's working and what could be improved.

Every day we start with a short meeting to cover logistics, patient and insurance management and miscellaneous items. Each assistant and hygienist has prepared their charts so that they can run down the schedule and let us know anything out of the ordinary, medical updates, treatment plans, patient concerns, updates, etc.



What is your practice philosophy?
Dr. Burke: We treat patients like friends and family, and want them to feel that way as well. Many tell us that is exactly how they feel, and we have a lot of families who have been in the practice since my dad started in 1960. It's especially nice when we see sedation patients who have avoided dental care, sometimes for decades, turn around and feel totally comfortable at future appointments. Treatment is always a two-way street and the more educated patients are, the easier it is to decide on a path of treatment. It's always up to them to decide how to proceed and we're here to give them as much information and guidance as they want.

What do you do to help set the practice apart from others?
Dr. Burke: Really, just be ourselves. We have a great facility and an incredible staff that is able to engage patients, answer their questions and calm their fears, all while talking vacations and recipes. The knowledge base we have is amazing. Beyond the physical aspect of the building, the technology we have available is truly impressive. Patients sometimes ask us if we're on something because they've never been in an office where everyone is so happy. I always thought if you aren't having fun at work, you need to be doing something else.

What are your favorite marketing techniques? How do you get the word out about your practice?
Dr. Burke: Patient referrals make up about half of our new patient flow. We also have a significant (and growing) online presence in our website and Facebook page in addition to a combination of direct mail and newspaper outreach.

What do you think is the biggest problem dentists face today?
Dr. Burke: Governmental interference with the business end, and insurance interference with the clinical end, combined with a lack of dedicated representation. The Academy of General Dentistry does a great job, but they're too small to make a big difference. Everyone should join the AGD. Heck, sign up the dog. They know how to use dues to the members' advantage!

What is your patient philosophy?
Dr. Burke: It's all about them. We'll do whatever it takes to make their experience in the office better. We want them to enjoy their visit. Nobody enjoys getting their teeth drilled, but everything else? That we can control. Everyone in our office has a great sense of humor, and the patients get this. They love it and all the time we hear, “I used to hate going to the dentist, and I never had fun.” If they haven't had a laugh by the time they leave, we've missed something.

What is your technique philosophy?
Dr. Burke: Longevity is king. I like to keep up with current materials, but that doesn't mean I'm always an early adopter. Materials have to last without failure. Technology has to do what it's supposed to without frequent trips to the repair shop. The DIAGNOdent was FDA approved during Chicago Midwinter, and I ordered one the next day. I still use that one. Then there was the Caridex, and Targis/Vectris.

What is the greatest advancement of change you have seen during your tenure as a dentist?
Dr. Burke: There have been amazing advances in diagnostics, but I think the advances that most change the lives of us and our patients lie in ceramics and adhesion. I don't know where we'd be if the space shuttle didn't have all those problems with tiles falling off. When it was happening, we never realized what it meant for dentistry, and the effect it would have on what we do on a daily basis.

Looking ahead, what would you like to see dentistry do in terms of the way it operates as a profession in the next five to 10 years?
Dr. Burke: I'd like to see decreases in the commoditization of dentistry, and something needs to be done regarding the out-of-control educational costs. They are intimately related. Many new graduates have no choice but to be employed in positions that they may not like, but can't avoid. It was the same in the early 1980s when they told us we'd have no trouble paying off $200,000 in loans (and this just after Jimmy Carter gave us 21 percent interest rates) but back then, private practice was pretty much the only game in town.

What is your favorite procedure?
Dr. Burke: That's like asking what's your favorite album or single malt—depends on what day it is. I like doing everything, even extractions now that I took Dr. Karl Koerner's course. But what I get passionate about, because it is changing (and saving) lives, is dental sleep medicine. My father and stepfather both died from heart disease, and I had a heart attack at 46. All of this was a direct result of the comorbidities of obstructive sleep apnea.

We used to laugh at dad snoring, and wait for him to start breathing again. My first hint of the existence of sleep apnea was during my first PDA. Absolutely life changing. I went home, took Dr. Barry Glassman's course, then Dr. Kent Smith's, and have worn a SomnoMed every night for the last nine years—without bite changes.

The medical community is still largely ignorant, but we have the capability of screening people on a regular basis. Learn what to look for, and if you don't want to get into treatment, refer! Glassman has a great CE course here on Dentaltown.com. Check it out, and then take his live course, along with Smith's. They really complement each other.

Describe your most successful or rewarding experience in your professional life.
Dr. Burke: I have a patient who was born with a cleft palate and had worn a partial for decades that she absolutely detested. My dad made her a new one 40 years ago, but she didn't like the whole removable thing. About a year after I graduated she talked me into a fixed bridge. All I could think about was how far over my head it was, but when it was finished I realized that it came out really nice. Fast forward 27 years and she has chipped some porcelain and one of the abutments is decayed. She came in, we talked and made an appointment. Two weeks ago we cut the original off, and I'm amazed at how great everything looked. Hope I can repeat that.

You are an active Townie on Dentaltown.com. How did you learn about Dentaltown?
Dr. Burke: It was traumatic, and I still remember the whole thing. Howard Farran was lecturing at some airport hotel near LaGuardia, I guess it was the mid or late 1990s. I had been a subscriber to the Farran Report (before it was called Dentaltown Magazine) for a few years, and at that meeting Howard announced he would soon stop publishing it.

He reassured us by saying that he was making it into a website, which sounded great, because at that time everything else was in a bulletin-board format. With the advantages of this new thing called the World Wide Web, it all sounded very promising, and a year or two later, Dentaltown was born.

What has Dentaltown done for your professional life? For your social life? What is your favorite feature?
Dr. Burke: Professionally, I wouldn't ever want to practice without Dentaltown again. I can say with absolute certainty that I haven't bought or used anything new in well over a decade without consulting Dentaltown first, and it has saved me from making some serious mistakes. There are products I never would have known about. The same goes for techniques—someone always has a better way, so why reinvent the wheel yourself?

Socially, it has totally changed the way I look at meetings. I'm one of those people who can walk into a full room and leave an hour later without ever talking to anyone. Since Dentaltown came along, it's a matter of making sure you see everyone, and deciding which things to do, because there are so many people around who I know.

What do you like to do when you are not working?
Dr. Burke: I live in the Poconos in northeast Pennsylvania with my better half, Peggy, and our dog Finn. It's a great area, so we try to get outside as much as possible. We have mountain bikes and kayaks that we use as much as possible, and hike regularly. Peggy had worked around Telluride for about 10 years, so we try to get out there to visit whenever we can, and usually swing over to Moab for the trails or a river run. Recently a number of new venues for concerts have been built near us, so we've been taking advantage of that. I have always read a lot, but since getting a Kindle, I'm going through books like crazy—mostly physics and history—but also trying to catch up with the things I never got around to previously.



Dentaltown Magazine
September 2025
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