Roughly a third of American dental practices are now owned by dental service organisations backed by private equity. Meridian is not one of them. There is no regional director with a monthly production target, no software flagging which patients are "under-diagnosed", and no script telling us to find four thousand dollars of work in a healthy mouth.
Elena Marchetti bought a failing two-chair practice on Marshall Way in 2012 with one hygienist and a waiting list of nobody. Ray Okafor joined as a partner four years later, largely because both of them were tired of writing referral letters for work they were perfectly capable of doing.
The building has grown to six operatories and nineteen people. The ownership has not changed and will not — we have turned down four acquisition offers, the most recent in 2025.
Plate 20 · 4:4.6 · Reception
You will see the same doctor at every visit unless you ask otherwise. Continuity is not a luxury in dentistry — it is how somebody notices that a crack has grown two millimetres since last March.
Co-owner · Restorative & cosmetic
Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health, then five years of continuing education through the Spear Institute here in Scottsdale. She holds AACD accreditation, a credential fewer than four hundred dentists worldwide have completed, and runs the veneer and full-mouth reconstruction work.
Grew up in Flagstaff, still climbs at the Phoenix Rock Gym on Tuesdays, and is the reason the waiting room has actual books in it.
Co-owner · Surgical & implants
Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, followed by a hospital residency in Boston and fellowship credentialing with the American Academy of Implant Dentistry. He holds an Arizona permit for IV sedation and has placed a little over two thousand implants.
Moved to Arizona for the weather and stayed for the golf, which he describes as "a work in progress". Speaks fluent Igbo and enough Spanish to get through a consultation.
Average tenure here is six years, which in an industry with roughly 40% annual turnover is the statistic we are proudest of.
Practice manager · 9 years
Hygienist, RDH · 7 years
Hygienist, RDH · 5 years
Lead assistant, CDA · 8 years
Treatment coordinator · 4 years
Insurance & billing · 6 years
Assistant, CDA · 3 years
CEREC technician · 5 years
Ground floor with step-free entry from the covered car park, a wheelchair-accessible operatory, and windows in every treatment room — which sounds trivial until you have spent two hours staring at a ceiling tile somewhere else.
Windows, blankets, and headphones in every room. The ceiling-mounted screen shows your own X-rays, not a daytime television channel.
A CEREC Primemill, a sintering furnace and a full-time technician. It is the reason a crown takes two hours here and two weeks elsewhere.
Step-free from the covered car park, a wheelchair-accessible operatory, and a hearing loop at reception.
Instrument cassettes, class B autoclaves and weekly biological spore testing, logged and available on request.
Free covered parking under the building off Marshall Way. In August this matters more than anything else on this page.
Watchful waiting is a legitimate treatment plan. A small, stable, symptom-free lesion often does not need drilling this year, and there is no quota that says otherwise.
Insurance reimbursement assumes a much shorter appointment. We book the hour anyway and absorb the difference.
When a specialist would do it better, you go to the specialist — even though the revenue leaves the building with you.
Every price on this website is our actual fee schedule. No group we could join would let us do that.
Book online in about ninety seconds, or call and ask for Renee at the front desk — she has been here nine years and can answer most questions faster than this website can.