AOX Ops | Independent Dental Investment & Portfolio Intelligence
Independent operational intelligence for dental private equity sponsors and DSO investors.
Dashboards show what happened. I make visible what they can’t: why it’s happening inside the practices.
Your analysts can identify where performance is changing. Management can explain why. But has anyone independently verified whether the explanation holds up inside the practices?
Before you fund another solution, verify the problem.
She helped me recognize that some of the decisions I was making as a practice owner were actually contributing to the problems we were experiencing.
Your best people keep leaving.
Is turnover a hiring problem, or a signal that the organization is becoming harder to work in? What does the loss of experienced people do to productivity and earnings durability?
More oversight. Same results.
Coaches, executives, and reporting layers keep multiplying. Does performance sustain when they step away, or is management repeatedly rescuing the month?
Another initiative. Another reset.
New campaigns, new expectations, new software. Who verified whether the last investment worked before approving the next one?
Your strongest practices are carrying the portfolio.
Are the top locations evidence of a repeatable operating model, or the product of exceptional people, local conditions, and undocumented workarounds?
The implementation was successful. The results were not.
A CRM or PMS can be live while the people using it still duplicate work, lose handoffs, or avoid the system. Did the investment change outcomes?
More activity. No meaningful recovery.
Calls, emails, consultations, and contests can all increase while case mix, collected revenue, and margins weaken. Is the organization measuring activity or value?
What if these are not six separate problems?What if they are connected?
What AOX Ops investigates
Same-store growth, location-level contribution, refunds, financing fallout, cash conversion, and what prior operating investments achieved.
The actual journey from inquiry through consultation, clinically appropriate treatment, financing, and collected revenue, including where handoffs fail.
Turnover, incentives, employee workarounds, silence in feedback channels, key-person dependence, and what happens when extraordinary management intervention ends.
What leadership believed, what it approved, how the initiative was implemented, whether it worked, and whether improvement lasted.
Every dashboard has a blind spot. My work is making it visible before it shows up in EBITDA.
By the time the problem appears in EBITDA, the organization may have been signaling trouble for months. Quiet meetings, rising turnover, fragile workflows, and temporary performance lifts are not diagnoses, but they are reasons to investigate.
The Visibility Gap is the distance between what leadership believes is happening, what people inside the practices actually experience, and what the financials eventually reveal.
Finding the cause early can mean the difference between a manageable correction, another expensive recovery effort, or something far worse: another practice closing its doors.
A quality-of-earnings review verifies the numbers. I verify the explanation behind them.
Consultants are paid to sell the fix. I don’t implement, so my only job is getting the diagnosis right.
Management chooses what you see. I choose what to examine.
The opportunity
Today the patient journey is invisible, so 970 of every 1,000 leads vanish and nobody can say where. When I make the journey visible, the same 1,000 leads produce 50 funded cases instead of 30.
Same 1,000 leads
Every month. Same marketing spend.
Journey unseentoday
Journey visiblewith me
01 Leads generated
1,000
Leads generated
Same leads. Same spend.
1,000
Leads generated
Same leads. Same spend.
02 Consultations booked
400
Consultations booked
Lost here
Six rings, voicemail, a callback the next afternoon.
440
Consultations booked
Made visible
Every call answered or returned the same morning.
03 Consultations attended
100
Consultations attended
Lost here
Wrong location on the confirmation text. No reminder.
154
Consultations attended
Made visible
The right location, a reminder the day before, a person who confirms.
04 Treatment accepted
40
Treatment accepted
Carries through.
62
Treatment accepted
Carries through.
05 Cases funded
30
Cases funded
Lost here
A printed quote and “call us when you are ready.”
50
Cases funded
Made visible
Financing discussed in the chair, before the patient leaves.
+20 patients a month
from the same leads
30
funded cases
50
funded cases
Illustrative monthly funnel for a subset of locations. All counts are fictional. How the second journey is calculated: Booking 40% to 44%, show rate 25% to 35%, funding 75% to 80%. Treatment acceptance unchanged at 40%. Rounded at each step.
