Podcasts about Dentrix

Kiera is joined by Dr. Rania Saleh, founder of Oryx Dental Software, a dental practice management platform that will streamline your practice's inner workings. The two talk about the journey of AI from when it first launched in dentistry to now, how AI can work in your practice as an accompaniment (not a replacement), the honest pros and cons of this intelligence, and a ton more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera, and today is an exciting innovative day. I am so excited for our guests that we have on here. Her and I met about three years ago in person, maybe even four. Gosh, I can't even remember. But I remember being in this event in Napa, and we were all hanging out in this lunch area, and there was this amazing woman who was talking about her AI innovative dental platform. And I was so fascinated by it. I went up to her, started asking her questions, and here we are four years later. So I've got Dr. Rania, she is the founder of Oryx Dental Software. And some of you may have heard it. It's a new I remember when we were talking, she's like, it's an AI platform that's gonna like take over and help schedule and a lot of the tasks that offices struggle with. And she's a dentist. And so I loved her for those reasons because not only is she a dentist, so she gets your pain point, but she's also created a software that helps a ton. And she's here to talk about all things innovative AI. And I know so many dentists are just chomping at the bit because. Dr. Rania, you know dentists are about like four, five, six years behind where you were. And so I'm super excited to have you here to talk about AI, talk about how AI is impacting dentistry, talk about how your platform's been able to help and serve. So Dr. Rania, welcome to the show today. How are you? Dr. Rania Saleh (01:10) Very good. Thank you for having me. Kiera (01:13) Course. So I gave a little bit of an intro to you. I don't know if you remember the lunch. I know we had a pre-show of how it was like that was so long ago and things have just upgraded and elevated since then. But give the listeners a little background to how you went from dentist, which I know you are still dentisting, to building this software to being like this AI innovative KOL in the industry. Kind of give us a little background of who you are and how we got to this point today. Dr. Rania Saleh (01:38) Yeah, so I started out as a dentist. and I I was an associate like most of us start. Then I went to the COI Center and I learned like a whole new way of doing dentistry. And at that point, I'm like, I'm gonna open my practice, fee for service, startup. and that happened in the middle of the global financial crisis. everyone thought I was crazy for doing it, but I went ahead with it and my practice started growing. I was doing great. it grew to multiple specialty, multi-location. and I got pregnant with twins and I had to be put on bedrust. Kiera (02:23) Mm-hmm. Dr. Rania Saleh (02:24) And it was a big, big shock for me because I had a lot of systems in my practice and I thought we were doing amazing. And at that point I wasn't practicing that many days. I had multiple associates. my practice started declining when I wasn't there. and this is when I realized that a lot of the systems were just in my head and not everyone was implementing those. and I started thinking, like, how do we get back on track? How do we stop losing? Losing money, losing patients' confidence, getting bad reviews for the first time ever, all of that really hurt me. And this is how Oreg started. Kiera (03:06) I love it. Because I think, Dr. Rania, you can really speak to how a dentist feels, right? How many dentists, I think, as you were saying it. I'm sure they're saying, yes, me too. Like I can empathize. I know I've seen it with all the clients that we work with. Systems aren't systems, right? Standards are not standards. They're what we tolerate. It's what we have as processes. And I remember you saying, like, orgs basically is going to become these offices, office manager for them. And don't worry, office managers, we're not replacing you. We're just enhancing this for you. But I remember I was so fascinated by your innovative way. And so I wanted to talk about what things can AI do from, you know, when your software first started to today, I feel like AI has just taken off, right? I was always curious what would take down like Google, right? Like coming with the internet was something in my lifetime that changed. And I was like, what's gonna be the next piece that is that innovative in our world? And I believe AI is here for that. So I'm just curious, like from what you've seen, those systems you said like they were living in your head. What things have you seen that practices can do from like AI is not a replacement, I think, for clinical decision making. It can be a tool for it. But how are you recommending that we use AI and dental practices that you've seen from software to clinical to front office? What are some of the I wanted to like really just rift with you? This is my selfish side because I'm like, Dr. Rania Saleh (04:18) Yeah. Kiera (04:19) let's chat all things AI. And what are you seeing that are like the pros and the cons? Where can dentists start leaning into this? What are some of the best on the market right now? You're one of the I love you were you're a you're a founding female in the industry and you're very innovative in it. So let's have a good rift on on AI and what you're seeing in that realm. Dr. Rania Saleh (04:38) Yeah, I mean, like AI touches every aspect, and I was so excited when something like this was created. And what was really good is with Oryx, we started with systems. What I said, like a lot of the systems were in my head, and we started like, how do we create a check-in checklist, a checkout checklist? How do we make everyone's life easy? So we made a lot of automations in the system very early on, but these automations still needed a human to intervene to be able to make it work. And with the emergence of AI, we're like, my God, this whole workflow that works perfectly for us can now be automated. So although it was easy to manage, now it's a click of a button and the whole workflow of scheduling patients, having AI receptionists call and and get patients that were not scheduled, like this is a great innovation. getting getting your clinical workflow, having to spend time with the patient. If you have your AI summarizing for you, we talk to our AI, and I always say that way, I want my AI receptionist to be the same as my best assistant. So I want I I don't want to learn a new language to speak to my AI. I want to speak as if I have Jessica or Jennifer or one of my best assistants and I'm just telling them I'm gonna do a crown on this tooth, let's extract this tooth. I see a recession here and it's capturing all of this and charting it. So AI charting is like a game changer because now my assistants could be doing other stuff while I'm doing my charting Perio AI is great. The same for imaging. It's a great tool to help us locate conditions, share our findings with the patients, and patients are just fascinating by that. So I don't see an aspect of the software where it doesn't touch it. Also like on the insurance collection, auto-attaching the narrative, anything that the insurance needs, all of that. is built into the AI system and there's a lot of tools to do that. So I I really think people should try it to see what it's capable of. Some people are a bit scared to dip in there, but I it's a game changer for us. Kiera (07:09) Yeah, so let's talk about let's play devil's advocate. because I think so many people listening are sitting on that side of the fence of like, but we're in clinical. And so how do I know that this is HIPAA compliant? How do I know that this is safe? I think that that's a big, a big concern. And then the other concern is like, well, yes, it can help me attend. How many mistakes does it tend to make? How much more double checking? Because I know there's offices and like insurance verifications. Let's go back a few years. Insurance verification, I feel like insurance verification companies have popped. Left and right. Like I feel like they're daisies in springtime. Like we just have a lot of them. And offices will say, I love it, but it's not accurate. So I don't trust it. And I'm just going to do it myself. So I think it's a twofold one. What are you finding for like AI with HIPAA and us being compliant in that realm? And then part B of that question would be: can I actually trust this and how much error? Like, are we talking 70% error, 80% error? And is it really helping my team or is it something where my team is kind of like, turning a blind eye to it, thinking it's taking care of it, and then we're just getting a lot of mistakes we have to fix first. So first question is like let's talk about hip end compliance and making sure in the medical space that we are we're protected and safe on AI. Dr. Rania Saleh (08:19) Yeah, I I would say like there's a lot of new AI companies every day. It's like a new name and people would tell me, Do you integrate with this? Have you heard of this? And if you don't have a BAA agreement with the company you're working with, then it's not HIPAA compliant. So that's the very, very basic. Before you go with any AI or any company in healthcare, just make sure that it's HIPAA compliant, that it has all the certifications needed to administer AI. And I would say that's the bare minimum to to protect yourself, to protect your practice and to protect your patients. W with the errors, it's like Anything that you do, the AI is not a hundred percent accurate, so you still have to check. But for me, I think if if I'm charting, could my assistant make a mistake and put the crown on number twelve instead of number thirteen? It happens in real life. So there's always that human in the loop where I'm gonna stop, double check, make sure. If it's taking ninety percent of my work, if it creates that summary but there's these two sentences that I don't like, I'm gonna read it. I'm not just signing. blindly progress note. But it's a lot of help. Like for example, when we do our claims, we're doing an automatic attachment. I would say that's a 99% success rate. The systems are great at detecting which radiographs they need to attach. But if you take your radiographs the wrong way, if you're putting a lower molar in the upper molar slot, then that might go wrong to the insurance. But even if you had Mary at the front sending that x-ray and it's in the slot of number three, she will probably send that x-ray. So it's not you you still need. The human to verify, but it's removing a lot of the redundant work. Kiera (10:17) Mm-hmm. Which I think that that's a good call out, right? I think that that's a a smart path to go down. I think it's a yes, but you're not wrong. Like mistakes happen in your day-to-day anyway with humans. Like, let's cut out half of the time. I I was reading up on some AI how it can like go through all your emails and respond to 60 emails in 20 minutes and have it about 80% success rate compared to what a normal human would do. And I thought about this and I was like, wow. 60 emails, 20 minutes, 80% success rate. I think that that's like a risk I'm willing to try because it frees up so much manpower for things that can't be done by AI, like blocking calendars or running interference and other things or talking to patients like right now. Who knows? There will probably be a robot someday that's gonna be. I know I had one office that was doing a robot a few years ago, but I think Dr. Aenia, what do you feel? a lot of practices like Orix is awesome, right? ORX has so many great things. There's a lot of AI in it. But a lot of offices don't want to switch softwares. I feel like switching CPAs and software is probably dentists like two biggest headaches that they just don't want to do. So, what are some tips like that a dentist? Like, what are some of the things you've seen in dentistry of AI that you might bring to the practice if they're not quite ready to do a full conversion of software? And then I do want to talk more of like what ORX can do. And like you've mentioned a few things. But if I am a if I'm a dentist, I do not want to switch my software. I love my dendrics, I love my eagle soft, I love my Open Dental. And I'm like, I'm not changing. It's too much change. We already have all of our systems processes, but I do want to start dipping my toes into AI. What have you found? What are some of the successful things that you've found that you feel like every office should be doing this? And maybe some of the ones you've heard on the market that are some of the top notch. And this is as of today, right? We're gonna timestamp it because things are shifting and changing constantly. So just realize like as of today, this is the best. What would you recommend for that practice? Dr. Rania Saleh (12:08) So I I would say like imaging, period charting, all of that could have a direct impact on the clinical workflow. AI receptionists, some people are not comfortable with that, but like maybe after hours when no one is answering the phone anyway. Don't give your best leads to the AI receptionist. But if you're not gonna answer these calls on the weekend, this would be a great way to start dipping your toe. I think People are shifting more to a comprehensive software like Oryx, and we see it more and more because you need all this data to be interconnected. If you're on EagleSoft or one of the on-prem older software, you have so many point solution and you cannot create that amazing workflow with that. And I feel AI is that tipping point for us as a software company. So maybe five years ago, I used to hear about like, why would I shift to Oryx? Why would I shift to a cloud software? It's not worth all the hassle. I have I have Dentrix and I have like six add-ons that are working so well, and my life is good. Why this disruption? So cloud is not enough of an incentive for people to shift. But now with on the Kiera (13:24) I agree. Dr. Rania Saleh (13:24) cloud features and on the interconnectivity, we're seeing a lot more people moving even from paper charts straight to AI. And it's just Kiera (13:32) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Dr. Rania Saleh (13:35) amazing. Kiera (13:37) So let's talk about, I know some of the critics of a one software are like when they're I won't say the name of some of the software. People know I don't need to to bring them up. But some of the complaints I've heard from a one-stop shop is, well, I like some of those add-ons that I'm able to put in other softwares because not every software is gonna nail everything 100%, right? So like just because we're really good at maybe we're great at the receptionist and we're great at the clinical, but we're not so good at our rub. Revenue cycle management. So every software is going to have, right? It's like a Toyota car out there. Like I can have really great la longevity and liability. Maybe you don't love the aesthetics of it. And so do you guys have any plug-ons and add-ons? Are there ways that things can integrate in? Because I know a lot of people are scared to switch to these all-in-one platforms. Because if I don't like something about it, there's nothing I can do to incorporate or change or modify, unlike some of the other softwares that are out there on the market. I don't like this, there's a bunch of add-ons that can integrate. And I found like with integrations, integrating into certain cloud-based all-in-one software, there's no integrations that they can have. So I think people are concerned about that. What are your thoughts around that when it comes to the softwares and the platforms and being able to make sure it's again, it's not gonna hit every single thing perfectly. It will do a lot of great things. How do we, how do we circumvent that and feel confident moving forward? Dr. Rania Saleh (14:58) Yeah, look the way we think about it is is it something we want to create? Is it easy to create? Is it gonna give a lot of value to our user? And does it make sense to have it only in Oryx or do we have the add-on? For example, like image annotation. We integrate with Pearl and Overjet. They're the best in the market at annotating x-rays. Kiera (15:18) They are. Dr. Rania Saleh (15:19) We're not gonna redo this work, we're not gonna get into all the certifications. They had to go through. So we have this integration and we always believe in choice. So if someone really loves overjet, they could stay with that. If someone wants Pearl, they could go with Pearl. And that's our approach to think. If it's something very minimal in the early days, people would say, Can you please integrate with this? And we have it for free in our system. We do the integration, then they don't use it. And it's not good for us and it's not good for the vendor. So like membership plans are so easy in Oryx. We never integrate it with anyone because it integrates into directly into the patient's ledger, into the credit card processor. It's a whole system built together that makes a lot more sense being inside of Oryx and a third-party integration does not make sense. So in the areas where it makes sense to integrate with other companies, we do it. In some areas we don't because users are happy with what they have. Kiera (16:21) Got it. No, that's helpful. What would you say are some of the like top things that people would consider in oryx that would make it as a switch for them to move over? Dr. Rania Saleh (16:32) the clinical was always our strongest suit and it's What makes people want to switch because you're able to give the patient a great exam and you're able to have the best relationship with the patient. Our patient report is very detailed. It has the patient's photos, it has a summary of their findings. It's the biggest source of referral for most offices. So a lot of users consider us for our clinical and the patient experience. Kiera (17:03) Got it. And can you break down specifically what are in that clinical? Like I'm looking for like the nitty-gritty. So it's like it helps us with the exam annotation. It helps with charting it, make sure that it sends the follow-ups, that it does the period. Like, what exactly is that? Because I think for a lot of buyers out there and a lot of people looking at AI, I think that they're just like trying to figure out it's like, why? Why should I switch? Like, that sounds great, but like you said, my life is good, my life is easy right now. So, what are some of those things? I feel like AI is the Life that we don't even understand that we're missing, right? Like I can have this great life, but if I don't see that Bora Bora and the four seasons exist, I don't even know that that's something that should be on my radar of a bucket list item. So what are some of those items that might just expand doctor's horizons of like, hey, I never realized that a software could do this, or I never realized that AI could do this. Like, let's do a little teaser sampler for doctors listening today of like. What are the possibilities that maybe they're not even imagining are real that are happening today for other offices? Dr. Rania Saleh (18:04) So like the whole experience starts with the patient booking online or talking to the AI receptionist, getting the scheduler and getting scheduled. And then they get the forms. The forms are extremely engaging, but we also ask Kiera (18:18) Okay, sorry, Dr. Rania. I'm gonna like just interrupt and I'm gonna back it up. So when I'm scheduling online, just clarifying, can they schedule all appointments or is it like new patients and profis? Cause I know in some of the other scheduling online platforms, they could only schedule certain types of procedures. So I'm just curious, like when they're scheduling, can it be all types of appointments or what are kind of the the logistics with that scheduling? And then we're gonna go into paperwork. Cause I'm like, hold on, break it down for me. I need a few more specifics over here. Dr. Rania Saleh (18:42) Yeah. No, it could be anything that the office wants. so if you want to expose all your scheduler, all your days with the online receptionist or with the AI receptionist, you can choose to do that. If you want treatment or not, you can decide what days, what times of the day, what providers are gonna take these online appointments or get appointments with the receptionist. so that part makes it super easy for patients to schedule and then they get an invitation to complete very engaging forms. and with these forms, we're asking a lot of questions, but patients love to complete them because they're like, that's really thorough. Like my doc I want to give my doctor that information. Very rarely someone would complain that the forms are long, but for the most part, people really like saying, Yes, I have I get food packed in here. No one ever asked me this. So we're gathering as much information as we can, and we give a summary to the dentist and also an explanation of what that would mean. So we have the latest evidence embedded into Oryx. someone comes with a rare genetic disease. It already tells them what that means, what you should be careful. Careful of how it could affect their teeth. And patients used to think, my god, my dentist is so smart. I just read it before they get in. And I'm like, you know, that puts you at a higher risk of this or that. And they're like, my doctor never told me this. so it makes the first engagement with the patient amazing because you know so much about them. If someone is Telling you that I have a click in my jaw joint and you're doing the TMJ exam, it's going to remind you. So now you have that extra engagement with the patient saying, You mentioned that you have this click on the right hand side. I cannot feel it right now. Tell me more about it. And that's what's creating that report. So the exam is extremely structured. It takes about seven minutes to complete. At the end of the exam, the patient gets a report showing their findings, their own photos, their own radiographs. So before they commit to a treatment, it's explaining to them like your periostage three. And that's why we want to have this periodontal treatment. We're going to have the scaling, we're going to have the maintenance. And patients understand, and they're not going to Google and saying, asking, like, is SRP a scan? They understand why they need that extra treatment. Kiera (21:20) I see. Okay, so it sounds like we go from being able to schedule online. I do love comprehensive forms that are saying specific things because that's also going to help us TF treatment. And also, like you said, I love making our doctors look incredible. Then when they come back, we're able to explain it, talk to them. And then on the clinical side, from things I've heard and like just repeating back, make sure I didn't miss any of the like features that are smart to be thinking about. I think the periocharding is a big complaint for a lot of hygienists. I have heard that a lot of them don't work super well. So I've heard like a lot of hygienists complain. How does your software or what are some of the softwares you've seen? Like, how do we actually fix that for them? And then also the same thing with doctor side, because I feel like a lot of it is that being able to hear it and being able to translate it into the software correctly. I've heard from a lot of clinicians that that is, it sounds so great, but actually in practicality, it's really hard. Can you speak to that of how you guys have been able to overcome that or softwares you've seen? to make that to where it's like not the annoyance. Like it's I feel like so many people think it's gonna solve their day and they're like, it's just so annoying. It's always broken and it's not working and it did the wrong numbers for me. How does that work for you? Dr. Rania Saleh (22:28) So w we had to train the models and retrain them and train them specifically to dental terminology, to specific numbers, to listen to thousands of hours of recording, and hygienists don't all talk the same way, don't say the teeth numbers the same way. So every few weeks we we come up with a new model that makes it more accurate. and it's not an easy task, it's not easy for us, it's not easy for anyone. We have office. That says, like, you have the best period charting on the market. We love it. It's amazing. It never makes a mistake. And another office that has some issues. And it's like, you have to go figure Kiera (23:08) Darn it. Dr. Rania Saleh (23:09) out is it the microphone? Is it the model? And then we start enhancing, and we realize, some people talk about it this way, and they jump into different directions. And Kiera (23:19) Mm. Dr. Rania Saleh (23:20) that's why it's not catching it. So I think from the very early days of Oryx, we've had a very strong commitment to making the software. The best, and that never changed. From creating the exams with the COIS Center, from putting the latest clinical evidence and committing to updating that evidence yearly. I don't think anyone does this much work. The same thing with any feature that you have, especially on the clinical side, where you commit a lot of dev hours to keep enhancing our features. Kiera (23:57) That's incredible. All right, Dr. Rania, I have like peppered you on so many questions. Thank you. What have I missed? What are things that you feel like, hey, Kiera, the listeners need to know about this, whether it's AI, whether it's platform specific, whether it's just like innovations in dentistry, what's something that I should have asked you that I didn't ask you that you're like, I feel like all dentists, like if I could go and help the the world of dentistry in the best way possible, what would you, what would you tell our listeners or what things do you feel like we need to explore a bit more today as we wrap up? Dr. Rania Saleh (24:26) I think the future is really, really exciting if if some dentists have not explored any of the AI tools that are available on the market, like start with the easiest one. start with having AI write your emails. I I don't think I can write an email anymore. Kiera (24:45) Which one do you use? I'm gonna interject because everyone's like, Great, but what one are you using? Who are you using for emails to write them? Dr. Rania Saleh (24:50) So I use Claude a lot and I also use Gemini. Like if I'm quickly writing an email, I just answer it and just polish and it looks amazing. and Kiera (25:00) Yep. Dr. Rania Saleh (25:01) like for for more deeper conversations, I typically use Claude. So start with like the general models and try it out and then th think how this can impact your life and then how it can impact your practice and then consider a software that is very AI forward. Kiera (25:22) Amazing. And then just break it down for us. I love that because it's like start easy, start with the emails. Gemini or Claude, you guys have it. I think she mentioned two for X-rays. I agree. Pearl and Overjet, two fantastic ones to just help with that clinical diagnosis to kind of just dip your toes into it. I know within our Dental A Team community and in-person masterminds and virtual masterminds, we are always talking about what are the AI innovation tools, what are dentists using right now, who's got the best. And I think like that peer group of being able to ask consistently. Walk us through specifics of like orcs. If I'm curious and I want to like find out more, I'm like, hey, maybe this could be a better software for me. Maybe like it is time for me to like broach it. what can people do to get more information on this Dr. Rania? Dr. Rania Saleh (26:04) Yeah, they can go at OryxDental.com and book a demo. We have an amazing team that would do a consultation with them, see what's right for their practice as a the pro tier, as a the AI tier, the automate tier, and and walk them through all the capabilities of Oryx. Kiera (26:24) I love that. And something I love about you is that you are a dentist. And so I can feel the passion bleed through you of just wanting to to serve dentists to make their life easier, to make the to make the practice and the patient experience. I think all of us could feel that today of like it is that patient experience. We want these patients to have a great and then I love that you're like, and we help the dentist look great and they don't have to do any of the extra work for it. I think that that just speaks volumes to the passion and the the pieces that you bring to the table. So I'm so grateful we were able to hang out, guys. Go. try something. I feel like kind of like offices that didn't want to get into the internet. They didn't want they were like, we'll just stick in the yellow pages. People will find me in the yellow pages. It's been tried and true. I feel like that's kind of like the internet now. And if you're not getting into AI, you're sitting a little bit in those yellow pages. And so let's make sure that we're able to be easier. We're taking advantage of these tools. You don't have to go a hundred percent all in, but I do encourage, I mean how long has Oreg's been in business, Dr. Mania? Let's just like for reference for everybody, how long have you guys been around? Dr. Rania Saleh (27:23) Since twenty sixteen. Kiera (27:25) 2016, so 10 years she's had an AI software working out there. And we're like, AI is brand new, because chat just came out two years ago. no, she's been doing this much, much longer than that. Ten years in the making, 10 years in refinement, 10 years in being able to be there. It's time if you have it. So like book the call with orcs, even if it's just to learn more. get on Claude and Gemini and write emails. I love it. You're like, I don't even write any more emails. But really, Dr. Rania, it was so great to have you. And I just truly appreciate what you're doing for dentistry, your knowledge on AI, the passion you bring to our profession and knowing that we have people like you that jumped into realms to make to make dentistry better and are really spearheading that from a space of true commitment to the dentists that are at hand. So thank you for being here today. Dr. Rania Saleh (28:07) Thank you for having me. Kiera (28:09) Of course. All right, for all of you listening, take the AI challenge, do something. And then I always love a good pen pal, I love a good accountability partner. So email me Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. I'd love to hear what's the AI challenge you took on. What's something? And hey, depending upon how many results we get, we might even be sharing these on social. So be sure to watch there of the best of the best that we're hearing from you as listeners. Reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. And we'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

