Southern Travel Surgery

Always. We come to your office, so your patient never leaves the chair they already trust — and they stay on your books. We handle the surgical visit and hand care right back to you.

Most partner offices book us one to two full days per month. You block the day on your schedule and fill it with surgeries — ranging from single teeth to full-mouth extractions. We arrive, set up in the operatories you designate, use the sterilizing equipment, and leave the rooms as we found them. Insurance verification is handled by our coordinator, and billing and code completion is handled by our team.

Wisdom teeth and impacted extractions, full-mouth extractions, bone grafts and sinus lifts, dental implants, and oroantral closures — the complex cases that usually get referred out.

It can go both ways. If you'd prefer us to diagnose and treatment plan, we're happy to. Our goal is to support you and your complex treatment planning, so if you have a direction or a treatment plan you'd like us to follow, please leave us access to review it.

One to three operatories/chairs, access to the sterilization room, and disposables (anesthetic, gloves, patient bibs, etc.). We bring our own sterile instruments, surgical handpieces, monitoring and emergency equipment, and IV setup. We are credentialed, licensed, and fully insured in every county we serve. We only ask that you have someone on site who is comfortable checking patients in and out, familiar with your office's flow, and able to assist with back-office needs should something come up (Wi-Fi issue, supply storage, etc.).

We are a completely separate entity and handle our own payment and billing. We rent your space for a daily rate. We handle all patient payments and billing. The host practice bills STS a clean, single daily rate — it is not based on production or collections. All production and collections are the responsibility of STS.

The host office handles what they're comfortable with, and we're always here to help. Each patient gets a link to reach our team directly for more complicated concerns. For post-op pain and suture removal, we encourage the patient to see their host office — and we're always here to coach, or to return if needed to give additional, more tailored follow-up care. (Spoiler alert: we have almost no follow-ups.)

All surgical liability rests with Dr. Bechtel and Southern Travel Surgery, not your practice. Our consent forms with the patient and our lease agreement with the host practice clearly delineate us as a completely separate service, entity, and team, there for the convenience of the patient only. We are separate in every way, and that carries an immense amount of protection in both directions. We carry our own malpractice and general liability coverage. We operate under our own state licenses in each jurisdiction we serve and provide proof of insurance and credentialing to every host practice on file.

Our business structure was built by the legal team of a large hospital conglomerate — the same team that has structured countless similar healthcare arrangements across Ohio and Kentucky. This is a tried-and-true system designed in compliance with anti-kickback and Stark laws, structured to protect the host office from liability for our procedures, and vice versa.

Absolutely. We are defined as a 'portable clinic' and operate within a traveling provider arrangement — a long-standing, well-established model in dentistry that is used routinely across many fields of medicine.