I make it visible so it becomes fixable.
What I do instead
01
The same five steps, but now each one shows where patients left and why. Not “conversion is low.” Six in ten of the patients you lost were lost before a consultation was ever booked.
Where the 970 were lost
1,000 leads to 30 funded
lost before a consultation was booked
600 of 970
Illustrative monthly funnel for a subset of locations. All counts are fictional.
02
A patient record, side by side. The DSO’s version is mostly blank or wrong. Mine is rebuilt from the phone log, the consult notes, and the financing conversation that never happened.
| Field | What the DSO has | What I reconstruct |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Dana | Dana |
| How she found you | Other | Searched for implants at night, called next morning |
| First contact | Lead created | Six rings, voicemail, callback 29 hours later |
| What she wanted to fix | Blank | Two failing molars, afraid of the cost |
| Consultation | No-show | Attended, wrong location on the text, rebooked herself |
| Financing | Blank | Never discussed |
| Why she left | Blank | Booked across town the same week |
03
Move one number and watch the funded cases follow. Then test whether the fix survives the next month, the next location, and the next person who answers the phone.
I find and verify the problem; I don’t sell the fix.
Move one number
IllustrativeIllustrative enterprise value
–
at an illustrative 8× multiple
Illustrative only. Real results depend on capacity, case mix, financing and costs. Reports show the conversion rate; they rarely show which leak, at which location, and why.
Not another report that restates what management already believes. A concise investor decision memo that distinguishes verified facts from hypotheses, quantifies financial exposure where supportable, identifies missing evidence, and sets out the implications for the next decision.
Fund.
Redirect.
Delay.
Investigate further.
See how a $2.0M capital request became a $150K gated pilot: a 4-page sample memo built on a fictional 50-location platform.
See a sample decision memo
Tracy Waltmon, Founder, AOX Ops
Tracy Waltmon on LinkedInThe founder
My first ten years in dentistry were spent clinically as a dental assistant in general dentistry and oral surgery. I went on to manage practices, build a consulting business serving dental and medical organizations, lead regional sales training, generate high-value full-arch revenue, and hold executive responsibility across multiple practices.
Took over an underperforming healthcare sales territory and tripled its production; ranked number one nationally for multiple quarters and earned multiple performance awards.
Personally achieved the top national ranking in full-arch implant sales, bringing firsthand knowledge of patient confidence, treatment acceptance, financing, and commercial execution.
Promoted after national sales success to develop and train sales teams, turning individual capability into teachable practices.
Helped reduce employee turnover within one year by addressing organizational and operational conditions rather than assuming recruiting alone was the answer.
Early in my career, redesigned processes so work previously requiring three people could be performed by one, not by demanding more effort, but by changing the way work was organized.
My work spans revenue cycle, collections, reimbursement, financial controls, staffing, technology implementation, training, and the organizational decisions that connect them.
Tracy has an incredible ability to see what others miss. She’s worth her weight in gold! I’ve been through consultant after consultant, and no one has ever made such an impact on collections and operations in my practice. She helped me recognize that some of the decisions I was making as a practice owner were actually contributing to the problems we were experiencing.
Dr. Greg Pritchett
Dental Practice Owner
She has an uncanny ability to problem solve.
Bonnie Jewell
Medical Practice Manager
Finds quick solutions to your most difficult areas in the office that need attention.
Erika Lopez
Lead Dental Assistant
Testimonials describe earlier professional work, not AOX Ops investor engagements.
I notice patterns in organizations: how people respond to incentives, what they stop saying in meetings, where departments become disconnected, and how decisions made at the top create consequences somewhere else.
Sometimes I see the warning signs before the numbers catch up.
My loyalty is to the evidence. Not the explanation.
You have the reports. You have management’s explanation. You may already have another proposed solution. What you may not have is independent evidence that it addresses the right problem.
What happens on the call: you describe the decision in front of you. I tell you whether an independent look would change it, and what it would take. If it wouldn’t help, I’ll say so.
Confidential from the first conversation. NDA signed before any specifics are shared. Most second opinions are delivered in about 10 business days.