Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Our first question is from Brooks O’Neil, Dougherty and Company.
Brooks O’Neil – Dougherty and Company
Good morning, guys. I have a couple of questions. You mentioned in your prepared remarks that the integration of Metro is proceeding ahead of schedule. Can you provide any details on exactly how that’s going and what impact you’d been able to have on the practice so far?
Greg Serrao
Sure. I think what we’re referring to Brooks is bringing two Metro Dental Care – first of all, many of the practice managers that were with us when we operated the Park Dental, so how on that level of expertise that the practice level has been very helpful. Also, having integrated the management teams of the two organizations has proceeded very well. I think we have now a combined management team that is extremely strong. I think we’ve picked up some significant improvement in areas such as clinical administration and recruiting for doctors and marketing and then maintain the strength of the Park – what we would have caught to our Park Dental management prior to. In addition, the combination of that and the cooperation, of course, of the doctor group, we have seen margins improved about 400 basis points so far from the time of the acquisition, and provided that we can maintain productivity per hour levels. I think we expect to see that margin improvements to continue from here, which is exciting of course.
The other thing I would say that’s been exciting is – we affiliated with Metro just about a year ago, a little more than that now. And over the past weekend all of their practices were converted – all 40 were converted to Improvis which was certainly a lot quicker than we thought we would have done that. Very dedicated and committed professional team and management team at Metro has allowed us to accomplish many of our goals quicker than we anticipated we would.
Brooks O’Neil – Dougherty and Company
That’s great. You guys mentioned and I noticed obviously that salary expense was the one expense item that was really quite a bit higher than I had expected myself and you elude it to the fact that a good part of that was related to under performance. I guess I’d say in the six Park practices what – what do you expect to do over the next couple of quarters to try to get that number down or do you think you can get that number down during that timeframe?
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