This DAT podcast episode is a fan favorite! Danny with Swell is on the pod! In this episode, Kiera chats with Danny about Google reviews, Google reviews, Google reviews — a very necessary part of having a practice. Danny shares what practices can do to get their name out in front of potential patients; what not to say in your review responses; why bad reviews are actually good; how to get patients to leave the best kind of review; and a ton more! Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today we are bringing you something so special. I am so excited because this is one of our most popular episodes from the archives. Whether you're hearing this for the first time or catching it again, I am so excited because it's jam packed with a ton of takeaways that you can start using right now in your practice. We have released thousands, literally thousands of episodes. And I wanted to start bringing a few of these amazing episodes back for you. So I hope you enjoy. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time. on the Dental A Team podcast. speaker-0 (00:32) and you guys, I am so pumped for today's podcast. I have one of my favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite companies. I met them when they very first started. We were just starting, so I think we kind of have a little like duo friendship that way. But these people are amazing. And if you aren't utilizing them, if you haven't figured out how to boost your Google reviews, you are in for the best treat. So I'm so pumped to bring on Danny. Danny works with Swell. If you guys haven't heard about Swell, You need to. because in my opinion, the reason they're the best is because they do it so well. That's how I remember swell. they're just the best at getting Google reviews and I'm excited. Danny's got some cool things to kind of help practices, even if you are utilizing swell, even boost those Google reviews more. So Danny, welcome to the show. How are you today? speaker-1 (01:14) Thank you kindly. I'm doing well, just here in snowy Utah, living the dream. speaker-0 (01:19) I love it. I love it. We actually pre-show connected on the fact that Danny may have gone to school with my husband. So we're waiting till post show to see if they know each other. I feel like it's like who's behind the door? My husband wasn't free. but it's kind of fun that you're in Utah. But Danny, kind of for those who don't know about Swell, Zeke and I I literally remember being in an office. I was in Alabama consulting a practice and they needed help with Google reviews. So I looked up, I had been told About swell. I was on a flight and somebody had mentioned swell. And so, and you guys were like early, early, early on. I was early on in my career and I remember I like just picked up the phone. This is when you guys used to not have a great branding. It was like a well. And I'm like, I don't understand what this is about. And I called and Zeke answered and I said, Hey, I'm Kiera Dent with the Dental A Team. I heard you guys are great. I want to utilize you in a practice and see if you're good. What do I need to do? And that's honestly how Zeke and I got connected. And Zeke has just been awesome. and the practices that I put you guys in, no joke, I think the best one the worst one did thirty Google reviews in one month. The best one did eighty five Google reviews in one month. And so it was super fun for me to have immediate social proof and great testimonial. And since then, Zeke has told me many times, Kiera, any event you go to, please tell me we will be there because you're a little walking advertisement for us, which I am because you guys do it so well. So that's kind of how I met you guys, how I got introduced. But kinda tell us like what the scope of swell is and how you guys even got started. speaker-1 (02:50) Yeah, so Swell actually kind of fell backward into dentistry, initially was hoping to help small pharmacy groups survive against the big boys, but then stumbled into dentistry and realized that there was a great fit in that a there were many systems that were currently attempting to help practices get reviews. A lot of them was just the five digit short code. less branded or personalized messages just with a link and then a few different steps that they had to do in order to leave a review. But Swell just said, well, we need to make it super easy, super convenient, and with as few steps as possible for patients to leave a review. So went out and integrated with all of the practice management softwares, stayed hyper focused on driving the most reviews possible for practices. And really swell as we know it today with without the whale that you're talking about, new branding. We think we're a little bit sexier and agree. And you know, our our design and and the aesthetic of our product, our branding, all of that is really great. But most importantly, we're just super effective at getting practices, reviews to the sites that matter, mostly Google and then Facebook, Healthgrades, other sites as well. Totally. yeah, that's that's swell in a nutshell. Primarily we know reviews are the tip of the spear, but then Swell built a little bit out and said, hey, reviews help you stand out online, but then you need to connect conveniently and convert these patients. And so we've built out some tools like web chat and and different things after the fact, but it all starts with the reviews. speaker-0 (04:27) For sure. And I will say, I am a swell, we have been a swell user. So swell, up until we joined with HubSpot, we've actually utilized Swell's chat on our website and it was awesome. We loved it. It was so easy and it actually started building so much traction. And literally the only reason we don't have swell on ours is because HubSpot integrates and it just pulls all the information. But guys, if I didn't have HubSpot, I would still be Wispwell. You guys were fantastic. You helped with our Google reviews. We still utilize you guys for Google reviews. but kind of like so offices, obviously. I hope if you don't know, we are in 2022. You've got to have a presence on Google. Like, no ifs, ands, or buts. Everybody finds you on the website. That is to me your website, and being on Google is your resume to the world. And if it's not there, you're not going to be found these days unless you are attracting a different clientele than the current millennials, Gen X, Gen Z. Whome coming in, like that's what they're looking for. So, Danny, kind of walk us through. You were telling me some crazy cool algorithms. I also love that you guys have always only been with Google because I was never a huge fan of some other platforms. and so I love that you guys have just stayed primarily, primarily Google because Google doesn't take away reviews unlike some other platforms. but kind of just tell us some of the algorithms you guys have come up with because you guys, that's honestly why I think you do it so well, is because you've stayed very niche, you've stayed very focused. And you guys crank Google reviews. So kind of just walk us through some of the things you guys do differently that practices can do to increase those Google reviews. speaker-1 (05:58) Yeah. Well, just I think one thing that's really important for practices to understand is that Google reviews to the Google My Business page affect local and broader searches. So, like you were saying, Kiera, it all starts with an online search. Dentist near me, affordable dentist, cosmetic dentists, all on for, whatever the case. And if practices aren't showing up in that initial Google search, it's referred to as the Map Pack. then They're being overlooked and potentially missing out on a patient that could have searched them online through social proof, read through very positive reviews, and said, Great, this'll do. I'll I'll make an appointment. so Google is tracking several different things. one is the location of the searcher, that's pretty intuitive. It's just how far away is the business from where that patient is searching. there's proximity, and then there's something that's called authority. So that's how well. Are they known online? Are they do they have SEO? Is their website getting lots of hits? this is less important for the review side. but the two important things that we like to focus on is number one, Google is constantly tracking the star rating of the practice and then the frequency or the recency that they're receiving reviews to the Google My Business page. So Essentially, we think that if you can raise your star rating or maintain a high rating and have fresh recent reviews coming to the page with responses as well, because responses are factored into that freshness or recency, those pages are more, excuse me, those practices are more likely to show up front and center when a patient within proximity searches for a dentist or or anything of that nature, they'll they'll pop up. One other thing you and I spoke about were the keywords. This is something that practices. Those of you who are already using Swell, I want you to listen closely because this is a great way to increase in terms of keywords and boost your chances of being front and center on Google. If a patient, when when you're sending out your review request, you could actually in the verbiage say, please describe your experience with us. Now the patient is able to say whatever they want based on HIPAA. They can say, I went in. To Dr. Lenary, I got an implant, an all-on-forecase, you know, they they changed my life. And then when I respond to that as the practice, I know I can't say the patient's name or or anything tying specifically to their actual appointment, but I can say we love to do all on four cases, we love to place implants, we love to do veneers, we love Invisalign and those keywords. So that will be the patient saying it. And the practice saying it and those keywords, those are that's a big deal with Google and their rankings as far as the current algorithm goes. And so that's something I'm always telling practices to do is ask patients to be as descriptive as possible. And then within HIPAA, you can't, you know, you have to walk a fine line, but you can say, we love placing implants, we love doing Invisalign. And now when patients are searching Invisalign Dentists or All On Four or Implant Dentists near me. they're they're much more likely to be ranking higher than other practices who are just saying, thanks for your review, or the patient just said, love the practice, would will come back for life. They can use those keywords to start ranking much higher now as Google has factored that in. speaker-0 (09:28) Interesting. So Danny, you talked about this a lot and I actually don't know. So I'm gonna ask you since you're the guru on it, when people do respond, because I do have a lot of practices who don't respond. So that was really helpful to hear that that keeps you more relevant. Also, podcast listeners, this is why I'm telling you guys to please go leave us go like reviews on the podcast because just like Danny said, yes, we have quite a few reviews from you guys. Thank you, but we have to stay relevant. So if we're not getting reviews every single month. The podcast doesn't actually stay as relevant. It's not ranked as high. So, guys, if you haven't left Dental A Team a five-star review, because hello, he just said reviews and star statuses. So it's the same thing within the podcast world as well. So, guys, that's why I'm always asking, like, please, if you haven't done so, because it makes our podcast relevant. Same thing with your practices. So that's how you can help the Dental A Team out that gives so much value to you. And also what you guys can do for your practices. Unfortunately for me on the podcast, I can't actually respond to any of the reviews. The way they have it set up, you can't respond to podcast reviews. but Danny, when you talked about responding on the Google reviews for your practice, it does keep you relevant, but you also mentioned HIPAA. So what are some of the things not to do on those reviews so people can remain HIPAA compliant on their review responses? speaker-1 (10:41) Yeah, well and I I I have to say that in terms of HIPAA compliance, this is something that I don't know all the ins and outs. speaker-0 (10:50) Agreed. So go check with your coup your HR people guys. So we'll tell you like the basics, but go confirm this is correct. speaker-1 (10:57) Yeah, for sure. It really just comes down to acknowledging a patient in the practice. You know, you you can't say, we loved placing for you, or we love having you as a patient in the practice. it's it needs to be a little bit more generic, like, thank you so much for that feedback. We love, we always strive to deliver a wonderful experience and we love placing implants as opposed to. Thank you for being our patient. And we loved placing that implant, and the results have been phenomenal. follow up with us if there's any problems. You know, it it's really just it's basically taking it a layer removed and just being a little bit more general in terms of you can say the services that you like to offer, the experience that you like to provide, but you can't actually make it so that. The public knows that that patient is a patient of record and that you treated X, Y, and Z in their mouth. speaker-0 (12:01) Got it. So can can you do one, not the other? You can there's no way you can say that this patient, like, thank you so much for coming in. We love you as a patient. That's like a hard pass no, because it'd be acknowledging that that patient's coming to your practice. Is that correct? speaker-1 (12:15) That is my understanding. Yeah, that people have gotten in trouble or practices have gotten in trouble by being, you know, just trying to be personal, but they were a little too personal and there are certain things that you can't acknowledge through the the Google response. speaker-0 (12:31) Sure. Which makes sense. So I think like guys just err on the side of safety. But what Danny was saying is like thank you so much for this feedback. We absolutely love treating every patient with the greatest experience possible. Like those things you can say. And if they do talk about a service that you did, it sounds like Danny, what you're trying to say on this with the keywords is to reemphasize basically the exact same thing that they said with that keyword. So implants, new patient experience, sleep apnea, ortho, Anything like that, because I'm trying to think of what people would be would be searching or those keywords that would be coming up. But be clever and creative on those responses to capitalize on what they said and then what you're responding back with to get a double. It sounds like it's like a two for one deal. Like they gave you the review. You can actually maximize those keywords with your response. Is that correct? speaker-1 (13:19) Yeah, absolutely. And once again, just encouraging those descriptive responses. I've had practices and and even close dental friends that have come to me and said, How can we avoid people just going and leaving us a five star and not saying anything? And I just say, Ask, you know, make it clear in your text message that should be highly personalized to begin with, because Swell is sending a branded it's either the logo, it's a photo of your team. It's it's even we can even scrape the schedule of the provider, the operatory. And if there were 30 hygiene appointments, four extractions, and three implants, we can take every individual provider and intuitively swap in a photo of the person that they met with. Clever. Calling them by name, the the provider by name. And then in that text request, you could say, please click the link, take the 30 seconds to leave us feedback, be as descriptive as possible, as this helps. the general public know about our practice and this is how we gain new patients. You know, that's not necessarily an invite that you're going to send, but you can find a way to craft a message like that and people will start leaving you a lot of feedback and then you can mirror those responses. Or even if they're not being descriptive about specific procedures, you could find a way to thread that in. Experience certain procedures, Invisalign implants all on four. I mean Lots of practices really harp on this and and they're ranking higher and seeing a lot of new patient influx because of it. speaker-0 (14:48) Is so brilliant, Danny. And I hope offices are listening to this because to me, I feel like that text message you send out to your patients is the bait you're sending out. And if they're not giving you back what you want, change it up. Like try different things. Danny, is there a way? Like my marketing brain's clicking on me. Can you A B test different responses? Or would I just have to try like one month of this type of a text the next month with another type of text verbiage to try and A B test which one will give me better response rates? speaker-1 (15:17) Yeah, well that's that's a great question. So we actually that's absolutely possible through Swell. we actually keep the click data on every individual template. So how many sends, how many clicks, how many opens, how many responses. So essentially, like you're saying, and it's not always you just plug this in and it's it's magic, but we we love that to be the case. But if not, the fine-tuning is absolutely there because we have the click data on every individual response. We can track these reviews all the way from invite sent to landed on Google because of our integration with Google. So we we can really give them some intel in terms of what photos, what logo, what verbiage, when to send it, all of all of the which sites are performing the best. It's it's all there in the swell dash. Cool. speaker-0 (16:06) And then and guys I think it's to me I feel like somebody listening to this, you're probably one of two people. One's like, Wow, that's way too much information, I'm not going to do that. The other person's like, That's so cool, I'm totally going to do this And what I would hope is like swell is insanely affordable. Like so ridiculously inexpensive, especially Dental A Team like Guys, Zeke and I got together at the beginning of this whole thing. So you better believe he has taken care of Dental A Team clients and still continues to do so. So anytime Dental A Team people come through, guys, you are taking care of with white glove and you get the like, I don't think there's any other company that gets as low of pricing as we do. And Zeke has been so amazing to maintain that. So guys, like definitely say you heard from on the podcast. But what I think is so cool is like to me, that marketing budget is so inexpensive for it. And we get so many Google reviews for it. And if you'll get your team and you'll change up just these text message responses and to see what response you get back. So I guess the text message verbiage to see the responses coming in. To me, I feel like it's almost like almost not quite there, free new patient marketing. Like it's very expensive to bring on a new patient. But if like you were saying, you can rank higher in Google, you can capitalize on those keywords, you can get more people to respond, more people are going to find you. just by Google searching. So to me, I feel like this would be a high priority project that I would definitely try and work on over the next couple of months to see if I can get our rankings to come higher. Again, it's not like an immediate instantaneous thing. It will take a little bit of time to grow in those rankings. But gosh, Danny, I heard from somebody and I'm not going to quote it because I could be totally off, but do you guys kind of have an average of based on the number of patients you see on average, how many Google reviews you guys tend to see? with that information, just so people can kind of see if they did utilize swell, how many average reviews they should be getting per month based on the patient numbers they see. speaker-1 (17:57) Yeah, well, just like you said with two the two example practices, you put this in one was 30 and one was 80. So funny enough, we we do think that based on all of the accounts that we've activated, that around 30 percent of the active patient base that they're seeing, which is usually trumping whatever they have going on. but then on the high end, you know, like I've got a friend in Dallas, Chad Duplanus. I I think you know Chad Duplanus, I'm not sure. but we plug, I I searched Chad on Google last year and he had 10 reviews on his Google My Business page. And I was like, Chad, people know you all over the country in dentistry. You're you're a speaker well renowned. I'm sure the experience in your practice is great. What's going on? He had a system. Funny enough, it was a company that I used to be with that was soliciting his reviews. And I said, do me a favor, plug in swell and Now, after a year of using us, he's over 450 on Google. I mean, it it was he was texting me on the weekend saying, I got seven, seven, five star reviews last night. High five, you know, and he's responding to all of them personally through our mobile app. So obviously, in his case, it it's a much larger percentage, but we typically think that we can we can convert around 30 percent of their active patient base if they're seeing. You know, it doesn't matter the number of patients. If they have a patient flow, we can take a certain percentage and convert those into online reviews, which will lead to new patients and just higher rankings. speaker-0 (19:32) It's so cool. Because at the end of the day, like what's so cool about this is guys, like, again, I see this as like, I don't know. I'm I must be really lazy, guys. I'm a Taurus, like by nature, I'm more of a lazy individual, I think. but I I prefer the term efficient. To me, I'm like, okay, if I exert just a little bit of effort on these Google reviews, utilize a great software, I can get so many more new patients in easier than having to build newsletters and flyers and social media campaigns, like that stuff takes freaking work. Yet alone, like I could literally implement swell, change up my text message and send it out to my patients and then check the data that's coming back to me and respond to these reviews. Like to me, that I guess this is just like my ROI on my time. How much how much ROI will I get for it like I to me, honestly, I've I've done swell, I've worked in practices. I'm talking less than an hour a month. Like it takes no time to respond to these reviews. It's so easy to do. You guys have such a great software for it that I'm like, okay, so I do an hour of input of time and I'm getting so many new patients back from it. Why would I not want to exert my time there? Even if I was at five hours a month, to me, that's way like I have done social media campaigns. That sucker takes me a good like solid five hours minimum to just like write posts for can like social media posts and then you've got to do your story and then you've got to respond to people and those people don't always convert. So just thinking of like ROI on time, I feel like it's a no brainer for practices to do it. So I am curious because I know I hear this a lot with Swell, and I want to know your guys' take on it. Some people have told me, Kiera, I'm nervous to use Swell because they don't let me filter the reviews that come through. They won't let me. So if I have a patient who's bad, they're gonna post about me and there's no way for me to control it. Whereas other review softwares will allow me to control those reviews coming through. So Danny. Please like respond. I you guys get this, I'm sure, for lots of people. I think it's great that you don't let them filter them because one, I think it forces the practice to actually be a great practice because you should always have a five star experience. But what's your what's your response to that as to like being able to filter the reviews? speaker-1 (21:41) Well, so the first response is that that is actually to stay in alignment with Google, number one, in that you cannot gate reviews. If you gate reviews, meaning if you're saying, how was your experience one to five? And then they go four and five-star reviews are then asked to leave a review, and one, two, and three-star responses are then taken for internal feedback. If Google finds out about that, they flag that and they pull those down. Because Google is trying to have the most authentic real experience or a real depiction of the practice. But then to, you know, if we have notoriously grumpy patients, we've actually made a great effort to make sure that it's simple and easy for practices to avoid even sending that patient a request. So with three different practice management softwares, Dentrix, EagleSoft, and Open Dental, you can write pound DND, do not disturb, into the chart notes for that patient, and it will not. When we sync with the software, it won't send that patient a response. Or because we're syncing with all of the practice management data, you can go through and and see all of your patients in a list form and just click a simple box that says block and they won't receive a review request. So we know that there are individuals who will gripe, but really even one of our other comments to this is that negative reviews are not the end of the world. Agreed. It's one, they come in, you're notified through SWEL in real time, you respond to that review. Once again, with HIPAA, don't get into an online argument, but just say, so sorry, there's a misunderstanding. Thank you for your feedback. We'll reach out to you privately. Now the general public, we have to remember we're not these reviews aren't for the practice. They're for the public to get an idea of what it's like to do business with the practice. So when they see a negative review or response from the owner, it was handled well. That can actually turn into a plus, but then they don't need to really worry about that because with the freshness and the re frequency that reviews are coming in, that negative review will be buried in no time. speaker-0 (23:48) For sure. And I think like to your point, I've actually had a lot of luckily I haven't had a lot of them. So I should like quantify this. but when I have had negative reviews, I have contacted those patients. I call them. I don't respond. Some people are afraid to call them. Guys, even in the Dental A Team, I had somebody give us some negative feedback. I was so freaking thankful for I called those people and I like wanted to hug them and high five them and I told them thank you so much. two of them became clients. So it's crazy that you can like That is the best feedback. And also, like you said, Danny, guys, if you're getting negative reviews, please do an internal check on your practice. Like I think that that is one of the best things that could ever happen to you because it can show you where your systems are low, where your patient experience is low, maybe where your dentistry needs to be improved. Like please thank those people. I I think a good life-changing book for me was Raving Fans. And it talked about like the worst thing that can ever happen to a business is for that customer not to give you feedback. Because if they don't give you feedback, they have no confidence that you will ever change. If they are willing to complain to you, tell you how you can improve, they have trust and confidence in you that something can be done to make this better, which is why they're willing to be vulnerable and share. So yes, the five stars feed our dopamine ego and they want us to be great. But gosh, those like one and two stars, please, please utilize a software that allows them to come through. Please, like allow your practice to get better because I think it's so hard in today's day and age. To actually get honest feedback, to find out how we can improve. So that's why I'm always pro. I'm like, no, I love that swell doesn't let you sift through and only choose the positives. Cause one, it's false and you're having a false impression of your practice. And two, you're not able to give yourself an opportunity to be better. When your neck is on the line and you know every person that's can leave you a review is going to, yes, of course, there's a few people that no matter what you do will never be happy. So please don't send them a review link, like save yourself that headache. But like when every single patient you know could get a review link, you actually are gonna act as a a more elite practice. You'll raise the standards of you'll raise the standards of your whole practice and you're going to raise the experience as well. So I think like I love that you guys do that. I'm such a huge proponent of what you guys do. I love that you gave some tips of how they can utilize those keywords in their responses. So Danny, I've just like been the biggest fan of you guys. Not only are you amazing with your technology, you've stayed niche. I told Danny pre-show, I'm like, I'm so glad you stayed niche because some companies are awesome and they take off and they're great at the beginning and then they go downhill when they become bigger and more popular. And swell has not, you guys have stayed consistent, you've maintained and you've only branched out in areas where you genuinely are making a bigger impact versus like trying to detour. So I love that about you. So Danny, if people are interested, they want to boost those Google reviews, try you guys out. I love that you're month to month as well. How can they connect with you? What's the best way for them to get swell in their practice? speaker-1 (26:45) Well, I believe given our relationship with Dental A Team, we have a link that will go out in the show notes. so they're we'd love to have you click and take 10, 15, 20 minutes. It's you know, it's not a long-winded demo. We think that seeing is believing. Let us show you how we differ from other systems. We're not trying to rip and replace other other systems in your practice, but we're a hyper focused bolt-on that plays nicely with others. We sit side by side. So click the link, or you can go to Sales@SwellCx.com. Excuse me, send an email to Sales@SwellCx.com, or you can visit our website, SwellCx.com. But the most important thing, like Kiera said, she's she's been with Swell from the beginning, and the pricing really is phenomenal for Dental A Team members and podcast listeners. So make sure to mention Kiera, Dental A Team, and we will take care of you with the discount. And they can also reach out to me personally if they want. I won't necessarily do the demo, but I can put you in touch. Danny Danny@SwellCx.com. I'd love to hear from you and get you in touch with our team. speaker-0 (27:56) Cool. I love it. And guys, I'm not kidding. Like when we say like this pricing doesn't exist at all anymore. And Zeke has been so awesome to just like maintain the relationship he and I set up. I think we're like pushing almost three, four years in a relationship together. So I just adore Swell. Danny, I appreciate you so much. You guys are fantastic. You're gonna be at our Dental A Team Summit. I'm excited for you guys to be there. Literally, I feel like Swell and Dental A Team were a good peanut butter jelly, and we like duo around the world together because I think what you guys do is just awesome. I love who you guys are as a company. I love what you guys stand for. And I love that you get results. I'm all about results. Like any person I work with, I want them to ensure results. So guys, just try it out. Even if you're with a review company, like test it out, see. I like to compare and they're month to month. So you could try it with some of your patients going through swell, some of your patients going through another one and just see. But at the end of the day, I don't care what you do, who you use, two things I hope you take away from this is one. Boost those Google reviews because it's the easiest way and the way of the future for you to be noticed and seen. And number two, make sure your practice is truly five star worthy. I think that's the biggest takeaway I have from today. So Danny, thank you for being on here. Thanks for being part of Swell. Super appreciate you guys and all that you do. speaker-1 (29:07) Yeah. Well, thanks so much. We love you and the team and look forward to the summit here shortly. Kiera Dent (29:11) I hope you all loved today's episode as much as I did. It is crazy to think that this many episodes have been released since we started the Dental A Team Podcast. And I started looking to say, my goodness, our listeners need to be reminded of some of the things they may have learned a year ago or two years ago or five years ago, because so many things in our practices weren't relevant back then when we heard them, but they are relevant today. And I would be doing you a huge disservice if I didn't re-release some of these episodes for you to remember, to refine. to optimize and really truly if you ever need a topic or you're like, my gosh, I wonder if the Dental A Team has anything like this, go onto our website, TheDentalATeam.com, click on our podcast tab and you can literally search any topic. So whether it's overhead or hiring or firing or team morale or engagement or case acceptance or hygiene or associate onboarding or whatever it is, we have so many episodes for you. And so I am going to intentionally be re-releasing some of the top best episodes for you, pulling back some of the ones that I needed to remember, some of the things that I feel for you to really, really relearn right now and to re-remember, or if it's the first time, welcome. I'm so happy you're listening to it, but I hope you truly enjoyed today's episode. I hope that you share this with somebody. I hope that you go and implement today because we only have one day. We only get today. And so making today the best that it possibly can be. If we can help you in any way, shape or form, reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

If your Dentrix Unscheduled List or Continuing Care List is so cluttered that your team has stopped using it, patients may already be falling through the cracks. In this episode of the High Performing Dental Team Podcast, Dayna Johnson shares what she has been seeing repeatedly during Dentrix practice assessments: messy scheduling lists, outdated appointments, unnecessary customized lists, and inaccurate Continuing Care data. She walks through practical ways to clean up your Dentrix Unscheduled List and Continuing Care List so your team can fill openings, improve patient retention, and create more reliable scheduling workflows. Your Dentrix practice management software should be your team's central source of accurate, current patient information. When the data is clean, these lists become powerful tools for keeping your schedule full and preventing patients from getting lost in the system. ✅ Key Takeaways Understand exactly what belongs on the Dentrix Unscheduled List, including broken, no-show, canceled, and Wait/Will Call appointments. Document the reason for a broken appointment in the Office Journal so the next team member has the full story. Avoid letting appointments sit on the Unscheduled List indefinitely. Dayna recommends approximately three months for most appointments, with reasonable exceptions. Clean up old customized scheduling lists created by former team members or providers. Simplify your workflow by using the main Unscheduled List and filtering by provider instead of maintaining numerous separate lists. Create useful Continuing Care Lists for overdue hygiene patients, rather than relying on Dentrix default lists for patients who are not yet overdue. Focus your Continuing Care workflow on prophy and periodontal maintenance patients who need to be reactivated. Remove broken or canceled appointments from the Appointment Book so Dentrix and your automated patient communication system don't mistakenly think the patient is still scheduled. Watch for patients incorrectly assigned to both prophy and periodontal maintenance Continuing Care types. Learn what the plus sign in the Continuing Care appointment column can tell you about a patient's existing appointment. Keep your Dentrix data clean so third-party patient engagement and reporting tools are also working from accurate information.

Guest: Dr Ryan Hungate, Chief Clinical and Strategy Officer at Henry Schein OneFrom designing Apple's in-store customer experience during the launch of the original iPhone, to building and selling a dental patient engagement company, to now shaping the technology behind Dentrix, Dentrix Ascend and Dentally, Dr Ryan Hungate has one of the most unusual paths in dentistry. In this episode, Julie sits down with Ryan to talk about what AI actually means for dental practices right now, not in some distant future.They cover how AI is changing revenue cycle management and insurance claims, why patient trust is built (or lost) in the tiny human moments AI can now help protect, what the "Gen Z stare" is doing to patient communication, and why Ryan believes dentistry is heading into its golden age.Connect with Dr Ryan HungateLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ryanjhungateHenry Schein One: henryscheinone.comInterested in taking your personal, team, and dental practice to the next level? Contact Julie and Ameena today to explore the possibilities for growth and success!Visit our website, Dental Business Mastery, at https://dentalbusinessmastery.com.au/, and book a complimentary, obligation-free Discovery Call to discuss your specific needs and goals. Schedule your call here: https://tidycal.com/3l298p1/30-minute-meetingIf you have any questions or would like more information, feel free to contact us via email at info@dentalbusinessmastery.com.au.

