Podcasts about SRP

Happy National Lineman Appreciation Day to all our Line Life Podcast listeners! To celebrate all the hard-working lineworkers out there, we are releasing a special episode today focused on Arthur William Muñoz, a journeyman lineworker for Salt River Project (SRP) in Arizona. He has been in the trade for 23 years and progressed from a trades helper to a lead lineman and working foreman to a section supervisor. During this episode, Art talks about what it was like to win the "David G. Hollis Award for Outstanding Apprentice at SRP," overcome his fear of heights to scale the 80-ft "Godzilla" pole and restore power following monsoons and microbursts.  He is also one of several SRP lineworkers who has volunteered his time and skillset for the Light Up Navajo project. For 2025, SRP sent two crews to the Navajo Nation to join lineworkers from 44 utility companies across 20 states. The volunteer lineworkers are connecting homes to the grid in remote areas of the Navajo Nation, where 70% of all US households without power are located. Of the 56,000 homes on the Navajo Nation, about 10,470, or about 25%, do not have electricity.   To learn more about Light Up Navajo VI, look for a future article in T&D World magazine and listen to the audio stories in our ICYMI series for our Line Life Podcast. Thanks for listening!

Happy National Lineman Appreciation Day to all our Line Life Podcast listeners! To celebrate all the hard-working lineworkers out there, we are releasing a special episode today focused on Arthur William Muñoz, a journeyman lineworker for Salt River Project (SRP) in Arizona. He has been in the trade for 23 years and progressed from a trades helper to a lead lineman and working foreman to a section supervisor. During this episode, Art talks about what it was like to win the "David G. Hollis Award for Outstanding Apprentice at SRP," overcome his fear of heights to scale the 80-ft "Godzilla" pole and restore power following monsoons and microbursts.  He is also one of several SRP lineworkers who has volunteered his time and skillset for the Light Up Navajo project. For 2025, SRP sent two crews to the Navajo Nation to join lineworkers from 44 utility companies across 20 states. The volunteer lineworkers are connecting homes to the grid in remote areas of the Navajo Nation, where 70% of all US households without power are located. Of the 56,000 homes on the Navajo Nation, about 10,470, or about 25%, do not have electricity.   To learn more about Light Up Navajo VI, look for a future article in T&D World magazine and listen to the audio stories in our ICYMI series for our Line Life Podcast. Thanks for listening!

