D Magazine’s Best, Two Years in a Row: The Texas Center Approach to Oral Surgery
For the second consecutive year, D Magazine has named Drs. Aaron Vickers, Tamir Anver, and Jeema Dad among the best dentists in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as voted by their peers. It’s the kind of recognition that means something different when it comes from colleagues.
“It’s great to be loved by your patients,” said Dr. Vickers, “but to know that the other dentists in the community also consider us to be excellent is definitely humbling.”
Dr. Anver put it in practical terms. A significant part of what an oral surgery practice does depends on the trust of referring dentists, the colleagues who send their own patients through the door. Being recognized publicly, he explained, gives those dentists confidence. “If they’re doubting whether or not they can trust us or refer to us, this demonstrates that other dentists already do. There’s no need to hesitate.”
For Dr. Dad, who has now earned the D Best recognition five times individually, the distinction speaks to something deeper than accolades. “It makes our team feel like what we’ve been doing has been working,” she said. “We don’t take these cases lightly. We literally put our hearts and souls into them.”
Redefining What Oral Surgery Feels Like
The phrase “redefining the oral surgery experience” appears throughout Texas Center’s marketing, but behind it is a specific, deliberate philosophy that each provider describes in concrete terms.
Dr. Vickers said it starts the moment a patient makes contact. “I want every interaction that patients and prospective patients have with our practice to feel different, and to feel good. Warmth from my team. Genuine empathy. People who are happy to be there and happy to work with the people they work with.” He wants patients to leave knowing they received a plan built specifically for their situation, not a template, not an upsell. “We want them to trust that we’re recommending only what they need and not more than what they need.”
Dr. Anver described the gap between expectation and reality that most patients arrive with. “People think it’s going to hurt. People think it won’t be affordable. People think we’re going to talk down to them.” His goal is to flip all three. The experience he’s aiming for, he said, is closer to a cosmetic or concierge medical practice than the transactional, high-volume model many patients have come to expect from dental and surgical offices.
That standard extends inward, too, to the team. “There’s a historic reputation for how terrible it is to work for an oral surgeon,” Dr. Anver said with candor. “We pride ourselves on being one of the best, if not the single best, place to work in the Metroplex.” He pointed to a telling data point: roughly half of their staff have joined through internal referrals from existing employees.
Dr. Dad described the patient experience from her vantage point in the restorative process. “When you go to the doctor’s office, you call, you walk in, and someone looks up and says ‘next.’ You’re a number. We try to change all of that.” Her team works to pass detailed information at every handoff so patients don’t have to repeat themselves to each new person they encounter. “The patient actually feels heard and seen.”
The Lab That Changes Everything
Texas Center is the only oral surgery practice in DFW operating a full-service, fully digital in-house laboratory, and both Dr. Vickers and Dr. Dad describe it as one of the most consequential investments the practice has made.
Dr. Vickers explained the frustration that led to it. As the practice took on more complex full-arch implant cases, commercial and national labs became a recurring bottleneck. “They serve many masters,” he said. “They can be quite difficult to schedule with, inconsistent in their communication, and can become the bottleneck in completing cases.” When something broke or an unplanned situation arose, coordinating a repair through an outside vendor added days or weeks to a patient’s discomfort.
The solution wasn’t just purchasing equipment. “We didn’t just buy some machines and still outsource everything,” Dr. Vickers said. “We bought all the equipment, we hired the technician, and we have a full-time lab in our practice available all day, every day.” Patients can speak directly with the lab designer to align on cosmetic expectations. Referring dentists can collaborate with the technician one on one. And when something urgent comes up, the lab can pivot immediately because it answers only to Texas Center.
Dr. Dad bridges the clinical and laboratory sides of that process. Her role includes overseeing the post-surgical phase of full-arch cases: monitoring healing, managing the patient relationship through recovery, and coordinating with both the surgeons and the lab when issues arise. “One of my roles is to bridge the gap between our clinical side and our fantastic laboratory side,” she said. “We don’t want to be a type of office that loses things in translation because we don’t actually talk to one another.”
The results speak for themselves in practical terms. Patients with broken or missing teeth can leave with professional, lab-quality replacements the same day, often the day they meet our team for the first time. “Imagine a patient without teeth,” Dr. Dad said. “Days is so much better than weeks. Hours is obviously better than anything else.”
Dr. Anver summed up the driving principle: “We don’t want to limit what is possible for a patient based on what we are or aren’t willing to invest in. We want to give patients the opportunity to say yes to optimum health.”
Four Locations, One Culture
Scaling a practice while preserving the feel of a family office is one of the harder problems in healthcare. Texas Center has four locations across North Texas, and maintaining consistency across all of them is something the leadership team treats as an active, ongoing discipline, not a passive outcome.
“The short answer is: because we care enough to do so,” Dr. Anver said. “We spend the time and the money to prioritize making sure it happens.” Every week, the four leaders of the practice rotate from office to office, conducting educational meetings that cover clinical topics, mindset, professional development, and operational consistency. Everything is very, very collective, and that’s with intention.”
Dr. Vickers described the same rhythm from his angle. “We do weekly location-based meetings where the leaders of our organization travel each week to a different office to work specifically with those teams on culture, on processes, and on consistency.” The surgeons also meet regularly as a group to align on clinical and administrative best practices, so that regardless of which provider a patient sees or which location they visit, the experience reflects the same standards.