Tiff and Pam talk about the current intersection of technology in the practice, and how using and understanding AI as a tool for busywork means you can focus on the tasks that really need that human touch. They talk about why training AI could be just as critical as training humans, where to look first when incorporating the software into your practice, how a staff member can serve as quality check for automated tasks, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Tiffanie (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Tiff back with you here on the podcast. And we are in the studio today. I have myself and I have Miss Pam with me. And Pam is one of our prize possession consultants here at the Dental A Team. We have had Pam on our team for a little while now. And if you are special enough and blessed enough to work with her, you know exactly who she is and you have some solid foundational systems. Pam is a systems guru. She busts them out.   And she holds accountability like I've never seen before. And when she learns something, she learns it forever. And I love getting to watch you, Pam, progress in your Dental A Team journey. I watch you like taking notes all the time on the systems that we, you know, hold tried and true. Yesterday Dana was talking about a couple of systems during our collaboration and I was like, gosh.   She's just over there feverishly writing and I love it because I know exactly what's gonna happen. You're gonna like go back, you're gonna relearn   Pamela (00:54) I was. Yes, I was.   Tiffanie (00:58) it, and you're gonna teach it. And it was just really cool. So I love that, Pam. Thank you. And I love that you have these skill sets that you're able to then take and you help so many practices implement the same skill sets, like not just our systems, but how to retain it. You know how you retain it.   But then you're also looking for how are other people retaining the things that they're learning so that you can help them grow in their learning as well. So it's just really cool to watch, Pam. Thank you for everything you do and thank   Pamela (01:27) Thank you.   Tiffanie (01:28) you for being here today. How are you?   Pamela (01:31) you know, I'm doing fabulous and thank you. I appreciate all those kind words, Tiff. That was very nice. I think it's a unique and great time to be in dentistry. So v we've seen a lot of changes over the years and now we're to a stage that is changing very, very quickly.   Tiffanie (01:50) I agree. I I love that you said that, Pam, because something that I think we've said in dentistry for a long time is that dentistry is really progressive in a lot of ways. I think there's a lot of things in dentistry that haven't changed and haven't progressed, like Rick canals, things like that are still being done similarly to how they were thirty years ago. But so much in dentistry is so progressive and it's changing all the time. But I I think we've always said that. But I think in the last five, six years that has   Like us saying that before doesn't even make sense anymore. Like the progression we're seeing now is wild.   Pamela (02:26) It's it's crazy. you know, I was thinking about this, and there are so many systems that we have done for years that we're not perfecting, right? That we still could perfect and are in addition to any AI stuff we have. But the interesting thing is is that now something that has been in scarcity our entire human existence or now or soon will become like an abundant commodity, which is intelligence, right?   Tiffanie (02:53) Yeah. Yeah.   Pamela (02:55) So   I think that it's really wild to be thinking about that intelligence is a commodity and we can buy it.   Tiffanie (03:03) Yeah, I think that's amazing. That was a great perspective. And you are not wrong. I listen to a lot of   Pamela (03:07) Yeah.   Tiffanie (03:09) podcasts and I know you do too that speak to that same thing. And I think both of our households house many conversations around that same thing. I think we we share that.   Pamela (03:18) That is so true. It's so true.   Tiffanie (03:22) Yeah. So with that, Pam, I think that's a great start. What are you seeing? expand on that for me. Like what are you seeing as far as I love that like intelligence is is a   purchasable at this point. What are you seeing with your practices or just the research you're doing and the things you're hearing and and listening to within the dental world, narrow that down for us. What are you seeing from your perspective how that's changing dentistry?   Pamela (03:48) Yeah,   well I I think the the question is is how do we react to that reality, right? And a lot of practices are have not gotten into the AI and are now saying, okay, I want my insurance verification done, I want, you know, RCM done, the revenue cycle management done by AI, but it is a little daunting. Right? It is like I had one practice say   yo well we have this company that's doing our RCM and and I said do you are you like what are you doing with it and they said nothing they do it and I'm like dear goodness gracious like there are you have to manage it unfortunately I think we're at a real a space where we're not the Ironman like Jarvis runs everything   Tiffanie (04:43) Yeah.   Pamela (04:43) you know stage we're at the   Alexis and we have a lot of really smart AI tools. Most of them, I'm well, they're all sitting on top of separate systems and what we are contributing. I don't think we're pardon me quite to the point where it's an operating system as opposed to, you know, pieces. So I'm seeing practices now take those pieces, try to learn them, and then develop their skills even more in the stuff that they were doing.   So what I mean by that is how are we, how are they actually doing at clean claims, right? Are they   Tiffanie (05:23) Yeah.   Pamela (05:24) getting the clean the claims clean before they send them in? how are they doing on you know managing the online scheduling? Are they reacting to that? And is all the patient's insurance information accurate before it goes to the AI?   So that's that's what I'm seeing. That's a s a little bit of a struggle.   Tiffanie (05:47) Yeah. I think something you pointed out there was that a lot of people a lot of people seem to be jumping headfirst and just like handing the keys over rather than allowing it to be a tool that they use still with oversight. And I noticed recently, even just on my chat GPT that I use down at the bottom, it's like, Hey FYI, these may be inaccurate. Like this is not to be taken as truth. Yeah. And I'm like, well   Pamela (06:11) Yes, I j I saw that, yeah. So true.   Tiffanie (06:16) We need that reminder though, kind of like the McDonald's coffee cup that now has, you know, since nineteen ninety or whatever it was, says that the contents are hot. Like humanity needs those reminders 'cause I think we're so it's like a it's a catch to me too, 'cause I do think we're so quick to jump onto things and try them. But   Pamela (06:34) Mm-hmm.   Tiffanie (06:34) at the same time we're like second guessing and   thinking we can't and thinking they don't work, but we do latch on to certain things where we're just like, wait, that was expected. I expected to be able to drink my coffee as soon as you handed it to me. You know, that it wasn't gonna be scalding hot, that I could just just go. And same with the AI. I think there's so many aspects of it that we just expected all of the truth to be on the internet somewhere. We've been primed that the truth is on the internet and   we just expected it to be true that now chat is like, hey, wait a second, like, hey, I'm just like your buddy who did the research online, the same as your friend next door. Like this   Pamela (07:09) Right.   Tiffanie (07:13) could be wrong. And I think it's an interesting thought because to your point of view, handing over your cycle management, your your revenue and all of that data, handing that over to AI and expecting it to just be perfect from here on out with no mistakes is wild.   Right, but we're doing it. So many of us are doing it. Similarly to the online scheduling. I know we have a lot of practices and we have some doctors that have spoken for us at our events. we had one last September that our doctor focused on AI, and she pointed out the facts of needing to train their AI the same as they're training a human. Like you get a   Pamela (07:51) Yeah, yes. Yes.   Tiffanie (07:54) result and you're like, you got that result, you're fired, you're done, we give up.   You say, actually,   Let's tweak it to be what we want it to be. So we're saying yes and okay, cool. And let's do it this way. Let's move it this direction. with that statement, you also said insurance verifications, making sure they're accurate. And it made me think too, we've always said, you know, good information in is good information out, bad information in is bad information out. And I think   That's the same with any of it, with any of the AI tools or any of it, right? The it can only scour the internet for so much information and find so much truth. With the good information in, that goes as far as everything. So whatever it is that we're asking and training these systems and these tools to produce is what we're going to get. So we're not spending the time with the AI and we're not spending the time saying, This is the result that I want, this is how I want you to get there.   we're doing a disservice to ourselves just the same as so many people we were just talking about this. So many people are still misusing or underutilizing tools that we've had for gosh, at this point I always say 30 years, but at this point I think it's going on like 40 years, right? Like we've had these tools for   Pamela (09:12) Exactly, yeah.   Tiffanie (09:14) a long time. We're still   Pamela (09:16) Yeah.   Tiffanie (09:16) misusing them because I know both of us have walked into offices where they're like changing the prices in the treatment plan.   And they're doing all this math and there's a calculator. I still have offices that have the calculators that have the tape, and I'm like, where are you even where do you buy the tape anymore? Right. But they do, they have this running tab. And I'm like, what are you doing? And they say, Well, it's never right. We always have a balance. And I'm like, Okay, this is like a band-aid fix, right? So no matter what technology you have, there's so much tech that saves us so much time. And that's the point of this conversation is what kind of tech is out there that can   save our team   Pamela (09:52) Mm.   Tiffanie (09:53) time. And a lot of that time is for the administrative team, gives them the the chance to do other things, right? So automating things gets rid of busy work, allows them to do other things. But if we're not utilizing the tool correctly from the get-go, it's not saving the time because we're going back and fixing it anyway. So maybe we're saving time on we have an online scheduling app and it works. So our team maybe doesn't have to answer as many new patient calls.   But then that same person is over here calculating by hand a treatment plan estimate. It's like, cool, well, we just like took nonsensical   Pamela (10:28) Yeah.   Tiffanie (10:29) time and put it into a nonsensical time suck again. So, Pam, how   Pamela (10:33) Yeah. Yeah.   Tiffanie (10:35) are you helping the chain offices to really utilize the tools to actually save the time? And when they're not, so like that situation, how do we how do we get to the bottom of it? Because for me,   When I see somebody calculating treatment plan estimates because they always have a bill at the end, I'm like, cool, that's like a band-aid over this massive gash on your arm and it stopped the bleeding   Pamela (10:59) Mm-hmm.   Tiffanie (11:00) in that one spot, but it's not fixed. Like you still need stitches. How do we get to the bottom of it? And how do you help practices really figure out what truly is going to save them time and how they can get there?   Pamela (11:14) Yeah,   I think it goes back to basics. Before we layer on that AI piece of it, we have to have those basics in place. And you're right, there are a lot of practices and you know that are struggling with that. They're still doing things by hand. So, you know, have going back to the basics and having that correct verbiage, I think, is super important. to with the patient of knowing that.   There may be, it is an estimation, and there may be a difference when once your insurance pays. And you can offer to the patient, you know, if you would like to call, I don't like doing predeterminations, pre-D, I'm kind of against them. A lot of people still do them for larger treatment. I understand that. but for if you are to, you know, tell a patient, look, if if it's a credit.   we will get that credit right back to you within the month, right? have   Tiffanie (12:12) Mm-hmm.   Pamela (12:13) some sort of verbiage that gives you a little bit of out, but also be confident when you're prevent presenting those numbers if you've done the homework. So I think that's where it goes is back to the basics, making sure the basics are correct before you, you know, are giving that treatment plan to the patient. And then your verbiage is super important. And trusting it.   Tiffanie (12:36) Yeah, I totally agree.   And trusting it exactly. Being able to trust the system is huge. So making sure I think you're you're like spot on back to the basics, right? So making sure your verbiage is in line and making sure that the information that we're putting into the computer system is as accurate as possible. And you can use AI tools for that too, right? So we have   Pamela (12:55) Right. Right.   Tiffanie (12:56) AI tools this day and age that do insurance verifications and they upload it into the system.   They do all of the pieces. But then again, back to what we said earlier and how you said like this practice is like, we don't even look at it, right? Same thing. Like if you're if you're paying for an AI bot to go scour, get the information, put it into your system, and then you're turning around and you're like, well, it's always wrong, right? I I always have a balance or a credit. And so I calculate it just to double check, like, okay, maybe we need to look to see.   Further back, where is that miscalculation coming from? Because the insurance data in the system, the patient's data in the system, the right fee schedules, all of those pieces are feeding the tech and the intelligence, the information that it's spouting out to you. So it can only do so much. So if you've   Pamela (13:47) Right.   Tiffanie (13:48) got, you know, you didn't mark the you didn't you didn't tell the bot that you needed to mark that there was a downgrade. So you're you're having   crowns come back and there's two hundred dollar balance because it was downgraded, right? Well, stop hand calculating that and tell the bot to do it differently. Tell the system to do it differently. Whatever your system   Pamela (14:06) That's right. That's right.   Tiffanie (14:08) is, there's a little button somewhere that you you click it and it says downgrades, right? Account for downgrades, etc. So utilizing those tools from the ground zero, I think is just massive and it's something that's been severely underutilized for a really long time.   that needs to be right first. Because then if we go in and we layer these AI bots on top of that, that data is what they're working with. Just like Dentrix can only give you a treatment plan based on the information that you put in there. You put the fee schedule, you put the percentages, you put the treatment plan. You did all the buttons, you clicked and you put the treatment plan. It spouts out these numbers based on the information you put in it. The bot's going to do the same thing. So I think that's our soapbox bot.   Pamela (14:55) yeah.   Tiffanie (14:55) situation there,   like we go on forever. Go for it.   Pamela (14:59) Yeah, no, I I agree and a lot. a lot of practices are struggling with this and they're because they're getting this AI and saying, Hey, it's not worth it. Like I'm still having to call the insurance company, I'm still having to, you know, calculate by hand, right? And I think it it does go back, like we said, to the basics and really digging down on that. And I mean continue to use AI, but like you said.   it's so interesting. You have to teach it, right? And you may not be able to look to say, this is the exact to the penny downgrade amount, but once you have taught it, you do need to trust it. Yeah. Yeah.   Tiffanie (15:40) Yeah, I agree. I love   it. Okay, what kind of tools? I've I've got a few, you know, that I'm I've been seeing the online scheduling, I think, is finally making it headway. It's been a tool that we've had for a really long time, but we've   Pamela (15:55) Yes.   Tiffanie (15:55) all been very afraid of it for good reasons. That's fine. But what are some other tools that you're seeing them implement? So AI bots, like what are what are your practices using them for that people could start looking at?   Make sure their foundations are correct. Start looking into how could we automate some busy work to give my team back time? What are you seeing out there in in dentistry right now, Pam?   Pamela (16:17) Yeah.   definitely the RCM, the revenue cycle management. I think that AI does a really great job with that. But the thing I I spoke about earlier is I the and getting to the root of the problem, if you don't want to have to manage it more, then you have to make sure your claims are clean. And what does that mean? And that's going back to basics, truly, as well. Like, are we taking all the photos? Are we taking   you know, all the blood points when probing. Are we doing are we doing everything we can do to make sure that they have as much information as they have. So I think RCM is kind of the number one I'm seeing. insurance verification, where a lot of practices are moving there. I think there's still a little struggle with that because we don't get the patient information a as quickly. And you know, I think most of the most of them say put it in two days before.   Tiffanie (17:15) Yeah.   Pamela (17:16) Patient communication, so even filling the schedule, right? texting people to say on an ASAP list, you know, those kind of things are being utilized very well. schedule optimum schedule optimization as well. So I think there are programs out there that help you say fill that schedule and say, here's the patients that would work in this hole, right? So I think it's   We have to accept that AI is here, right? so I think very, very to your point is yes, training it, but also yes, we do have to learn it. And it it will be it's one of those things. We're kind of lifelong learners, people in dentistry, because we always have new things coming. And so we have to look at it like this. This is just a a piece to learn, and the more we can learn about it, the better.   that we are gonna get. We can't just be afraid of it. I say dig right in, figure that, you know, whatever you're using, figure it out. Call the company, ask questions, ask the right questions, you know, what what how do I get my insurance verification better? You know, and let them help you and tell you because they know everyone doesn't know. And if you just like one and done, I'm leaving it alone, you're probably not gonna have   as good of experience as you could have with it. Yeah. And so I think doctors   Tiffanie (18:43) Yeah. Yeah, I love those.   Pamela (18:45) need to be a little bit aware aware. It takes time to learn. It's not just plug   Tiffanie (18:50) Yeah.   Pamela (18:50) and play.   Tiffanie (18:51) Yeah. And to piggyback off that, it sounds like making sure we still have KPIs in place, there's still somebody overseeing results, that somebody's still verifying that that employee, right, is doing the job right is key because if we're if we do have an AI bot that's helping with revenue cycle management, and then we're not looking at AR numbers, we're not seeing, you know, our over ninety.   decrease or or is it increasing like we're not watching those KPI points. That's how it gets lost. Just the same as somebody with a great resume comes in and says, hey, I'm gonna clean up your AR for you. Pay me X amount of dollars and we stick them in a corner and never look at it. Right? It's the same thing. So making sure those KPIs are in place. I think there's a ton of AI style tools that have come out for front office administrative work, which makes sense. You know, that's that's where AI   is in the administrative world right now as the recording of this podcast at least but something that I see a lot of practices using too and I think you have a few that are using them the like Pearl and Overjet AI systems for that second opinion at least I know a lot of doctors are liking that second opinion which has helped it's not I I think of it as busy work now but that like co-diagnosing space and really just that confidence   in what I'm diagnosing seems to come across a lot more from the doctors and those tools have been super beneficial as well. So I think there's starting to be this massive shift in the AI tech kind of industry where there is going to be more coming out for the the back office as well. And I think Pam, a lot of insurances are actually using systems like Pearl and Overjet, those AI tools to read x-rays and process claims a lot faster too.   Which to your point then they gotta be super clean. You're okay.   Pamela (20:45) Well, yeah, and and sorry, I totally did not mean to interrupt you,   but that that brings up something that I've thought about and I've heard from practices, a lot of claims are being denied, right?   Tiffanie (20:58) Yeah.   Pamela (20:58) More. I think it's up like by twenty percent over the last few   Tiffanie (21:01) I agree.   Pamela (21:01) years. And that's probably because they are using AI to read the x rays, and   Tiffanie (21:09) Yeah.   Pamela (21:09) there is no way the human eye can be as good as   an the AI assistance, you know, the tech   Tiffanie (21:19) Yeah. Yeah.   Pamela (21:20) the the radiology it it it that is going to become an AI job. So just in general.   Tiffanie (21:25) For sure.   Pamela (21:26) And so reading reading X rays, they're they're proficient. They're they're extremely intelligent at it. And so we need to jump on that bandwagon to make sure that we are seeing everything too. But   yeah, that's   Tiffanie (21:40) Yeah, agreed.   Pamela (21:41) very, very true.   Tiffanie (21:42) Yeah. And the same as the other AI tools, they have their variances as well. And you train those   Pamela (21:47) Mm-hmm.   Tiffanie (21:47) tools too. And you train yourself to see like, okay, well, this variance of that is like that's that's pretty extreme. I'm not like my practice doesn't diagnose that way. Cool, that's a watch for you, right? But at least it's being pointed out and you can compare. You can look at okay, what did last time look like versus this time? Which is super cool because that's not something you can do.   with just our eyes of that kind of comparison.   Pamela (22:11) Yeah.   Tiffanie (22:12) So whether you're diagnosing off of it or using it as a tool to see progress and change, train it, train it and train yourself just the same as you're training your scheduling bots.   Pamela (22:22) I I agree a hundred percent. And it it does have to be managed, right? It it does have to we have to learn it and we have to manage and it i it's just not a one and done. Just yeah. So very sh very   Tiffanie (22:33) Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love it.   There's so much tech to be found. I think some key ones that we can kind of action item here to go explore at least. I love the online scheduling tools if you're not using them yet. I think they're worth it. they weren't always. They have turned a corner. They are worth it. and Pam, I think even the scheduling   bots that answer, you know, new patient calls, things like that are taking over and they're doing really phenomenally. And then I think I would push to make sure your insurance information is accurate. obviously, you know, Pearl or Overjet kind of tools, those are phenomenal too. But I think starting with those scheduling and those insurances, if you're not using those tools yet, I think it's worth looking into because I really do think that revenue cycle management, all of those pieces are   hugely beneficial at this point. So do your homework. Go ahead.   Pamela (23:30) I agree and I think I think   it yeah, do your homework and I think it's exciting what's happening in with the voice activation. I don't think it's quite   Tiffanie (23:38) Mm-hmm.   Pamela (23:39) there yet, but that is something I know dental offices are very hungry for. I know it's a little intimidating, but when it gets better, and I I think it's developed huge amount from when I was in the office because it d had   Tiffanie (23:53) Yeah.   Pamela (23:54) just started. and you know, I think   Offices are really looking forward to that and doctors are looking for their notes to help with their notes, right?   Tiffanie (24:05) Yeah.   Pamela (24:05) So I think those are the two big areas that we want to watch   Tiffanie (24:08) Yeah.   Pamela (24:09) and really keep abreast of what's going on and you know, keep automating and you can do it slow and it shouldn't be intimidating.   Tiffanie (24:18) Yeah, I completely agree. I think slow is fast these days. Everything's changing so much. It's worth it to do   Pamela (24:24) Yeah.   Tiffanie (24:25) your due diligence and make sure that you're using it correctly and to its full extent. So I love it. Thank you so much, Pam. This was a lot of fun. I know that the AI tech world is your jam. you do a lot of introspective work on it and just it's a big conversation topic for you. So thank you for   Being on here with me today and being willing to share your knowledge.   Pamela (24:49) Thank you, thank you. I love AI and I can't wait to buy a robot.   Tiffanie (24:54) Yeah, no right. That's what a our   we have an almost 13-year-old in the house and he's ready to buy one, ready to build them, ready to go. I love it. I love it. Of course.   Pamela (25:02) I know, it's it's very cool. Well thank you for the time, Tiffanie. It was great to talk about this.   Tiffanie (25:09) Thanks, fam. Awesome. Okay, listeners, share this with a buddy. share some information you might have. You might be trying something in your practice now. Drop us a five-star review below and call that out. People do read through those comments.   or if you're on our socials, put it in the comments section. You guys have some conversations about this. There's a lot to be learned here and there's so much to be shared. I know we had a doctor speaking on how she's using AI, but then we also just had a massive conversation in our doctor's only mastermind last Tuesday about AI tools, AI bots, kind of how different practices are using them. So it's a huge conversation. Get it rolling in there, get on board with some other doctors and share these tools with each other.   Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. If you need anything from us at all, we are always happy to share all of the knowledge that we have and we're always happy to help you in your practice on your journey towards an amazing rest of the year. Thanks so much guys and we'll catch you next time.  

Dental insurance payments don't have to be confusing, time-consuming, or difficult to reconcile. If your dental practice is still relying heavily on paper checks and EOBs, understanding EFTs and ERAs could dramatically streamline your insurance workflow and improve cash flow. In this episode of the High Performing Dental Team Podcast, Dayna Johnson sits down with dental insurance expert Colleen Huff to break down EFTs (Electronic Funds Transfers), ERAs (Electronic Remittance Advice), insurance payment reconciliation, and Dentrix insurance workflows. Colleen explains why dental practices are moving toward electronic insurance payments, how to create checks and balances, and how tools like Dentrix Insurance Eligibility Pro can improve efficiency. They also discuss why dental insurance isn't just an administrative responsibility. From accurate clinical notes and diagnostic images to treatment estimates and collections, every member of the dental team plays a role in helping the practice get paid correctly. ✅ Key Takeaways Understand the difference between an EFT and ERA and why your practice may want both. Learn how ERAs can flow directly into Dentrix and reduce manual insurance payment posting. Discover why Colleen recommends a separate bank account for dental insurance EFT deposits to make reconciliation easier. Create a checks-and-balances process so your team verifies that EFT deposits actually reached the bank before posting payments. Learn why ERAs and EFTs can save significant administrative time and help improve dental practice cash flow. Understand how electronic EOB information can be stored within the patient's Dentrix Document Center. Learn why accurate insurance breakdowns directly affect treatment estimates, patient portions, collections, and patient trust. Hear Colleen's experience using Dentrix Insurance Eligibility Pro to sync insurance information and reduce manual data entry. Discover why your entire dental team, including the clinical team, has a role in successful insurance claims and reimbursement. Learn why dental practices need to continually update their insurance workflows as payer requirements and technology change.

Where Should You Make Notes in Dentrix? A Complete Guide to Dental Practice Documentation

A lot of dental billing advice online is loud, confident, and wrong and the cost shows up months later as denials, write-offs, and clawbacks. So we flipped the mic and let you meet Erica, the person behind years of dental billing education, revenue cycle management consulting, and a whole lot of hard-won pattern recognition from inside real practices. We talk through her path from a “natural-born geek” who literally tried to steal homework, to becoming a teen mom who needed a stable career fast, to discovering that the dental front office was where she belonged. From there, she builds a billing company at 22, partners in dental practices, and eventually creates Dental Career College after seeing how hard it is to hire and train great front office teams. Along the way we dig into what offices actually asked for most: stronger verbal skills on new patient calls and real competence with dental insurance claims and billing systems like Dentrix. Then we get practical about the issues that keep practices stuck: denial management without a standard process, confusing “we did it” with “will insurance pay,” and letting coverage rules creep into clinical decision-making. Erica shares why billers must keep up with updated CDT codes, invest in continuing education, and prepare for diagnosis codes and AI in dentistry, because the billing landscape is changing fast and it will leave people behind. Follow us for tips and updates, and don't miss the upcoming live webinar: bring your denials and your questions. If this helps, subscribe, share the episode with your office, and leave a review so more dental teams can find it.Send us Fan Mail Registration Link for Diagnosis Codes on a Dental Claim Form Webinar:https://dentiqhub-diagnosis-codes.vercel.app/Get your Dental Billing Toolkit Here:https://www.dentalbillingdoneright.com/the-dental-billing-toolkitDownload "The Most Underused Codes in Dentistry - And How to Get Them Paid" checklist here:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfxnnfSlNd0NPhMoBWq-1D_xU5R8LS4xPhHNKIjfLQwStOUag/viewform?usp=headerSchedule a billing chat with Ericka:https://calendly.com/ericka-dentalbillingdoneright/30minEmail Ericka:ericka@dentalbillingdoneright.comEmail Jen:jen@dentalbillingdoneright.com

Is Your Dentrix Software Really the Problem, or Do Your Systems Need a Cleanup? Thinking about switching from Dentrix Core to Dentrix Ascend because your software feels messy, outdated, or overloaded with bad data? Before you make the leap, there's an important question to ask: Will changing dental software actually solve the problem? In this episode of the High Performing Dental Team Podcast, Dayna Johnson shares a conversation with a dentist who was considering leaving Dentrix Core after 28 years because of messy patient ledgers, duplicate insurance plans, excessive adjustment types, and years of accumulated data. While Dentrix Ascend could provide a clean slate, Dayna explains why switching dental practice management software without fixing the underlying workflows and team habits could eventually recreate the exact same problems. Whether you stay with Dentrix Core, move to Dentrix Ascend, or consider another dental practice management system, the real goal is to build better systems, stronger SOPs, cleaner data, and consistent team workflows. ✅ Key Takeaways Don't switch dental software just to get a clean slate. First identify what is actually creating the problems in your current system. Your workflows matter more than the software. Duplicate insurance plans, inaccurate ledgers, unnecessary adjustment types, and other data problems often come from inconsistent processes. Clean up patient ledger allocations daily. Correct allocations help ensure payments are applied to the appropriate patient and provider in Dentrix Core. Create clear rules for adding insurance plans. Dayna recommends searching by group number, group plan name, and employer before creating a new insurance plan. Limit security rights. Not every dental team member needs permission to add providers, insurance plans, payment types, billing types, or adjustment types. Build standard operating procedures before changing software. Without consistent SOPs, the same problems can follow your practice into a new system. Create recurring Dentrix cleanup workflows. Maintaining clean practice data should be an ongoing process, not a once-a-year project. Optimize the software you already have. Before investing the time and money into a software conversion, determine whether better training and systems could solve your current challenges.

Richard May is the Vice President of Business Development at Mango Voice, where he focuses on helping dental practices improve communication through cloud-based phone systems, AI-powered workflows, and secure practice management integrations. Richard works closely with dental teams across the country to simplify patient communication while enhancing efficiency and the overall patient experience. Learn more about Mango Voice: https://www.mangovoice.com

In case you missed it, this week's podcast is a replay from last year. I chose to bring this episode back because the guidance is still incredibly valuable. Keeping your Dentrix database clean is one of those maintenance tasks that never goes out of style, and if your practice has experienced staffing changes recently, this is the perfect time for a refresher.

⏰ Feeling overwhelmed in your dental practice? You may not need more team members—you may just need better systems. In this episode, Dayna Johnson shares one of the most impactful lessons from her nationwide Dentrix User Meetings: four practical ways dental teams can buy back time, reduce stress, and improve efficiency. Drawing from real conversations with office managers and practice owners, Dayna explains how stronger workflows, automation, and accurate data can transform the way your practice operates. Whether you're using Dentrix or another dental practice management software, these strategies will help your team spend less time scrambling and more time delivering an exceptional patient experience. ✅ Key Takeaways Shift from scramble time to preparation time with better pre-visit workflows. Embrace automation for insurance eligibility, appointment confirmations, online scheduling, and patient forms. Trust and optimize your automation tools instead of creating manual workarounds. Build a team-wide commitment to accurate, complete data entry. Finish every task all the way to the finish line to prevent costly mistakes. Eliminate outdated pop-ups and keep patient records clean and relevant. Use the Office Journal and reminders instead of relying on memory. Apply the KISS Method (Keep It Super Simple) to create workflows that are easier to train, follow, and scale. Strong systems reduce stress, improve patient care, and create high-performing dental teams.

In case you missed it, this is a replayed moment from last year and one of the most listened-to podcast episodes because so many dental practices are making big decisions about insurance participation. If your practice is going out of network with insurance plans, your Dentrix setup needs to change with you.

Documentation, charting, and insurance narratives are taking time away from patient care, and many teams are already stretched thin. In this episode, Kirk Behrendt sits down with Rushi Ganmukhi, founder of Bola AI and former MIT AI/NLP researcher, and Cassie Tallon, a dental operations leader and author, to explain how voice-enabled AI can reduce clinical documentation burden, improve note quality, and help practices get paid faster. You'll learn where voice tech fits best (perio, restorative charting, and clinical notes), what it changes operationally, and how to identify the friction points in your own workflow. Listen to Episode 1055 of The Best Practices Show!Main Takeaways:Voice technology can reduce the time and disruption of perio charting by allowing hands-free entry during hygiene visits.Faster perio charting supports more comprehensive perio exams, which can improve identification and treatment of periodontal disease.Delayed or incomplete notes can delay insurance submission and cash flow, creating a backlog of unsent claims.Templated, generic notes and late documentation can weaken clinical records for both insurance review and legal defensibility.Insurers are increasingly requiring more documentation, including perio charting for restorative claims, to support medical necessity.Effective adoption of AI tools depends on fast implementation, flexibility in workflows, and customization to an office's documentation preferences.Practices can start by tracking daily workflow “sticking points” for a week and mapping which issues could be reduced with voice-driven documentation.Snippets:00:00 Voice tech as the “hidden power” of AI for practice efficiency.01:00 The documentation burden: perio charts, restorative docs, and insurance narratives.02:10 Rushi's background in AI/NLP and MIT research, and why he entered dentistry.04:35 Why voice tech fits clinical environments better than consumer voice assistants.06:00 Bola AI's early focus on voice perio charting and expansion to notes and restorative charting.07:05 Why integrations with practice management systems matter (Dentrix, Open Dental, Curve, Patterson, Henry Schein).08:00 The time cost of manual charting and its impact on hygiene workflows.10:00 How delays and backdating notes can hold up insurance submission and revenue.11:20 The risks of cut-and-paste templates for insurance and legal documentation.13:00 Insurance requiring more documentation, including perio charting for restorative claims.14:00 Why “decay” alone is not a sufficient clinical reason in a narrative.15:00 How dental-specific logic and terminology improve accuracy over general dictation tools.16:35 What “plug-and-play” adoption should look like in the operatory.18:10 Handling variation across practices (sleep/airway, medical billing, pediatrics, customization).19:00 Current curiosity vs. adoption: workforce shortages and the cash-flow case for AI.22:00 Overview of Bola's three core products: Voice Perio, Voice Restorative, and AI Scribe.26:00 A practical challenge: measure how long perio charting takes and identify workflow friction points.29:00 Final guidance: start small, solve specific problems, and choose tools proven in clinics.30:10 Where to learn more and request a demo (bola.ai).Guest Bio/Guest Resources:Rushi Ganmukhi is the founder of Bola AI and has a professional background in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, including research experience at MIT focused on helping computers understand human speech and language. He leads Bola AI's work applying voice technology to dental workflows, including perio charting, restorative charting, and AI-assisted clinical documentation.Cassie Tallon is a dental operations leader with 20 years of experience spanning multi-doctor practices and DSOs, including supporting growth and operational efficiency across multiple locations. She is an author focused on dental operations and has dedicated her current work to helping dentists improve efficiency, navigate growth decisions, and strengthen systems without adding unnecessary overhead.Resources mentioned in the episode:Bola AI (demos and product information): www.bola.aihttps://smilesource.com/exchangeMore Helpful Links for a Better Practice & a Better Life:The Best Practices Show: https://www.actdental.com/podcast/Best Practices Association: https://www.actdental.com/bpaUpcoming Events & Workshops: https://www.actdental.com/events/Smile Source: https://www.smilesource.com/Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.comSubscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com

In case you missed it, this is a replayed moment from last year and one of the most viewed podcast episodes I've ever shared specifically for hygienists. And honestly, this topic is more important than ever because efficient perio charting in Dentrix directly impacts diagnosis, patient care, insurance documentation, and clinical consistency.

Tanner Applegate, Founder and CEO of Unify Dental He is passionate about two things: personal growth and using technology to create greater efficiency and innovation. He believes continuous learning and adaptability are essential for success, both personally and professionally. Tanner is driven by a desire to help others grow, embrace new ideas, and leverage technology to move their businesses and lives forward. ----

In case you missed it, this is a replayed moment from last year and one of the most listened-to episodes in this series. And honestly, this is one of those topics that hasn't changed… if anything, it's become more important as practices try to improve cash flow and reduce accounts receivable.

In case you missed it, this is a replayed moment from last year that quickly became one of my most listened-to podcast episodes. And honestly, it's still just as relevant today because insurance hasn't gotten any simpler… if anything, it's gotten more complicated.