Tiff and Dana walk through different dental departments and share ideas many practices have used to keep things green, including reconsidering which items actually need to be disposable, reducing paper, reusing plastic, and more. Episode resources: Sign up for Dental A-Team's Virtual Summit 2025! Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:02) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. I'm so excited to be here with you again. You know that I am just always so happy to bring Dana on the set with us and be here with you. We love sharing our tips. We love sharing our tricks. We love sharing our, I don't know, workout gear with you and all of the pieces and just sharing our lives with you. So we are both so excited to be here today. Dana, thank you for always being on board, for hopping on, for jumping in on any conversation. I know I spin you.   and throw you in some directions that you're not always expecting. So thank you for keeping up with me and knowing how to roll with the punches. How are you on this fine, fine afternoon?   Dana (00:42) Doing good. I'm excited to be here. You know you're right. You keep me on my toes. I never really know what you're going to throw at me, but I leave with a smile on my face and having loved it. So I'm excited to be here too.   The Dental A Team (00:48) That's true.   Perfect.   And now clients and non-clients and listeners here, you guys know that this is truly unscripted from our brains. We come up with topics, but we do riff here and we really pick each other's brains and really come up with solutions for things just the same as we do on your coaching calls. So when you guys bring stuff like this to us clients, this is how we roll. And for anyone who is wondering,   We do have conversations like this outside of the podcast world as well, as consultants are constantly talking to one another about things that we're seeing in practices, things we're experiencing when I need something, maybe I don't have an answer for it. Cause you guys, I know this is going to sound crazy and wild, but we do not know everything. I know it's a shocker. It's a shocker, but combined between all of us, we've got it pretty well handled. So if there's something I don't know,   or have questions on, I definitely, definitely throw it to my ladies and get those answers for you guys. So rest assured everyone, we're constantly collaborating just like we tell you to collaborate and we're constantly growing and learning ourselves. So Dana, thanks for being one of those beautiful ladies behind the scenes for me on so many occasions and I'm excited for today's topic. I...   I just barely prepped you with it, but it sounds like you've recently had a conversation like this with a practice and I'm excited for it. So think it's really something that has been coming around the dental scene for probably the past 10 or more even years, but really strong recently. listeners, we're going to talk today on some eco-friendly dental practice methods. And that doesn't just mean dentistry, but really a lot of the products and just what are we doing?   new out there right now to really go green and a lot of the practices and Dana with your conversation that you've just had with your practice recently I know you've got a lot of hot tips and tricks and there are other practices out there we both talked to as well but what do you have for us today on on that like what eco-friendly things did you guys chat about on that call?   Dana (03:04) Yeah, and I think that it is just coming up with ways any ways that we can reuse, reduce and recycle things right When it comes to eco friendly offices And the biggest thing in dentistry is our disposables, right? So what are the things that we have that are disposables? Can we find a recyclable option? Or that we can reduce the number of disposable items that we're using or eliminate them altogether if it is, you know,   The Dental A Team (03:10) Yeah.   Dana (03:31) I'm all about sanitation, infection control, all of those things. But I think COVID put us in a little bit of like a redundancy mode in some of those areas. And so I feel like in the last 4 years, our disposables have gone up a ton. And our infection control, while those standards are great, I think even above and beyond what is really needed. And so I think it's just finding ways to navigate those things. And we tend to like put plastic over everything and just use   things that aren't super eco-friendly to keep like sanitization standards. And so we don't want to give up on those things, but there are a lot of new products and new technologies and things that we can use that aren't necessarily disposable like we're so used to them being.   The Dental A Team (04:19) Yeah.   Yeah,   I love all of that. I totally agree with you and I hope everyone got the 90s child reference, the late 80s 90s child reference there, reduced, recycle. If everyone could see the commercial and hear the song, I would be even happier right now. I think it needs to come back. I agree. I do love the fact that you mentioned the disposable pieces and like the plastics on everything. And it's funny because I've   Dana (04:32) Did you love it?   The Dental A Team (04:50) I've done it myself and I've watched people put the plastics on and then take the plastics off and then like we're scrubbing everything still and so it's like gosh that's that redundancy space that is it necessary and is it always necessary for every appointment too?   know, because my implant placement appointment or extraction or perio surgery or SRP even is going to be a little messier, we'll say. It's going to look a little different than my limited exam with a PA where I'm not actually infiltrating any tooth structure whatsoever and everything's very clean. So are we taking that into consideration too, which I think leads into exactly where you said like, are we taking inventory of the disposables that we're using? Because do we need to   to   do we need to have disposable air water syringes? Number one, is that completely necessary? And do we need it on both air waters for the limited exam because they're both gonna be removed likely and tossed out after that appointment, especially if you've got.   sterile tech or another dental assistant or anybody coming into the room because they don't know what you touched and so they're going to dispose of anything that's disposable. So I think just taking into consideration too what the next appointment is.   what's actually necessary and only putting out the things that are necessary. for doctors listening, this definitely is an overhead situation. It's going to help supply cost immensely. But for everyone who's listening, this is a reduce, reuse, recycle situation of we've got to save the dang planet, you guys. We've got to do what we can to really make sure that we're not filling those landfills with unnecessary debris and that we're really doing the best that we can for the people that are.   the people that are here.   I think I still see Dana when I go in offices, I still see, you know, those dental assistants running around there. And I was this person, they just grabbed, you know, we've got a filling coming up and I just grab a stack of two by two by two. So just grab a stack or the hygienist, right? Just grab a stack instead of like, how many do I actually need? And my doctor, realistically, we only need two. If I'm cleaning off your instrument, you're passing it, you know, you, you pack the composite in there and I need to clean the instrument off before you pack more composite.   it's not going to take this whole stack. I'm never using all of those. And if I do need more, then I can get more. It's available. And same with hygiene, right? When you're going through and scaling, like you don't need a massive stack in most cases. You probably need two to four, I would assume, to really keep your instruments clean. So even just as simple as that. Now, Dana, I...   On the same subject, right, eco-friendly, what are you seeing practices do within the front office with paper? I know paper's always been a big thing. And then COVID happened. And like, I think we got paper crazy again, which was the exact opposite of what I thought would happen, but we got paper crazy again. And what are you seeing offices do now to try to combat that and switch things back around?   Dana (07:58) Yeah, and I think it is. just going back to making sure that they're doing medical histories, like sending those to patients ahead of time and doing them electronically, doing their consents electronically when patients walk in, you know, using the iPads for new patient information, for treatment planning and presenting. So there's a lot of ways and not only, think that a lot of this is there's kind of like another benefit to it, right? We can switch everything to electronic, which is also going to save us a fair amount of time.   I was just in a practice recently and they were like, Hey, we're clocking a lot of overtime. And I'm like, front office, like, what are we doing with our overtime? And I'm not kidding you. They looked at me and said, well, we spend about two hours at the end of the day shredding. And I was just like, wait, what? So not only right, are we being eco-friendly by eliminating paperwork, we're truly eliminating work from our team two hours every day spent on shredding.   The Dental A Team (08:38) Yeah, I knew you were going to say that. I had an office last week that said the same thing.   Dana (08:54) then we're paying a shredding company to come and take our shreddables too. So it's like you said, it helps with supply costs and it helps with costs and it truly also buys us back time while also serving the environment and being really, you know, as eco-friendly in those instances as possible.   The Dental A Team (08:57) Yeah.   Totally, totally agree. I literally had an office just, I think it was two weeks ago now, Trish and I went to an office and they had a massive shred pile and I was like, what are we shredding? Like, what do we have to shred if we're getting insurance verifications, like download it on the PC and then upload it into the document center, like all these different spaces. So being efficient and being innovative is gonna be huge. How can we reduce the amount of paper that we're using, the amount of ink that we're using, because those ink cartridges, they gotta be thrown.   away somewhere and they have to be picked up like it's this whole process just for ink cartridges. One space I know I work with a lot of teams on is route slips because yes yes yes yes to route slips. I want route slips but it doesn't mean it has to be individually printed every time. I have plenty of practices that do that and prefer it. I'm totally fine with it. I don't care what you guys decide to do but I have a lot of practices actually that pre-print   they'll print what they want a route slip to look like and then laminate it and they fill that out per patient. And so the night before or...   day of whatever, they fill these route slips out just the same as they would have printed them and then they're setting them on the counter. Most of the time it's like patient name, type of appointment and any balance that they might have. And then the back office is then filling out that NDTR space, the next visit date, time, re-care. And so there's really not a whole lot of extra that you need on your route slip. They should be pretty simple. If you've got, I have a lot of practices that have a lot of checklists and check systems on their route slips.   and I'm totally fine if you want them there. Again, I don't have a huge preference, but they're not necessary. I do think if you need an appointment check system, then maybe make a separate sheet that's laminated per appointment that the dental assistant or hygienist can keep and check off for that appointment, especially if you're gonna do the laminated version so the front office doesn't feel like they're filling a ton out as well.   route slips, I agree, any kind of forms or documents that you can automate and make them put them online, make sure all of your stuff is on your website, make sure that the forms are being texted and emailed to your patients prior like this is 2025. remember, gosh, I remember way back in like, how to be like 2009 2010. My doctor that I worked for was like one of the first doctors to he was always he's very innovative. So he's one of the doctors that's always got   the next best tech thing. And I remember way back in 2009, 2010, he came to me and he was like, we're doing a kiosk, Dent, a Dentrix has a kiosk, and everyone's going to check in on this little computer on this little desk in the corner. And it's going to automatically put the paperwork into our system. And it's going to be amazing. And I was like, no, it's not. And it was so clunky, and it was so hard, and so difficult. So   to my men and women of 2025 in the dental industry. If you didn't get to experience the pains of getting to where we are today, and you think today's paperwork is difficult, I have stories to tell you. It was ugly. It was so hard. Everyone hated it. It never transferred. It never uploaded correctly. Patients hated it. It was embarrassing. Oh my gosh, the day and age we live in today of automation just blows my mind. So every time   Dana (12:23) Thanks   The Dental A Team (12:37) I walk into a practice and they're like, it's too hard. I'm like, let me tell you and we get it done. So just go get it done guys. Dana, do you remember that? Were you one of those offices?   Dana (12:47) yeah. Yep. Yeah. And you know, I I'm all about like being on top of tech and being but sometimes I'm like, let's let it work its kinks out. Let's let it work its kinks out before we're like, maybe man number one on it.   The Dental A Team (12:53) Yes.   Yes.   Literally, think yeah,   I think that the the rep just got to him and we were like one of the first I swear and I was like, oh for the love doctor and I'm like 20, you know 20 maybe 23 I guess back 23 24 back then but I'm just like baby I felt like like I don't know how to do this. Like are you kidding me? barely I I   was using dial-up in high school, okay? This kiosk, less than 10 years later, is blowing my mind. I can't, I can't with this kiosk, but today it's much different. So there's everyone, in case anyone wanted to know my age or how much of a...   Grandma, I am when it comes to tech, there's your answers. Dial up and kiosks and it was a pain and today I finally feel confident today with Canva and I've been working on that for I feel like two years. So here we are, here we are. But and then.   Dana (13:54) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (13:57) On the space of eco-friendly, I think those are really, really fantastic ways. I've also heard, I don't have all the stats and the answers on it, but I do know that there's been a lot of research by a lot of doctors on different like vacuum systems for the suctions and different, I know there's a dry and a wet and one or the other, right? They both have their pros and their cons, but making sure those two, if you do find yourself in a situation where you need to replace your system, I know I've got a doctor that's working on that right now.   actually making sure you do your due diligence and research on that because there is a way per the stats at least to save a ton of water with the dry system and so I know even down to those pieces or a lot of the new data you might even know a lot of the more stats or whatever but a lot of the new   compressors and things are more energy efficient and lasting longer. It's kind of like the Energizer Bunny, like the batteries just keep getting better. So I know a lot of those spaces as well, and the hand pieces, electric, you know, motorized and all those different spaces. So there's a ton there. And Dana, what about for, I think hygiene department wise for you, what about the   Like the giveaway bags, all of those pieces, like what are you seeing practices do there?   Dana (15:17) Yeah, I've had a lot of offices either nix the bags all together and just kind of like bundle them or switch to like a paper bag versus a plastic bag. Also to there are a ton of eco friendly home care products coming out and I'm not advocating for them. I think do your research, make sure they meet your standards for your patient. But there's, know, bamboo toothbrushes, there are now recyclable toothpaste containers and you can be a recycling center for them. There are also toothpaste tablets that like you just refill you can just get a sachet.   The Dental A Team (15:25) Yeah.   That's cool.   Dana (15:46) fancy words, Hachet, of the little tablets and you put them in your plastic container. So you just reuse that plastic container over and over again. So there's all kinds of eco-friendly home care products too that you can consider switching to. Just reduce waste, you know, from a patient perspective too. So I think all of those things are worth taking a look at.   The Dental A Team (15:46) I do like that.   Dana (16:08) Again, making sure as long as they meet the standards of your office and what you want your patient to utilize them for, if you can opt for an eco-friendly version and it's something that you're wanting to incorporate more of, I say go for it.   The Dental A Team (16:20) Yeah, I love the toothpaste that you mentioned. know I've seen one of the hygienists that's been in my life. does a lot of, she just does a lot of this stuff and she does a lot of posting about it. And she posts the powder that comes in the little jar, right? Like, gosh, that's brilliant because you like the sachet, right? You're refilling that jar. And so it's a glass jar that you're refilling with the powder and you're just getting your toothbrush wet, dipping it in the powder and then brushing your teeth. And you just think about how many   Dana (16:33) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (16:50) tubes of toothpaste run through your household, just your one household, how many tubes of toothpaste are thrown away on average, right? Probably somewhere between two to six a year, I can imagine, right? At least two to six a year for every household. If you can   teach your patients and educate your patients about products like that, that do work, do your research, right? I don't know which product was, I did not do the research on it, right? I did not buy it, I will do more research, but like do your research like Dana said and advocate for something you believe in, but make sure you're educating your patients too. So maybe you've got those things on hand at the dental practice, maybe those companies have disposable ones that you can give out.   Dana (17:18) you   The Dental A Team (17:38) And I've had a lot of practices too that have done away with like the bags and really they each time just ask the patient like, hey, do you use the disposable toothbrush? A lot of our patients, you guys, we've sold them electric toothbrushes. So a lot of our patients aren't using disposable toothbrushes. And I can tell you, most of the time those disposable toothbrushes are used for the guest bathroom for when somebody comes and forgot their toothbrush, right? That's what I did with them. That's what I do with them. That's where they are.   Dana (17:50) That's for sure.   The Dental A Team (18:06) So making sure we're asking those questions and only giving those things out as necessary because eventually they do go into the landfills and all those spaces. So take a look, look at what you can do, how you can make things a little better. Like can we install, I know in the house I'm like use the fans guys, like don't turn the AC on yet. I know it's.   96 degrees today. I hear you. I'm in Phoenix. I get it. But I'm like, none of the fans in the household are on and we're cranking the AC. Come on, like how can we be how can we be more economic and eco friendly in every aspect. So I think there's a lot of space in it for the dental in the dental practice. And then there's a lot of space for us to really educate our patients on how they can carry that through into their own homes. Yeah, Dana.   What do you think, I'm gonna do this to you again, what do you think are some good actionable items, especially because you just chatted with your own practice that you consult, what do you think are some good action items, some easy things that they can consider either watching or switching out or whatever that they can take away from today's chat?   Dana (19:10) Yeah, I think first thing is just review your disposables, right? Is it necessary to use all of the things that you use? And is there there, you know, one that you can sterilize or you can reuse alternative? Make sure we're looking at just paper waste, right? How much have we shifted or can we shift electronically? It'll just help with efficiency too. So this is a win win on both sides. So take a look at paper use in the practice and then do some research on some eco-friendly products and see if your office is a good fit for them.   The Dental A Team (19:39) I love it. I love it.   Thank you, Dana. Thank you for taking this adventure with me today. I was so happy to hear that you had just had this conversation with a practice recently, so that makes it very simple. So thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you, everyone here for listening. As always, we appreciate, value you. We are here for all of the things and we're here to support you. So drop us a five-star review. Always let us know if there's any topic you wish that we would talk about. Dana and I will get right on it. I promise you that. We need the ideas, you guys. So thank you. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com   Hello@TheDentalATeam.com and we'll catch you next time.  

Mene svrgnuti znači počiniti rodosvrgnuće, jer ja – više nego svi pobunjeni studenti, profesori, dekani i rektor zajedno – volim svakog pravog Srbina, svaku meni lojalnu Srpkinju, o Srpčadi da i ne govorim!

Mene svrgnuti znači počiniti rodosvrgnuće, jer ja – više nego svi pobunjeni studenti, profesori, dekani i rektor zajedno – volim svakog pravog Srbina, svaku meni lojalnu Srpkinju, o Srpčadi da i ne govorim!

