10 February 2025

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Alumni Profile Q&A: Dr. Gregg Lurcott (DDS 1998)

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Dr. Gregg Lurcott credits his parents and growing up in Buffalo, New York, with generating the lifelong work ethic that today keeps him on track in his career as a busy Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeon with three offices in the Denver, Colorado, metro area. Work ethic is necessary if you are a newspaper delivery boy trudging through Buffalo’s legendary snowfalls and blizzards, carrying heavy bags filled with copies of USA Today, the Buffalo News and a local advertising paper – particularly if you keep at it for six years. Gregg was entering his junior year in high school when his father moved the family to suburban Detroit for a new job. The timing was difficult for a high school kid, but there was a very big positive: The University of Michigan was right down the road in Ann Arbor. It was impressive, the campus was awesome, everyone said he should apply and he was admitted. By then he was considering dentistry and he received the double-bonus four years later of being admitted to the U-M dental school. After graduating with his DDS in 1998, he completed a one-year internship at the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo, then spent four years as a resident in OMS in the St. John Health Care System and Children’s Hospital of Michigan. He then practiced in the Detroit area for six years before moving to Colorado in 2009 after being coaxed for years by one of his childhood friends from Buffalo who had moved there. He started as a single practitioner and gradually added four associates and two more offices. In a recent interview, he discussed his career choice, recollections of dental school and why he maintains a connection with the school.

Q: You’ve said that you thought you would pursue orthodontics because your childhood orthodontist was a family friend who seemed like the happiest person alive. How did you get from ortho to oral surgery?

A: I had that early orthodontics connection, so in dental school I went to the orthodontics clinic and watched them put brackets on teeth and bend wires. It seemed like orthodontists had a nice lifestyle and they work with their hands and deal closely with people, both of which I’ve always liked. But when I went to the oral surgery clinic and pulled my first tooth, I said, ‘This is fantastic, this is for me.’ I was blessed in that way because I loved it. I went over to the U-M hospital and watched big surgeries, including some by Dr. (Joseph) Helman that were really impressive. I liked the excitement of the operating room and the oral surgery clinic back at the dental school. So from there I did the internship in Ohio, then the OMS residency in Detroit.

Q: What else comes to mind when you think of your four years at the School of Dentistry?

A:  I realized very quickly that, unlike undergrad, I needed to show up for class or I was going to miss something important. Everybody I was surrounded by was highly accomplished through their undergrad education. I don’t know how the admissions staff vetted the students but I was impressed. I knew if I wanted to get into oral surgery I needed to be at the top of my class, so I worked extremely hard. Everybody was working extremely hard. If you get accepted to one of the best dental schools in the nation, the faculty weren’t just handing out A’s like it was free candy. The professors would tell you if what you were doing was not quite right, even though you thought it was awesome. But when they sent you back three or four times to freshen up a margin or whatever, you’d see that it was better the way they wanted it. It made me better. Some of the faculty seemed strict. Others, like the Heys brothers (Ron and Don), were easy to talk to and practical. For all of the faculty, mediocrity was not who they were. They were keeping the bar high. By the time you got to the point where you were treating patients, you were doing quality work. We are better practitioners because of all of that. It was just high, high standards and it started from Day One at the dental school.

Q: Now that you’ve been a practicing oral and maxillofacial surgeon for nearly 25 years, you’ve treated an incredible variety of patient needs. What is it about those complex cases that keep you going?

A: I feel it is my calling because I find it so rewarding. I enjoy getting up every day and going to work. Some days I’m just taking out wisdom teeth or putting implants in or doing bone-grafting. I still enjoy taking out wisdom teeth even though I’ve taken out thousands and thousands. But I also like the broader scope of our specialty – treating facial trauma and performing orthgnathic surgery. Dog bites. People not wearing a seatbelt in serious traffic accidents. Gun shots, which have grown more common in recent years. Interpersonal violence. Cancer and tumors. Cleft palates. Someone falls down stairs, or is kicked in the face by a horse. Anything you can think of that would cause facial trauma and need facial reconstruction. Gunshot wounds are probably the worst things we see. Whatever the case, we put the patient back together. We may need to reconstruct their face or jaw, and if they lost teeth we can get them a full set of implants. We hide their incisions and often after months or a year of healing they look amazing. We make them feel whole again, take away that stigma about their previously shattered appearance.  It’s pretty profound. It is gratifying and fulfilling for me personally and professionally. When I’ve been on call over the years, I get calls in the middle of the night and pop out of bed because someone needs my help. My approach is that I’ve been trained for this and I can do this, whether it takes one hour or six hours. Sometimes you get home late at night after a long day, then you are called back in for something else an hour later. I embrace it because it is rewarding and I truly enjoy what I do!

Q: Tell us about your unusual practice of giving out your cell phone number to patients.

A: I give all my patients my cell phone number, which is kind of weird. Patients always tell me that no doctor or dentist has ever done that for them. I get asked why I do that and don’t I worry about people calling me all the time? The idea is that if a patient has a follow-up problem, they can just call me or text me and get in touch with me right away. I’m not going to leave them hanging. If they are having an allergic reaction, for example, I don’t want to find out eight hours later. That’s the culture I have adopted in my practice. My partners all give out their numbers. Patients don’t abuse it, they respect it and they don’t call me for just some random reason. 

Q: You recently hosted a School of Dentistry alumni meet-and-greet dinner at your home in Denver that included Dean Jacques Nör and about 40 people. You and your wife also provided financial support to the school during the Blue Renew major renovation for the Gregg and Rebecca Lurcott Imaging Room in the oral surgery department. Why do you want to retain ties to the dental school?

A: The dental school has brought me so much success, professionally and personally. It’s a feeling of gratitude and happiness. I discussed with my parents a while back that the greatest gift you can give someone is an education. I value that in life. I value my mentors and the education I got at the University of Michigan, and I know I am successful in private practice, in the hospital, and in my community because of that. It set me up for success. I love the university and going back to Ann Arbor for games, or watching Michigan football and basketball on TV.  The community you feel being a Michigan alum is nationwide and worldwide. You see anybody anywhere in the world wearing maize and blue and you feel instantly connected to them. It set me up for the rest of my life, so that’s why I give back. Blue Renew is an example of maintaining the highest standards – a state-of-the-art dental school with the best equipment and most technologically advanced classrooms, clinics and professors to produce the finest dental students and most cutting-edge research and technologies. The dental school and the university have always been about excellence and you want to contribute to that excellence, either financially or with your time. I’ve chosen to do both and I would encourage all of my fellow alumni to reflect on their success and education from one of the most highly regarded and respected universities in the world, and do the same.

Source: https://news.dent.umich.edu/