Re-releasing a DAT listener favorite! Dr. Dave Moghadam joins Kiera to discuss getting your hygiene team on the same page and at the same point of understanding. He shares his approach, and goes deeper into the following: Gather all information and establish a flow of procedure Hold a longer meeting for your hygiene team to review and add their own ideas Allow a period of follow-up for questions Transition into monthly or quarterly meetings to continually update Dr. Moghadam utilized the Dental A-Team's hygiene course to help him come up with this approach to calibrate his hygienist team. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: speaker-0 (00:05) Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I have this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you.   Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A-Teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.   Hello Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And you guys, I am so excited to bring back on one of my favorite guests, one of your favorite guests, somebody who is in the real life with you guys. He is a practicing dentist, rocks our office. I've known him for quite a while. And he's a man that creates systems, implements and executes. And today I'm jazzed to bring him back on. Dr. Dave Moghadam, how are you today?   speaker-1 (01:13) Wonderful, Kiera. Thanks for having me back. appreciate it. It's gonna be a blast as always.   speaker-0 (01:17) It's   gonna be great if you guys have not heard his other ones we've talked about we've gone from acquiring practices Bringing on associate doctors. We've talked about team quarterly calibrations and now we're gonna dive into something that you started I actually think you started it maybe COVID maybe you're doing it pre-covid ⁓ But but it's going to be diving into hygiene calibration, which I think is so relevant. I mean right now hi, Janice are like more Harder to find than unicorns in my opinion. They're like real real tricky   But we just know that they're real. I think it's a great time actually to bring this in. So Dave, kind of walk us through, like I said, you're practicing, Dennis, this is your real life. This is what you're doing really in your practice, which is why I love having on the podcast. So kind of take us away on this hygiene calibration, how you even got the idea for it, what spurred that. I'd love to hear.   speaker-1 (02:08) Yeah, so I think as far as like, how did this come about? What was the situation? Everything like that. Some of the key things that were happening were I had focused a lot on a lot of the rest of the practice, like a lot on systemize this, do this, let's grow and everything else was just really just taking off. But the one thing year after year after year that was kind of like fairly consistent, not really like, my God, really, you know, growing was the hygiene department.   So I started to look into things of, how can we just improve? And I always feel like if we improve some of the other basic stuff, the numbers fall. So I think a lot of the things that I was ⁓ looking to do was just getting some consistency, make sure everybody's on the same page. At that point, had gotten, yeah, this was about two years ago. So we had just gotten a new hygienist to join our team who's been with us ⁓ since then.   We had another hygienist who was only there a day a week at that time. So it was kind of a little difficult to try and get everything all buttoned up. the way I went about it was one, I first took the big chunk of what we had in our operations manual, such as protocols, expectations, standards, record keeping, all that stuff. And then the other thing is I   contacted you and I said, Hey, what do you have for this? Because we're all going to be on our butts for a while when the world closed down for a little bit. we went through the hygiene course. I took some, some pearls from there. tried to organize things a little bit more. Uh, we did a little bit of coaching with, Tiffany as well, uh, virtually then. So we basically, the, outline for this, you know, it was basically protocols standards, you know, what   ⁓ record keeping, know, what if you encounter some hiccups with patients, you know, as far as, know, those types of situations, ⁓ you know, what's the appointment flow like, what's the communication, like what are the key points that we want to hit on, ⁓ teeing up the doctor, pre-teeing up the doctor, which I'll get into in a little bit. ⁓ And then, you know, a lot of this is kind of reviewing our, basically chunking out our routes.   is very detailed and that kind of like highlights a lot of this stuff. And then we get into you know some basis of treatment planning, incorporating some bundles which is a concept that you guys helped us you know incorporate and bring in, and then just talking about some of the other basic stuff like how do we talk about fluoride, you know why is it important to ask for referrals, and then you know financial discussions which basically means just don't have the financial.   speaker-0 (04:56) Right. Yes, I love it. Well, and I love it. Something I wanted to point out is I feel like there's actually a ton of opportunities all around us. It's just, we willing to see them and then actually execute on them? So you saw COVID as a time we're all hanging out. We've got nothing to do. This is the area that I haven't spent any time on. So like, let's make this rock solid. And I think there's so many opportunities like that. Hopefully not another pandemic shutdown, but there.   all around us all the time. So Dave, let's actually deep dive if you don't mind on a lot of these topics. I know that's kind what we came today for just so people get an idea of how you calibrated your hygiene team on this. Like you gave the resources. Yes guys, if you want to get our hygiene course, we're constantly updating it. It's getting ready to move to all videos. Once you purchase the course, you have it for life. definitely   speaker-1 (05:43) You're kidding, right? I wonder who gave that suggestion.   speaker-0 (05:46) That was Dave, which is great because I came in with steal of a deal and said like give me honest feedback and then I felt bad your team was going through as we were rampantly   speaker-1 (05:56) That's really going to button it up. ⁓   speaker-0 (05:59) Good   good. So we're working on videos working on audio, but we're constantly updating and innovating it and asking for your guys's feedback So if that's helpful for you fantastic, like Dave said we did do virtual calls with his hygiene team very spot specific but kind of like walk us down through this Of like what exactly does this calibration look like you listed those items kind of deep dive with us on it. Yeah   speaker-1 (06:19) Yeah,   that was just a lot of verbal diarrhea there. I just kind of threw it out there. So we'll break it down. We'll go section by section. Yeah. is what happens. So basically, as far as protocols and standards and things like that, I mean, that's just kind of the basics of what are we expected to do. It's kind of like if you think of onboarding, it's repetitive. It's a review. But kind of like, what do you expect to do in the morning, during the appointment, at the end of the day, kind of going through, making sure everybody knows what the   all that looks like, making sure that they're very clear on like what's expected for the end of day sheets that, you know, that they take pictures of and turn in every day, all that stuff. You know, record keeping, you know, how often are we doing, you know, probing, how often are we taking x-rays, you know, what kind of photos do we expect? And then as far as like pickups that relate to that, I mean, we, I think of it in a positive way, half our patient base is 60 and a   I love it. It's a really a wonderful type of practice, but in over the past five years of, ⁓ know, initially early on transitioning and taking over a practice like that, and then taking in other practices like that, we get a lot of stuff where people think that the X-ray head is gonna melt their faces. And, you know, because of that, it's kind of like, well, let's figure out a way, what's gonna be our kind of standardized way of how we're gonna address these concerns.   What are we going to go ahead and do? So we like a little pamphlet basically that shows some examples of things, why we take x-rays, what could be missed, all that stuff. Very simple, very straightforward. Has a little chart that we just kind of found somewhere on Google about radiation, the mouse, like that. And they kind of have their set kind of like, hey, we go through all that stuff. And if it kind of becomes a push versus shove moment, they have to come grab me, which I don't really love, but it is what it is.   And then we kind of go from there. So that's not to get sidetracked, but that's kind of, you know, one of those things. Like when we have situations where things may not necessarily go smoothly, it doesn't matter what the actual answer is. Everybody just has to know it.   speaker-0 (08:23) Right, right. No, I love that. And I was going to say, Dave, based on our last podcast we did, you know, they've to come get you maybe throw that into your calibration role play. What do we say to these patients? ⁓ But I really do.   speaker-1 (08:36) I don't necessarily want to encourage.   I like to do dental treatment and sit at my desk and drink water.   speaker-0 (08:43) I definitely agree and that's what I feel like most dentists feel. So I like that. So with that, I like that you do that. So how does this kind of hygiene calibration look? Do you do it consistently? Is it like once a year that you do it? Did the hygienist help create it with you? They brought up the issues that they were coming with. I kind of break it down. Like if I'm a brand new office, I don't really know. I want to do this. I'm hearing you do this. What are kind of the steps to be able to actually get this into my practice and start running it?   speaker-1 (09:10) Yeah, so I think the big thing is I think you gotta just like deep dive into it, like do it once over whether it's like one really long appointment or like maybe a couple of weeks of a couple of hours. I think it's a lot to try and like just be like, yeah, you're gonna like remember all of this stuff. Like even if we do every three months, stuff like that. ⁓ And right after we did it, we were doing weekly hygiene meetings.   So we kind of will like chunk out, you know, little pieces of this to kind of get a little bit more granular or kind of talk about how we improve doing weekly meetings is a lot, it just was really, and we were just being very, very inconsistent with it. So I was kind of like, ⁓ like it's Tuesday and yesterday was Monday and Monday was really hard. And now I'm really tired and you know, Dr. Seth's not here today and I'm around all morning. So you know what? I just feel like,   not doing this at once. That's what would happen. So now we basically have at least one scheduled each month and a second one that's kind of like floating. Where so that one we're going to no matter what kind of go through some of this. And then if there's another topic that we kind of want to dial, you know, dive into a little bit more, that's at the second one. It makes it a lot more manageable to go ahead and do things that way. I think when you chunk it out like that, these are not like 20, 30 minutes. You know I'm saying? Like, you know, after everybody's kind of   had some time to relax before we're to start to see our patients again. But I think the first thing is really making a big, you know, let's get all the information organized together. Let's go through it all. Let's make sure somebody's on the same page. ⁓ I would assume, you know, as we're going to hopefully be onboarding, we'll find an onboarding another hygienist, you know, over the next several months, it would be something that would be a big chunk of the onboarding process. But I think, you know,   we'll get to it. I mean, there's a lot, a lot more to go through, but I think having done this for a while and I realized sometimes when you kind of have this, even if somebody, if they've helped make it and you're kind of just driving those points home sometimes, you know, like we talked about in our podcast, things will get stale or there's a way to do it better. And I really have felt that, you know, uh, over time, if I've in the times that I've tried to really, you know, ask for feedback and listen in an environment that doesn't seem so   confrontational, know, hygienists and all my team members really sometimes bring these just like amazing, wonderful ideas that I never really would have thought of about. And that's really how I think it really kind of starts to really grow and evolve. And that's hard because, you know, a lot of times everybody, every team member is different. And we have some that are a little...   touchy about things. And a lot of times I try and explain that, you know, everything that we were talking about here is not like, Hey, you did like a crap job at this. It's kind of like, Hey, like, I want to try and see how we can make this a better situation for our patients, for you, for me, is there a way that we can maybe try this to see if this is better? Like what suggestions do you have? want to make sure you know, overall,   That's the thing, because I always am that type of person that's like, let's make this better, better, better. Sometimes people think it's like, hey, you're doing a not good job. like, no, you're doing a great job. I just don't sit still. And that's kind of a problem. I'm sorry it comes across that. So I've gotten my office manager a little bit more involved as far as like, you know, she's in the meetings as well and asking some more of these questions that I think it's led to a little bit less of a like.   confrontation, a lot of this confrontation, but less, you know, heated kind of environment. That's a great idea has come out of things here.   speaker-0 (12:53) Well, I think it's because you're also getting into that. Yeah, you're also calibrating with them. And so it becomes more of a learning versus a dictation. And that's where I think the freedom is the freedom to come up with ideas, the freedom to give that feedback when it's when it's coming together to calibrate and to connect versus judging critique. And so I feel like you did a good job of spinning it getting everyone there. So if I'm breaking this down for an office, it sounds like one.   gather all the information of like kind of the flow of the procedure. Like what is it, what's involved in that? Thinking of, mean, Dave gave you a really great checklist real quick of those items. And then from there, it sounds like set up a time, maybe over lunch, maybe do a longer one to two hour meeting where you kind of have the outline of it, go through it all. I did this with an office that I was consulting with and I literally gave them about an hour and a half. They went through the whole process, looked at everything, added pieces in. And then the next day we followed up, it was very short.   Just to make sure like what questions that they have Then they can roll into like monthly meetings on this or or every quarter just kind of calibrating reviewing checking to see But I thought you also brought up a good point of making sure that once it is solidified Which again duns better than perfect because guys it will never be perfect. It will constantly updated So don't spend your next three and sixty five days trying to perfect this darn thing like get it done So it's at least something for when you onboard people and then continually update it as well. So   Dave, you had said there's more that you want to dive into. So take it away. I'm not going to stop you. Give some examples.   speaker-1 (14:20) No,   for sure. mean, there's a lot. we've gotten talked about, you know, protocols, standards, record keeping stuff, you know, kind of any hiccups like in that, you know, so making sure everybody knows what the expectations are, you know, what to do if there's there's pushback there. The next thing we kind of will dive into is the flow of the appointment. You know, every office is different in how they want to go ahead and do things. You know, I always feel and I'm not the best at this, even though I preach it all the time.   that if you wait until like the last five, 10 minutes of the appointment and you sell somebody like, hey, you have all this stuff that's wrong inside your head, like you just run out the door. So I always feel that in the first 20 minutes, should be, records should be, ⁓ all gathered together, hygienists should start reviewing everything that they potentially see as a problem, kind of warming things up in a sense with the patients there.   and the doctor in that sometime in that next 20 minute window, ideally, somewhere between 20 after 30 after can get in there, talk about what the situation is. And then this time the patient has more time where they can ask questions, go over things. The front office has the heads up if it's something that's involved. Although a lot of times, honestly, if it's more than, it kind of moved more towards this.   If it's more than a couple of things and somebody is going to be in a sense spending more than 5,000 bucks, may want to set up even a small appointment just to re-review things, you know, with the doctor or somebody upfront or something like that. Cause it's all, it's a lot that they can. And honestly, a lot of times, you know, five, 10 minutes doesn't really do the justice that some people will need to really understand what the problem situation is and really own that.   speaker-0 (16:10) Right.   speaker-1 (16:11) comes   across as kind of like, my God, they want like, you know, 10 grand from me. I don't even know what the hell's going on.   speaker-0 (16:17) Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. No, you're exactly right. And I think something I love that you just talked about on that is you actually helped your team make better decisions without you always having to answer it by saying, hey, I want a consult if it's over 5,000, this is where we should be setting up a consult. I literally just had an office ask me, hey, Kiera, when do you recommend setting up a consult? And I'm like, it's doctor dependent. Because some doctors are presenting 30, 40, 50,000 and they're like, those are fine. It's just laissez faire.   Other dentists are saying, like, no, over, you know, five grand, 10 grand, let's bring them back for a consult. But by having this, like, just expectations and helping your team know the parameters, they can then make a lot smarter decisions moving forward. Independent and confident.   speaker-1 (17:03) There may be other people out there who are very slick and can get somebody to give them $30,000 in three minutes. That's just, that's.   speaker-0 (17:10) Right, right, exactly. Exactly.   speaker-1 (17:12) But   at the end of the day, wouldn't want it to be like that. The way we kind of do everything is like, let's really kind of make sure somebody understands something, makes feels comfortable with the decisions that they're making. Because I would much rather not do anything if somebody doesn't feel comfortable with it than do it and have an issue.   speaker-0 (17:29) For sure, absolutely.   speaker-1 (17:31) So I mean, think that's a newer thing that we're kind of moving towards. I think we kind of ballpark it in a sense. Sometimes it's not even a financial thing. Let's say somebody has been going to the same dentist for a long time, they show up and then it's like, my God, there's like, know, 16 surfaces of decay. And like, it's just like, okay, well, yeah, this is not gonna be a two minute conversation. This is like, hey, I see a lot of things going on. Let me highlight them for you, but let's have you come back and let's really talk about, you know,   what the options are and if something really involved I encourage them to bring a friend or a family member or a second set of years somebody that they can rely on as well because it's a lot of information you it can be overwhelming.   speaker-0 (18:12) Wow.   Right. Exactly. But I think like overarching big picture on this is you got your hygiene team calibrated with you. You got them because at the end of the day, I feel like hygienists tee up so much for the doctors. They're the ones who spend so much time with these patients. Doctors run in, run out, like you said. I also love that for you. And again, this is doctor preference. Some doctors don't like to do exams when they're not polished and clean, but I like your actually really love your thought process on it. You're right. If you come to an exam,   Lastly, right before that patient leaves, there is no time for them to ask questions to anybody but the front desk. And oftentimes if they have a lot of questions, they're out the door if they plan to be there for an hour. Whereas if they had exam can be in the middle of the appointment, they can ask questions to that hygienist. That hygienist can re-emphasize treatment as well, helping them see like, this is why, can you fill this catch with my instrument here? Like this is what Dr. Mogadam was talking about. So I really love that philosophy and I love that   Again, I think what I'm pulling from this that I hope a lot of other offices are hearing is that you are giving them confidence to make decisions independent of you that are in a line with the direction you want the practice to go. And when people have confidence, they know how to win the day, they've helped co-create it with you, they know how to give the patient the best experience, that gives team members freedom. That gives team members so much, like, just...   just help and greatness that they can do. So I really, really love that you brought that up and how you calibrated your hygiene team. Any other thoughts you have on it, Dave?   speaker-1 (19:43) other thing that I would mention that it's kind of beneficial if I actually get off my butt and show up at the time that I'm supposed to is let's say somebody has something that's not like, my God, over the top, like, you know, taking out a tooth, graphing it, placing an implant, restoring it, lot of in that. And we have like explosion codes in open dental, but somebody still has to kind of organize it. And then I always want that double checking kind of, you know.   What are we anticipating that their insurance may help them with all that stuff, kind of doing the breakdown. So, oh, know, a lot of times if it's something a little bit more involved, we don't need to bring somebody back though. I'll just walk up front and just say, hey, you know, we're doing this, this and this for Mrs. Jones. Just make sure you have that ready. So it's a much quicker, easier checkout process and just immediately get them scheduled. know, anything beyond like a couple of things, I usually make an effort to walk up there, give them a heads up and, you know, sit at my computer for a minute or two.   a fish, not a   speaker-0 (20:38) For sure. I love it. And again, I think it's important like guys, Dr. Dave here is telling you like this is what he prefers. This is his style. This is his flow. This is the vibe he likes to have and he's been able to create it in his practice. I will tell you from a team member's perspective and I'll be all I want my doctor super happy. That's literally what makes me so happy. So if I know that Dr. Dave wants to go drink his coffee and wants me to take care of everything else and he's given me the parameters of what to do. Awesome. I'm going to take it on.   If I know Dr. Dave's a dentist who doesn't want to let go, I'm probably going to push him a little bit and remind him he should let go because I got this for him. But at the end of the day, I'm going to do what I can to make him super happy because I know when my doctor's happy, that's one, what I'm there to do as an assistant, as a front office. I'm there to help my doctor's lives be so simple and easy and also to give our patients the best experience. So I just love like you, you looped it all together. You gave the parameters, you co-created with them.   and then you, now you get to have the life that you want to have. Go drink your coffee before seeing your patients, whatever it's needed, because then you also probably have a much smoother day that you look forward to. You probably enjoy dentistry a lot more, which means you're probably going to be a better diagnoser. You're probably going to be better to our patients, probably do better clinical because you are happier. You've got it set. We're able to all flow and gel, which is how the whole practice can move smoother.   speaker-1 (22:00) definitely. And not to sidetrack us, I'm going to forget if I mention it now. could set something up another time to kind of talk about scheduling protocols as far as how to remember to put borders together for bigger procedures that are multi-step and even also actually creating a schedule where everybody's going to be happy. Because there's the concept of block scheduling, but there's also the concept of what we started doing. I mentioned this to you a little while ago where we schedule based on the types of   procedures that we want to do, not necessarily financial values and stuff like that. And just like with most things that I do, that's not something that I learned myself or created out of thin air. You know, it was something that I heard in other podcasts that I love. They call it in their terms, they call it priority. You know, creating priorities for the types of dentistry that you want to do, which in my mind is way better. You know, I always gear towards things of like,   How do we want to go ahead and make things a better experience for our patients? How do we want to do more of the types of dentistry that we want to do rather than like we're chasing this magic number at the end of the day? Because as for myself, for my team, I know that doesn't really push the needle. But when we kind of talk about all the steps of what's going to get us there, all the stuff that the numbers go up and down, it's good. And then we keep the lights on and we continue to grow and we help more people and employ more.   speaker-0 (23:19) I love it. I love it. And I'm so glad that you said that and I agree. I think that'd be a really fun podcast to dive into. Because again, scheduling, and I love hearing it from a doctor's perspective, because I will harp on this all day long and say a schedule that you want is actually the best schedule for your patients. Because you're happier, you deliver better dentistry. And when you guys have those boundaries in there, it's so much happier for everybody. So I definitely want to dive into that. I also want to dive into our IT podcast as well, which will be a real fun one.   But to wrap up on hygiene calibration, how often, Dave, do you recalibrate with your hygiene team?   speaker-1 (23:58) So it's not something that we've done. It's just mostly because we do our meetings. So we kind of loop around on areas that are kind of falling through the cracks a little bit and then expanding on other teams. And a lot of times, you know, we'll get, ⁓ because of what we've talked about where we have like these discussions, ⁓ we'll incorporate some other great things. like we were kind of at certain times where things were getting a little bit lost in the shuffle as far as like, consistently doing probing at the times that we want to or basically having the ⁓   the appropriate codes in for when we're checking the patients out and you something gets lost in the shuffle of the handoff and this and that. So one of the hygienists thought of a great idea of, why don't we create just a dummy code for probing as well? And then, know, when then we talk about how like, you know, when you're creating your next appointment, put everything in that's going to be there, you know, put in put in the probing, put in whatever x-rays are necessary, put it all there. And then when you're doing you're basically you're setting up for the morning huddle.   in six months, it's very easy. All that stuff is basically there. And then we can start focusing on some of the stuff that I want to focus more on as far as like this stuff that actually relates to the patients, what's going on with them, their lives, because everybody can read the schedule, you know? So if that part is not important. Yeah. Yeah. Side note, I don't really love our morning puzzles. That's something we're going to work   speaker-0 (25:18) That's the next calibration one there Dave. So don't worry. got lots of tips on morning huddle I've revamped those many times and many practices, but I like it. ahead   speaker-1 (25:30) Yeah, I think getting back to some of the other things that we kind of talk about aside from, you know, appointment flow and everything like that. A lot of what we want the, you know, to all talk about, we have a nice route. So if it kind of goes over, like these are all the things we're checking. So, you know, that makes kind of teeing up the doctor pretty, pretty easy there for the most part. What I wanted to mention about pre-teeing up the doctor is let's say you get another doctor in the practice and it's   it's the first time, it's the second time, it's the third time, whatever time it is, people are going to be like, who is this human being that is walking in the door? So, you know, I think really, you know, taking a second and making sure that, you know, the hygienist know, you know, when they know it's going to be that doctor doing the exam, they know what to say. So what we kind of scripted out here is, you know, we've been fortunate enough to continue to grow as a practice to make sure that we spend enough quality time with each patient.   You know, Dr. So-and-so has joined our team. We're happy that we found another great doctor who shares our philosophies to join us and help take care of our patients. I'm so excited for you to meet them. I love it. know, something like that ahead of time is disarming. It sets everything up. It shows that we have, you know, confidence in this other person who's joined our team, that it's not a second rate situation and they're being pushed to the side. I love And then, yeah.   speaker-0 (26:55) Well, and something else that I want to point out is Dave, you have this all on a PowerPoint. You actually shared it with me, which I appreciate a ton. and something I love about is you've got pictures in there, you've got verbiage in there, you've got links in there and you update it, but that's a very quick, easy onboarding packet as well to give a new hygienist joining your team. It's also very quick for you to update it. And then there's no question of what is that? And so, and I also love that you guys use the route slip. I think that's a pro tip. If you guys aren't doing that open dental.   This is only for our open dental offices. There might be some others, Dentrix and Eaglesoft. Sorry, Charlie, you're out. But you can actually edit your route slips and you can put these questions in there. So a lot of the things like I'm big on not depending on human memories. I think the human brain is brilliant. I also think a lot of times in practices we try to implement new behaviors, but it takes quite a while for that new behavior to actually take off. So constantly thinking of if you want this to be hygiene checklist.   how could you make a quick checklist? If you can't put it on your route slip, you can create a laminated checklist that they check off for you for every patient. Some offices who work in Dentrix and Eagle Soft, they literally have their hygiene checklist printed on one piece of paper and then on the backside of it, that's where they print their route slips. So lots of ways to get creative with this. But what it sounds like you've done, Dave, is you went through the philosophies with your hygienist, you had them help co-create it, you've given them the parameters so you have a great schedule.   And then we also put into play a way for them not to forget. And that's, think, a key piece to success. And then you're continually talking about this in your quarterly meeting. So I would say for offices wanting to do this one, just start, like start right down every piece, get information, learn, get your hygienist together and get it all put together. Again, Dave, I love that you put it in a PowerPoint. Two, make sure that everybody's aligned. Three, add to it, have a set cadence of when you'll do it. Are you going to do it on a quarterly calibration?   Are you going to do it once a year where you review it, make sure it's up to date. But that's where oftentimes these great systems, these great protocols come into play, but fall off the bandwagon because we don't have a set cadence to do it. So Dave, I love it. I love you guys like breaking it down. And I'd say for all those offices wanting to do it, go for it. Reach out to Dr. Dave. He's awesome. start though, he gave you a really great list. Read, listen to this podcast, write it down. He gave you a lot of step-by-steps. know that's hours and hours of work that he put into this.   Lots of resources, lots of time that you guys already have a jumpstart. So take what he's given you, execute on it, and have a really calibrated hygiene team. So Dave, any last thoughts? I love what you've done. Thank you for sharing. It's always fun. You have so many great ideas that you love to share.   speaker-1 (29:34) I mean, I think there's a lot more that we could dive into. I think some of the other key takeaways is, I mean, working with somebody like yourself or other people, they can kind of give you some more of these ideas. Like we wouldn't have thought about kind of bundling procedures, things like that, trying to make things a little bit more clear overall. ⁓ Other key things as far as,   new patient blocks, lot of these key principles, all these other things, incorporating them and making sure that everybody's on the same page. Because we started to do that, didn't really have a discussion with the hygiene team. They started just not, you know, regarding or understanding that and putting things in. Then it's a whole big to do in a sense to try and reorganize the schedule there too. So one, if you're going to continue to learn and grow and incorporate new things, one, I encourage it and you should, but you should probably talk to everybody and not forget to do that.   speaker-0 (30:28) Amen, I do it all the time guilty Guilty people like care you forgot. I'm like, yeah There's like seven other people attached to this decision and I forgot to share with all of you and Dave Thank you for that agreed if we can help you guys I know Dave you reached out to us for resources. We also did virtual training with your team. We come to your practice So if there are ways this is something that you guys want help getting kicked off the ground by all means Please reach out to us. You can email us. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com   this is literally what we are made to do. This is what we love to do is where we are passion lies. and just kind of being that outside, think outside the box, giving ideas to, to make your life easier and more efficient. So Dave, as always, I appreciate you. Thanks for being on our podcast today. Thanks for sharing your ideas. You're just a wealth of knowledge. So thank you. All right guys, that wraps it up. Go execute. Don't just take this knowledge. Think it's a great idea, but actually execute, stick it in your planner, in your schedule, on your calendar, wherever you need to.   so you actually make it happen because you are always just one decision away from a completely different life. All right,   always, thank you for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.   That wraps it up for another episode of the Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.  