Brenda Burman, general manager of the Central Arizona Project (CAP), shares her background and insights from her time as Administrator of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. She provides a deep dive into CAP's history, infrastructure, and its critical role in delivering Colorado River water to Arizona. Brenda discusses the economic impact of this water, the causes behind current shortages, and what that means for the state's future. She also addresses potential challenges related to energy supply, cybersecurity threats, and water quality protection. Highlighting CAP's use of artificial intelligence to safeguard infrastructure, she shares updates on a major project to link CAP and SRP canals and introduces CAP University—an online resource for public education and legislative updates. Podcast Recorded on March 27, 2025

From the studio that brought you "Pick & Drive" comes SCRUMBAGS - your one stop shop for everything Aussie Rugby!New Zealand's depth is again called to question as Australia rule the SRP top six - should the Kiwis be forced into dropping a team after their horror start? Perhaps the Blues could play NPC?Meanwhile it's wet dream stuff for Mitch and Lachie after the Tahs and Reds bank important wins while the Force earn their flowers after a 52-15 thumping of Fijian Drua.The boys also break down the penultimate round of Super Rugby Women's with Tahs in the box seat to wrap up the minor premiership after the Force's bonus-point win while ACT's season is all but over following their home loss to Queensland.It's also SRP form XV time with Aussie sides fielding the lion's share! SOCIALSInstagram - @scrumbagsrugbyTwitter/X - @scrumbagsrugbyJoin the chat via Discord - https://discord.gg/GMRPqyy7Keep the lights on - https://ko-fi.com/scrumbagsrugbypodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Block scheduling can transform your productivity into profitability. Kiera makes the implementation as easy as 1, 2, 3: Identify your practice's production goals. Design your ideal block schedule. Implement, train, and track. Episode resources: Sign up for Dental A-Team's Virtual Summit 2025! Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript kiera Dent (00:02.36) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today, I just really wanted to dive into, are you truly tired of missing production goals? Because if you are, block scheduling is honestly the secret to hitting them consistently with ease. And I know this is something that's talked about so often. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to break this down into three easy steps to make sure that you're able to do this with your team in a fun, effective, and just like overall amazing way for you.   Block scheduling can truly transform your productivity into profitability. And it's something as simple as doing a quick puzzle in your practice where we're able to add the pieces, have an incredible patient experience, incredible team experience, incredible doctor experience. And to me, that's a win-win-win. So for that, these three steps are going to really make it easy for you and your team to...   chunk this down into a tactical practical way. You guys, I'm Kiera Dent, owner and CEO of the Dental A Team, a consulting company where we are committed to not just understanding you, but actually being you. All of our consultants have worked in every position in the practice where we're able to understand what it's like to not be able to hit productivity goals, to schedule with no frustration, to have cancellations that are dropping off on us, to where we know what it's like to lose team members. All of those things are something that our Dental A Team   consultants are experts at and something that I'm really really proud of as a company because I know that when we understand you we're not just coming to you with theories and ideas but actual tips that have been proven, tried, consistent across hundreds of offices in all the states in multiple different countries to make sure that we're giving you guys efficiency that helps your team stay focused. So this is gonna be able to help you guys out and today it's gonna be short and actionable because I want you guys to able to take what we talk about and implement it today.   So step one is going to be identify your practices production goals. Now that what we got to do is we've got to look to see what did our practice produce last year and a healthy standard benchmark is that we want to actually be increasing a minimum of 10 % year over year. We also want to make sure that we've increased our fee schedules every single year and most practices go up about 5%. Now, if you're concerned about that with your fee for service patients or your out of pocket patients, I want to just remind you that this is standard across the board with most businesses to increase 5%.   Kiera Dent (02:14.402) And if you wanna keep those preventative ones out, by all means go for it. I just wanna be able to remind you that by doing so, when we actually send our statements out to insurance and we bill out to insurance, it actually helps the insurance companies determine what the fee should be within our area. So I wanna make sure that we're not missing opportunities and possibly a membership plan could actually help our patients when we're concerned about those preventative services. So make sure that we know what we need to do for that 10 % growth.   make sure we understand how many days we're off in the practice. So I like to go through every single month. What are the vacations? What are the holidays? What are the times off? What are our high and low months across the board? I know for some pediatric practices, our certain months in the year are actually not great, but our summer months are incredible. I know for other areas based on where they are, they get a lot of snowfall in February. So February actually becomes a terrible month for them. There's also other offices where there's a notorious, suck timber or slam dunk September.   where we actually have a dip right after school gets back in session. So knowing those trends are actually gonna be able to know your practice's production goals to be able to hit them successfully. And while yes, this might take a little time for us to go through, map these things out, what it What it it does is it actually helps us go through and see what does our production need to be? How can we realistically hit it based on the days that we're working? What does each day need to be? What does each provider goal need to be for our doctors and our hygienists? And then we're able to actually bring all that information together.   and make a perfect puzzle for us. And then we start to place it into place. So when an office does this, usually I'm seeing a minimum of a 10 % increase, but oftentimes I'm seeing a 10, 20, 30, 40 % increase year over year. I've added multiple millions to practices and our consultants have done as well just by effective block scheduling where we're not increasing the new patients. We're not changing the hours that they're working. We're not adding more days for them to work. We're just being very consistent with how they actually schedule. And it's like I said, it's a puzzle.   I can put in five puzzle pieces of one type, or I can do five different puzzle pieces. Again, I put five puzzle pieces in same amount of time in a day, but I'm actually able to make a thousand dollars versus a $5,000 a day. It was crazy. had an office that I went into and I remember they had never been scheduled to 10, $10,000 in a day. And so when I went in and I showed them, here's how we can actually do 10,000, I scheduled them to 10,000 the next day. What was wild was the day I was there, they were producing 4,000.   Kiera Dent (04:35.778) The next day I scheduled them to 10,000 showing them how to do this. And at the end of the $10,000 day, they looked at me high-fiving. We were out the door on time and they said, Kiera, that was actually easier than our day was yesterday when we only produced 4,000. And I said, it was just with blocks. It was just with us being strategic of where we put people as being intentional. And from there, we were actually able to be productive. So just helping you guys see, we've got to figure out what our specific production goals are before we restructure the schedule. That's step number one.   Step number two is design your ideal block schedule. Some doctors like to start early in the day with a crown. Some like to start later in the day with their crowns. Whatever it is, we need to design it of where do we actually want these to be? And I like high value, follow ups, zero dollar appointments. And instead of just saying a crown, I actually like to build a block schedule based on dollar amounts. Like I said, it's puzzle pieces. So that way if a crown or a quad of fills comes through, I know there are 1500 or a thousand, whatever it is, they're going into this block.   Blocks are held for us for 24 to 48 hours, pending upon your practice to make sure we're able to put the puzzle piece in that we want. We're able to actually map it out and we're able to then tell patients when they're coming up, hey, Dr. Smith likes to do crowns in the morning. I have an eight o'clock or a nine o'clock on Monday or Wednesday, which do you prefer? Now I'm not asking the patient, where do you wanna go? I'm literally asking the patient, this is what we do. This is where I can put you. This is how we do it. What works best for you?   We actually eliminate a lot of the excuses. We eliminate a lot of the frustration and we're directing and guiding the patient rather than trying to come back after they've told us they want a four o'clock when our doctor really doesn't do crowns at four o'clock. This is going to help you exponentially build the blocks. Also, I'm not putting implants and fillings next door to each other because that can get tricky. I'm not doing two crowns back to back where I can't see it. We're literally building a puzzle that our doctors can actually do. All of us get our lunches. All of us get out on time.   Doctors can get over to their hygiene exams. So I'm also then playing Sudoku across the board where I've got my doctor procedures, my new patients and my SRPs. Square up your SRPs and your implants. So that way the doctor can literally get the implant done and not have to go do the hygiene checks. It's a way for us to truly make a puzzle that's 80 to 90 % effective and efficient. So when we do that, that's step two of design our ideal block schedule and build that out. Now, the way I do this is I draft block schedules in Google Sheets.   Kiera Dent (06:58.242) So in Excel, map it out of what the perfect amount is, put the dollar amounts there of what this is actually going to equate to for the day, and then figure out where my hygiene blocks need to be. I need to also figure out the number of new patients that we're seeing, the number of SRP and the number of perio maintenance blocks that I also need to add into my schedule to make sure I have enough hygiene hours to accommodate the patients that we have in there. So that's in how we're gonna draft this up. So that's gonna be what you'll need to do next is draft a block schedule template for your practice that will actually be effective.   And then step three is to implement it, train our team and track our progress. So what we do is we then go put it into place. I understand that hygiene is usually blocked out six months. And so that does take a little bit longer to get into place, but our doctors can get their blocks put in right away. And we need to train our team, put those blocks in, educate them of what do we do when a patient wants a four o'clock, but we only do crowns at two o'clock. And I want to just remind you that an ideal schedule for our doctor is an amazing schedule for our patients.   us being on time, us being happy as a team, us having our doctor fresh and prepped and ready to go is so much better for these patients than us like trying to shove them in because the reality is patients can adapt the schedule as long as we're using our words, which are free to be able to put our patients where we want them to go. So how do we do this? So we host a team meeting, we explain the block schedules, we assign a point person who's going to oversee and implement, and then we actually help them make sure of...   What happens when we put this in a block when we're not supposed to? What's the follow-up? And I really get offices to work on this for six weeks to two months where we are rock solid on this. And then we come back and we adjust it after that. So when I've done this, there was an office and they were producing about 2 million a year. We put in block schedule, like I said, no extra days, no extra time. So we went from 2 million up to 3.5 million simply by being effective with our time with block schedules. To me, that's a wild growth. We have gone   Exponentially, we've gone from 2 million to 3.5 just by putting these blocks in. were like, Kiera, patients are happier. Our team is happier. We're having our lunches on time. Our doctors are getting out on time. And to me, I just feel if those are the wins, then amazing, this is worth it. So for you getting your team excited about it, helping them see like, understand teams don't like change. Why do you think I love being the Dental A Team where we do this in a fun and effective way? I love to do this because I help teams see what's possible when it feels impossible.   Kiera Dent (09:18.488) helping them see where we can create ease when there's chaos, helping them see how we can be more efficient rather than cumbersome. So the reality is block scheduling is going to change your life. It's going to help you be effectively productive. It's going to help you hit your goals with ease. One of my favorite quotes is by Walt Disney where he says that he was able to create predictable magic because of the systems behind the scenes. And so for you to be able to create predictable production with the systems behind the scenes of block scheduling to me is a gift that you can give yourself and your team this year.   So what I want you guys to know is this is going to honestly simplify your productivity and give you guys goals to be able to hit them with ease. You don't have to be perfect. We have those snow days. We have the slow summer days. We have the December that's only two weeks. We have all these different things put in so we know exactly what we need our blocks to be. And then we're able to hit our goals with ease and more consistency. I really don't love having success be happenstance where I'm like, will I get it or will I not? I like your success to be inevitable. And I believe that block scheduling is one of the greatest ways to do that.   So if you're interested, DMS or email us for a free block scheduling template, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com And as always, you guys, this is how we're able to help you run a successful dental practice with ease. I don't believe that running a practice should be hard. I believe that this could be easy. And I want you just to ask yourself, what if it could be easy? How would you feel? How would your team feel? How would your patients feel? Because that can be a reality. This is what the Dental A Team does. And if that's helpful for you, reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