Dr. Dad travels between three of the four offices with her own clinical team, which means patients see the same familiar faces regardless of which location they visit. “If you come to Frisco to see me and then decide to come to Denton, it’s still me and my team with you,” she said. “It’s not a whole set of different people you don’t know. It’s consistency.”
She also made a distinction that matters to her: “We are a family-based oral surgery practice. You’re not going to come to our office and feel herded in and out. We give patients the time of day.”
What 3,000 Five-Star Reviews Actually Mean
Texas Center has accumulated more than 3,000 five-star Google reviews, a number that likely surpasses any comparable group in the DFW market. But Dr. Vickers is more interested in the quality of those reviews than the count.
“Patients are writing paragraphs about their experience,” he said. “They’re calling team members and doctors by name. And they’re doing all of this without any incentive from us. They are simply choosing to share their experience so that other people will know.”
For Dr. Anver, one story above all others captures what the practice is building. Reagan, whose full story lives on the Texas Center website, came to him as a young woman in her early twenties: in dentures at 15 following childhood trauma, and later an amputee after years of physical and psychological hardship. She had never bitten into an apple in her adult life. “She had no self-confidence. She had never had a chance at a meaningful adolescent or young adult life.”
After completing full-arch dental implants, the transformation extended far beyond her teeth. She sent the team photos from her first date. Dr. Anver laughs that he expects to be invited to her wedding one day. The apple moment, him handing her one on impulse and her biting into it and nearly falling out of her chair, ended up in the practice’s culture video. “It’s 100% real life,” he said. “She didn’t know it was possible.”
Dr. Dad described the daily version of that feeling. “It makes us feel fantastic, because what we’re doing makes a difference. The moment patients walk in, you’re actually greeted. You’re not a number.”
The Credential Behind the Care
Four of the five surgeons at Texas Center hold both a D.D.S. and an M.D., and all five are board certified in oral and maxillofacial surgery by the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. Board certification, Dr. Vickers and Dr. Anver both emphasized, isn’t a marketing footnote. It’s a formal commitment to a standard of safety and training that very few practitioners reach.
“There are probably fewer than 3,000 to 4,000 board-certified dual-degree oral surgeons in the entire country, for 350 million people,” Dr. Anver said. “We’re a really small cohort. It’s something to be proud of, and something that patients and colleagues can feel confident in.”
PULL QUOTE
“We redefine the oral surgery experience by following through like nobody else. By finishing what we start. By not nickeling and diming people, but by planning comprehensively and then delivering on our promises.”
— Dr. Aaron Vickers
Dr. Dad’s role is distinct. She is a restorative dentist, not an oral surgeon, serving as the cosmetic and functional architect for the practice’s full-arch cases. She designs smiles before surgery begins and manages patient outcomes through the final restoration. Her involvement means the surgeons operate with a clear end vision already established, and patients move through the process with a single point of continuity from planning to completion.
Oral Health Is Total Health
The relationship between oral health and overall wellness is something all three providers take seriously, and it shapes how they talk to patients about the stakes of what they’re doing.
“We believe our patients should be pain-free, disease-free, and have a smile they can be proud of,” Dr. Anver said. Oral surgery is often the gateway to all three. But the effect, he’s observed, rarely stops at the mouth. “When people decide to prioritize their oral health, that is often the first thing that makes them prioritize the rest of their health.” Patients lose weight. They quit smoking. They start showing up differently because something shifted when they invested in themselves. “It’s usually not the last thing they do.”
Before the First Appointment
For patients approaching oral surgery with anxiety, which the doctors will tell you is essentially all of them, Texas Center has a consistent message: you are not the first person to feel this way, and you will not be treated like a number.
“Pretty much 99% of the patients who meet us don’t want to be there,” Dr. Anver said, without any trace of frustration. “We’re used to people not looking forward to meeting us. But if you look at the 3,000 reviews, we’re obviously doing something right.” The track record, he said, is the reassurance. Patients walking in don’t have to take anyone’s word for it.
Dr. Dad framed it from a promise standpoint. “If they want a customized and individualized experience where they’re actually seen and heard, they should come to us. We don’t cut corners. We literally want them to have a good experience, be comfortable during the process, and have a successful outcome.”
Dr. Vickers said it comes down to follow-through, the thing patients fear most won’t happen. “We redefine the oral surgery experience by following through like nobody else. By finishing what we start. By not nickeling and diming people, but by planning comprehensively and then delivering on our promises.”
What Comes Next
All three providers described a practice with clear momentum and an intentional plan for growth.
“We intend to double,” Dr. Anver said plainly. New locations, new services, ongoing investment in technology. The framing he returned to was mission rather than market share. “We’re not doing it out of greed. We’re doing it with the mission of being able to serve more people in the DFW community and potentially beyond.”
Dr. Vickers described the access problem that growth solves. Patients who want Texas Center’s level of care sometimes can’t make the drive, particularly elderly patients who require coordinating travel with help from friends or family. “We’re trying to have better access to care for patients by spreading our wings,” Dr. Dad said, “but without compromising what we’re doing or at what level.”
The expansion philosophy, she said, is essentially the same one that governs everything else at Texas Center: don’t move until you’re sure you can bring the whole standard with you.
For Drs. Vickers, Anver, and Dad, the D Magazine Best Dentists recognition carries a particular weight precisely because it comes from the dental community itself. These are the colleagues who see the referrals come back, who hear from their own patients about the experience they had, who know, better than anyone what it actually takes to earn that kind of trust. Being voted among the best by that group, two years running, is less an award than a verdict. And at Texas Center, it’s one they intend to keep earning.