Tiff and Trish discuss the need-to-know info for the buyer of a practice, including team member transparency, new patient inflow, software use, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:01) Hello Dental A Team listeners. We are back again I have Trish with me because I freaking adore her and I the we just recorded a podcast We record a few at a time. You guys know that I batch them It's called efficiency and that will be on my tombstone per Kiera. She tells me that every day It will it will if it's any vision. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like grating cheese by hand like come on anyways   We are here today and we just recorded a podcast. So these are kind of serendipitous that they're back to back and it ended up this way in a weird way. So I don't have to go down that rabbit hole, but we just recorded a podcast on this seller's perspective of how to ensure that you're always ready and prepped to sell no matter where you're at in your journey, making sure that 10, 20, 30, five, two years down the road, you can sell your practice and that it's not as...   as stressful an event as it would be if you were unprepared. So I can't say we can remove all the stress. I can say that we can remove some stress that is just unnecessary. So today, now, I really wanted to look at the buyer's perspective. And we kind of hit on both a little bit on the last one, but this one's gonna be a little bit different. So make sure that you listen to both. Doesn't matter which order, I don't think. We'll find out by the end and I'll tell you if you should have listened to the other one first.   I know, I know, inefficient, but it's okay. So Trish and I are here today. You guys know I adore Trish. If you just listened to the Sellers one, which you should, ⁓ you heard me just rave about Trish. And Trish, love, I realized when I was recording with Monica a couple of weeks ago, which those were fantastic, you guys, if you need information and ⁓ ideas on training your team and operations manual, et cetera, all those pieces, Monica has some stellar ideas over there. But I realized Trish, while I was   Recording with Monica, I love podcasting. I love this aspect. I'm just a weirdo like that. But I love podcasting with you guys. And I realized in the beginning ⁓ with Monica, it was our first time podcasting together. And it was the first time that I got to rave about Monica and just really say all of the things that I love about her and I think is just so incredible about her with her consulting and just who she is as a human.   And I get to do that with you guys here in this platform. And Trish, you're one of my favorite people to rave about. love all of our consultants. You guys hear me rave about them, but Trish is such an incredible human being. It is impossible to describe you. You're just multifaceted. And I realized this is my brag session time. And I'm like this, I love it. It makes me so happy inside.   DAT Trish Ackerman (02:37) Thank   I that.   The Dental A Team (02:49) to just watch you guys thrive and to get to just tell the dental community how amazing you guys are and how special it is for them to get to hear from you and to get you guys in person with them and working with their teams and the leadership that changes the profitability that I've seen come out of everyone's work is so cool. And I realized with Monica, I'm like,   this is why I love podcasting with them because I love getting to love on you guys. It's just so cool. So thank you for, I hope so. Dana's over there. just always like ask her about workout stuff, you know, and I'm like, she's, I love on her too, but I'm always like, what's your hair product? What's your, what's your workout? It's fine. It's fine. ⁓ so thank you for letting me have this space Trish and for, ⁓ always being open to all of the things that I need. ⁓ your,   DAT Trish Ackerman (03:19) We'll take it.   Thank   The Dental A Team (03:43) one of those people that I know I can trust to just be myself. So thank you for that. Thank you for being here today. Of course, of course. I love my job. So with that said, number one piece of suggestion that I have before we get into this buyer side, Kiera and I, have been at this for a little while with the Dental A Team and   DAT Trish Ackerman (03:46) You're welcome to attend, thank you.   The Dental A Team (04:06) Carers Dental Consulting and Dental Masters and whatever name we decide it's been the Dental A Team for a long time and it's going to stick the Dental A Team, it's not changing. But we have had a couple of renditions and one piece that I know we have gotten really, really good at, but that we've really had to work hard at. And from a buyer's perspective, a seller's perspective, I think this is insanely relative, the people. We have worked really, really hard at the people aspect and   pouring ourselves into the people and figuring out that that's actually what we love to do. We love to consult. We love to be with the teams and the doctors and we love to see all of those pieces. I love being on stage. I do. But pouring into our team and creating a business that's not solely dependent on Kiera and I and a company that could thrive if we're on the road, if we're on vacation, that has been a massive transition in our company.   And once we realized that and we got really good at it, we started attracting some really, really cool people. And Trish, you're one of those people and you do not shy away from letting us know that it's working ⁓ or letting me know when I'm not on my best A game of that. And I love that about you. And I love that about our team. think I can count on any one of you ladies to be that person for me. thank you.   And doctors and business owners out there, think this is a huge piece of selling or buying a practice. And Trish, you mentioned that towards the end of our sellers one is the team and really making sure that the team is there for the longterm, but they're really supportive. know if, you know, we built this company to be a sellable company. That's a known fact. It would be wild for us not to do that. It does not mean that Kiera is selling the company tomorrow, but she could.   if she needed or wanted to. And Trish, from a team perspective, just real quick to hit on that, as a team perspective, how does that make you feel ⁓ for the doctors and practice owners out there to kind of hear?   DAT Trish Ackerman (06:13) You know, this is a hot topic. I won't go down bunny holes, but I have seen many, I've been with a lot of doctors that have purchased a practice and they have acquired that team. And I've seen the bright side of it and I've seen the dark side. The bright side is what I'd like to share today because we'll put the light on that. And I also do want to, I want to add something to what you just said, Tiff, about how you and Kira are also feeling like   The Dental A Team (06:26) Yeah.   DAT Trish Ackerman (06:42) you're in a different space now in the company because of the people. But I also want to remind you that that is something that you and Kira, you built that. You built, it didn't just happen. You guys built that. you do have to, like for Kira, there is a level of trust that has to take place. And I'm sure it's really difficult. I mean, this is a livelihood. And this is the same for these dental practices. So when a buyer is coming in,   Typically they do acquire a team and it is the responsibility of the selling doctor to be very transparent. We can't leave team members out when they get shocked and just told I sold and there's a buyer coming in there. could we I've seen I've seen entire teams walk out like, okay, we're out. We're not we're not dealing with it. But when there is a lot of transparency introduction to the incoming potential buyer, sometimes they haven't even bought yet.   The Dental A Team (07:30) Yeah, thumbs up.   Yeah.   Yeah.   DAT Trish Ackerman (07:41) ⁓   and just letting the team, ensuring that the team knows that they're going to be safe. They're to be safe. There's change coming, but they are going to be okay. And if they value and adore their doctor, which many of these team members do obviously, and if they've been there for a long time, then they also want to be part of that support. So being a part of this whole process is, I always say number one, like start there.   The Dental A Team (08:07) Yeah, I totally agree. I love that. So taking that to the next layer, right, as a buyer, I think that would be a a great inquiry when looking at practices, right of what is the team's knowledge on this situation? Do they know that you're selling? How far into those conversations argue how prepared is the team? And really like, what am I walking into? I think is massive. think if you were dating,   and you are on whatever dating platform, because that's where you're finding people these days, right? And it's like, yeah, I have three kids. It's like, cool, what am I walking into? You would not just walk blindly into a family and expect everything to be just fine. It would be, you know, there's a, yeah, yeah. Like there's a courting period for both, for the parents, right? For the...   DAT Trish Ackerman (08:53) no family.   The Dental A Team (09:03) boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever it is, right? And the kids, there's a courting period for all of it. And they think that we devalue that in the buying and selling situation. I think, that was great perspective. If I'm a buyer, that's definitely a great question and inquiry to ask. And I think when you're adding additional practices, we have a lot of dentists, a lot of doctors who want to, they have their flagship and they want to expand and they want to reach more communities. And so they're adding,   another family and now we're the Brady Bunch and we're meshing these two families together, but not having that knowledge of who am I meshing into the family I already have. There hasn't been a courting period. Could be really, really dangerous.   DAT Trish Ackerman (09:44) Yeah, I can. And like, where is this new practice going to be? Like, there's so many things to look at here, but we can cover that today. And I'm so happy that we started with the team piece though, because I just want to have that all over. If you're wanting to buy a practice, where's the team, team, team? Who are you adopting?   The Dental A Team (09:45) Yeah.   Yeah,   yeah, yeah, who are you adopting? love that. And who are you expecting your current team to befriend? They've got to, you know, even if your practices are, they're never, they're never going to quote unquote work together. Not how, if you've got multiple practices that don't communicate, that don't have anything to do with each other, that's a lot of, in my opinion, that's a lot of stress. I think that's like, if we're gonna continue the dating theory, right? That's like having your family.   And then you start a second family. And you have a wife, kids, a dog, and you have a wife, kids, and a dog, and you're trying to keep these two lives separate from knowing each other. That's a lot of stress. That's a lot of work, and it's just completely unnecessary. You can adopt this practice as team and welcome them into the family that you have, as long as you already have worked on that culture. And I think if you're expanding...   Practices you're buying additional practices that culture piece has to be intact your systems have to be intact So I think buying additional practices is a fantastic idea if that's your journey That's the the road the path that you want to take and you've been called for it do it But look at those pieces so from we talked the seller's perspective earlier And I think sellers and buyers perspective is super similar just like we we had said it's like buying a house so if you're buying a house or you're selling a house you're kind of   Selling a house, you're thinking what's the buyer looking at? And as the buyer, you're looking at these pieces and how is it valuable to you? And Trish, some things that you had mentioned before was the patient base, making sure it's a healthy patient base. I think from a buyer's perspective, it's active patient base, but also then new patients coming in. Are they still getting new patients? Because that's where a lot of your diagnosis is going to come from. And then healthy profit and collections.   are huge. We've already talked about the courting of the team. What does the team know? How are they going to support the cell? I think is a great question. How is your team prepared to support the cell and making sure they're on board? But Trish, when it comes to the, I think the profit in the AR is probably for most buyers, a massive question mark. And when it comes to that as a   a doctor coming in, even if they're going to partner maybe, but buying that additional practice to come on board with yours, what are some pieces that you really look for within the profit or the collections and maybe even down to like software if you're adding an additional practice, what are some pieces you would advise your teams and your doctors to look up?   DAT Trish Ackerman (12:36) Before I even would go there, would first need to know what, like, what is the philosophy of this dentist? What kind of dentistry is he wanting to do? And there's, you know, we could, anybody can find a profitable practice somewhere close to them even. But if you're a, if you're a doctor that like wants to do heavy surgeries and you're all on fours and the big time stuff, but you find a practice that has a great patient base, good profit and all that stuff by a college.   then that might not be the right demographics for you. So like that is something that you even have to look at first. What type of patient base are you trying to attract? And what type of patient base, if you find the one that is Purcell, okay, good profit, team's healthy, accounts receivable is on point, but it's a patient base that is not going to be super open to your philosophy of dentistry, then that could be painful.   So that is also something, it might be a great deal, but that we'd be very careful about what's actually inside that patient base and if it's gonna align with the type of dentistry that we're looking to do.   The Dental A Team (13:36) Agreed.   Yeah.   I think that's like buying, you've found your perfect house. You're like, my gosh, this is the elevation that I want. It is white with black trim. It's got an acre of land, which is impossible to find and all the upgrades inside, right? This literally happened yesterday. I'm like, this is the house, but exactly, right? Like it's like backing a busy street and it's.   DAT Trish Ackerman (14:06) They a train track above it.   The Dental A Team (14:13) almost 20 minutes away from where we need to be. Right. So it's like, it's like finding your perfect home and you're like, this is the one, but it's completely outside of our school district or our, know, it's adding 20 minutes of Camille. I've done that. I have literally done that. And you guys, it was hard and it was unnecessary stress because there are more out there. So I love that you mentioned that because it's shiny objects syndrome, right?   Like that shiny object comes and it looks perfect. It's packaged beautifully, but underneath that shiny exterior is hiding something underneath that is gonna cause a lot of pain in the end. And I think that is the perfect statement there. Like watch for what it is that you want to do. Know what your philosophy is. What is it that you want to do with your dentistry?   DAT Trish Ackerman (15:08) Yep. And you can get there. It's not that they can't, but in order to get there, it's going to take some remolding of yourself temporarily. again, I'm going to use the high surgical doctor that wants to do lots of surgeries, lots of implants, but these patients have only seen one tooth dentistry and they've been patients for 20 years. We can introduce that after a couple of re-care cycles.   We need to kind of mesh with the selling doctor and the dentistry that he did and build the relationship first. So as long as the buyer can be patient, can accept that, then it can work. It can work. And it's not that difficult to do. I do think that that's when we come in very handy because that requires a lot of coaching. That does require accountability on their philosophy, behavior change.   And that's again, I mean, I don't want to totally toot our horn, but I will when it comes to that piece, because I think we do an excellent job coaching the doctors through situations like that.   The Dental A Team (16:14) Yeah, I totally agree. I've worked with a practice similar to this that came on board after purchasing the practice and ⁓ high aspirations and wants so much CE and wants to do all of these things within his dental philosophy that I am totally on board with. Although the purchase of the practice was a practice that just isn't, it wasn't ready yet. And there were a massive amount of patients, honestly, thriving.   on patient base 3000 patients within their database and very healthy active patient base. So the reactivation, the re care, like it was, it was easy to get that thing turning, but it took two to three re care cycles before he gets really start diagnosing the things that he wanted to diagnose. And just purchasing, this was a brand new practice first, you know, first time he's owned a practice. And I was like, you, you want to go in.   and you want to ramp up marketing and you want to replace the patients with the patients that you want. I hear you. I hear you. But financially and profit wise, that's not the way. And that's where, like you said, Trish, the coaching really came in handy because it was an easy space to gently add in the things that.   that he wanted and that he needed with the patient base, weeding out the patients that weren't gonna be okay with it, keeping the patients that were and now being ready to implement some marketing in a few months. know, it's still about a year and a half out from original ownership of this practice. Now we're ready to start marketing, but we had to get there because the finances had to make sense. And so I love that you say that, because I think a lot of people think it's totally fine. Like I can fix him.   Yeah, those things bother me, but we'll train it out of them. it's not really the patient base that I want, but I can replace it with new ones. Can you? Because if you're next to a college, like Trish said, you might not be able to do it as quickly as you need to. And honestly and truly, you may not be able to do it. So I love that analogy.   When it comes to profit in the AR, I think that's an easy space for doctors to look at that they kind of freak out about. But again, Trish, like you said, when you've got somebody behind you, you've got a coach. I know we've helped a lot of practices purchase their, not helped them purchase their practice, but really helped look at the pieces of it. It is an easy space for us to see healthy, not healthy when it comes to finances.   pulling the reports and kind of like going in and getting all the pieces, not our jam. That's not the type of consultants that we are, but we are the type of consultants that will walk you through step by step on what to look for. We will help look at P &Ls. We will help look at the overhead costs and the ⁓ health of the AR and credits like Trish mentioned, and really help to advise and give opinions. ⁓ But outside of that, for a buyer who's adding that practice,   I think you nailed it saying, what's your philosophy? Cause we're adding this practice. this going to be, is your philosophy that you want one of them to be GP and like bread and butter and you want the next one to be, you know, cosmetics. And is that the philosophy that we're going for? Like, what is that going to look like as a buyer? You've got to make that decision first, not while you're looking at practices. I think that would be really dangerous to not really know what you want and then go into it be like, well, this could be.   Well, is that what you want? So I love that. Something I think Trish that's kind of like simple that is often missed is software. What software are they using? Is this a software we know? Is it, is it one we're using? Is it one that we want to use? You know, Eagle soft compared to Dendrix or open dental compared to curve, like very, very different systems. Um, and this is wild. It's 2025, but there are still   Practices out there. I love them dearly. I love you guys. I love you so much all of you that are using paper They're not chartless and in this day and age the practices the doctors who own practices that are growing They're purchasing additional practices. You guys are like you're with it. The technology is there you've got CBT CT scans. You've got scanners. You've got Mobile everything you you're pulling up x-rays on your phone from your dental software and these   practices that you're purchasing, these practices that are out there are typically not gonna be super in alignment with that. So what is that reinvestment going to look like? And again, I think, Trish, back to the team aspect, can the team support it? Are they going to support it? Are they prepared to support it? ⁓ What do you think, Trish? What's your opinion on that?   DAT Trish Ackerman (21:07) Well,   I'm actually going through something similar right now. And here is my coaching around that. they're not paper, they're not paper, but they are dentrics and they have been dentrics for forever. I mean, honestly, think one of the team members has been there 20 years and this is all she knows. And that's okay. Okay, dentures is great. However, the new doctor who's been there 60 days   The Dental A Team (21:28) That's what you think. Yeah.   DAT Trish Ackerman (21:37) is ready to transition to either fuse or curve, one of the two. And we had a long discussion about this yesterday and I begged him, please pump the brakes on that. Because if you're buying a practice and you're acquiring the team and they're going through so much change as it is, and if you throw too much onto them and we go through a massive software shift like that, that could actually drive team members   to leave. I mean, I could. That's a huge shift or just a huge change. It's difficult. It doesn't mean that they don't get through it, but that's just another, that's just something else to really look at. Now, if it's paper, I kind of, would almost, I mean, that's a toughie, but I would almost say hold off for at least 90 days. Like just get in there, build the relationship with the team. I know that the Biden doctor would be chomping at the bit. We've got to some.   The Dental A Team (22:08) Absolutely.   DAT Trish Ackerman (22:36) some new technology in there when it comes to software. But when we're buying, those are still things that we do. Either we need to be super slow with and or have such a bond with the team and spoil them right out of the gate that they become our partners quickly. And that is also possible. It truly is possible. But again, building the relationship with the team. If you're going to throw a software change in there like that, then we need to be strategic on how and when.   The Dental A Team (22:39) Yeah.   Yeah. And I think that I agree and what is massive. agree. And going from Dentrix, you guys, like people who use Dentrix, I'm a Dentrix girl. ⁓ I used Dentrix for almost 20 years in practice and it is, yeah, Dentrix is like iPhones. I, in my opinion, Dentrix is like Apple. Once you're in it, you're just, you're sold. You're like, Dentrix is life. Apple is life. Right? Like I know my phone, the capabilities of my phone is so much more than what I have.   DAT Trish Ackerman (23:07) and what.   Good stuff.   The Dental A Team (23:35) but I am so infused and integrated into the Apple web. I can't imagine being out of it and not having an iPhone. Dentrix is very similar. So if you can relate, relate. ⁓ But I think Tresh what you mentioned that I agree. I totally agree. Waiting timeline, you guys. And we're really good at timelines. We are really great.   at taking all of the ideas that you want and being like, fantastic, let's build you a timeline. Let's get this charted for you. And then you know the path that you're going down. So reach out to us. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. If you are a client, like talk to your consultant, that's what we are really, really good at that. But what you made me think of again is that courting process. Because if you're courting the team and the selling doctor and you're building a relationship with the selling doctor and the team ahead of the purchase,   you're already ahead of the game when it comes to that because they are ready to welcome you and support you. And if you've done it right, right, like I know that my boyfriend's kids will know that a dish goes in the dishwasher, right? It drives them nuts. A dish goes in the dishwasher, right? But that's already gonna be a known fact because there's a courting process, right? So what are the quirks? What are the things that   A team really needs to get to know about you. So it's not a complete shock when you come in. So anyways, I loved this. I, I loved the seller's perspective, but I love the buyer's perspective too. And really being able to see that. Yeah. Thank you Trish for all of that. If you were to pick say three action items for ⁓ someone who's thinking about adding a practice or buying a practice, what would the top three action items be for them?   DAT Trish Ackerman (25:04) I did so.   Really know your demographics. How far away is it from your other practice? If you're adding an additional practice, how far away is it? And what is the team going to do when you come in? How can you establish that team prior? And how can you get the trust and the buy-in from that team first? Because what you don't want is to buy a practice and then the team leave.   The Dental A Team (25:40) Yeah, yep, I love that. Demographics, location, team. Those are fantastic places. Yeah.   DAT Trish Ackerman (25:45) And then we look at everything else. But those   are the time I would start there and make sure that the demographics are good, the team is good, and then everything else we can work out and coach through.   The Dental A Team (25:49) Yeah.   okay.   Yeah, I totally agree with you. It makes me think of, of interviewing. always say, get the demographics out of the way first, because if your practice is too far for someone to drive, they're not willing to drive there. All of those other questions that you asked before you got there are null and void. They mean nothing. So save yourself some time, check the demographics, the locations you want patient base demographics, location base, and then you want team. So I love that. Thanks Trish.   DAT Trish Ackerman (26:23) Yep.   The Dental A Team (26:24) Okay, that's a wrap   guys. I hope you enjoyed this. You do not need to necessarily listen to the sellers first. So you're welcome. We wait until the end. I told you I would tell you. You can listen to them in whatever order you want to. But listen to them both. So that was your buyer's perspective. Trish, I love ⁓ bantering with you. Thank you so much for your perspectives and your wit. you guys, drop us five star review. Let us know what you loved. Let us know any other ideas you have or if you have purchase practice.   practices put them in the notes you guys because people again they really do read those if you have tips and tricks we want to hear them too we Learn these things from you guys as well. It's not just knowledge. We were born with this is from experience So go do the things Hello@TheDentalATeam.com You can head over to our website TheDentalATeam.com and you can actually schedule a free consultation with our team and we will be happy to help you in whatever ways we can and As Trish loves to say go be amazing   DAT Trish Ackerman (27:21) Thanks, Tiff.

On today's episode, Dr. Mark Costes sits down with Samad Syed, founder and CEO of mConsent, a powerful all-in-one platform designed to modernize and streamline dental practice operations. Samad shares the origin story of mConsent, which was born out of a frustrating medical billing experience and has since grown into a software solution trusted by over 2,000 dental offices across the U.S.  He breaks down how mConsent integrates seamlessly with major PMS systems like Dentrix, Open Dental, and Eaglesoft to eliminate paperwork, improve patient communication, automate insurance verification, and boost case acceptance through AI-powered tools. The conversation also explores how mConsent is reducing front desk burnout, increasing operational efficiency, and helping practices reactivate patients, manage unscheduled treatment, and build 5-star reputations—without relying on a dozen different software plugins. Be sure to check out the full episode from the Dentalpreneur Podcast! EPISODE RESOURCES https://mconsent.net https://www.truedentalsuccess.com Dental Success Network Subscribe to The Dentalpreneur Podcast

✨ Did you know your team says more with their body language than their words? In this episode, Dayna Johnson breaks down the power of nonverbal communication and how dental teams can use it to build trust, reduce misunderstandings, and create stronger, more connected workflows. Nonverbal cues influence everything — from patient interactions to team collaboration — and mastering them can transform the way your practice functions. Dayna shares practical, easy-to-implement strategies you can start using immediately to enhance communication, even when no one is speaking. ✅ Key Takeaways: ~ Nonverbal communication is essential for effective teamwork ~ Teams can improve understanding without relying only on words ~ Body language has a major impact on team dynamics ~ Nonverbal cues can prevent conflict and misunderstandings ~ Practicing nonverbal techniques builds trust within the team ~ Awareness of body language supports a more inclusive culture ~ Nonverbal communication is powerful for both in-office and remote teams ⏱️ Chapters: 00:00 The Importance of Treatment Planning 00:26 Effective Documentation Strategies

Transitioning from paper charts to digital records can feel like learning an entirely new language, and many dental professionals are still adjusting. In this episode, Dayna Johnson explores the real-world challenges teams face when moving to digital charting, from maintaining accuracy to finding ways to preserve creativity and detail in documentation. You'll learn why this shift requires more than just new technology, it demands new skills, workflows, and a team mindset focused on accuracy, clarity, and patient care. ✅ Key Takeaways: ~ Transitioning from paper to digital records comes with challenges and a learning curve. ~ Digital charting can feel limiting but offers long-term efficiency and accuracy. ~ The odontogram must always reflect the patient's mouth precisely. ~ Strong team communication improves consistency and accuracy in charting. ~ Training and adaptability are key to a successful digital transition. ⏱️ Chapters: 00:00 Transitioning from Paper to Digital Records 00:43 Charting Techniques for Accurate Representation

Tiff and Kristy provide guidance on how to assess your practice's financial health as 2025 begins to wrap up (and what to start thinking about for 2026). They touch on… Reviewing those P&Ls monthly Aligning spending habits Keeping emotions in check And more! Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review The Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. I am so excited to be here with you today. I truly love this portion of what we get to do in our worlds and getting to get you so much valuable information out to the masses is something that Dental A Team has worked and strived just so hard to achieve in our.   consulting world of just getting you all this information and I have with me today one of my faves. I seriously, I have the most amazing consulting team and if you guys haven't heard from all of them yet, you soon will and if you don't know them personally yet, they're not your consultants. I hope that you get to meet every single one of us even if you're just coming to the events, however it is, but I...   have a personal favorite here for recording podcasts with. She calms me, she just keeps the energy light and fresh and I love any time that we get together. Kristy, thank you so much for being here today. How are you doing? The weather is like weird today. I always tell everybody about the Arizona weather and it's so much fun to have everybody here in the same place. We all live in Arizona in the Phoenix area. Jane is down in the Tucson area, but.   We really love it. And Kristy, how's your world over there? You're just in the beautiful little pocket of Phoenix. And how is it?   DAT Kristy (01:23) Yeah, it's awesome. I love that you say that because we do pride ourselves on the weather here, right? But even with that, this weekend we got a lot of rain, what they say the most in like seven years. Yet all of us, even as close as we are, we experience it so different, right? Like some places flooded. I didn't get flooding, thank goodness, but it downpoured. It was fun and it's made it for cool mornings. So we're taking it.   The Dental A Team (01:42) Yeah.   I agree. I agree that humidity is hitting us hard. So we're not super used to that, but it is making for some, some really beautiful mornings. totally agree. And yes, Britt and I were actually in Reno at our quarterly in-person traction event where we have a, implementer who comes in and leads it for us. And he helps us to build out the company structure and,   teaches and trains us on how to run large meetings like that. So it's always super cool. But we were up in Reno with Britt and or with Kiera Shelbi and Britt and I actually got stuck. Jenna got out. She got back to Denver, which is crazy because Denver always shuts down. And so she got back to Denver. But ⁓ we got stuck until Saturday because the airport was shut down. And then there was a storm in Vegas because we thought, OK, well, we'll fly to Vegas because it's only a five and a half hour drive from there and we'll still get home. And then ⁓   that flight got canceled too. So it was wild. was meant to be, got more time in Reno and got to spend a little bit more time with Kiera. So that was great, but it was kind of crazy. It's not usually Phoenix that disrupts the flight patterns. And it was a hundred percent Phoenix. There were so many flights canceled because so many planes were stuck here and other planes couldn't get in. So it was wild, Kristy. It was wild to watch it from afar. We just got like TikTok notifications and you know, news articles are like, my gosh, all the Waymo's stuck in the puddles and things like that. So.   DAT Kristy (03:15) Yeah,   they just stopped in the middle of the road like what the heck.   The Dental A Team (03:18) Yeah,   that's why whenever somebody says, you use the way most? I'm like, heck no, I have seen them stuck in the middle of intersections far too many times. I'm sure one day it's going to be fantastic, but I haven't built that trust muscle just yet.   DAT Kristy (03:30) Yeah, agree. Well, I'm glad you made it home safe. And ⁓ yeah, the humidity is odd for us too.   The Dental A Team (03:34) Thank you.   Yeah,   yeah, it totally is. And my son was like, Oh, you go to the East Coast enough, Mom, you're fine. Stop complaining. And I was like, Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. But but in the spirit of planning, we we truly had an amazing time really just one getting the time together as a leadership team and then to really looking and projecting like where are we at? What's Q4 going to look like? And then also kind of prepping and planning for 2026. So super relevant in this conversation here.   today and really looking at ⁓ practice health from a financial standpoint. And this is something that your CPAs and your financial advisors and all of those professionals should be looking at with you as well. This is the time of the year that we're really looking at what is this last year? Because we get to Q4 and it's like, well, it's kind of like the end of your senior year, right? You get to the end of your senior year of high school or college and you're like, well, everything's kind of basically submitted. So from here,   It's really just like, let's do our best and make sure that we really cross that finish line strong, but there's not a ton of pivots to be made to really change the game. So kind of prepping and planning. And I think looking ahead at 2026, putting in some really solid ways of checking in on that financial health, something that I've seen that, Kristy, I know you do this as well, but something I've seen a lot of clients really ramp up is a monthly pulse and even like,   weekly sometimes pulse on what the financials of a practice actually look like has really been beneficial in helping them to really reach those goals. And Kristy, you are really fantastic at figuring those financial goals out and then like backtracking them to see, okay, well, what do we need to do to get there? And how do you help practices really keep that financial pulse top of mind and that   running that way so that they're constantly looking at those numbers without feeling overwhelmed and also without losing sight of it. Because you know sometimes you do something too often, you start glazing over it. What's that fine balance that some some tactical tips that you have that you and your practices are working on right now?   DAT Kristy (05:52) Yeah, well, first and foremost, I believe that you have to be getting your P &Ls from your accountant monthly, right? We can't be waiting. I have seen some clients where they're begging for them for three months ago, you know, and it makes it really hard to stay on top of it if we're not getting them monthly. So first and foremost, make sure you're getting them from them monthly so that we can take a look at them and evaluate. And I like what you said, Tiff. ⁓   you can be, you can go over the top. It's a fine line, right? So I love looking at them every month and I'm not going to freak out if something's out of whack one month, but certainly let's look at the quarter, right? And make sure that those metrics are in alignment for the quarter. And to your point, I always like to speak in terms of like, we're going to crawl before we walk and we're going to walk before we run. Like,   In the crawling stage, let's just make sure where's your overhead, right? What percentage are we at there and what is our profit or EBITDA, so to speak, right? Where are we ranging there? That would be my first little steps to take and start looking at it.   The Dental A Team (07:10) Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And I think what time of the month do you usually push for those PNLs to be received? I have my judgments, but what are yours?   DAT Kristy (07:21) like to say by the 15th. I'll give you a little grace and give you by the 20th, but the 15th is my ideal target.   The Dental A Team (07:28) Yeah, yeah. I think I'm a little stricter. If I don't have those CPAs reaching out to us by like the eighth to the 10th, I'm like, my gosh, how are we supposed to work with this? There's a lot of, and I ask that because there's a lot of clients out there that are getting them like the first week of the next, next month. And so maybe December, we're finally looking at October.   DAT Kristy (07:35) Thank   The Dental A Team (07:53) And that is like, gosh, such a lag that we've got these questions floating around of like, where's my cashflow TIF and how do I fix this, Kristy? And it's like, I don't know, because I don't have eyes on what's happening. The P &Ls should be much quicker and much cleaner than that. And realistically, it's just it's the bookkeeper going in and allocating the certain expenses to the category that they should be in. So it's time consuming.   but it shouldn't be too crazy. And if yours is too crazy, then we probably need to look at your spending. Do we need to dial back the number of orders that you're placing every month? Do we need to make sure that things are a little bit more simple on that side, that it can be done quicker? Because we wanna be able to make real-time adjustments as quickly as we can. If we're on a two-month lag.   then we're adjusting for two months ago, it could look totally different. And then next month we get two months ago and it's like, it was totally different. We didn't need to change it. And so we're just constantly spinning our wheels in that way if we're not getting the data fast enough. And that is, in my opinion, one of the easiest ways to ensure that you're financially healthy is really just ensuring, like you said, Kristy, that on an overtime basis, things are consistent and they're clear, that they make sense.   DAT Kristy (09:08) 100%. I like that you said push to the 10th, because obviously if, you know, in the walk or crawling stage, we're just learning, right? We have a little bit of buffer, but as we get to the top of our game, it should be more. And if everything is electronically done, it really is in there already. It's just a matter of organizing it, right?   The Dental A Team (09:30) Yeah, and I like to give myself the grace because I know or give them the grace. I typically know if we ask for it by the 10th, we're getting it by the 15th to the 20th. If I give them that leeway, they'll take it. And we know that's just how it works in that world. That's fine. We work with what we've got and figure it out. And I think it's a massive place to start, Kristy, is those P &Ls. And I think the P &Ls really outline   DAT Kristy (09:39) Thank   The Dental A Team (09:56) the financial health in so many different areas because it gives us insight to what is actually happening. Having those categories split out, we've talked about that a ton, we've done a ton of webinars on it and if you need help with that, reach out. We've got really simple sheets and documents that you can even send over to your bookkeepers and your CPAs that kind of outlines what we like it to look like so that it's simple to review.   But being able to see those over time is huge. I know I have a client that like one month was 48 % overhead and that's before Dr. Pay, that's before loans, right? And it's like, holy cow, we killed it. But then it's like, okay, but hold on, because the next month was 64%. So taking an average there because likely something got shifted, payments got posted, or I don't know, I've had some clients that's like, my gosh, I forgot to pay Henry Schein for two months. So then it's like that third month had this massive Henry Schein payment.   but over the quarter, it wasn't that bad. So making sure that we're looking at it month by month and over the quarter is huge. ⁓ Something that we've done, that we've ramped up ourselves and that we do ramp up with a lot of clients is really looking at our bank accounts constantly. And I know that Kiera and our financial team, they look at our bank accounts weekly on a weekly basis to make sure that everything makes sense, that things are.   where they're supposed to be that, you know, that we're not getting charged for things we shouldn't have been, et cetera, but then also that we're staying in alignment with the budget that we had set. And those budgets come from those P &Ls and those total numbers. Kristy, something I've realized recently in the recent years is while I was in practice, I would build our budgets for our spending. like our...   you know, five to 8 % for supplies or what have you or ortho budget, things like that. I would build it based off of our collections, air quotes on that word, and it would be our collections from Dendrix. I'd pull the collections for the last month. I'd build that budget based on the collections. And then Doc would be like, where's all the money? Like, well, I don't know, it should be there. But there's such caveats to what's been posted in Dendrix or your operating software.   compared to what's actually in QuickBooks, I found that I was running this like ragged race of trying to play catch up all the time with like even just the percentages for credit card fees and third party financing being taken out of our payments, just those simple tweaks make a massive difference. So building those budgets, Kristy, off of our actual P &L numbers, our actual QuickBooks collections has...   made a massive difference, I know, for a lot of my clients. How do you see that working for clients? And also, how do you see that working with a leadership team that maybe doesn't have access to or not looking at those P &Ls together? How do you suggest for financial stability and health in the practice, they really get that information down to the people that need it?   DAT Kristy (13:08) Yeah, absolutely. One of the things, ⁓ well, there's a couple things. We at Dental A Team keep scorecards for our clients and it could be as simple as adding that line in there and having the doctor put that dollar amount and having the budget calculate right there. Everybody can see it. They know what to spend. The other thing to that point Tiff is,   You know, a lot of times we look at the practice management, we see our collections, but how many times do we reconcile it with our QuickBooks? Like, really look at that and see. And obviously, just like you said, it could be a matter of when something was posted or when it came in, right, to the bank account. But I think that's an area that sometimes is overlooked. You know, there can be variance in there, obviously, for when things post, but...   what is that variance and how consistent are we having that variance? again, depending on which method you're using, if you're using the collections from your PMS or the collections that are posted in the P &L, we better be clear what that difference is and ⁓ account for it for sure. Right.   The Dental A Team (14:25) Totally agree.   And you actually reminded me just last week, I was in an office and I was like, what is happening here? I was going through their P and L and I'm like, okay, we've got, we've had some changes in the office. We've got some places that it was decreasing. Some places we spent more, some places we actively spent more on purpose. Like, but things just weren't adding up with what was coming through from the software. And I realized after an hour and a half of digging, I'm like, why is...   I put a line items, I updated the scorecard and I put a line item for like QuickBooks collections and then the PMS collections. And in comparison, I had it subtract and like tell me the difference in numbers. And there were months that were coming up $30,000 different that it looked like we collected $30,000 more in their software than what QuickBooks was showing us. Luckily, I know this office manager very well personally, like familiarly.   And I'm like, I know there's no conclusion to jump to here. Like something is not reporting correctly. And what I realized is they specifically use Dentrix. Dentrix will allocate any positive write-off or adjustment. if there's an adjustment that's adding money, it'll allocate it to production. If there's an adjustment that's removing money, it automatically adds it to collections.   So when you pull up the adjustment space in Dentrix, it'll show all positive production, all negative collections. So it was showing drastic differences. And so I was like, gosh, I totally forgot about this space in Dentrix that it does this. It's just, I call them the Dentrix-isms. It's just a Dentrix thing. It's very frustrating, but it just is what it is. So when I went through, I reallocated where the write-offs should be coming from. Now, caveat, messes up.   production collections for forever because it's now correcting it. So what you thought you had done, you didn't, and it fixes it. So the new numbers are more accurate, but you're going to be frustrated because it's different. But what it did when I did that and re-put in the collections numbers is that it brought that $30,000 difference down to a more manageable $1,200 to $3,000 difference, which is what we tend to see with the   care credit fees and all those different credit card processing fees, we typically see, I say like 5,000 or less, I'm not going to freak out about too much as long as it's inconsistent. I don't want to see consistency. I want to see really low numbers. And then again, sometimes some of that money is going to be pushed over to the next month. So quarterly, it made sense. Quarterly, it was beautiful. Month by month, it was a little wonky, but just making that   change because we were checking the financial health of the practice because things didn't feel like they were making sense. So we, the office manager and I pulled the full year's PNL and we did line item by line item comparison 2024 to 2025 percentage change on each space, went through and figured out where the spending was, went through and line itemed everything and then added it like you said to the scorecard to see those differences, massive.   massive improvements where the docs were feeling like cashflow was like, ⁓ we were freaking out. And it was like, well, these are the areas where you intentionally spent money and were actually only a 16 % difference overall year to year. And they were like, ⁓ so we didn't increase enough, but their spending was purposeful for taxes. We just didn't look that way yet on paper.   Regarding financial health of the practice, that was exactly what we did, but adding it, like you said, to the scorecard and looking at, I think the scorecard's just really cool because it allows you to see over time. Whereas a new sheet is I'm only dealing with today. So I'm only looking at today. I might look at it and say, oh my gosh, my employee percentage was 42%. That's real life, I've seen that in an office. It was 42 % this month, and you're like, cut hours. But over the quarter, it was,   30 % or 31%. We had a spike because we had a collections dip or whatever. So I think adding it where you're seeing that kind of comparison allows you to see what is the trend here or is this an abnormality? Does this level itself out? Am I on track for over time or do I need to jump and hot fire? And Kristy with that said, like, you think, as I'm saying that I'm thinking,   Is that a space where we could even tame our emotions around finances? Because we're seeing so much data in a bigger spectrum where we can see trends, uptrends or downtrends, rather than this like, my gosh, payroll was so high, I've got to tackle that. It's allowing us to see a broader picture. Do you think that helps reduce some of the emotional, like just quick fixes?   DAT Kristy (19:34) Absolutely. And we don't want to react, right? Many times we go to that mindset of cut, cut, cut. you, and you know, one of the things that I learned a long time ago is you can't focus on the opposite. So if we're focused on cutting, then we're not focused on producing, right? And so yeah, you're 100 % right, Tiff. I think it does calm the reactionary, right? It's good to know, notice, but then look at the bigger picture.   The Dental A Team (19:48) Yeah.   Mmm.   Yeah, gorgeous. As I was talking like, my gosh, Kristy, that's why you do so well with coaching in my opinion, because you are very, very good at being data and results driven, acknowledging the emotional aspect and not discrediting that by any means, but being able to focus back to what the drivers are and then being able to acknowledge and address any emotions that are still present. But you do well removing that because   we're looking at data and data is non-emotional. You can come up with something and there's been so many times where I could think of so many offhand where I've data-drivenly discussed something with a client and they're like, ⁓ and the emotion kind of disintegrates, it dissipates because it was attached to what they thought to be true. And when they saw the reality, there was no need for that emotion anymore.   DAT Kristy (20:59) Exactly. Well, and to be honest with you, it goes both ways, right? It's the same thing as if we're only looking at the practice numbers, sometimes they think they're doing very well or not doing well, either one. And then once we look at the overhead numbers, it's like, actually, you're here, you know? So ⁓ it goes hand in hand both ways. I always like to say, you know, if I had a pizza business and I was going to sell pizzas,   The Dental A Team (21:18) Yeah. Yeah.   I love that.   DAT Kristy (21:29) I need to break it down and figure out what it cost me to make the pizza, then I can go sell the pizza. But so many times we don't do that and we just put it out in front of us, right? And then on the back end of it, we do have to measure how many pizzas did we sell and how much did we actually spend. Sometimes we forget to go back and look at the cost too.   The Dental A Team (21:34) Yup.   Yeah, wow, that's a very good point. Very good point, which is where the P &Ls come in handy and the line items. And I think the P &Ls will group it and lump it into categories, but every now and again, maybe like once a quarter or so, really looking at what are they putting in those categories so that one, you're making sure they're still super accurate from the bookkeeper and two, that you're not like Amazon spending. There was a couple clients that I saw.   DAT Kristy (21:56) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (22:19) I'm like, what is going on? Why is this category so jumpy? One month it's massive, another month it's not, and they get lumped into office supplies and front office supplies, and all of a sudden it's $3,000 when realistically budgeting-wise it should be $1,200. I'm like, what is in here? And they're like, Amazon goes in there. Every time we want something or Doc says something, we just press the order. And I was like, ⁓   Got it, we need some systems around Amazon or Walmart. I've seen like, I just run to Walmart and I grab what we need every week. And I'm like, my gosh, there's weekly ordering will hurt you every single time. Any kind of weekly ordering. If you can't budget the ordering in a monthly fashion or maybe twice a month, I'll give leniency on twice a month, then we need to talk. Cause that weekly ordering will hurt you every single time.   I think this is all really good, Kristy. I love this. I love this. And I go ahead.   DAT Kristy (23:16) Yeah. I was   to say, I agree with you. mean, we can liken it to our own space if we go to the grocery store with a list or without a list. What is our end result when we pay? You know, so I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm like for dental supplies, we can go to twice a month, but have it fixed and then make sure you're staying within the confines of the budget.   The Dental A Team (23:27) Yeah.   Yes, yeah, that's actually brilliant. Yeah.   Yeah, I agree. And I think that was that was a super great thought process there. Because if you're not planning even your dinners, right, I'll plan my dinners for the week. So then I know what ingredients I need and what ingredients if I know what ingredients I need for specific dinners, I know what I can reuse as well. Otherwise, I'm going to the grocery store just kind of getting random things that I think I can make into something. And I'm ending up at the grocery store a couple times a week to replenish or, you know, supply those missing pieces.   And so if you know what your schedule is, if you know on average how many crowns you're doing, how many fillings you're doing, how many implants you're doing, you can have an average guesstimate of how much of each supply you need to keep on hand, which is then going into your budget for your ordering. So that was beautiful. Yeah, good job. All right, guys, financial health is massive. And it's something that I think all of us, Kristy,   Trish, Monica, Dana, myself, we all just work really, really hard to ensure that it's top of mind for all of our clients. But if you're here listening and you're not yet a client of ours and you're a Dental A Team podcast listener for life, we love you and we wanna make sure you have this information too. please, by all means, somewhere around the 10th of the month, because we know it's probably gonna go longer, make sure you've got those panels in there. Talk to your bookkeeper. If you are the bookkeeper, I have a couple clients like that.   Put it your calendar, you guys. If you are your own bookkeeper, that's fine. I'm not gonna judge you. I think it is a task that you can easily pay for, but I'm not here for that. If you are your bookkeeper, put it in your calendar and you should have that sucker done by like the fifth or the eighth of the month because everything should be closed out. Review your PNLs monthly and quarterly and yearly. Review your spending habits constantly. I have a lot of practices that'll look weekly.   I have a lot of practices that'll look monthly, whichever works best for you. Just make sure you're reviewing those spending habits and then budget for your team. So your supplies ordering, your front office, those are the easiest places to budget. Make sure that you've got an ortho budget added in there. If you have ortho fees and ortho costs that are outside of like Invisalign, things like that. I have a lot of practices that do bracket style ortho and they need a lot of supplies that has to be separated out.   Those are your pieces, you guys. Those are the easiest ways that you can tackle real life, real life, in time, financial health. And we want you to go do that. Kristy, thank you so much for your insight. You truly do so well with your clients and we get to see their progress constantly and those needles are always moving. And I know that it's because you can take that black and white results driven perspective. So thank you for everything you do for your clients and everything that you bring to Dental A Team every day.   DAT Kristy (26:33) Thank you, it's fun.   The Dental A Team (26:35) I know,   I know, I love watching you do it. You really do love it. And it makes me really happy. All right, guys, that's a wrap for today. Go leave us a five star review. Let us know what was super helpful. Maybe there's some tips and tricks you've got that you can share with the world. I'm telling you, people really do go read those. So if you have things in there, they will see them. You can drop us an email, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We'll be happy to get you over any documents that might help. We do have some.   budgeting information, we do have some overhead spreadsheets, things like that. If you need help with that, just reach out and we'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast. Thanks guys!

