Many of his patients might be surprised to learn Dr. Mark Broomhead graduated from University of Illinois with a finance degree. For two years, he worked as an investment banker.

“It was just a job, it wasn’t a career,” says the Chicago native. That’s when he started down the path where he would find fulfillment.

“I went out and got an internship, randomly, while I was an investment banker and I worked for two oral surgeons, unpaid, on the weekends.”

He volunteered his time trying to see if dentistry was something he wanted to do.

A Change of Plans

“This just jumped to me and I ran with it. I’ve always had this passion for dentistry and medicine,” he says.
Dr. Broomhead shares his favorite aspect of dentistry: changing someone’s smile.
“A smile can say so much about someone. It can do so much for happiness and just getting ahead in life.”

He recalled a recent experience during a patient visit at Compton and Broomhead Dental Center in Munster, Indiana.

“The poor guy didn’t want to smile,” he says.
But within not even 24 hours of Dr. Broomhead working his magic, his patient was smiling from ear to ear.
“He sent me a before-and-after picture with the caption ‘What a difference less than a day makes.’ When I saw him again days later there were tears, hugs, and smiles. Strangers were reaching out to me on his behalf sending messages saying, ‘You changed this guy’s life in not even a day.’ There’s no price tag you can put on something like that.”
He continues, “That’s just this week’s story – but that’s why I do this.”

Dr. Broomhead’s practice includes a division he operates, Dental Home Health, that serves the immobile, homebound, and geriatric population that can’t leave their homes.

“With Dental Home Health, we can bring virtually any service to them. I have a portable, digital x-ray device – it’s a handheld device that hooks up to a laptop.”

A lot of Dental Home Health is partial and full dental work, but much of it is emergency care.

“A patient could have a lot of pain or a life-threatening abscess or infection. With Dental Home Health, we can diagnose, give antibiotics, and if it comes down to a situation where we can’t do this in the patient’s La Z Boy, then we can arrange ambulance transportation to our office for sedation dentistry or extensive surgeries that can’t be done at home.”
He continues, “The other benefit is being able to diagnose where people would let things go, typically because they can’t get out of the house – whether it’s too icy, there’s too much snow, they don’t have a driver or they’re by themselves. So they just live with the pain and discomfort, and some of these are life-threatening situations.”

Dental Home Health travels to nursing homes, hospitals, and homes of individuals. The service is steadily growing and expanding: they now have their own director and are in a couple different counties.
“It’s good for our community, and to have our name and our brand out there. We are providing a service that no one else – that I know of – in this state does. We are in northwest Indiana, which is a suburb of Chicago, and no one does it in Chicago either.”

What’s the hype?

Dr. Broomhead discusses the hype at his practice: mini dental implants.
In October 2016, he got involved in MDICA – Mini Dental Implant Center of America.
“A big part of my practice is placing implants and restoring smiles that have gone terribly wrong and had a hopeless prognosis. I do same-day implants, non-invasively, at half the cost of traditional implants,” he says.
“I don’t have to sedate the patient and I don’t have to cut away all this bone. I just bought a second 3D scanner to put in my other location because of how busy implant services have gotten.”
His practice has been voted as the #1 dental office in Northwest Indiana – called Best of the Region – for the last four years in a row.
Dr. Broomhead mentions upcoming commercials on the topic of mini dental implants, and says that he will be shooting a 30-minute infomercial as well.
“We’re going for number five this year and I’m going to do the silliest dental office parody commercial. I’ll be the forefront of the commercial, I’m going to be dressed up like Justin Timberlake and have 40 team members. We’re all going to be involved, so I’ll have a videographer come in and it will go viral.”
Dr. Broomhead’s last video on the mini dental implant topic received more than 25,000 thousand views.

A 2017 Incisal Edge 40 Under 40 honoree, Dr. Broomhead will be a featured panelist at this year’s Under 40 Summit May 30-June 1 in New York City. He’ll speak on the topic Marketing Your Practice/Social Media.

Register for the event today: https://www.under40summit.com/

A word of advice

Dr. Broomhead shares the best advice he can give to aspiring dentists.
“Don’t pigeonhole yourself. Think broad picture, think outside the box. Take as many CE courses as you possibly can, even after you graduate dentistry. This way, your scope of practice is broader and you can offer as many services as possible to the patient.”
He emphasizes the importance of building up a confidence level.
“If you spend enough time and take enough CE credits in certain aspects of dentistry, for example implants, you can be just as good, if not better, than an oral surgeon or a periodontist. You shouldn’t be the typical drill-and-fill dentist.”

A fun fact

In June 2016, Dr. Broomhead participated in the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon. The competition consisted of swimming 1.5 miles across the San Francisco Bay from Alcatraz Island to the Golden Gate Bridge, biking 18 miles through the hilly streets of San Francisco and running another eight miles.
When asked if he would ever participate in a triathlon again, he said he’s officially retired right now.
“Maybe four or five years from now,” he says. “I’ll never say never, but life and work are too busy!” he laughs.
Read his interview on the topic last spring at: https://blog.benco.com/2017/05/30/swimming-with-the-sharks-indiana-dentist-braves-teeth-chattering-temps-of-san-francisco-bay-with-teamfox-ie40under40/