Brian Bednar: a lifetime of service Join us for a special episode as we celebrate Brian Bednar, a true community champion, as he prepares to retire from SRP. With years of dedicated service, Brian has not only powered our communities but has also been a driving force behind impactful local initiatives. We reflect on his incredible journey, the legacy he leaves behind, and what's next for this passionate advocate of community engagement

It's This Week in Bourbon for March 7th, 2025. Willett Artist Series Vol. II goes on sale, there's a new british bourbon, and Woodford Reserve releases the Derby 151 bottle.Show Notes: Willett art-bourbon series launches, charity focused, King Saladeen designs. Trump tariffs impact Mexico, Canada; retaliatory tariffs follow. MGP sales decline 16%, refocusing on branded spirits. Lofted Spirits merges distilleries, emphasizes Kentucky bourbon. Southern Distilling rebrands contract division, Statesville Contract Distilling. Old Carter Whiskey sells for $20.5M+ in global auction. British distillery launches "grain to bottle" bourbon, defying tariffs. High West Bourye 2025: Rye, bourbon blend, 10-year, $124.99 SRP. Penelope Rio: Honey, Amburana oak finish, 98 proof, "carnival in a bottle." Orphan Barrel Fanged Pursuit: 17-year Kentucky bourbon, non-chill filtered, $200 SRP. Buzzard's Roost French Oak Batch 2: Precision-toasted stave finish, $85 SRP. Woodford Reserve 2025 Derby Bottle: Lahera art, Kentucky Derby tribute, $49.99 SRP. Support this podcast on Patreon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kiera and Britt continue their conversation from episode 958, Hiring Hygienists in Today's Economy, by discussing the shifting landscape of hygiene. This includes the pros and cons of assisted hygiene, shortened appointments, practices without hygienists, and more. Episode resources: Sign up for Dental A-Team's Virtual Summit 2025! Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00.73) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and the one and only Brittany Stone coming back for part two of our hygiene conversation. welcome back. How are you?   Britt (00:09.332) It's always fun when you start off with my full name, so I'm like, alright, let's go!   Kiera Dent (00:12.304) It is funny. You do range from Britney, Britt, like no BS Britt to B. B has recently come in. How do you feel about just B? I hope it comes across as like nice, but then I realized like, B could be taken wrong. So I never say the, hey B.   Britt (00:28.75) You're not the only one. I'm fine with it because it's easy and I'm like shoot you grew up with the initials BS like what are you gonna do?   Kiera Dent (00:37.904) Well, I never want to like sometimes when I call you and I'm like, hey B and I'm like, I hope it lands as like, like love. Yeah. Yeah. It's not meant for any other letters. But Britt and I, if you didn't listen to our other podcasts, Britt and I were chatting shop about how to hide like hire hygienists in today's economy. And with Britt bringing a hygiene perspective, if you don't know, Britt used to be hygienist.   Britt (00:46.83) It's Brett. stands for Brett.   Britt (00:52.748) Yeah.   Kiera Dent (01:07.3) Great. How long has it been since you graduated from a hygiene school? Let's just give people your scene.   Britt (01:10.05) Kiera.   You're gonna age me a little bit here.   Kiera Dent (01:16.162) Okay, don't feel age. The only reason I asked for it, so before you answer, just know my reasoning so you don't have to answer. I was just thinking because I wanted people to know you've been in the field for like enough time to give weight to your answers. But maybe we don't need to do that. Maybe it's been there for longer than five years. Shut, I didn't even know. All right, well, you have been in it for a long time.   Britt (01:31.512) That's fine. Eighteen, Kiera, eighteen.   Britt (01:40.378) I'll say this, was a young graduate from high school, so I'll give you that. That pushed me a year ahead, but 07 is when I graduated, so this year we'll make it 18.   Kiera Dent (01:49.111) No way.   Kiera Dent (01:52.996) Dang girl, I didn't even know. Okay, so Britt really has a lot of weight and you did hygiene for, and then Britt went from hygiene to then office management of a pretty large DSO and then came consulting and now does consulting and operations. So.   Britt (02:06.38) Yeah, I did full-time hygiene for a decade. So I'm like a solid, five full-time, full-time, 40 hours for a decade.   Kiera Dent (02:09.21) Did you really?   Wow. Man, I really like there's some moments that I just see you as a hygienist. Like I can just picture you walking up with your like, it's not a swagger, but you have a can't that you definitely walk. And I can see you walking up, getting your patient. Hey B, how's your swagger? But.   Britt (02:28.11) You can call it swagger, I'll take swagger. don't know what else to   Kiera Dent (02:35.736) Yeah, so I'm like, just, could imagine you being a hygienist sometimes, but then you're like, Britt the consultant, Britt operations, Britt, my yin and yang. So anyway, well, that's fun. That's a fun. Okay. So to give Britt credit, she did hygiene for a decade. I won't say anything about loops, Britt. We will not discuss that on this episode. We will.   Britt (02:56.238) I mean, I just changed myself a little bit. you know, we talk about it. I would have to know if I was a full-time clinical, for sure.   Kiera Dent (03:01.752) Of course. Yeah, of course. I know you would. You don't, you stay very current. I do appreciate that you stay very current with hygiene. You attend hygiene CE all the time. So what we were talking about in the last episode that this would be part two of was we talked about kind of like, do we, how do we work with the compensation pieces of hygiene? And then talking about it from a business standpoint and a doctor standpoint and a hygienist standpoint.   and really bringing those two perspectives to the table, which is what the podcast has been built to do is bring different perspectives. And something I just want to reiterate today, if you missed the last one is that the things Britt and I talk about today are going to be perspectives and never meant to weaponize. So doctors, can't weaponize it against hygienists and hygienists, can't weaponize it against doctors. And so really just setting the stage today of let's have an open conversation around where are we at the dynamics. there's no.   there's no like hiding the fact that it has been hard to hire hygienists since COVID. It's it we thought that it would probably be four years, maybe five years before the hygiene shortage caught up. I still think it's in like massive catch up time, then you tack in inflation on it. So raise like the amount people are coming out asking from school, but I, I mean, I don't really want to ask, but I am going to ask I'm sure hygiene has been like   attempting field to go back into. I'm like, you work at Dental A Team but you've got hygiene over there. And it just keeps like getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I think if I was in your shoes, I might just contemplate it here and there, especially on days when it maybe isn't your favorite day at Dental A Team, which is hopefully like one and every moon. I know what happens. We just had it like a week ago.   Britt (04:31.822) Everybody's got a day there right like it happens but I Mean here's the I I love hygiene and I left it loving it so like that's the thing is I and I'm like I still go back I still double from time to time, but I'm going back full-time I The things that are appealing right hygienist know what do I love? It's like   Pretty predictable, right? Like you got a job, 100 % predictable, but my hours I'm gonna work, I know my schedule. If I can get the doctor to work with me, I can manage running on time. like, and then when I'm done at the end of the day, I go home and I don't have to take it. Like there's nothing for me to do outside of the office other than like learning stuff, but there's nothing to do outside. like, those are the, we know that those are the perks of hygiene.   Kiera Dent (05:02.692) That does fit you so much, Britt. The stability, the...   Britt (05:29.23) and that's part of why I loved it is because of those reasons. Do I debate going back? I don't know. I enjoy what I do now. It's different, right? Like you grow and you morph into different things and it's fun to take the next step. And can I go back to it? Sure. Would it be different? 100%.   Kiera Dent (05:47.888) Hahaha   fair. I was just curious because I mean, like I know I've looked at what I want to go back into management, what I want to go run a regional, what I want to run a DSO. And for me, there was like a lot of fun in it. There's a lot of fun in being in a system. But I think I agree with you. I feel like I have morphed and evolved into things that I really enjoy. Like I really enjoy the creativity aspect. Do I sometimes wish, Britt, like sometimes I do miss the like, go in, just like you know your day.   You don't have to like be thinking and creating nonstop and you leave at the end of the day and like, we're done, we're done versus here. Ideas will continue to, I mean, I saw you last night. You're building a whole spreadsheet, which is fun, but it never shuts off unlike at the dental office. So different, different times. But what we were wanting to chat about is we talked about compensation on the last one. And now it's coming into how can offices kind of like did a really great job of like paying your junior.   Britt (06:33.269) Yeah, yeah.   Kiera Dent (06:46.692) like fresh out of school and it's based on skill set, not based on longevity or tenure. Then we morphed into talking about what do we do for base versus commission if offices can't afford it and different ways to navigate that. And so I wanted to just kind of finish up that conversation with a few other ideas of what's hygiene's take as a landscape of assisted hygiene and shortened appointments. Because as we were discussing on the last episode,   it's kind of coming to this like necessity and survival mode for practices of like, hey, we're like running such a high number up for hygienists. So what this is truly called is innovation and things are changing and shifting and adapting due to the nature of lower reimbursement rates of insurance, inflation has come up, there's a hygiene crunch. So hygienists are coming up as a higher paid profession than what they were even four or five years ago. And so it's kind of like, well, what do we do?   what about assisted hygiene? What about shortened appointments so that way we can have more appointments? And again, I'm not here to advocate for it. I'm just saying like, this is the reality of what doctors are thinking of. And it's the thinking of this. They're also thinking of do I bring a doctor and instead of hiring a hygienist, they're thinking of do I do a hygiene less practice? So I'm just curious, let's talk assisted hygiene first, give me kind of a hygiene perspective on because I don't I don't know how it feels as a hygienist. So you get to speak, I know every hygienist is different, but like just what you hear from colleagues in your perspective.   Britt (07:59.361) Huh.   Britt (08:06.85) heterogeneous is different and I feel like it's a it's one of those polarizing things that I think there's people that love it and either you love it or you're not really a fan of it I feel like so that's like the that's the I don't see a lot of in between or it's like sure I'll do it for a little while while we hire like even I would do it maybe for a little bit while we hire someone but it's it's not my jam I can't say that I love it when it comes to   Kiera Dent (08:31.738) Tell me why, why don't you like it? Like what is it about assisted hygiene just from a hygienist perspective that's almost like a grind for you that you're like, I'll do it for a little bit. Cause I hear that all the time, like I'll do it for little bit. Like what is it from a hygienist perspective that makes that a bit trickier?   Britt (08:46.446) I think the piece that makes it tricky is like you're just, I don't know, probably part of why we get into what we do is like the one-on-one with patients and interacting with them and being able to ensure like from kind of beginning to end, right? The team has an impact, but I'm...   I'm giving them a good experience from beginning to end that doesn't feel rushed, that doesn't feel jumbled. And so I think that's for me personally, and I think some other hygienists, it feels like, great, I'm popping in, I'm in their mouth pretty much the whole time that I'm in there, and then I'm popping out and going on to the next one. I don't think it has to be exactly like that, but I think that's how it can feel from the hygiene side. I think having a really good assistant can make it much more doable. I think how you schedule it, how stack that.   Assisted hygienist can definitely make a difference on how much time you've got to interact. like, do hygienists, we like a little bit of control. I don't know, probably. And so it's just like, I know I've reviewed the things. I think that's probably the difference between hygienist and doctor is I'm not leaving it to an assistant to review medical history or ask the questions or hear what's going on and gathering it. Like I get to do that from beginning to end when I'm.   Kiera Dent (09:41.411) Yeah.   Britt (10:00.332) So it's just a little different when you've got the assisted hygiene in there.   Kiera Dent (10:03.834) So, and I'm also curious, like, I've never really scaled teeth for real. I mean, I kinda, in Utah, as an assistant, I was supposed to be able to profite, and I'm like, I don't even know what I'm supposed to do. There was one time I pretended to scale because my hygienist was late, so I just like, I didn't even actually really touch their teeth. just, you know, like, did a little tap, tap, tap, waiting for this dang hygienist to come, and I was like, yeah, we'll just like get started. I didn't do a darn thing. So I don't actually know what it feels like to scale that much. I'm curious, like, on a body.   