Want to improve your case acceptance and streamline treatment planning in your dental practice? In this episode, Dayna Johnson breaks down how to master treatment planning in Dentrix, covering everything from case dates and alternate cases to customizing treatment plans for better patient understanding. Drawing insights from a recent Dentrix User Meeting, Dayna shares how small adjustments in your treatment planning process can have a big impact on efficiency, communication, and production. ✅ Key Takeaways: ~ Treatment planning is the foundation of strong case acceptance. ~ Use case dates strategically for tracking expiration timelines. ~ Link alternate cases to present multiple options to patients clearly. ~ Customize treatment plans to focus on what patients really care about—their out-of-pocket costs. ~ Always accept or reject treatment instead of deleting it for accurate tracking. ~ Clear communication is essential for patient trust and workflow harmony. ⏱️ Chapters: 00:00 Introduction to Treatment Planning 02:44 Understanding Case Dates and Their Importance 05:19 Linking Alternate Cases for Better Patient Options 08:34 Customizing Treatment Plan Estimates 11:21 Accepting and Rejecting Treatment Plans

Are you managing membership plans in your dental practice but not sure if you're doing it efficiently? In this episode, Dayna Johnson breaks down how to manage membership plans inside Dentrix—without creating chaos in your system. She walks you through the levels of membership management—from basic tracking to advanced setups—so you can choose what works best for your team. Whether you're just starting or optimizing your process, you'll get practical, real-world tips to simplify workflows, protect profitability, and keep your data accurate. ✅ Key Takeaways: ~ Understand your practice's unique needs for membership management ~ Learn how to track hygiene and discounts correctly ~ Avoid common Dentrix mistakes (like linking membership to insurance!) ~ Discover how to use fee schedules and custom codes effectively ~ Streamline your operations and save time using built-in Dentrix tools

Got questions? Send Ericka a Text!A candid look at why AR rises even when production is strong and how access, clarity, and team alignment restore cash flow. We share the biggest blockers we see inside practices—password chaos, clearinghouse issues, unread billing emails—and the simple systems that fix them.• password and portal access as revenue gatekeeper• EFT lockouts creating delays and aged AR• Dentrix–Vine fallout and claim tracing discipline• daily email reviews and statement ownership• patient AR rising from unclear benefits and silence• stronger benefit scripts to prevent “surprise” balances• third-party alignment as team extension, not threat• kickoff meetings for roles, tools, and expectations• billers as end-of-cycle auditors spotting root causes• repeatable rhythms for faster posting and fewer denialsIf any of this resonated with you friends, feel free to leave a review, feel free to leave a comment, share this episode with someone who you feel would relate. And if you're interested in a billing consultation and seeing how fortune billing solutions can help you, go to the show notes. There's a link down below, and you can set up a time to meet with me. Schedule a demo with MaxAssist to unlock scheduleing potential here: https://maxassist.com/book-a-demo-fortune-billing/ Join The Biller Acceleration Mentorship Wait List Here: (Only 5 Spots Left in 2025!!)https://linktr.ee/dental_billing_coachWould you like to set-up a billing consultation with Ericka? She would love the opportunity to discuss your billing questions and see how Fortune Billing Solutions may help you. Email Ericka:ericka@dentalbillingdoneright.comSchedule a call with Ericka: https://calendly.com/ericka-dentalbillingdoneright/30min Perio performance formula: (D4341+D4342+D4346+D4355+D4910)/(D4341+D4342+D4346+D4355+D4910+D1110) Delta Dental Locum Tenens Form: https://www1.deltadentalins.com/content/dam/ddins/en/pdf/dentists/locum-tenens-form.pdf

Send us a textTwo wonderful softwares at battle with each other. Unfortunately, Dentrix is flexing their mighty muscle, and it just might lead to dental practices making the switch to other dental practice management software. Vyne is the preferred software when it comes to the submission of dental insurance claims. Hopefully they'll fix their integration issues. Tracy takes on the podcast on this power struggle issue.Support the show

Re-releasing a DAT listener favorite! The Dental A-Team is seeing a lot of burnout across practices we visit, so Kiera's here to offer tips about delegating. Just because you can do a bunch of tasks doesn't mean you should. Kiera provides DAT insight on the best/easiest way to delegate, how to fill the time you've delegated out, and what the delegator and delegatee should absolutely not do. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript Kiera Dent (00:05) Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I had this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, pillar, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you.   Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A-Teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.   Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and you guys I hope today is a great day for you. I am car casting today I am headed down to see my parents for a little bit today and Decided you guys know me when I drive between that Nevada, California state line I love to podcast if you have not heard about the time I was headed to my little sister's graduation and I was Car casting with a microphone. They have an agriculture check   point and go take a listen to that one. If you don't know which one that is, email us Hello@TheDentalATeam.com guys. just want to say a massive, massive, massive thank you to all of you who have been stepping up, taken on our review challenge and honestly leaving us reviews. I've seen you guys posting on our Google reviews to help deadly team. Get the word out. You've also been posting on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. I have been seeing those and I just want to say thank you. Shout out today. I saw Annie.   had posted and gave us a massive five star review and Annie, thank you. There's so many of you that have been listening in. Brooke Birdie saw your review as well on iTunes. And I just want to say guys, number one, it feeds my ego. So thank you. I am a words of affirmation girl. So that definitely is the best way to give back to me and make me feel like a million bucks. That's number one. So if you really want to make my day, please leave us a review and just tell us how great we are. I would love that. And number two,   Thank you guys for helping us help more practices. We have actually been seeing an upward trend on our podcast downloads. That is kudos to you guys. ⁓ Massive, massive, massive boosts on our downloads. And I just want to say thank you to all of you for doing that, because this is helping us help more practices. You know, when I started working at the dental college, the dean asked me why I wanted to take on this position. And I said, you know, I want to find a way to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. That's honestly why we   I did my job at the college and then that's also why I decided to ⁓ take on and work with the consulting company. And then that's why we started the podcast. So you guys, the only way for us to reach every dentist in the world is by you guys helping spread this. I think that that's the way we'll be able to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. So guys, keep hitting those downloads, keep leaving us review, keep sharing these.   When I see you guys on social media platforms where you're sharing our podcasts with people, it's been so helpful. So thank you guys for taking that on. So today's topic is how to delegate. I know I've chatted about this a few other times, but it's just been coming up more and more. And I know a lot of offices are struggling. I'm seeing more and more burnout amongst team members and owners. And so I thought that this would be a very applicable topic for you guys today. So basically number one, when it comes to delegating,   We've got to look to see what is the reason for delegating? Are we trying to find more time for ourselves so that way we can be more balanced? Are we trying to grow team members into another position? Or are we just trying to ensure that all team members are being utilized throughout the day? Maybe you have another reason you want to delegate, but oftentimes I find that the number one reason we don't delegate is because we're concerned about losing our place in our job.   and the value that we're bringing to the practice. When in actuality, I think it's let's get people into their zone of geniuses so we can work more effectively and consistently together. So for me, I think one of the best and easiest ways to delegate is for everybody just to do a brain dump on the tasks that they're doing day in and day out. Now the reason I like a brain dump rather than a time journaling is because oftentimes those things that we put on a brain dump are going to be the things that we can actually think about.   that are for for for front of our mind. So those things tend to be the ones that are consuming the most of our time. There might be other things on there that we don't think about, so you can always add back to this list. But what I really love to do is I love to brain dump all the information and then after I brain dump, I go back through, you guys know if you don't know, my favorite color is pink, and I go back through with a pink highlighter and I literally look at all the tasks that only Kiera can do. A lot of times the tasks that I'm doing are not things that only I can do.   Or if they are only things I can do, I might need to train. So for example, I used to be the only person who could podcast on our team. So we decided, Hey, the consultants actually have a lot of great information that they could be sharing. And it doesn't necessarily have to just be Kiera. So we decided to start training the consultants to see could the consultants ever podcast if something were to ever happen to me. And the answer is yes, I trained them about the microphones. I taught them how to podcast. taught them how to do cadences, but I realized.   That was something that only Kyra could do before, but you guys, I am looking to try and have a baby. We've been talking about this forever, but guys, don't worry. I'm a walking bag of, I feel, lethal hormones right now. We are starting the process of IVF and ⁓ if you haven't done it, that's great. Congratulations. If you have gone through it, please send me help because I literally feel like a lethal bag of walking hormones and don't even know how to control myself right now. It's like one minute I'll be fine. The next minute I'm bawling my eyes out. And I heard even after you have babies,   this doesn't go away. I don't, I don't quite know what to do. But the bottom line is our team had to be able to start delegating things to our other team members that they could do just as well, if not better than me. But that also came up with, I had to realize I needed to start training. So delegating, we've got to look at like, what's our ultimate goal. So for me, my ultimate goal was I wanted to ensure that Dental A Team could continue to grow, bless people's lives, positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. And for me,   to also be able to be a mom. So in order for those two things to happen, I had to start delegating and utilizing it. I realized I don't delegate that much. I like to swoop in and save the day because I think I can do it faster and better. Well, the answer is yes, I theoretically can, but that doesn't mean I should. Okay, I'm going to say that again. Well, yes, I theoretically can do everything potentially faster and better. That doesn't mean I should because what that does is that actually means that I'm a one man team.   rather than a multiple person team. So I want to have all of the people on my team working super well. And I want to ensure that they're all able to do the task. And it's not just me. So I would say that you guys are going to be able to start looking for your why of why you want to delegate. So once you have figured out your why as to why you want to delegate and the plan,   Then we go through, like I said, and you highlight all the tasks that are actually tasks that only you can do. Like I said, some of those tasks that only you could do, maybe if you trained, you could actually get those tasks passed off your plate. But I really like you guys to ensure that you know exactly why you want these tasks to be completed, why you want to delegate. I think having a strong why helps you realize that that's what you're actually going to do rather than it just being a wish that you're hoping one day will come true.   Like I said, I'm not a great delegator and I realized that because I like to swoop in, save the day, make everything better and theoretically I can do it better, faster. However, I can't ever grow the company. I can only grow as big as I can grow. So realizing that sometimes delegation also will be an avenue for growth for your practice is one of the best pieces of advice I could ever give any of you. So realizing that when you delegate, you allow other people to blossom and shine, you allow yourself to blossom and shine and grow to a larger scale.   Now I will say some people I watch them delegate and then they get lazy. They will pass all their tasks to other people. They'll grow everybody else, but then they forget to grow themselves. So when you delegate off of your tasks, say if you're an office manager and you get a front office lead and then you get a clinical lead, well, sometimes you as an office manager, no longer know what you should do. This is where you start diving deep in the areas. Maybe you don't know. Let's talk about the business aspect. What are the financials of your practice? What about overhead? Do you know how to adjust that?   You're going to start thinking like a business owner. Also go to your dentist and figure out what's on their plate. Have them brain dump and look to see what tasks you can take off immediately and what tasks you need to learn and grow into. So making sure as you delegate, you don't get lazy. You don't pass too many things there. Also before you delegate, I want to make sure that you've built an admin time into your schedule. So doctor time, you can have that as CEO time. You can have it as admin time. You can have it as golden time. I don't care what the heck you call this time, but it's set block time every single week in your schedule.   Oftentimes the practices all notice that they'll want to hire somebody else before they put in this admin time. I chatting with a front office team. Typically we like to have one front office team member per doctor, unless it's a solo doctor, then I for sure want two front office people just so we avoid any temptation of embezzlement or fraud or anything of that nature. So what happens is a lot of times people feel like they need to get more people upfront, but they don't realize you can delegate tasks that would actually make the patient experience better. For example,   chairside treatment plans on an iPad, taking fluoride payments in the hygiene operatories that make it so much faster and easier for every single person in the practice. What about tasks like insurance verification? That might take a long time and it might actually be cheaper to outsource that. So looking at that, but also before we even consider that, I want to see, you actually doing ⁓ that admin time every single week?   And if you're not, that might be a critical place to start before we even start delegating. Because a lot of times, a lot of those projects that we want to delegate, if we just had one or two hours in a week where it was dedicated, not interrupted time, we could actually crank a lot of those things out and be super hyper productive. So for me, I have a business focused time. I have a three hour block every Wednesday from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. My team knows, do not even think about scheduling something there. Don't do it. It's not good for you or for the business.   So that is my blocked golden time and I work on big project items. So for me specifically, I work on, I'm looking to bring in a different position in our company and I'm mapping that out, talking to mentors, figuring it out, writing job descriptions for it. Other things like I'm not going to use that time to podcast. As much as I love to podcast, I have that built into my schedule in another place. I'm not going to use that time to answer my emails. Instead, I'm going to use that time to work on high level.   most productive projects. For some dentists, that's where you might be designing cases. So getting all that ortho completed or designing those cosmetic cases that you know you need to get completed. That's where we're going to be able to have a much more successful and productive schedule if you actually block that time. For office managers, this time might be where you actually go through your one-on-one employee check-ins. It also might be where you work on maybe sign development or looking at all the KPIs.   and figuring out what KPIs need to be adjusted, doing a deep dive on the numbers. For billers, this is the time where you call on those collection calls. You work on your AR, that's the deeper projects, the ones that have to have a ton of time dedicated to solving them and figuring them out to get them paid. That's where we utilize this time. For our scheduling team, this is the time when you call all those unscheduled re-care calls. Same thing for treatment coordinators. We call those unscheduled treatment lists.   Just think of every person did this. ⁓ I forgot the clinical team. Let me give the clinical teams some ideas. Don't want to let you guys feel left out. So for our clinical team, we might want to give them some block time to maybe get those crowns or those ortho cases done. This might be the time that our team actually orders for the practice. It could be the time ⁓ for a lead hygienist. This might be the time that you create like the perio protocols or review the numbers on your hygiene, on your hygienist and see.   How is their fluoride ratio? How are their perio numbers? This is the time when you'll deep dive in there. It's not the time we dedicate for sharpening scalars. This is the time where we literally are maximizing and doing those high level projects that will move the practice forward. Hey, Dental A Team listeners. You guys have heard the early bird gets the worm, right? What does that even mean? Well, it means that the early bird is the person who maximizes on benefits.   optimizes their practice and they take advantage of great deals. So guys, right now, this week, last chance to save on Dental A Team's virtual team summit. It's all about optimization and execution with an emphasis on full team. And then Saturday is all about leadership. So guys, don't miss out. You know, you're going to come. So you might as well pop on over to TheDentalATeam.com snag those early bird tickets, because once they're gone, they're gone and you'll be paying more for the same event. So head on over to TheDentalATeam.com.   Snag your early bird virtual summit for April 22nd and 23rd, and I'll see you there. So again, before we ever delegate, I want you to make sure you have that time built in. After that, I want you to figure out why you want to delegate. What's the bigger purpose as to why you want to delegate these tasks. Then what we do is we come up with a game plan of, fantastic. This is what we are going to delegate. This is how we're going to delegate. This is why we're going to delegate.   then we actually have to delegate. Okay? So we have to delegate guys. That's part of the game. That's what we have to do. Now people get really nervous to delegate because why? We don't want to what? Dump on somebody else and make their life stressful. Well guess what? They might already be doing half of what you're doing and if it just was their project, you might make their life a lot less stressful. Let's just pivot that a little bit. Also, we might be able to do things like, ⁓ we might be able to find efficiencies.   I will tell you if I give Shelby a project that I've been working on for quite a while, Shelby is way more efficient and organized and structured than I am. And so she usually can come up with a better way of doing it than I can. That's going to create ease and efficiency for our entire team. So when we go to delegate, we can check in with people, ask how much time and say, hey, here's the list of items. First and foremost, you can have a team meeting and be like, here are all the items up for grabs. Who wants to own this section? Now.   I say to team members who are being delegated to one of the number one ways for you to lose confidence in your practice, the person who's delegating to you is by not following through. If you say, yeah, I'll take that on, but then you never actually do it, I do not want to delegate to you again. I lost trust. So when people do this, I'm going to say you've got to own it with integrity. So if I say, yes, I'm going to take this on, I don't care how I've got to remember it. I don't care how I need to figure it out.   my job because I committed, I'm going to own this process. I'm going to own the fact that I need to do this because I committed to it and I own my word. It's not accountability. You don't your office manager following up like, okay, Kara, I know you said you take on ordering. Did you get it done? The answer is yes, the office manager should still do that. But me as a person who took this on, I need to have an attitude of ownership in my practice where I don't need somebody to come follow up with me.   check in because I know when I say I'm going to do something, I will fall through a hundred percent. So team members, leaders, everybody listening, check yourself. Are you a person who actually owns your word, takes ownership of the things that you commit to doing with your job, with your personal life, all those areas. Do you actually take ownership of it? Do you take ownership of your health? Do you take ownership of your happiness? Do you take ownership of your financial wellbeing? Do you take ownership of the schedule if you're a scheduler?   Do take ownership of making sure every doctor hits goal every single freaking day if you're a treatment coordinator? Do you take ownership as an office manager that you will continually hit a minimum of a 10 % growth rate every single year and make sure that your team is super happy and content? As a doctor, do you take ownership that you are going to produce and increase your clinical skills so you can be the best provider that there ever was? As a hygienist, do you own that you should be producing 3.3 times   or 3.5 times your pay or 3.0, I don't care guys, choose your number and stick with it. There's a million of them. Minimum three, maximum 3.5 and less your fee for service. Then I for sure, for sure, for sure, for sure want you to be producing at least 4.5 times your pay. Okay? Do you take ownership that it's your job, not the scheduler's job to ensure you're hitting your production every single day, that you're mixing your schedule, that you're maximizing, that you're getting a 98 % reappointment percentage?   Assistance, do you own the fact that you should not be getting up in a procedure to go get something because you didn't set up your operatory? Do you own your job? Do you own that you should be looking for same day treatment you can add on because you look at their treatment plans. You don't just robotically do what's on the schedule. You actually proactively look for things and own that as your job. Okay, so if you're not there, let's start there. That way when people come to you to delegate to you, you know that you can count on yourself to.   own whatever is coming to you to delegate. So then once we delegate, we pass it off. We have to make sure we've got clear expectations of when we want people to follow back up with us. So for example, I passed a task to Shelby. I wanted to find out a report on our consultants. That was something guys that was on my to-do list for about nine months. Yes, nine months and I did not complete it. So I decided this is something that is not just a Cura only task.   Shelby is probably much faster and could probably get this done faster for me. So what do I do? I pass it to Shelby. I asked her, Hey, this is what I need done. What do you need help with me? I gave her all the resources and tools so she could actually execute on it very well. And then I asked her, okay, what will you need from me? ⁓ she told me, and then we said, what date could you get this completed by? Shelby had to methodically think about, Hmm, this is going to take me a while. I have a lot of tasks on me. I think Kiera, I could get this done by the end of Q1.   does that work for you? So that means March 31st. And I said, totally no problem. We put it in, we have a task organizer. We utilize a CRM. So it's kind of like your guys's Dentrix open dental. And it's where all of our clients are housed. Plus it's where all of our tasks are housed. So we have it there. Shelby and I put the deadline on there. And then when she gets it done, she checks it off. If you guys don't have a task manager or things that these projects, I would suggest you get one. For practices, I've seen the software Asana or Trello.   or Google Docs all work really, really well when we're assigning out a bunch of projects and needing to have deadlines on them. So those would be the ones. Some offices love Basecamp, other offices love monday.com. For me, Asana is probably your easiest, fastest one to set into place. Or a simple task manager, ⁓ Google Docs is honestly going to be your easiest one. And then just make sure you review it every week and check it off. We noticed with our team, we were delegating. Our team was taking ownership of it.   However, we didn't have a consistent follow-up process. And I would say that's the next piece of delegation that oftentimes fails in a practice is we don't follow back up. So for us, we just said it as Friday morning at our morning huddle. We pull up the task sheet and we pull up our Asana board. And we go through every single task that should be done and everything headed up for the next week to make sure our team stays responsible and they don't forget. And we have a consistent follow-up process. So that way it's not sitting here thinking, well, I'm sure Shelby will do it.   We actually have a set process in our company where we follow up every single week. That was because we realized we were passing out tasks. Our team was doing a great job. But then we all kind of would get sidetracked and forget what we had committed to doing. And we need to have a place where we could have everybody aligned. So those are some of the key pitfalls that I see with delegation. Those are some of the solutions that I've seen work well. But at the end of the day, we can sit here, we can talk about it, we can create solutions, all these different things.   But what really is the number one piece is actually doing it and then following up. Those are the two most paramount pieces with delegation. I will say having a strong why is going to make you delegate faster and more consistently than just talking about it until I decided, Hey, I'm getting pregnant. Hopefully fingers crossed. I didn't really see the need to delegate. Yes, I did for my own mental sanity, but until I had that why.   And other times when I've opened up a second practice, instantly I've got a strong why that I need to delegate these tasks so that way all the information can come back to me as a regional manager and I'm not having to micromanage or check in all the time with my team. Guys, there is a different between micromanaging and checking in. Checking in, keeping track of all the projects is not micromanaging, period. Micromanaging is where it comes sit over your shoulder and tell you how to do your job. That's micromanaging.   but checking in with you to ensure that you're actually doing your projects, that's just called running a business. That's called running a team. That's making sure all the team is growing in the same direction and the team knows the set expectations. So guys, try delegation. I see it happening. You can make your team work so much more effectively and efficiently. So I suggest, one, get a list of all the things that could be delegated. Two, let's pass it out to the team and ask people who can own it. Three, let's make sure we have a set time of where we can actually follow up as an office.   and ensure all projects and tasks are being completed and done. And four, create a culture of ownership where when we say we'll take something on, we own it, we don't drop the ball. I want to sing this song to you guys like, we own it. You can go look it up. I didn't do it justice and I'm not going to sing karaoke for you guys. However, get your team to own it, delegate, rise everybody up, make sure that you guys don't have a set process for it and realize how much more effectively your team can operate when all of us are working together.   growing the company in the way that's best for the company to grow. All right, guys, as always, so much love to you. Thank you for being a Dental A Team listener. I super appreciate it, guys. So thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.   that wraps it up for another episode of the Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.  

