Thought Leadership
Marina Davar's thought leadership: six pillars from both sides of the desk
Marina Davar built a dental assisting program from zero and now manages a large Cincinnati medical practice. These are the six themes she writes about on this site.
Pillar one · Founder authority
Building the program
What it actually takes to launch a healthcare training program from a blank page, told by someone who did it.
She writes about the real timeline of building a dental assisting program and getting through CODA accreditation, curriculum designed backward from what employers need on day one, equipping a functional dental training clinic on career-college money, and advisory boards made up of working clinicians who tell you the truth.
Pillar two · Pedagogy
Teaching the hands
Clinical skill is taught, not downloaded, and adult learners learn it differently.
She writes about teaching chairside technique to students with jobs, kids, and doubts; lab time built around demonstration, practice, and feedback so skills actually stick; and assessment that proves competence, from checkoffs and rubrics to externship evaluations employers can trust.
Pillar three · Student success
The student nobody bet on
First-generation students, career changers, and working adults are the healthcare workforce, if programs keep them.
She writes about retention as a design problem (scheduling, remediation, and belonging for adult learners), what career colleges get right and wrong about students who are new to higher education, and externships and employer relationships as a completion strategy: the path from enrollment to employed.
Pillar four · Employer-side commentary
What practices actually need
Marina Davar has interviewed the graduates she used to teach. Here is the view from the other side of the desk.
She writes about the skills gap practices find in week one and how programs can close it, competing for clinical staff against TriHealth, UC Health, Mercy Health, and Christ Hospital wages, and an employer's honest curriculum feedback, including denials literacy and professionalism.
Pillar five · Cincinnati market
Independent and surviving
Running an independent medical practice in a region where the big systems set the wage floor and the payer terms.
She writes about revenue cycle discipline (denials as a management problem, clean claim rate, days in A/R, wRVU productivity), how independent practices recruit and retain when they can't outspend the hospitals, and making value-based care work outside a health system.
Pillar six · OH · KY · IN
Tri-state realities
Practice where three states meet, and the regulations meet you first.
She writes about licensure, payer enrollment, and telehealth across Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana; Ohio Medicaid, managed care variation, and CAQH and PECOS credentialing across state lines; and HIPAA, OSHA, CLIA, Stark/AKS, and OARRS compliance for practices that have no compliance department.