Britt (10:18.744) you   Kiera Dent (10:33.622) Does it like hurt your hands? Does it, is it exhausting to just go because you don't really get any break or reprieve? You're just going nonstop. I'm just curious or to like the ultrasonics and things like that now help that make it easier for you. I don't really know the mechanics of that.   Britt (10:48.994) So yeah, scaling time, like absolutely. Does technology help? Yes, I'm a big fan. I will say it. Polish first. Polish first. If you're not polishing first, you're spending a lot of time on stuff that you don't have to be spending time on. And I'm a big fan of ultrasonic or piezo. I will use it on pretty much everyone. Like even my kids because they got a lot of plaque and I can polish and I can get a lot done with that that doesn't sound or feel the same as scaling. And so I'm a big fan of it.   Kiera Dent (11:06.117) Mm-hmm.   Britt (11:18.636) And then so like So there's a lot you can do to help minimize it But that's the piece of doing assisted hygiene usually it's if I've got an assistant if they can polish right they're doing They're doing all the easy stuff and so it is me just doing what's the stuff that I only I can do? Pia's own hand skill, right? And so like it's more of that every day and it does hygienist need dentist hygienist assistance, right? We all need to take care of our bodies because it's   It is a more physically taxing job than people think that it is. And so taking care of yourself, making sure you're doing some stretches. And so, yeah, it is a little bit more physically taxing to do assistive tithing, but it's a lot better than it used to be because we got a lot better tools than we used to have.   Kiera Dent (12:02.607) Right. Okay. So that actually helps. And so I'm curious, like, let's just throw out a scenario. And Britt, this week, I mean, we talked to offices about this in our consulting where, so let's say a hygienist, I'm going to use really easy numbers because I don't want to get wild. Let's say a hygienist is $30 an hour, which some of you are laughing at me. I know that's not even in the realm of your hygienist. I'm very aware of this. I also don't want to throw ranges out there intentionally on the. Exactly. There's also a reason I'm not throwing high ranges out there because I don't want to set standards that are not.   Britt (12:24.366) a bit apathetic.   Kiera Dent (12:31.056) Realistic for your area. I feel like 30 is a safe number for me So if I'm hiring a hygienist at 30 and I bring on another hygienist for 30 That would be $60 an hour that I'm paying of compensation for it Well in this area if my hygienist is 30 odds are I could probably get an assistant for between like 17 to 20 realistically if my hygienist is only at 30 I think that that's like a fair number probably more like 15 in that area, but let's say you're there at 20 just for easy math I've got $30 for hygiene. I've got $20 for an assistant   I actually have $10 of extra, if you're following my math, $10 of extra that's not being paid. Britt, what are your thoughts of if an office takes that $10 and even if they pay a hygienist say 35 an hour during assisted hygiene time versus just 30, does that actually make any difference for a hygienist? I know some can do more. Some it's gonna be like, you're paid 30, now I'm paying you 40 during your assisted hygiene days. Tell me like how that is from an office standpoint.   because there's obviously different compensation amounts we're going to be doing. And from a hygienist standpoint, does that feel better? Does that make it easier? Is that like, sure, I'll take on a couple assisted hygiene days. I'm always pro don't run assisted hygiene every single day. I think that does burn your hygienist out. Usually if I recommend it, it's either for a day or a half a day for a hygienist, but trying to make it, but like, is that necessary, Britt, from your perspective from hygiene?   Britt (13:50.786) mean, yes, some degree of compensation difference 100 % if you're running assisted hygiene. I know on the last episode we talked about a base plus commission. I like that even for assisted hygiene because, if we're doing assisted hygiene, we should be producing more. And so again, I do like that model because it naturally adjusts things and compensates accordingly. So yes, I do think there should be some sort of compensation that's more on those days. And I do like it when it's   Kiera Dent (14:01.775) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (14:11.972) Mm-hmm.   Britt (14:20.494) Base Plus Commission. Now I've got some, I've had one client where it's nice when you have a group of hygienists. I do love an office with a few. And they did, they rotated an assisted hygiene day through all of them. And they were like fighting over who got the assisted hygiene day. Like they wanted it, right? Like, and it's because yeah, they make more on those days and they were compensated based on their production was a part of it. And so they loved having those days to get a little bit more of a boost. And it was almost like   Kiera Dent (14:34.743) They do!   Britt (14:46.862) when we don't need it anymore what's going to happen because they all like getting that little bit of extra income coming from.   Kiera Dent (14:53.368) And so how do you even win over a team to do it? Because I agree, and I actually hear that more than I hear the opposite. I hear more hygienists actually enjoy it more than they thought they would. I hear a lot of them figure it out, especially when that's not my everyday. think if they had to do it every day, it'd be a little bit more taxing. But think about it. You've got four hygienists. We add an extra column of hygiene four days a week. We've literally brought in a whole extra hygienist without bringing a hygienist on. So I think it's a very creative way to do it. But how do I even like?   package this, you know I look at in sales terms, like how do I even like convince a team that this is a great idea to trial it out rather than just the resistance of hygienist saying no, just like you said, no, I want my patient care. I want to own over this. Like I want A to Z. I hear all the time we're going to have the patient care. It's going to be disrupted. And I'm like, well, it can be, or it could actually be more awesome. How do you win a team over to even be open to trying it?   Britt (15:47.084) Yeah, I think it depends on the office scenario, right? Like what's the reason, what's the why that we're doing it? And I'm a big fan of like, hey, let's try it first, right? Like I'm not saying you have to do it forever. I'm not saying you have to do it every day, but like, let's try it and let's figure out a system that feels comfortable and meets our like standard of care that we want to provide. So let's start easy, let's work through it, let's train up an assistant. do think.   Cystid Hygiene needs one of your best assistants to be helping in Cystid Hygiene to make it run smooth and give those patients that great experience. And so let's work through the system and see how it goes. like, yeah, it's going to be compensated. If I've got a hygienist who's a gunner and likes to run and does not like to stop, then that's usually my first one. Then I'm like, great, let's team up. Let's get that figured out and see how it goes first. And then word can kind of spread because usually they'll do really well.   Kiera Dent (16:14.681) I agree.   Kiera Dent (16:34.448) Hmm.   Britt (16:42.062) And so yeah, sometimes it's a personality thing, right? Some will love it, some will struggle a little bit. Sometimes there's people that like are gonna be your ones to help you figure it out. And some are like, well, once I see someone else do it and like, oh, that's not so bad. All right, then I'll go ahead and do it. So I think depending on the reason why, I think trying it first, I agree with you, not an everyday thing. It can even be like start with half a day and see how it goes and just start to figure out to find the rhythm of it.   Because I think when you find the rhythm of it and you're like, yeah, that works really well, then it's like, OK, like we can do more of this. And I think it can run.   Kiera Dent (17:18.276) And I'm really grateful that you shared about the office that you have, that they all want it and they enjoy it because I think that that actually can be the reality of what can happen from it. And I'm really big when you roll it out, agreed. Having not a great assistant really will actually make this harder. So do not go and hire a brand new fresh off the street assistant that does not know what they're doing, can't take great x-rays, can't move through because hygienist having someone that they trust that they can lean on, that they know is going to do a great job.   If they can polish, that's a great way for them to be able to use it. And then really also another big piece are no new patients, no SRP, no perio maintenance put in that. It's really just pro fees because that's gonna make it so much cleaner for them to be able to run this effectively. And you're running it on the half an hour. And then doctors, you have to be very strategic when you go in for exams. And doctors, you cannot be late on assisted hygiene because that will throw your whole hygiene. Like it's a domino and it will be good part.   Britt (18:12.302) That's the quickest way to take your hygienist off when you're asking them to do assisted hygiene. 100%. That's the way. That's the way to do it.   Kiera Dent (18:15.44) And that's not like, we'll be there, we'll be there. It's like, you've got to get up and jump. But that's also with hygienists too, making sure that we're giving our doctors enough time. Like I try to ask hygienists to give a 30 minute window of exam time where a doctor could come in. So that way doctors can find the end time of prep, come and get their exams done and keep everybody on schedule. So hygienists plug there, try really hard because I know there's some hygienists who love to alert right at the end of the appointment. And then they're fresh when doctor doesn't come in.   Well, like let's notify when they could come in. Like let's take our x-rays the first 15 minutes and then try to get doctors out at that. I try to have them out. Please do.   Britt (18:51.934) I'll one-up you a little bit on that as soon as diagnostics are done. As soon as my diagnostics are done and they've got x-rays, they've got period charting photos, I'm letting them know. Come at any time. I'm happy to have you. And of course, there's a bunch of plaque that's gonna make it more difficult once I've got that done, but I'm gonna notify them. at any time.   Kiera Dent (19:04.856) Yes.   Kiera Dent (19:12.536) And then doctors, I try to have you out at the quarter to the hour, meaning like you're not walking into the exam, you're walking out of the exam. So that allows hygienists to polish floss, wrap up, get everything done, get the patient out, flip the room and get their next patient back on time. So I think that that's something that before I maybe rolled out assisted hygiene doctors, I might take that on with the hygiene team. Like let's get really good on our exams. Let's calibrate those exams up so they can be more efficient. Let's do the, I have a better.   I haven't told you my new acronym. It's not iCrap. So if you've been listening to me, I have a new one. It's called iCreep. So it's iCreep when you come in that's introduction, compliment, recap, and then a personal note. And if hygienist can get really good at that handoff when doctors come in or assistance, and then doctors are really good on their NDTR, so wrapping up your treatment plans, that's gonna really help that synergy. And then also maybe doing what would doctor do to diagnose and to help tee up treatment. I think that that can just...   Again, we're all working together to make those exams as efficient as possible while also giving the best patient care. But I creep, that's my new one. It's not I, Sierra. It is, I creep. Someone was like, creep, and I was like, amazing. I wish it could be CPR. I've been working to figure out different letter and words. So to be determined, but okay, let's like, go ahead.   Britt (20:16.11) It's a step better. It's a step better than the last one.   Britt (20:28.014) Real quick, one more thing on the exams, because with a really good assistant on exams, the other thing I think about, and that for me as a hygienist I care about as well, is making sure treatment is teed up really well.   Kiera Dent (20:40.675) of greed.   Britt (20:41.59) Patients aren't having to repeat themselves and get frustrated and then not wanting to get treatment done just because they feel like they're not being listened to. So that communication piece and having an assistant who's really strong who can relay that information to doctor if they're the ones that are going to be in there for the exam and make sure that it's teed up really well for the doctor and they can speak to it is huge because that's, I don't want to, you know, rob Peter to pay Paul, right? I don't want to.   have not so great exams and not close as much treatment by adding an assisted hygiene, I'd rather leave it and get really good exams and really good case acceptance. Overall as a business, that's gonna help me a little bit more. So just making sure that again, that assistance key, really quality exams for your patients, even though you're working assisted hygiene, make sure that experience is stellar and 100 % can be done. It just takes a really good team to work together with a hygienist and assistant.   Kiera Dent (21:35.0) Yeah, that's a great point because you can have forms where the hygienist can document it in there because people are in opposite rooms. But getting a good role and a good synergy is going to make this so much better for setting this up for success. And I think the answer is I actually don't think hygienists hate assisted hygiene as much. think it's there's quite a few little like tick boxes that if you can check them off, have a good assistant have good exams.   