Barry Chase, Alex Montazem, Michael Lee and Evan Cohen don’t know each other very well for four dental specialists who work together.
Hicksville-based National Dental selected them separately as the “A team” to anchor Hillside Dental Care, its newly opened Williston Park practice at 215 Hillside Ave., said Chase, a dental sleep apnea specialist.
While they have “casually and informally met,” Montazem said, they haven’t interacted much.
Despite that, they’re ready to hit the ground running and start providing oral surgery, orthodontic care, root canals and sleep apnea treatment under one roof, following a medical trend of having multiple specialists in one place working collaboratively, Chase said.
“It’s like good musicians — you can assemble them and they can play well together almost immediately,” Chase said. “That’s a very easy thing for us to do, is collaborate.”
All four have years of experience in their specialized dental fields and practice in parts of Long Island and New York City.
Cohen, an orthodontist certified to provide transparent Invisalign braces, has practiced in Staten Island and the Bronx with a network of orthodontists that operates in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Lee, a 15-year endodontist, or root canal provider, practices in several locations, he said.
Chase said he has offices in Melville and New York City.
He likes Williston Park’s central location and proximity to Winthrop-University Hospital, where he sometimes works, he said.
Montazem, an oral surgeon for more than 20 years, currently has his own practice in Smithtown.
He was looking to move into a group practice when National Dental, which owns five general dental practices, approached him about joining Hillside Dental Care.
He wanted some “camaraderie” and “collaboration,” he said.
“After being in the office for 20 years alone, you start to want to make sure that you’re still state of the art, taking advantage of the expertise of other specialists,” Montazem said.
Collaboration is one of the hallmarks of the group-practice model, Chase said.
Being in the same place creates “synergy” among the dentists, he said, and prevents the patient from having to go see several specialists in different places.
“If they see an issue you can collaborate with each other, and you don’t have to go from office to office,” Lee said. “You can just get it done.”
Group practices can also offer technology that single practices couldn’t, he said.
The four specialists will also work with National Dental’s five general practices on Long Island and Queens, said Mark Gelfand, a National Dental attorney who acts as counsel for Hillside Dental Care.
The company chose Williston Park for its multiple-specialty office because there are many local general dentists who refer patients to specialists, Gelfand said, and there aren’t any similar group specialty practices in the area.
The office’s location at the corner of Hillside Avenue and Mineola Boulevard also has good “curb appeal” and lots of traffic passing by, he said.
“It’s kind of a nice marriage of general and specialty,” Gelfand said.
On top of the office’s modern, upscale look, Chase’s sleep apnea treatments are likely to be a big draw for Hillside Dental Care, Gelfand said, as more people become aware of how prevalent the disease is.
He called Chase a “pre-eminent” provider of specialized mouthpieces that keep the jaw from sliding back and causing breathing to stop during sleep.
The mouthpieces are a welcome alternative to the other known treatments for sleep apnea, Chase said: either surgery or a CPAP machine, a breathing device that requires the patient to wear a mask while they sleep.
In addition to causing snoring, Chase said, sleep apnea can cause many health problems because it stops the flow of oxygen to the brain and the heart.
“My tagline is, I can save your marriage, I can save your life and somebody else pays for it,” Chase said, referring to the fact that he accepts medical insurance, including Medicare.
Gelfand has sleep apnea and said he used his CPAP machine for about a week before giving it up. “I could either breathe or sleep, but I couldn’t do both,” he said.
But he made an appointment with Chase to get one of his mouthpieces.
“Why put an extra strain on your heart if you don’t have to?” Gelfand said.