Kiera is joined by Mark Rasmussen, CEO of Moolah, to talk about the landscape of credit card fees and how to reduce them, membership discount plans, and other bonus features offered by the dental payment tech company. (Pssst, Mark was last on episode 866, It's Time to Modernize Payment Processing!) Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today I am super jazzed because I have a guest here who's going to help us with cashflow leaks, modernizing your practice, figuring out those membership plans, all the things that you need and want. We're going to talk about some case studies. This is one of my absolute favorite guests, Mark Rasmussen, CEO, owner, founder, Moolah. How are you today, Mark? Welcome to the show.   Mark Rasmussen (00:22) Hey, Kara, I'm doing fantastic. I'm doing awesome. So, so, so it's connected with you and your listeners and excited to get into all this juicy good stuff about revenue and payments and modernizing things. Let's do it. I love it.   Kiera Dent (00:31) Yeah.   Let's   do it. So I have a slight crush on Moolah. Like truly you guys like just make credit card processing easy. And so what I want to start off, if you guys don't listen, Mark and I have done other podcasts in the past together. ⁓ But I don't know, Mark, what you guys say on your email subject lines, like on your little, what is it your signature, but I feel like it should be like your new favorite credit card processing company. Like that's what I feel like Moolah's tagline should be because I wanted to do a couple case studies with you since we last chatted.   Mark Rasmussen (00:40) Hahaha   Kiera Dent (01:05) ⁓ Mark knows, like, I do have a crush on Moolah. I try to get them to come and be our processor too.   Mark Rasmussen (01:10) I need to like soundbite clip that,   like I have a crush on Moolah just like everywhere in social. I love that.   Kiera Dent (01:15) I   do. do because I like companies that make things easy, but also are like the cheapest on the market and credit card fees are one of my biggest beefs. Like really truly I get annoyed when I look to see how much credit card fees are charging. And when you guys, ⁓ deadly team listeners, just so you know, I'm going to throw it out there. Like anybody who goes through our link literally saves 10 basis points. ⁓   on it, which is huge to get anywhere in the credit card industry. So you're getting below that 2.99. So you're getting 2.89 on cards not present and 2.39. And I hope that Mark, I'm allowed to say that because I'm just going to be bold and brazen. And if not, we'll cut that out. So don't stress about that.   Mark Rasmussen (01:52) No, no, no, for sure. And   not only that, it's like, that's not just a like teaser rate, like they look, your practices will get that preferred rate forever, right, which is awesome. And, and it's like you and I were talking a little bit earlier, too, of like, a bit of shock and awe of like, I and myself as well, I've been seeing like some statements from potential practices. And I'm like, ⁓ my God, I'm like, I'm seeing like,   Kiera Dent (02:03) which is so big and you don't add extra heat.   Mark Rasmussen (02:19) six, seven, eight percent, like net effective rates. I know you were saying you have been seeing even higher. It's crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. It's almost criminal.   Kiera Dent (02:25) Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it   does feel criminal because like here's the thing like you might get a cheaper rate somewhere else but when you look and dig into the details and this is where it feels annoying and obnoxious to me and doesn't happen right away it happens like when you've stopped looking at it you're like I've checked my credit card company for years they don't do anything and then all of a sudden it starts creeping up and being eerie and that's where I just get annoyed and that's why like I have a crush on Moolah because you guys don't do it and you guys stay consistent for it so   I felt Mark and I, you didn't listen to our last podcast, we'll definitely link it in the show notes for you. But Mark, I felt we should kick today off with some case studies because I have some clients that I've recommended over to Moolah. And I think my favorite one is we were looking and I had a practice and our overhead was high. So like this practice, they don't love to like look at numbers. They have an amazing CPA. Like I will say we do look at numbers, but they're kind of like, yeah, carry it. We'll just like out produce our problems a little bit. And that's fine. Like anybody can have that. But I said, Hey,   Mark Rasmussen (03:17) Alright.   Kiera Dent (03:21) Your credit card fees are really high. think that they were honestly like 10%. And I'm like, is that really true? Like that just seems outlandish. And they said, well, Kiera, we're in a contract. Mark, do you want to throw up with contracts? Tell me about credit card contracts.   Mark Rasmussen (03:33) Oh, I hate contracts. I hate contracts   like really in anything in my life. I don't know. So yeah, but that's, it's just crazy. The industry for the longest time has like felt the need to like lock these business owners and not just Dennis, but business owners in like these typically it's like three year contracts. And then, you know, they'll have like termination fees. And so they take advantage of that. And like you were saying, I talked to so many practices are like, Oh, I'm paying X and you know, they were paying X the first month that they signed up.   And then they didn't look at it, like you said, and then six months later, eight months later, the processor started like nudging it up, nudging it up, nudging it up. And to the point where when you look at what their rates are, you know, two years from when they signed up, it's like almost 180 degrees difference. So yeah, please you guys out there, please make sure you stay on your credit card processing. Look at those month end statements. Look at, you know, what is being nudged up because   Kiera Dent (04:19) Yeah.   Mark Rasmussen (04:28) You know, they'll just slip it in a little statement message. They're not forthcoming about it. I promise you they're not like, shooting you multiple emails or calling you and be like, hey, we're going to increase your rate. No, no, no, no, no. They're going to slip it under the table and hope that you never pay attention to it, which is really what happens because you guys are all busy. You guys are all doing amazing care on patients and you're not paying attention to that. That's the reality.   Kiera Dent (04:49) And it's creepy to me because it's also done on things that don't make sense. Like I feel like reading a credit card statement with what they're charging is like reading very highly processed foods. And I'm like, I have no clue what 90 % of these words are. And I feel like it's the same thing when you come to a credit card statement. And so back to this practice, what we did, there's two case studies I wanted to bring to the table today that are my own personal clients that I've referred over to Moolah that I signed up with Moolah. So this practice, again, overhead, let's out produce our problems.   Mark Rasmussen (05:00) That's a good comparison, I like that.   Kiera Dent (05:18) And it was wild because the first month they switched to Moolah, their CPA sent a letter to all of us and said like, hey, what'd you do? Did you switch credit card companies? Your fees are so much lower. Like that fast first month drop down. So we went from about a 10 % fee on what they're producing and collecting to then dropping it down to this 2.89 to 2.39, depending upon if card was present or not, which is super awesome also because then you can get cards.   Mark Rasmussen (05:28) guys.   Kiera Dent (05:44) on auto renew, like on just processing internally and you don't have to, like you can have cards present or not present within the practice, which is so awesome. ⁓ But I was shocked like that fast. And then another practice that we brought to Moolah, they were locked in with another credit card company. And so I didn't know you couldn't do this, Mark. So this was like rookie mistake on me. Like I was, I'm scrappy and I thought, well, okay, fine. You guys are in a contract. So.   just stop processing through that processor, switch everything over to Moolah. Well, you know this Mark and I was rookie so you know what happens. Do you know what happens with those companies?   Mark Rasmussen (06:21) No,   listen, I said that a lot too because technically, really, if the practice is in a contract, and I've said that before, you probably have these miscellaneous junk fees, these monthly minimums that are gonna hit maybe 20, $30 a month. But even if you're paying that minimum and you saved thousands over here, who cares? Pay that minimum, just write that contract out. What happened here in this scenario? Okay.   Kiera Dent (06:44) That was exactly what I said too. So   that's what, cause I was like, why not? I thought the exact same thing. I'm like, okay, if we're looking at, you're able to save 3%, 4 % like higher amounts and we're processing, even if you're processing a hundred thousand or 200,000, like that extra two, 3 % do the math. Like that's surely going to offset the cost. Well, what happened is we actually did that. So a client signed up with you guys. They did that. And we got a letter from the other processor saying,   Mark Rasmussen (06:54) Yeah.   Kiera Dent (07:11) that, we have a minimum and if we don't hit it, it was going to be substantial and to get out of contract, it was going to cost us a thousand dollars. So we literally said, fine, take the thousand dollars because we'd already saved that much through Moolah's savings to be able to like, we're just like, like it's a done deal. Like they were trying to threaten them with this thousand dollar fee, but we were like, that's so minimal to get us out of this contract based on how much we were saving. Now this practice was processing a decent chunk.   Mark Rasmussen (07:32) Right. Right.   Kiera Dent (07:38) But I think even if you're processing like 70,000, 80,000, that one, 2 % stacks up. Like it's insane how much we pay in credit card fees. So those are like the two that I wanted to bring to the, like I said, this is why I have a crush because I hate credit card fees so much. And that's going to lead into our next topic. But Mark, anything you want to add? Cause these were two cases that I've watched since we last met.   Mark Rasmussen (07:45) yeah.   I love that.   Kiera Dent (08:00) ⁓ I'm constantly on the prowl for cheaper people. I love that you guys don't charge for the terminals. You have it set up the next day. There's no contracts. Like that's where I said, like it's your new favorite, like credit card processing. You don't increase the fees. You give our clients reduced rates. If you have multi locations, you guys also take care of those practices. Like it's amazing what you guys do. So that's my like pitch for Moolah, but if you want to add anything else.   Mark Rasmussen (08:22) I love that. wanted to, because you just   like rang a memory. So what you were referring to in that practice, right, where like, okay, you can't just skate by and just pay the minimum, right? Or they were gonna hit him with his fee. Well, another thing I'm gonna tell your listeners out there is, listen, if you don't go with Moolah, great, do your homework. But one thing to look out that I've seen in contracts, which is crazy, is that sometimes you'll see a contract, all right, if you cancel early, it's like a 350 termination fee. Okay, fine.   but I've seen others out there where the processor says they try to enforce liquidated damages. So the processor will say, oh, we've been making, you're in a three year contract, on average we're making like, whatever, $500 a month on your processing. If you leave us now, it's not early termination fee, we're gonna calculate that $500 for the remaining 16, 17 months and they hit you with this liquidated damages thing, crazy. So just be on the lookout for that. If you're doing anywhere that's a contract,   Kiera Dent (08:57) No.   Mark Rasmussen (09:20) Look out for liquidated damages, that's no bueno, but better yet, find somebody that's just not gonna put you in a contract. Much easier.   Kiera Dent (09:26) Yeah. And   also like, okay, Mark, help me understand. And maybe you don't know because you guys don't do this and that's okay. But to me, it feels really funny that I signed a contract with them and there's got to be something in the fine print because I'm like, how did they go from what they told me to being able to add all these extra surcharges later on and increase it when we're in a contract?   Mark Rasmussen (09:43) for sure it's in the fine print.   yeah. It says that any, it basically says that any time at our discretion with 30 days notice, we can make an adjustment to any of your pre-schedule. And so they'll just do that. And then they'll just put a little message, you know, really small font in whatever kind of notification. And you know, in their minds, right? All right, well, we checked off the box. It's super shady. It sucks, but it's, you know, it's out there. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (10:05) Yeah, it is what it is. And I would say   they'll like look at it because two clients that were in contract, we were able to send over every person that I've sent to you guys have just loved who you are, that it's easy, that it's fast, that it's the cheapest processing. And there's a few other features that I think we should talk about. I feel like I'm on like a Moolah sales pitch right now. Like I'm truly not. I just get giddy. Like if you guys hear me talk about Swell,   Mark Rasmussen (10:27) Ha   Kiera Dent (10:30) was Zeke and Google reviews. I have a crush on Swell. They just do Google reviews better than anyone else. And right now, Moolah for sure, you guys are taking the cake on being able to do credit card processing better than any other company that I've come across, which I think is amazing. And so something else that I think is ratcheting fees on practices when we're looking for some of these cashflow leaks is on membership plans. Now, I'm a huge proponent of membership plans. I also think with the economy, with where insurance is reimbursing, ⁓ people are starting to look at like   should we be going out of network? And my big proposal is, hey, yeah, of course, if you want to do that rock on, membership plans really can help with that. But ⁓ there are some membership companies that actually charge pretty outlandish fees. I never wanted to pay for that. I was scrappy in a practice. So what I did is I just charged the patient an annual fee. Well, that was like eight years ago that I was charging an annual fee. And I think you look at today's world, no one wants an annual fee anymore. They just want like a monthly fee and they want it to be low.   Mark Rasmussen (11:02) for   Right. Right.   Kiera Dent (11:28) But managing that is nonsense on my own paying for it. And Moolah, like I've heard through the grapevine, you guys are doing something with membership fees. Can we talk about the membership plans? Talk about how you guys do this. Is it easier? Is it something we can do? Because I think membership plans have to come into play with the insurance situation that offices are in. And also possibly a cash leak if you're paying for heavy management fees on your membership plans.   Mark Rasmussen (11:37) Yeah, yeah, absolutely.   Yeah. So listen, membership discount plans. I've since I've been, I've only been in the industry, you know, dental industry for about four years now. And every year I feel like it's getting traction. More practices are asking about us. I have practices that are doing demos with us and they're like, Hey, I'm doing this demo is driving it because I heard you guys do, you know, membership, discount plan management. And so yes, the answer is we do. ⁓   And as you were looking to, there's a lot of great vendors in this space that just do that, right? And I'm not going to name any names, but there's a lot of great vendors, but they're not inexpensive. Like, you know, there's some decent SAS fees and then you pay per patient enrollment. ⁓ And so when it's, you know, when you look at the net net and you're like, okay, is this really making sense? So what's nice is that we have complete membership discount plan management built into the platform. You can create all your plans. ⁓ You can easily onboard the patient into the system.   Kiera Dent (12:21) Mm-hmm.   Yeah.   Mark Rasmussen (12:48) whether the patient wants to go monthly or annual, like you said, you were doing annual and a lot of the practices that I run into have historically been doing it annually, right? Because to think about billing it on a monthly basis has you like pulling your hair out. But the reality is that the patients and the consumers in the world that we live in, ⁓ everybody looks at whatever they're gonna bring into their life, whether it's a Netflix subscription or it's a car payment or it's anything else, everybody kind of looks at at a monthly basis.   Kiera Dent (13:02) Too hard.   Mark Rasmussen (13:17) And so that is what you want to be delivering. And so with the Moolah platform, you can absolutely manage an in-house membership discount plan and offer both annual and monthly options and truly set it and forget it. Not have to think about it. The system's going to run. The system's going to automatically post that payment into the ledger. In open dental, we even go a step further where when you enroll the patient into the membership, not only are we handling the billing element of it,   But we're also going into the PMS and we're associating that patient to that membership discount plan and keeping track. You know, that's what's really doing all the heavy lifting of keeping track of whatever the one free cleaning of the 10 % off services. And we keep that in lockstep. So if there was like a billing issue, we automatically disassociate the patient from the plan to really just kind of make it pain free. you know, membership discount plans are phenomenal. It's a win win for patients and practice. First of all, it brings some really great reoccurring   Kiera Dent (13:51) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Mark Rasmussen (14:14) like trackable revenue into the practice, right? Number two, it's bringing patients like butts in seats ⁓ as well. ⁓ Because the patient looks like, I'm paying $40 a month. I should use it. I should be in there. ⁓ And it's bringing value to the patient. So it's literally just a win-win all around. I really love that for, you know, when you're looking at out of network patients ⁓ and the absolutely, you know, the platform has it built in. So you guys, please, if you're looking at discount plans, memberships,   I encourage you to look at some of the other great vendors out there and then come take a look at us last and see like the value that you get that's included.   Kiera Dent (14:49) That's awesome. Yeah. And again, like there are so many great people out there that are doing it. I just feel, ⁓ when I heard that you guys were doing membership plans, I was like, well, it kind of makes sense because you're already processing credit cards. Like you're already doing the processing. So now something else that is doing a processing is in my processor, into my software, which I just, that was so incredibly clever. And, ⁓ like again, I had another client who, who scoped you against other companies and they were like, gosh, like there's no fees.   Mark Rasmussen (15:03) Great.   Kiera Dent (15:17) compared to other companies with moolah. So that was something I was really excited about. I'm big on just, it's like my insurance. I've been with State Farm forever. And Jason and I giggled, we're like, we need to go and actually like assess and make sure that we're truly getting the best plans. And so I just think like it's good to periodically go and assess and make sure our credit card fees, what they were when we set up.   our membership plans making sense? Is it time to look to possibly renegotiate some certain things? And again, I'm not here to propose one company over another. Like Mark said, do your homework, figure out what's best because there's so many great companies out there. I just really love when it's simple and easy. And that's something I love about you guys, Mark, you guys have the fact that we can send patient statements and like have payments online and they can pay it all times of the day. Like just that alone boosts offices, collections with Moulin. So Mark, I want to go into a dicey topic with you though.   because this one's hot. We had it in our in-person ⁓ doctor and leadership mastermind when we were in Arizona and I loved it. It was like a hot, hot topic and heads up like this might be awkward for you. I don't think it will because of who you are, but there's the question of, and it was hot, like the room was split of people who were pro and con. So the question is with credit card fees being as much as they were, we talked about at the beginning, like ways that we can reduce it.   Mark Rasmussen (16:10) Let's do it.   I know, I wanna hear what the feedback was, because I know where you're going.   Kiera Dent (16:40) Then we talked about reducing membership plans. Now there's a question of, should we actually charge patients the credit card fees? Like this is becoming really popular and I don't blame businesses because inflation's high, labor is higher. So now we're trying to figure out like where could we cut? And so people are like, well, sweet, we're just gonna pass on the credit card fees to our patients. And the room was spicy. There was like people that were so pro and people that like literally people were bristly and it was a...   Mark Rasmussen (17:05) Yeah.   Kiera Dent (17:06) It was quite interesting. So your credit card company, which is where I feel like it's a little awkward to ask you this question, but I want to know, we pro, are we con? Should we charge the patients from your perspective? We're in 2025. So many companies do this. Should people be charging patients the credit card fee? Should they just raise their fees and bake it in? Like, what are your thoughts on this? Because my room was 50 50 split. And I will tell you some of the feedback if you want to hear it, cause it was quite interesting.   Mark Rasmussen (17:13) Yeah.   Okay, okay.   I do. Okay, so the first   thing I want to point out is I expect you to say that the room is split, right? Like half of them are like, yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm not paying for my patients' reward points. And I think the other half of the room was like, yeah, but I'm worried about the optics. Does it look like we're trying to be cheesy or nickel and diming our patients, right? Those are the two ends that are battling each other. The interesting thing is that this hot topic, ⁓ if you would have asked that just three years ago,   Kiera Dent (17:38) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm. No.   Mark Rasmussen (18:01) it wouldn't have been 50 50. It   would have been like 80 90 % saying no way and 10 % made me do it. So the trend is is like it is going right and two or three years from now I have a feeling it's going to be like 80 % are doing it and 20 % are not doing it. So the cat is out of the bag. Let's just get that you know right out there in the open. What do I think about it? I'm to be super Switzerland about this and I'm going to say that I think   Kiera Dent (18:06) Agreed. 100 % agree.   I would agree with you.   Remember he's   a credit card processing company.   Mark Rasmussen (18:31) Well,   no, I'm going to say that I think that as a vendor who delivers credit card processing service, I think that I should enable our practices to make that choice for themselves. I think whatever you think you should do for your practice, I want to support it. So if you don't want to do surcharging, great, we love that. If you do want to do surcharging, great, I love that. I just want to give the tools to the practice so they can make that decision. Now, aside what I think about it,   It's a very interesting topic to talk about. Well, what is the net result? I like, all right, how does it work? What does it save? Let's get into it if I may. Okay, so there's a couple ways. There is absolutely there. There is, and there's a couple flavors to this. There's a couple flavors to this. ⁓ there, the, the, what that we do, let me talk about that first. So what we do is what's referred to as compliance surcharging and with compliance surcharging, what is, what you're doing is that   Kiera Dent (19:06) I agree. Cause like, are there rules around it? Like, you actually have to do anything? Okay. I have no idea. Okay.   Mark Rasmussen (19:28) When a customer's paying you with a credit card, the system, system, I'll just speak to our system, most others are similar, but when a patient is paying you, whether it's in practice on the device or whether you sent a text to pay or it's an online payment, our system automatically, real time, looks at the number that the patient put in or used on the terminal. And within a half a second, we're looking back at the credit card network before we even charge it, and we say, is this a credit or is this a debit? If the patient is paying with a credit card,   We then pop on the screen, either on their mobile device or on the terminal, we say, hey, we see you're using a credit card. We're going to add 2.99 % as a fee to you for using a credit card. If you want to use a debit card, you will avoid that fee. So in Compliance Surcharging, what I really like about that is that you're not charging us fee across debit and credit, right? You're still giving your patient the convenience of being able to pay with plastic.   Kiera Dent (20:19) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.   Mark Rasmussen (20:25) and still use a debit card because the reality is if you have a credit card in your wallet, there's probably 99 % chance you've got a Visa debit card in your wallet as well. And so you're not pulling away that convenience of them being able to pay plastic and just saying, hey, if you want to avoid that fee, pay cash or check. That's kind of archaic. So with compliance surcharging, you are going to offload your credit card fees to the patient, only the credit card fees. When they pay with a debit card, you will still pay for that, okay?   Kiera Dent (20:43) I agree.   Mark Rasmussen (20:55) With doing that with Moolah, if you're going to pay the debit fee and not pay the credit card fee, we see that the overall net effective rate for the practice ends up being below 1%. It ends up being like, I'm going to throw out a weird term that people are going, what the heck is that? It's usually going to be around 75 or 80 basis points. About three quarters of 1 % is going to be your net overall cost, which is huge savings, right? Huge savings.   Kiera Dent (21:07) No.   Crazy, like insane. Just do   some math. If you did a million dollars and you were able to basically save, gosh, so much.   Mark Rasmussen (21:28) No, let's just say,   the reality is you're probably saving one and a half percent. So on a million dollar practice, that practice is gonna put about $15,000 back to their bottom line. Like, and that's it, and it was painless. And you're still not really, yeah, exactly.   Kiera Dent (21:37) Exactly.   And that's also for payments you're already collecting. Like this is already   money we're collecting, we just get to keep more of it rather than having the credit card processing fee.   Mark Rasmussen (21:47) Yes.   And it doesn't need to like, you know, break brain cells for you to try and figure it out. Like the system is going to automatically calculate it. We're going to organize it. ⁓ It's just, it's painless. We're handling it in the PMS correctly. listen, the savings cannot be ignored. Like we talked about the cats out of the bag. You're going to see more businesses across more different verticals. ⁓ And the reality is   We've all been around it for a long, long time, right? Who's been doing it forever? Gas stations, right? We've seen it on there. Cash credit, right? That's been there forever. And we're all used to it. And you also typically see a lot when you're dealing with like state or federal agencies, you ever gone on and make an online tax payment, they usually charge a fee there. So it's just now getting more, you know, ⁓ rolling out. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (22:40) Nail salons for the girls out there. We all know the   nail salons. They'll say like, it's a 3 % charge if you use credit card. I'm like, here's your cash. Like it's clever. They push us to what they want.   Mark Rasmussen (22:49) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.   So it is listen. So I, I believe in delivering the technology to our clients, I don't have an opinion one way or the other, whatever you feel is good. I will tell you though that I think a lot of practices, especially on the on the one half of the room that are like against it. I think what we're finding is that people are not pushing back as much as   you think they are because consumers are just getting used to it. And again, the fact that at least with our practices, you're still giving your patient the ability to have that convenience and pay with a debit card and not have the fee. If they were doing like the model where they call it, know, cash discount, where you're going to hit the debit card and you're going to hit the credit card, I think you get more pushback on that, but you're still giving that convenience. So yeah, I'm a fan of it. We get, like I said, more and more requests of it. ⁓   It's not going anywhere. yeah, we're here to support your practice. If you guys want to try it out, try it out and listen, here's the thing.   Kiera Dent (23:50) Yeah.   How does it work in practice   though? Like, so someone's standing in front of me at a terminal, I'm collecting money in person. How does this work? Because it's not gonna pop up on my like treatment plan that I just gave them or on my ledger. So how do I do that?   Mark Rasmussen (24:00) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.   It'll pop up on the terminal.   so first thing we do, we give the practices, ⁓ you know, some template messaging and they'll just want to put up something by the front desk. And it says something to the effect of that, you know, this office adds a surcharge when using a credit card, ⁓ not beyond, you know, what our costs are, right? This is not a money, additional money revenue is trying to like, you know, make arbitrage between costs and no, I'm only going to pass off. And so.   Kiera Dent (24:32) Great.   Mark Rasmussen (24:35) the patient is aware of it, they've seen it, and then when they go to use it on the terminal, if they're in practice, when they go to run the credit card, it will pop up on the screen and your team can just show it to the patient, they'll see it, that it's adding it because they're using the credit card. And it'll give them an option if they want to accept it or if they want to back out of it and try again with a debit card and avoid the fee, really easy.   Kiera Dent (24:58) Okay, that's actually really helpful. And now I have a question because I don't know this. How does this work? Because technically the practice is collecting more money, right? Like we are taking the fee plus the credit card fee. ⁓   Mark Rasmussen (25:10) Let's say it's $100 and let's just say we're   adding that surcharge so now it's $103. Okay? Yeah. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (25:14) Right, so that's $3 more per $100 transaction. But   does that impact them in tax? I would think no, because credit card companies still charging us the 3%. Like, how does this work? Are you following what I'm saying? how does this impact you?   Mark Rasmussen (25:26) Yeah, I do. So you   don't have anything else to like, you know, break your brain on that. Our system, first of all, will break out the surcharge in the reporting. Okay. So it's really clean. Furthermore, the addition, the $103, right, like the customer got charged, the patient got charged $103. But our system automatically calculates it, that you have a fee of 3 % and that you surcharge the patient 3%. So the practice is still just going to get the full $100.   Kiera Dent (25:36) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Mark Rasmussen (25:56) It's as if they took a cash payment. So it's easy for them. They're not getting 10.99 at the $103, so to speak. It's just still truly only taking $100, which is great.   Kiera Dent (25:57) Gotcha. Okay.   Mm-hmm. ⁓   Yeah, because that's what   I was curious like, and like some things have sales tax. So didn't know like surcharges, do they get taxed differently or is it just like accepting cash, same thing for a practice? Okay. Now, so that's really helpful. And that helps me see on the ledger. So are you guys synced into the PMS for it to say, because like if my ledger says a hundred dollars, but I'm now doing 3 % surcharge on it.   Mark Rasmussen (26:18) Exactly, total amount, total amount, yeah.   Yes.   Kiera Dent (26:35) I'm going to be posting $103. How do I make sure that all of my ledgers match up?   Mark Rasmussen (26:40) So   we'll post $100 in the ledger, okay? And then we'll have a procedure code for the surcharge. And then we'll also have an offsetting so that it doesn't mess up your balance. So you can easily run reports based on the procedure code. I can see what my surcharge is, but it's not messing up and showing that, I took in $103 on this $100 transaction. So your ledger is gonna stay nice and clean.   and not be a nightmare, 100%.   Kiera Dent (27:10) Okay,   because that's I was like, Oh, great. Because there was another office that I heard about. And Mark, I'm just curious about your opinion on this. And then we're gonna get back to this like spicy and thanks for walking through this. There was another practice, I've literally never heard of this before. So I'm curious if you have or if you recommend or don't this practice. So let's say a patient, the total is $100, they pay the $100, the practice literally posted on the ledger.   Mark Rasmussen (27:28) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (27:38) instead of being $100 because now they lost $3, they posted $97 on the ledger and they were taking out the surcharge. Have you ever heard of that? Because I had never heard it. I was, do you recommend that? Because I've never recommended that, right? And I think as a patient, I'd feel really angry though. no, I gave you 100 bucks, but you gave me 97. Like I would just.   Mark Rasmussen (27:48) I haven't.   That seems wonky. Yeah.   Right. Or   continue that on. How about now all of a sudden a week later you go to refund it and we're we're refunding you 97. You're like, no, no, no, I paid you 100. It's gonna be messed up in so many levels.   Kiera Dent (28:09) Right. I was just curious.   I was like, I mean, maybe I'm archaic on how I do this. I used to just do it that way and then accept that that would just be a cost on my PNL. But now there's a way for you to actually offset it with the process. So my question is going back to that, that's actually helpful. Thank you. So if you're doing that, definitely recommend not doing that anymore. ⁓ But I was like, Hey, I've never heard of this. Maybe that is the right way to do the accounting on it. But it felt very messy to me. Now,   Do we as the practice need to put in the surcharge as that procedure code when we're charging that out or does Moolah automatically sync it in and put the surcharge of the procedure code?   Mark Rasmussen (28:48) We have, yeah,   automatically done. There's nothing for you to do. Yeah. So during onboarding, we will set up, we will work with the practice, obviously. We'll make sure that we have a procedure code set up for them. And so during the onboarding, we'll have that so that when you do run a surcharge transaction like that, there's nothing you need to do. It'll all be handled in the ledger correctly.   Kiera Dent (28:51) Amazing. I love it. This is why I said I have a preference on you.   and you're in all softwares. What softwares does Moolah sink into?   Mark Rasmussen (29:10) Yes, so ⁓ Open Dental, ⁓ Dentrix, G7, and ⁓ newer server-based, not Ascend. And we're actually going to be ⁓ releasing, finally, this has been a long time coming, we're finally going live with Eagle Soft ⁓ Beta at end of next week. So Open Dental, Dentrix, and Eagle Soft. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (29:28) Awesome.   That's awesome. Okay, very cool. And   then if you're not in one of those and you can just obviously add this in, it wouldn't be automatically synced. And I think like of those ones though, huge win this way. Okay, now we'll go back to the spicy. I will tell you guys how the room was divided. The room was divided, I'll be right. The do it, don't do it. And then the like, there's a middle ground, which I thought the middle ground was kind of convenient. ⁓ There wasn't, but I did see people like it. I did feel like it was like,   Mark Rasmussen (29:45) Yes.   Was there any physical fighting going on? Okay.   Kiera Dent (30:00) like politics and religion status. Like it was like very cut through the room. I do agree with you. And that's what I said. I was like, you guys, this 2025, this is going to take place in the future and it will be very common. just, think our early adopters going to stay or not. It's your choice. Um, I've always been of the opinion like, no, just bake it into your fee. And now I'm like, well, everybody's starting to charge for it. Like, why not? Um, so it was don't charge for it now. Another was like, no, put it in. People are doing it anyway. And the middle ground, which I thought was   Mark Rasmussen (30:02) Right. Right, right, right.   Kiera Dent (30:30) of a good way to do it is in person. They didn't charge a fee, but any of their online statements, they did charge a fee because they said most people who pay online know there's usually a service fee associated with it. So I thought that was kind of a, an easy way. If you guys are looking for a navigation through it. ⁓ but I think like, honestly, it's just like anything else, train your patients if you want to, but don't feel like you have to, I think it'd just be something to consider. So, but again,   Like get the reduction, like if nothing else, like switch to a processor that's going to be reduced fees anyway. So even if you want to continue offering it, you're still saving on that. Mark, I have one last thing that I wanted to dive into. I'm hearing from a lot of like integrated softwares. So like dental Intel and Flex and some of these other ones that literally make practice lives easier. They're having processors in there that are just integrated right into that. They're using it all the time.   Mark Rasmussen (31:20) Yeah.   Kiera Dent (31:25) How does Moolah play in those worlds? Like, do you get the same pricing? Do we not get the same pricing? Are some of those better because they're already bundled in? Again, I'm putting you on like really awkward topics, but I just want to know. I want to know how does this work.   Mark Rasmussen (31:35) No, no, not at all. So listen, you mentioned Flex. We   love Flex, okay? I love Flex, not just because, yes, they're a partner of ours, right? And yes, your Mool account works beautifully and integrated with Flex. But I love Flex just because I think they're like cut from the same cloth that we are. Like we just, at the end of the day, we want to over-deliver, right? We want to over-deliver, whether it's technology, whether it's value, and they have that mindset. And so I love the Flex team. Full disclosure.   ⁓ And so we've been an integrated partner with Flex for, gosh now, I think three years. So yeah, I think they deliver a ton of value to any open dental practice. So anybody out there for sure should check out Flex. They are amazing. Dental Intel. So we used to be, ⁓ not to bore the audience, but like we used to have an integration with Modento and then Dental Intel acquired Modento.   Kiera Dent (32:33) Yep.   Mark Rasmussen (32:33) and   then Dental Intel wanted to roll up their own integrated credit card processing. And so they have now. so, listen, ⁓ we wish Dental Intel the best, wish them well, but yeah, we're no longer integrated with Dental Intel, but yeah, Flex, we love Flex.   Kiera Dent (32:49) Okay, because I was just curious. Now, I feel if it's bundled, is this a time where offices should just be strategic? I'm not saying anyone's doing it. I haven't looked at it. So I'm not here to like cast judge or I just want to make sure offices are being smart. I would think when they're bundled or they're integrated, offices should still check even using MULA. They should still be watching their credit card statements every single month, right? Like no matter what, just to always make sure things are staying clean and also before we sign up with anybody.   Mark Rasmussen (33:08) Mm-hmm.   100%.   Kiera Dent (33:19) Like literally read the fine print and look for it. Yes. No. I from like, let's just go all the way back.   Mark Rasmussen (33:23) Yeah.   And I would always say that, you know, let's just take the Flex example. Flex has, you and I won't name anything, I'll let you guys out there, you go check it out to yourself, but there are three options. I encourage you, especially when we're talking about a vendor that you're looking at, and especially when this vendor that you're looking at revolves around your cashflow, right? Like it's a pretty integral part of a vendor that you're bringing into your ecosystem. call them, talk to them.   Kiera Dent (33:46) Mm-hmm.   Mark Rasmussen (33:54) Call in the middle of the day. Do they pick up the phone? Do they answer? Can you talk to somebody very easily? Like really pop the hood and take a look at who you're going to get in and do business with, especially when it's, you know, that vendor is like controlling your cash flow on a daily basis. So yes, please you guys out there, do your homework, look at the agreements, ask questions, and see what's right for you. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (34:10) Yeah.   That's awesome. just, again,   I wanted to like go into it because these are things I'm hearing. I'm hearing people say like, this seamlessly integrates. I know you seamlessly integrate. I know you guys are constantly working to refine, to get into more and more practice management softwares to make it easier. Just Mark, as we wrap up, like this has been fun. I love the like, thanks for going into some of the spices with me. ⁓ But just as a quick rundown, like what are some of the features that Moola does? We talked about the membership plans. We did talk about that Dental A Team clients get 10 % basis points less for card present or card not present.   Mark Rasmussen (34:33) Always is.   Yep.   Kiera Dent (34:47) Which to me that alone, I would just look into it and see, like I said, two clients literally saved money by like dumping their contracts and moving over, which I think to me, like before I can have a crush on a company, I test them pretty heavily. So to see the proof in the pudding, I was so just elated and it made me even like you guys more. But what else does Moola do? Because I know you guys do a lot of other things that just make life easy.   Mark Rasmussen (35:05) I love that. yeah, yeah. So   at the end of the day, we do a lot, but it's all payment related and will always be payment related, right? So we're focused on being like, we try to be like the end all be all payment solution for dentists. And so when you look at like, what does a dental office need from a payment perspective, ⁓ it's in practice payments, right? So we provide you guys the physical devices. So   No more having to buy rent or lease those terminals. We're going to include them. you know, not only, yeah, they're wireless. Yeah, they're really cool. Aesthetically, they look really good. Yeah. And, and here's the other great part too, that I think it's kind of underrated ⁓ is of course, not only did we include them. the practice didn't need to buy them, but like normally, you know, with our peers, you have to buy these devices and then you buy them and then it's like one year warranty, right? And then like Murphy's law always kicks in.   Kiera Dent (35:37) They're awesome too. They're portable. They can go back to the hygiene operatories. It's amazing. So your hygienist can take it. Like they're awesome. It's so great.   Mark Rasmussen (36:01) like it loves to do. like, okay, month 14, the device just, you know, went out on you. And then you're gonna sorry, you got to buy another five $600 device with mula you guys will literally never have hardware expense ever because we give them to you on the front end. And we will warranty them forever. As long as you're with us. I don't care four or five, six years. If there's new devices that come out and your guys age out, we're going to replace them. Even if you drop it off the counter and crack the screen.   We don't care, we're gonna replace it for you. There's no fear or premium. So, in practice payments, we have you covered there from a technology standpoint as well as a hardware standpoint. Moving on, there's also, have the ability to, like you were talking about earlier, store patient cards securely tokenized. Nothing's ever touching the practices servers. It's all on our servers, but it's giving you the convenience of having those stored cards for the patient. You can have as many stored cards as you want. You can even send a request to the patient.   before their appointment and the patient from easily from home from their mobile device could add their credit card. And so when they come in, it's already stored and it's available to use. So stored cards, yeah, yeah, yeah.   Kiera Dent (37:07) With that, can I ask, do you guys have   the compliance paperwork? Is there anything you have to do to get a patient to have a stored credit card that we can run for future payments? once insurance pays, because I know that's a big thing of storing cards on file, do you have anything with that? Because I know that this is a zone.   Mark Rasmussen (37:23) Yep. What I...   Yeah, no. So it's very obvious as far as the process of the patient adding the card. Like when you send the message, it says, hey, would you like to securely store your card on file? Right? Beyond that, what I've seen some practices do is just they'll just include it in their overall like new patient intake forms and kind of include it in their terms of service of that. Hey, listen, if you want to store a card on file with us, you can. And you allow, once you store a card, you're giving us the authorization to utilize that card.   Kiera Dent (37:35) Mm-hmm.   Mark Rasmussen (37:51) for other future balances. As simple as that, that's all you need to do.   Kiera Dent (37:54) which is so smart you   guys think about it. This is where so many other industries do this. They have a card on file. I mean, I go to the spa, my cards on file, they run that card when I'm gone, like I authorize it to happen. So they never out of money. They're never chasing money down. Like it just to me makes so much more sense of a way to process.   Mark Rasmussen (38:12) Can you imagine if   Netflix or all the other subscriptions, if they had to wait for a payment every month and wait, come on, no. Subscription is the way, 100%. So, okay, so store card on file they get. The other thing they get is the ability to create and manage in-house payment plans. And of course, automatically post those payments to the ledger. We have some great things where if the payment fails, right? They're into the plan for three months and all of sudden the July payment fails.   Kiera Dent (38:18) No. No.   Yeah.   Mark Rasmussen (38:41) our system will automatically notify the practice, notify the patient, and what's cool is that the software will allow the patient to self-administer and fix it. So the software is not telling the patient, your card failed, call the front desk. No, we're gonna save a phone call there. The software will allow the patient to tell the software, okay, either A, try to charge that card again, or B, they can actually upload a new card on file.   So the cool stat on that is that in failed transactions in our payment plans, we see patients solving it between themselves and software within the first 24 hours at a rate of over 80%, which is huge. So payment plans, and then we talked about earlier, you also get the ability to manage any of your in-house membership or discount plans. ⁓ We have the collecting on a balance when the patient is out of practice, ⁓ sending a payment request either   Kiera Dent (39:20) Holy cow, it's amazing.   Mark Rasmussen (39:37) allocated or unallocated payment request can attach a statement. ⁓ We also have the ability to host a payment page on their website. So if you want to put a little navigation, click here to make an online after hours payment, we'll host that page for the practice. ⁓ So yeah, we really kind of just looked at it a full circle of like, where are all the payment touch points that our practice is dealing with, and just trying to deliver these really amazing tools. And again, as you know, our model.   ⁓ There's never any monthly fees. There's never any set up fees. There's never any annual fees ⁓ All there are these two simple flat rates and again, you can cancel it anytime you want never locked in anything   Kiera Dent (40:18) That's awesome. Mark, I appreciate this so much. How do people, like know they just connect with you, schedule a demo. You guys will look at their credit card processing, see how you guys can fix it. How do they connect with you specifically if they're interested? And specifically The Dental A Team, The Dental A Team, perks.   Mark Rasmussen (40:33) I would recommend and maybe we can list this in the podcast, but there will be a specific Moolah URL. It's like forward slash The Dental A Team They should go there and then they can schedule a demo. And then if they go there, then we're going to know it came from you guys. That way we can get them that 10 basis point savings forever. So just schedule a demo with us and no pressure. We're like the most like   the least salesy organization I think that you guys will ever run into. All we wanna do is inform you. We wanna show you what we have. We're not for everybody. ⁓ But assuming that you guys love what you see, we encourage you to try us out and check us out and see if we're gonna be a great fit for your practice.   Kiera Dent (41:13) Yeah, for sure. You guys, honestly, I love Moolah They're incredible. So on our website, we will link it. So the way you get to Moolah, it's on our website, TheDentalATeam.com. And then you can click on the About Partnerships Mulas right there. ⁓ And the actual, like if you guys want our direct link here, it would be TheDentalATeam.com slash partnerships slash Moolah. And that should take you right to Moolah's page. It's also mula.cc slash partners.   So that helps you guys will also link that in the show notes mark. I appreciate you guys so much Things are being on the podcast things are going through the spicy with me. I appreciate you so much   Mark Rasmussen (41:52) Any time, love you guys, you guys are the best and ⁓ have a great rest of day.   Kiera Dent (41:58) Hey, you too, for all of you listening. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team Podcast.  