have doctors in and out on time, have the assistant really, really solid with being able to tee up the treatment and close the cases, have someone that has a similar vibe to the hygiene team that cares about these patients a ton. I think if you can check those boxes, and then you also compensate higher. There's so many little pieces that everybody's super excited about to do it, but I think if you're missing any of those six, it does not feel as good to try. okay.   Britt (22:14.701) Mm-hmm.   Britt (22:24.022) Yeah, and patients are used to working with two people, right? So that's even, it's like, yeah, it's one more person in the mix, but on the doctor's side, there's two of you. So having an assistant with hygiene, isn't that big of a deal? Seeing the same two faces every time, like they'll be fine with it. Cause I know that can be a concern. I'm like, they're used to having two people on the doctor's side.   Kiera Dent (22:41.104) I see the same. I'm like, just because we're not used to it doesn't mean it's odd for the patient. I tell doctors when you're onboarding an associate, I'm like, you can assist each other. And I know that feels weird to you, to the patient, they're used to someone else in there. To hygienist, they're used to people switching rooms. it's not something, if we're not weird about it, your patient won't be weird about it. But I think we feel very awkward because we feel uncomfortable. But just not projecting that onto your patient. Cause I don't think it's as much as you might think it is. So, okay,   Britt (23:10.316) And ender fun for assisted hygiene, I always have someone to pair your chart for me. So I'll take that as a win.   Kiera Dent (23:15.28) True, that is a big win. mean, truth, you're not having to call for it. Okay, the hot topic of shorter appointment times. I'm talking, I've heard 50 minute appointments, 45 minute appointments. Is this doable, Britt? And I think I'm gonna know your answer, I also, like come from both, come from hygiene, Britt, and operations, Britt. Bring both of those Brits to the table and you answer. I'm curious.   Britt (23:40.11) And I'll say this, I have worked in offices with all of the above, right? So I've done all of the above.   Kiera Dent (23:44.42) came. Her bigade you guys have idea. Good thing we plugged that at the beginning.   Britt (23:49.038) So all are doable. I think there's a couple of things that make a difference when it comes to shortening appointments, depending on what type of experience you want them to have, right? That's an important part to consider for doctors. Depending on our pay or mix, what we need to do in order to the business running, that's something to consider. And then also how efficient we are.   Kiera Dent (24:11.376) true.   Britt (24:17.07) as a team and like doctor doing exams, right? That's an important piece of it. And then another one is our patient base slash how good are we at keeping them healthy and not giving ourselves a lot of work every single time our patients come in. If you know what I'm saying, those bloody profusers, they're a lot of work. So if I'm treating period appropriately, I'm educating my patients, they're coming in regularly.   Kiera Dent (24:30.85) you   Kiera Dent (24:36.089) I do.   Britt (24:42.734) We all know those are patients that are a lot easier to see and more efficient most of the time. And yeah, there's gonna be even working on shorter appointment times, there's gonna be some. Like you know that person that's like an advanced period patient and I'm like, I cannot in my right moral standing do that in 45 minutes, it's gonna be an hour. There's gotta be some of that liberty where needed.   Kiera Dent (25:03.888) Yeah, I agree. So I think the hard thing of switching appointment times is I do think it becomes an all model because for me to shift it, it feels like a daunting project to shift from 60 minutes to 45 minutes. Now I'm moving everything up. My exam times don't hit at the same time anymore. Things just are moving all around. that's a huge jump.   Britt (25:18.99) Mm-hmm.   Britt (25:29.804) And 60 to 45 is a big jump. I wouldn't go that far if we're going to play around with times. Maybe you could go from 60 to 50. Most offices are running on 10 minute increments. So you can make that shift. And it's just you've got to be really on point to run that efficiently, because the quality's still got to be there. It's just we've got to be able to run really efficiently.   Kiera Dent (25:45.208) I agree.   Britt (25:57.944) And I'll add this, and depending on what I was expected within that appointment as well, right? If we want the hygienist to be super comprehensive, we want them to get scans done, we want them to collect a lot of information for us, like, I map it out, right? That takes me two minutes, that takes me three minutes. Like, what's reasonable in an appointment for us to get done by the minute mapped out and then make your decision?   Kiera Dent (26:11.002) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (26:19.652) I think that that's a wise and don't go for your fastest hygienist and don't go for your slowest hygienist. Let's find that middle ground of what's reasonable between the two because you do have some. mean, Britt and I, can even hear in our, the way we talk, we've got different tempos. mean, but you can guess who's a little bit faster and who's a little bit slower between me and Britt. And sometimes it's really good. Like Britt slowing me down and me speeding her up. And I think Britt and I would both agree that a happy medium between the two of us is the right spot to be, which is usually where we end just in   Britt (26:33.752) huh.   Britt (26:41.87) Mm-hmm.   Britt (26:48.814) Yeah. And a team working together really well, right? Especially when I was working on 45 and 50 minutes. I mean, we had a fantastic clinical coordinator, right? So if my next patient was here and there was a room to be had even for a few minutes to get x-rays done, and someone was available, they were getting those x-rays done and getting it started. So it's a different tempo and pace you run on. And it does take full team support. It's not going to be like, oh, well, they're early. Oh, they're here. We have space to see them.   Kiera Dent (26:49.561) in decisions.   Britt (27:18.058) start getting them taken care of so that it helps your team members out and we get them out as efficiently as possible.   Kiera Dent (27:24.464) So that's a good point because then it becomes, it's not just the hygienist. Cause I think 60 minutes is kind of like hygiene does their own thing. We want them to do everything on shorter appointment times. We are trying to get more, more bodies in and out. But I did the math and it's like, if I'm going from 60 to 50, I'm getting 10 extra minutes per appointment. That's going to give me 80 minutes in a day, but that's not enough for me to get two extra appointments unless I do a 50 minute plus an additional like 30 minute. And so I would ask the question, Britt, and I don't know if   Britt (27:32.897) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (27:53.36) you run the numbers or not on it. I mean, I haven't, so that's why I'm asking. But if I've got a hygiene team that does take ortho scans for us when we do ortho, I've got a hygiene team who's taking CBCTs for implants and we're teeing it up for all on X cases. If they're looking for sleep and we're doing snore tests on them, does it really make sense to get me one more hygiene patient for hygiene? Or does it make sense to look to optimize the additional services? Now I get like, we might be trying to get   because I'm like, well, what's the reason we're doing it? If we're trying to shorten the appointment times because we have too many patients, maybe it's worth looking at our fees. But if we're trying to get more patients in to optimize our hygienist pay, to be able to pay them and compensate for the amount of production they're doing. And I know a lot of offices don't pay hygienists for those scans. Like if you do a night guard scan or you do an ortho scan, it goes to the doctor, which I understand because the doctor is going to need to do a lot. But I'm just curious, like to me, it makes a little bit more sense, possibly.   If my hygienist have 60 minutes, I'm already there, why don't I try to optimize and maximize that appointment, paying them maybe a little bit of these scans that I want to be done so that way they can hit their production number, but it benefits the office on a bigger scale. What are your thoughts on that, Britt?   Britt (29:05.61) where I think it comes back to what type of experience, what type of office, what's your vision. It comes back to ultimately write any business. It comes back to the volume value question. By cutting time, we're choosing volume. By using that time better, we're choosing value.   Kiera Dent (29:20.208) Mm-hmm.   Britt (29:26.318) It's going to be a personal preference. I'm not going to say there's a right or wrong answer in that because there's a lot of factors depending on kind of what your payer mix is like. I definitely have some areas that even for me, I tried to move that culture of the area, if I tried to move that patient at the speed that I need for a 45 minute appointment, they are not going to love it. Even though I might be the most pleasant human being they've ever interacted with because the pace that they run is a little bit slower, right? And so...   Kiera Dent (29:50.916) Yeah.   Britt (29:56.334) right when I was running 45 minutes, we were right outside of DC. Those people don't want to be there that long. Right. And they were, you know, demographic was easy for us to run them through. And so they didn't mind the fast pace and we still connected, but we were able to run like that. So I think it comes back to overall experience on what you want to have. and there's no right or wrong, but I love making more use of the time we have, which is where I think hygienist functioning to the   the height of their capability, right? If you can use laser and that's something your office wants to bring in, great. That's something that can be an adjunct service that adds to the production. You know, what can you do for the patient? I think not only on the hygiene side, but that's where I think it really is a team to where what can I do in scans, in pictures, in educating patients about treatment options, talking to them about what do they really value? What do they really want? Are there cosmetic things that they're looking for?   Kiera Dent (30:29.232) Mm-hmm.   Britt (30:53.24) There's a lot you can do and I think that's for hygienists to realize if we do well overall, right, everybody wins. So when we're able to get where we need to production collection wise as an office overall, it makes it easier for us to say, yeah, that time is useful. We're making good use of it on the hygiene side. Let's keep our appointments at 60 minutes. Or if it's like, hey, we're not, we either need to do that and get things up or.   we're going to have to evaluate and make some decisions because sometimes there's just business decisions that need to be made and we need to figure out how to adapt and innovate.   Kiera Dent (31:28.324) Yeah, right. That was such an insightful piece. And as you were talking, I just thought, I hope offices are listening because I think that this is just a really good, like, this is where we, have to get into the, are we doing this? What are additional pieces rather than just the like quick surface level decision? Because I think there's so many pieces below it. Like you said, demographics, DC, 45 minutes makes a ton of sense. Those people are faster in and out. They're younger population. Like it's an easier model to roll that.   Britt (31:56.268) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (31:56.396) versus maybe let's say some areas in Arizona, like you might not have a same, you might have it like in Scottsdale Tempe, but if we're going a little further out to maybe some of those senior centers, that's not an ideal model for maybe an older population base. So really like you said, and I think like volume versus value, and I don't think it's the value that we're bringing to the patient. It's the value of are we doing ortho? Are we adding these adjunct services to it? You obviously add value to your patients, but are we doing a lot of people?   or are we doing less people but more extensive? That's gonna be a clinical or a business decision and also a clinical decision and also a cultural decision of what you ultimately want your practice to be. But I get it, you gotta make these decisions, you gotta make the business run. I would just caution, don't make the quick decision because I think there's multi-layers below each of them to really consider. So hygiene Britt, thanks for coming today. Any last thoughts you've got as we wrap up? Assisted hygiene, shorter appointments, I think they are really good perspectives to bring.   Britt (32:55.822) I think my last thing I like that you said, right, don't make the quick decision, evaluate it. And I think even hygienist, right, it's easy for us as team members, I do the same thing, right? I can see my world and what it's gonna impact for me, but I understand there's more behind it than just my view. And so really taking a good look overall and seeing what's gonna be the best decision. And yeah, how we're functioning now might make us think that we need to make this decision, but maybe we can keep running and function a little different to where we don't have to make that change.   Kiera Dent (33:25.52) I think it's a really good perspective. if you guys are in this debacle, we're speaking to your souls. This is what we love to do with our practices is really weigh the pros and cons and help the office make the best decision for their practice, not just a decision and really thinking through the, all the different pieces and then executing and getting your whole team on board, helping the team see the pieces so you can really be successful. So reach out if we can help. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com thanks for being with me today. I appreciate it.   Britt (33:53.196) Yeah, thanks for having me.   Kiera Dent (33:54.648) Of course, and for all of you listening, thanks for listening. And we'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.    