Tiff and Dana talk about a large trend happening in dental practices this year: last-minute cancellations, and why it's such a stressor for the doctors. They share how to notice the signs of no-shows further in advance, plus ways to troubleshoot the problem. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript Tiffanie (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are so excited to be here with you today. I have the one and only Dana here with me. Dana, we're still working on that dynamite. Dana is my favorite nickname, but we'll see what Kara decides sticks. So.   Thank you, Dana, for being here with me today. If you guys are watching this podcast, which I think is still a weird concept in my brain, Dana has the most incredible hair today. Dana, I'm always impressed with your lovely loc. So thanks for coming ready to go today. How are you?   Dana (00:34) doing good. Thank you. If you only knew how little time it took me and that's why it's consistent because it takes me no time to get it to do this. I'm excited to be here anytime I get with you on this podcast tip is special time. So   Tiffanie (00:42) I love it.   Thank you. Thank you. And I do enjoy our time together. I'm trying to make sure we get that one on one time a couple more times per month than just podcasting. So thanks for being patient with me on that. Dana, I get to pick your brain all the time. We have a really fun one coming up here in a second that I know everyone's going to be really excited for. But right now, I really want to pick your brain a lot on cancellations and the cost of cancellations to a general practice. I know in   My client base, what I have seen and tell me Dana what you're seeing as well. I have seen this year just like a wild bag of like, patients coming? Are they not coming? Are they canceling? What are the reasons? Like it just feels like a mixed bag of information. Since realistically, I would say it probably, I think it started trickling around November, but January, February was wild. Weather was wild.   And then now that we're getting into, you know, summery months, we're getting out of spring and into summer months here in May, it just still seems to be like trends are just kind of cycling around that same space. are you seeing that with your clients you're working with and friends in the industry that you're chatting with as well?   Dana (02:03) Yeah, I feel like it is a weekly basis where it's like, okay, how are things going? Well, the schedule was full, right? It was looking great and it just seems to be falling apart. So a lot, a lot of last minute cancellations where it is really hard for the team to pivot and pivot quickly in those instances.   Tiffanie (02:09) Yeah.   Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. And so on one hand, I want you guys out there, doctors, team members, office managers, those of you who are listening today, on one hand, if this is something that you guys are coming up against this year, I want you to know that right now in 2025, this has been a trend that we've noticed within the dental community as a whole. today we really want to talk about the cost of those cancellations. I think it's great for doctors to know that information.   A lot of doctors do, lot of owners already have that information, but I think it's great for team members and office managers to really know the cost of that as well so that we can see why are the doctors harping on us, not just because they don't have patients, but why is it so stressful to them? And doctors, why am I feeling this internal stress? And then I've also got some tips in here, Dana and I have gone through that are ways for you to know that there's a problem, start noticing it more in advance.   and then ways to troubleshoot those problems as well. So first and foremost, I think, Dana, the most important thing to remember is that we've got to make sure that we've got a solid plan and a solid action, actionable pieces as far as our goals. If we don't know our goals, if we don't know where we're heading, then...   Like, what are we even doing? Right? So as long as we, as long as we can keep a good heading on our goals. And I mean, by that, like, what is our monthly goal? What is our daily goal? And then always looking at what have we done? Where are we going? And what's that gap in between? If we're not watching that gap in between, we can fall into a really scary space. And then it's that last week of the month that we've all lived where the office manager is like, okay, guys, we just need $30,000 in addition this week. Who needs ortho?   right? And we're like, scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get that money in. But it's because we haven't watched all month where those numbers are at. making sure that we're always looking at that, and we're always paying attention to those things is going to be massively important. Now, Dana, I know you have a lot of practices that are tracking this, that are they're watching these trends. As far as like dollar per hour kind of cost to the practice and what this actually looks like in conjunction to the goals.   What are you seeing with your practices right now and what do you suggest they really start to watch?   Dana (04:39) Yeah, I think that it is one just like you said, tracking and making sure that they know how much is open schedule time impacting their production and their ability to get to their goals. How much you know, if their hygiene team isn't getting to their 30 % or hitting their daily goal, is it because they just didn't have a full schedule of patients because that is pretty crucial for them to get to that point. Daily goals are set up with full schedules in mind, especially if we use block scheduling to get to daily goal. If   our blocks aren't full, we're not gonna get there. So I think it is tracking to be able to look and say, how much is it impacting our production and what are we losing when we have a hole in our schedule? Because sometimes when we can attach a monetary value to that actual appointment, it becomes a little bit more important. When we see, if we know that every time a restorative appointment is open, that that costs us   $1,000 right or $900, right? Well, then we know how much that's going to impact our goal if we know that every time a Recare patient doesn't show up that equals $230 well, then we can sure be strategic about how we make that gap up   Tiffanie (05:40) Yeah.   Dana (05:56) later in the month or later in the week and sometimes too for team members it's like oh we only have one cancellation well one cancellation for every 17 days that you're open when you know what that value of that appointment is it really really   You can see how it's impacting. And so I would say take a look at your doll, you know, your production per hour on both sides so that you know, when I've got an hour open, it's costing the practice this much. When I've got an hour and a half open, it's costing the practice that much. And that's just the missed dentistry. That's not the costs of the practice just to be open for that hour, right? Like there's all of those fixed costs that extend into that too. And so getting a real picture of what each hour in our practice leads to   Tiffanie (06:25) Good job.   Dana (06:41) production and expenses can just be so eye-opening on its impact.   Tiffanie (06:48) I totally agree.   I think the actual cost, like if you look at it and we're looking at our goals, that actual cost is what is your dollar per hour? So like Dana said, it could be anywhere between $500 to $1,500 an hour on a doctor's schedule. And then again, that $100 to $300 on a hygiene schedule just really depends on what your practice's goals are and what you guys are set out to achieve. So if you've got $1,200 between doctor and hygiene, we've got a goal of $1,200 per hour and you've got those openings on the schedule, that's what the cost is.   that data that we've done really really well and we've done differently this year with our current clients is really having them go through and track the number of open hours on each provider's schedule. So the reason that we do that is last year   I had a couple of doctors that were really, really close to, one of them was really close, he was about $30,000 away from hitting the goal that he wanted. Another one was like $20,000 away from exceeding where he thought he would be this year. And I was like, gosh, wow, how did we get so close, but we missed it by that much. So what I did was I sat down and I looked through the whole year and I tallied.   doctor, open hours, hygiene, open hours. So whether that was cancellations, the schedule fell apart, who knows, but it was just open hours that were on the schedule that could have been scheduled, meaning that was an open block, nothing was there. And both of those doctors would have far exceeded what they anticipated had those been filled. Now,   We like to say a variation rate of about 5%. If you're more than 5 to 8 % on the long end, like 8 % is high.   If you're more than that in cancellations, you're in hot water. So even if we deducted that five to 8 % from that math that I did, we still would have hit those goals. And so it really brought a lot of reality into the situation. Like you were saying, Dana, to really be able to see what that gap is and why it happened. And I had a practice just the other day, she did fantastic. This office manager, she had the information before we even went into the call. one of the doctors, one of the owner doctors was really, really intrigued on why are we   just why are we short in collections and by that he was looking at QuickBooks, right? So why is the bank short? So because when we look at their data, when we look at their collections and their production, just looking at those straight from Dentrix, they were above 100 % on collections. So the team is like, bro, like we're at 102%. Like, what do you mean? And he's like, yeah, but there's no money. Like there's not the overhead, right? So the overhead is hitting well,   The office manager knew that we were going into this conversation. She knew that he was going to ask these questions and that I wasn't going to have that immediate information. So prior to the call, she went through the whole first quarter of the year. And what she did was not only she took cancellations on one side, because that was an aspect of it, but another piece that she took was we've had a lot of call outs from hygiene and ⁓ vacation.   And surgery, was a surgery that, you know, quote unquote, she's on her vacation. So we had a lot of time that there wasn't a hygienist available to see patients. And when she tallied that it was literally that missing piece and his mind was just blown and he was like, my gosh, thank you. He just needed the satisfaction of knowing what it was, right. But the cost of not only cancellations, but that missed opportunity of hygiene because there had been hygienists ill, there had been hygienists on PTF.   as a hygienist that had to have shoulder surgery, these things come up and they happen, but we're not always anticipating them and our goals get missed. So these cancellation spots where patients are calling and they're like, gosh, I just can't come in are even more important.   because there are times where we can't, we can do something about that. We can fill an open spot on the schedule. I can't do hygiene if I don't have a hygienist, a licensed hygienist there to take that spot. So those different spaces really took a toll. the cost on the practice, right? The cost of the cancellations is the dollar per hour, but then on a grander scale, it's like, what did we miss out that month and that quarter? And how did it impact our overhead? Because this example, all three examples,   the doctors were like, why is my overhead so high? Where's my profitability? Why is this sucking? Especially when you feel like we're rolling along pretty well. It's like, where's the profitability? Where is it missing? That's the big toll. And then also I think, Dana, the stress, like, gosh, being a team member and then like inefficiencies that it creates, the stress of having to save a patient or   Dana (11:22) Mm-hmm. Yeah.   Tiffanie (11:40) having to talk somebody into coming last minutes, the stress of knowing that there's a cancellation there and Doc's gonna, know, Doc and manager or owner or whomever is gonna come ask me questions. Like Dana, you've been in that position too. And even maybe even from a hygienist standpoint, the stress of having openings, like that's a cost as well. What was that for you and your perception as a provider and a team member, but then also as a consultant, what are you seeing there as far as the cost on a practice with those cancellations from an emotional standpoint?   Dana (12:09) Yeah, I I think is I do this definitely something that weighs heavily on you because I mean, I'm very goal oriented. And so if you put a goal in front of me, I'm going to want to tackle it. And so it is a little bit defeating in that way. And then it's like, okay, well, I would have to book patients out, right. And sometimes even further than when they were due, right, just to have my schedule fall apart. And it's like, man, like I could have seen those people that I had to look out a little bit farther. So it is a stressful on a patient care level is stressful on a   goals level it's stressful on like hey I'm here and like I want to do things that are of value to the practice so yeah it plays a burden on everyone and so it's just something that's so important to look at and to set a game plan for and to tackle as a team.   Tiffanie (12:58) Yeah, I totally agree. totally agree. Now areas that we'll tackle some areas where you can tell there's an issue, like not only you see like, my gosh, I feel like there's a lot of cancellations happening, but really just being able to see what that what that entails. So I think one space is open schedule, obviously, right? Open schedule. I think frustrated team members, Dana, do you agree? Yeah.   Dana (13:23) Yeah, yeah,   because it's so much more work on the back end to save something that's fallen off or to fill something than it is to just be really good at reappointing from the beginning and being really good at creating value from the beginning. Those things are much easier than this stress and the crunch time of after the fact.   Tiffanie (13:45) Yeah, totally agree. So upset team members, like stressed out front office team members, upset doctors, empty schedule, seeing repeat offenders. So patients that are repeatedly coming off of the schedule seem to cancellations. And you guys, I want to tackle a little bit too on why.   why this happens. There's a few things and I mean, you guys are going to tell me and your team is going to tell me patients are sick and patients can't come in because of work. Like I totally hear you. I get that. I understand. But what it boils down to the root cause in my opinion is a lack of a lack of systems or a lack of systems follow through. So lack of consistency. So ⁓ handoffs and patient buy-in might not be there. Team buy-in might not be there. Scheduling rules. So how do we form   and build the right schedule. If we're consistently behind on patients appointments, or they're taking longer than we said they would, they're not getting sat on time, like if we're showing that we don't value our schedule because our scheduling template isn't working for us and it's running us behind, I don't like we're telling the patients our schedules don't matter. I'm not sure why we expect a different result. On the other side, we expect our patients to, you know,   really, really take into consideration the schedule and to make that a top priority, but we're not even doing that. So hard truth, I think there. ⁓ If you're having these issues, if you're running behind, you're seeing high cancellations and you feel frantic, it's typically a reflection of the schedule that you're running. Right, Dana, do you agree? Am I just in mean?   Dana (15:23) 100 %   I hands down took the words that I say all the time and I'm like honestly it comes down to a lack of value and that's really hard for offices to hear but it is a lack of value on the appointment itself right we've not created enough value for the patient to feel like this is something I cannot miss and we also haven't valued it enough to ensure that we've done that.   Tiffanie (15:42) Yeah.   Dana (15:47) to ensure that we followed our systems that we've worked really hard to put into place. And so maybe we don't value those systems or we don't see their value. And so it truly comes down to just a lack of value on both ends.   Tiffanie (15:58) I absolutely agree. Yeah, yeah. And the patient's buy in comes from value, you guys, and it takes multiple times. So some of the systems I think, Dana, that we can we can pop through a couple of systems that really, I think, stand out and helping that. And I think one space to remember is that we want to attract and we want to keep the patients that we want. Not every practice is built for every   patient, every person. So some patients are not going to respond well, they're not going to care, they're always going to cancel or they're going to hop. You know, I used to work in a dental practice that it was a heavy retirement community and we had a lot of, them in Arizona snowbirds. And so we had a lot of winter visitors and they were just special hoppers. We would see somebody on, you know, one new patient special that we were running at the time and we'd never see them again or we'd see them three years later trying to use another special.   always going to happen. So work really hard and aim to create systems that work for the patients that you want to keep. Who's your patient avatar that you're trying to attract to your practice? What will they appreciate about your communication about your systems? And don't be afraid to lose some patience to make room for the patients that will appreciate the systems you're putting into place. So that's my caveat. And to create that value. really Dana, that word that you use   there is spot on because that's really what it's all about. We're creating value, which creates retention and we're, we're selling not only a product, a dental product, we're selling a filling, right, but we're also selling an emotional product of how are they feeling when they're in our practice and our systems boil down to create to   being there to create feelings, to evoke emotions in patients so that they do see the value in that product that you're selling. So handoffs, you guys might hear this constantly. If you've ever listened to any podcast, NDTR, if you ever want to hear Dana and I talk about it, there's probably about 50. So go type in NDTR, Next Visit Date, Time, Recare. It's literally the perfect handoff situation. It's something we've used for years. It was something that and I trialed many years ago.   And it's worked so well in so many practices to turn around case acceptance, to turn around scheduling, and to really just turn around communication between front and back office that we continue to harp on it. So go type in NDTR on our website, TheDentalATeam.com. When you go to podcasts, you can search NDTR.   ⁓ And I think treatment planning in general. So making sure those handoffs are right, treatment planning. And I think Dana too, like I stress to practices to treat re-care appointments very similarly. Like it's so easy to get into that routine of like, okay, let's just, let's schedule your next six months real quick. We'll pop it on the schedule. You can let me know as it gets in or, don't worry, they're scheduled. And it's like, we haven't built any value.   In my, we built the value of the appointment hygienist, like the value that you have built during that appointment 100%, but that patient has to remember to evoke that feeling in six months from now to keep that appointment on the schedule. So how are we building and creating that value for those appointments even thereafter? So Dana, like NDTR.   treatment planning, and then how do you suggest and how did you maybe even as a hygienist build that value for those re-care appointments when they're coming three, four, six months later?   Dana (19:25) Yeah, I see it all the time. And I do think NDTR builds in some value in that and I've been getting a lot of doctors question like, hey, why do I have to ask about their re care? Right? Well, that is that is your chance to build value as the doctor that not only do I need to see you for that treatment, but it's super important to me as the doctor to see you in six months or whatever your regimented cleaning time is. So there is that but then I would use this as a hygienist myself every single patient before I scheduled.   Tiffanie (19:47) Yep.   Dana (19:55) They were given a reason why I needed to see them back. Right? So even my regular six months, and I learned this from an amazing coach, right? So I'm not even going to take credit for it, but it's something that like I did routinely that I instill in all of my hygiene teams that I work with. And that is every patient has to leave with a reason to return. Even if that is, my gosh, Mr. Smith, seeing you every six months has kept you looking so good. We need to make sure we keep that up.   Tiffanie (20:01) ⁓ I that.   Thank   Dana (20:25) Let's get your next six month appointment scheduled. Even if Mr. Smith has zero issues, concerns, anything, right? Then my people with concerns, that's even more so. All right, so I need you to work on that flossing technique. We did have a fair amount of bleeding this time. My goal for you the next time you come in six months is you've been able to really target that in and we've got that bleeding reduced. I can't wait to see you in six months to check on it.   Tiffanie (20:27) Beautiful.   Dana (20:49) Right, so when giving them it's not just like let's get your routine appointment scheduled No, there is a reason why every single patient needs to be back in my chair at the recommended interval and   Sometimes too we would put little notes and it helped the front office, right? Hey, I know Dana really wanted to keep you on that six months She said you were looking so good last time. Is there any way we can make today work, right? So it was in my auto note I always put it in there and help the front office then they gave them the reason right? Hey, don't forget Dana wanted to check those bleeding points. How's that flossing going? Let's get you in today Let's make sure you're here so she can double check on that so it's something that I have used religiously and that I feel like truly does because   we do see that hygiene appointments, right? That's where a lot of the cancellations happen and that's because it's just the routine cleaning, right? Or the routine preventive. And so building that value in hygiene and you can do it with something so simple as just something you need to check on the next time that they're there.   Tiffanie (21:48) Yeah, my gosh, Dana, was stop the podcast. That was all they needed. It's brilliant. Thank you. I love that. So I think that in itself is huge because that that went into the confirmations that went into saving the appointments and the pre scheduling. So I think that was huge, Dana, that little nugget was more than we could have ever asked for. Thank you.   Thank you. So, systems, guys, NDTR, go look it up, treatment planning. I love this idea of making sure every patient, whether they're coming in on doctor's schedule, whether they're coming in on hygiene schedule, they have a reason to come back. And remember, I mean, gosh, it makes perfect sense because...   your patients are coming back on your your dental schedule and your doctor's schedule because they have a reason because they have decay, broken tooth, missing tooth, whatever the case may be. So find that reason for their re care as well. And I love that you pointed out even the healthy patients you were like, let's keep this up. Let's keep that going. I can say I had my eye exam the other day and he was fantastic. And he was like, gosh, yeah, it hasn't changed a lot from last like he was just bringing up so much information from the last time and like can't wait to see it again next time. I was like, wow, this guy actually in a very short amount of time, I think I spent   five minutes with the man, ⁓ massive amounts of trust build and value. I truly will not go to another eye doctor as long as I can go to him. So just building that value, doesn't have to take a long time.   It just has to be massive amounts of value. So make sure you're under TR treatment planning, make sure there's a reason for them coming back. They're always scheduled to come back. Confirmations are in place and make sure that you're tracking your cancellation rates, you guys, and really seeing what the impact on the business is and sharing that with your team so that everyone's super aware. This awareness is meant to bring light to trends.   It is not meant to be a you guys suck, this is where we're at. It's a hey, this result sucks. Why is this happening? Let's look at our systems. I tell my teams all the time and I think Dana, you do too. I don't want you doing something that's not working. That is such a waste of time and I...   would gouge my own eyes out, I could not. There's no way I could live life like that. I did not expect other people to as well. So when we track these metrics, when we're looking at these trends, my goal is to ensure that we're only doing things that are getting the right results. And when we're not getting the results we want, we change the system because it's clearly not working. And when a team knows that that's   what we're looking for. I'm not looking at you that you suck unless you literally refuse to use the system. I'm not looking at you. I'm looking at the system. The system and the results are what we're tackling. We're not tackling people. We're never tackling each other. So   Dana (24:24) Thank   Tiffanie (24:34) Go into it that way. Track those cancellations. Look at the real cost to the business and then look at the systems that you have in place. Are you adding enough value to those appointments through your handoffs, through your treatment planning, through your discussions on why they need to come back and then through your confirmations. Are your confirmations working? we lax it easy asking and are we keeping a good schedule? Huge, huge. You will get back.   what you give. So make sure that what you're giving is freaking excellent. And Dana, thank you so much. That was a wonderful podcast. That was so many amazing nuggets. You guys go back, listen again, take notes. I'm telling you, Dana's brain, I always get something new out of it. Years and years later, consulting side by side, you still just always drop something on me that I'm like, dang, all my practices need to hear that. So Dana, thank you for being here with me today.   Dana (25:29) Yeah, thanks for having me as always.   Tiffanie (25:31) Of course, you know, I'll steal you anytime I can get you. So awesome, everyone. Go listen, take notes, go do the things, start tracking your cancellations, look at those systems and really start seeing the cost and the value that you're perceiving. Okay. Any questions?   Reach out to us, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com, if you need checkers, if you need more information on any of the things that we talked about, if you're interested in learning how to have someone like Dana give you amazing tips like that all the time, just off the cuff, please reach out. We are here for you guys. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. You can reach us.   on our website www.TheDentalATeam.com. We make it really, really easy for you guys. So reach out to us and drop us a five star review. We want to hear how amazing you thought Dana's nuggets were today. Thank you all. We'll catch you next time.