From the studio that brought you "Pick & Drive" comes a new rugby podcast - SCRUMBAGS - your one stop shop for Aussie Rugby!Round 2 of Super Rugby Pacific was a proper doozy headlined by the Reds' confusingly large win over Moana Pasifika and the Force ending their 5060-day Canberra curse.Mitch and Lachie cast an eye over all the week's SRP results before turning attention to the upcoming Super Rugby Women's season with full squad breakdowns, players to watch and more.SOCIALSInstagram - @scrumbagsrugbyTwitter/X - @scrumbagsrugbyJoin the chat via Discord - https://discord.gg/GMRPqyy7Keep the lights on - https://ko-fi.com/scrumbagsrugbypodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode, Daphne Zohar, John Maraganore, Josh Schimmer, Eric Schmidt and Sam Fazeli are joined by Endpoints' Zach Brennan for a discussion on the election results and what we can expect with a Trump administration, including the negatives/risks for the biotech industry as well as the positives and potential opportunities. The hosts also cover other news from the week including Moderna's Q3 earnings and the company's CEO Bancel stepping down as sales chief, as well as BioNTech's Q3 earnings and the potential softening of vaccine pricing. The group recapped the ASH conference and readouts including Arcellx's early data and related stock movement. The discussion turns to ObesityWeek highlights including data from AstraZeneca, Vertex, Zealand and Novo Nordisk. Other topics covered this week include Sarepta's SRP-5051 discontinuation, the death of gene editing and the impact to the fledgling field. This episode aired on November 8, 2024. 

SRP Director of Water Strategy Christa McJunkin joins Arizona’s Morning News to discuss what is shaping up to be a difficult drought season, and what SRP is doing to address those concerns.  

A very special in-person episode was recorded for your pleasure, seeing a return of not only Andrew but Ant's rants and Super Rugby Pacific. The reunited trio look ahead to the rugby extravaganza that is SRP, asking the deep questions like who can stop the Blues, can the Crusaders get any worse and will all of the Australians improve without the Rebels. We also look back on the first two weeks of the 6 Nations (Rugby's Greatest Championship™) as Ant lets his feelings known strongly about their claim to be the best and at all of the big news from the rugby world including the inevitable demise of one Warren Gatland. Music by @monstroid, 80s TV Show.

Text us about this show.Jason Reisdorf is a brilliant musician. One listen to his two bands, Natural Satellite and Son Reis Project, bears this out. Natural Satellite is a duo with his wife, Karli, who is a cellist and vocalist. They write and perform laid back, jazzy originals that are creative and introspective. Then there's Son Reis Project (SRP), a trio with Jason Goessl on guitar/bass and Ryan Thomas on drums. SRP has both jazz and heavy metal as its foundations and from there it's an experiment in sound that is indescribable. But with Jason as the constant between the two, one thing that's for certain is that both will be interesting. Listen to this episode and find out for yourself."Fly Away" performed by Natural Satellitewritten by Karli Brianne Reisdorf℗ 2024 Natural Satellite. Used with permission of Jason & Karli Reisdorf."It Goes On And On" performed by Face Your EarsExplore home recording and music creation with Rich and Justin on 'Face Your Ears'!Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Face Your EarsExplore home recording and music creation with Rich and Justin on 'Face Your Ears'!Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the showVisit Into The Music at https://intothemusicpodcast.com!Support the show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/intothemusic E-mail us at intothemusic@newprojectx.com YouTube Facebook Instagram INTO THE MUSIC is a production of Project X Productions.Host/producer: Rob MarnochaVoiceovers: Brad BordiniRecording, engineering, and post production: Rob MarnochaOpening theme: "Aerostar" by Los Straitjackets* (℗2013 Yep Roc Records)Closing theme: "Close to Champaign" by Los Straitjackets* (℗1999 Yep Roc Records)*Used with permission of Eddie Angel of Los StraitjacketsThis podcast copyright ©2025 by Project X Productions. All rights reserve...

Bienvenidos a un nuevo episodio de SRP Lite. EL PRIMERO DE LA TEMPORADA y un LITE de verdad, de una duración aceptable. PJ CLEANER no quería dejaros sin programa durante un mes y os trae un pequño avance de algunas de las series de las que hablaremos en el próximo SRP habitual y también un repaso a lo que se ha estrenado en este inicio de 2025 (tanto nuevo como regresos) y que considera que debéis tener en cuenta. Hasta pronto!! GRACIAS POR VUESTRO APOYO Y POR ESTAR SIEMPRE AHÍ!!! Únete a nuestro grupo de Telegram (ES GRATIS!!!!): https://t.me/seriesreality Déjanos tus comentarios y likes en IVOOX, Apple Podcast, Spreaker, Podimo, Castbox, TuneIn, PocketCast, Spotify, Amazon Music y en nuestra web: www.seriesrealitypodcast.com. Aceptamos café virtual en https://ko-fi.com/seriesreality1 Twitter: @seriesreality1 Instagram: Seriesreality1 YouTube: Series Reality Podcast email: seriesreality1@gmail.com

  I've never quite bought into the "ocean" aged concept that Jefferson's has touted for many years, mainly because I could never really tell the difference between ocean aged and regular, but I will say over time I have tasted a few gems, especially their single barrels. This is a wheated single barrel, ocean aged at 90 proof bottled for Bourbon World. The MGP wheated recipe has also been hit or miss over the years. I've tasted ones that I thought were maybe the best wheated bourbon I've ever had, including Weller, and I've tasted others that were lost, flabby, just so-so. Which brings us to this particular barrel. Over priced at the $90 SRP, so we've lowered it to $69.99, which I can say with a straight face is a HUGE DEAL! Pillow soft cinnamon spice with layers of caramel throughout. The fruit is subdued, the oak is subdued but the barrel sugars are amazing. Maybe you're like me and getting older and need a little something less than barrel strength sometimes. Don't sleep on 90 proof. Elmer T Lee, Eagle Rare, Weller Special Reserve, all 90 proof. Grab a bottle at any Bourbon World store. You won't regret it.  

In the latest episode of Public Power Now, Brant Heap, Director of Protection, Automation and Control at Arizona public power utility Salt River Project discusses SRP's state-of-the-art Technology Innovation Lab and details how the lab is being utilized for training SRP employees.

Here's the latest CPG news happening right now on February 9th, 2025 including Liquid Death National Super Bowl Ad, New Olipop and Perfy Flavors, Mid-Day Squares RumorAccroding to Ad Week: The renegade canned water brand—with a growing lineup that now serves iced tea, sparkling and still water varieties—is buying its first national Super Bowl ad to air on Fox on Feb. 9, per an announcement released today.While building the brand and establishing street cred based on scrappy marketing, Liquid Death CEO Mike Cessario said the $7 million Big Game buy provides “no cheaper way to reach over 100 million unique people who actually want to pay attention to the commercials.” Liquid Death aired a superbowl ad previously but only in 23 sectors of the United States. This will be their first national one.According toBevnet.Com Olipop has permanently relaunched its Peaches & Cream flavor, which went viral on TikTok. Each 12 oz. can has 9 grams of fiber and just 5 grams of sugar. Olipop Peaches & Cream is available on the brand's website and exclusively in Whole Foods Market nationwide (SRP $2.49) until May 1. After May 1, the flavor will be available in all major grocery stores. For more information, visit drinkolipop.com.Perfy is Launching a Pepperoni Pizza flavored soda on NationalPizzaDay..What's cool about Pepperoni Pizza Perfy?• It tastes like pizza-flavored bloody mary mix. It's actually delicious if you're into that kinda thing.• 30 calories | 3g sugar• Caffeine? Fuggetaboutit!• Ayyyy, no added sugar• VERY LIMITED EDITION. Meaning once it's gone, it's gone.There are swirling rumors that due to potential tariffs to be imposed next month against Canada by President Trump, Mid-Day Squares was tentatively planning to move their manufacturing to the United States where a majority of their revenue is derived from. According to others, this is simply a rumor and Nick Saltarelli, co-founder of MDS, is addressing this in a social media post. We will report it when we see it!

Does your office perform subgingival irrigation? And if so, what medicament do you use? In this episode, Katrina Sanders discusses the extent that subgingival irrigation is beneficial when combined with SRP... and where else we should be looking to improve its efficacy!

Does your office perform subgingival irrigation? And if so, what medicament do you use? In this episode, Katrina Sanders discusses the extent that subgingival irrigation is beneficial when combined with SRP... and where else we should be looking to improve its efficacy!

Not only does the water of the SRP canals help people live in the desert, but it also employs a very important contributor to the community: the white amur fish. Now, you might not immediately think of fish as being important to living in the desert, but this specific kind of grass carp plays a key role in ensuring the water flows smoothly throughout the canals. Since the canals are surrounded by a major metropolitan area, they tend to end up with some blown-in debris and garbage from city life. This led one of our listeners to ask if it's safe for the fish to be in the canals, and who takes care of the trash that finds its way into them. This week on Valley 101, a podcast by The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, we hear from a senior environmental scientist from SRP who explains the important job the white amur fish does for metro Phoenix. Click here for the map of the canal dry-up schedule. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amy Maciver speaks to Monty Roodt, author, publisher, and co-founder of Southern Rights Publishing, to explore how SRP is revolutionizing the publishing industry and what it means for both writers and readers alike.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Figuring out how to drink from the firehouse of the new year can be overwhelming. Tiff and Britt give suggestions on where to start your journey to improving your practice's growth, or perfecting your scheduling, or addressing high cancellations — or whatever your goal is in 2025. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Join Dental A-Team Consulting Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00.983) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. I am so excited to be here with you today. I have pulled in the one and only Britt. We still need a really strong nickname for you, Britt, but I'm just excited to be here with you today. And I love Britt. People call me Tiff. I love Britt. I feel like it's just like rolls off the tongue. So we'll just, we'll stick with that for now, but we're here in the new year. I'm excited to have these conversations. I've pulled you for a few podcasts today and I just think that you are going to be so stellar.   at the content that we're gonna talk about. And doctors, I hope you're here to freaking learn. Britt, one of her nicknames is No BS Britt. So welcome to that. And I say that today because we're gonna be just talking a lot of business in a lot of the podcasts that we're recording today, but especially this one and some planning for the year. We're in 2025 now. So I wanna make sure you guys are just totally prepped and planned for it. So Britt, how are you on this fine, beautiful morning in Arizona today?   Britt (00:56.718) mean I'm great. It's a sunny day every day pretty much here. So you got to love it. I love that. I'm like, I mean, there's a few nicknames out there, but I don't like spiffy Tiffy is such a good one that like, I don't know if the rest of us will get one that's like that same level, which is deserved. But yeah, so I've got a few but nothing quite like spiffy Tiffy.   The Dental A Team (01:09.455) I know.   The Dental A Team (01:17.303) I know, you had to come in early, you know? The nickname game started earlier than everyone else got here. That must be what it is, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. think things just, my grandma called me Tiffy my whole life growing up. I was Tiffy. And so I think things just rhyme with Tiffy better, you know? It's like a hard end at Britt or Tiff. So it was easy to, it was easy to monopolize on that one. But it is.   Britt (01:19.266) I know.   Britt (01:24.137) It just takes some years. Eventually we'll get there.   The Dental A Team (01:45.709) It is always sunny. I feel like this year I decided, or not this year, I guess last year, I told my son, I said, I think we just need to stop pretending like we live in a state or a space of life that actually has a winter. People who live in the tropics, they just realize, guess what? It's just going to be tropical. Like we're not going to get a winter and that's okay. And I think in Arizona and Phoenix, at least, like that's the life we need to start living. Stop pretending like it's going to be sweater weather. It's not going to happen.   So here we are. Yeah.   Britt (02:15.414) saying, it's warmer this year. Every year we say like, it should be cooler. Like exactly, like it is what it is and you know what? I'm happy for it. I am perfectly fine not having freezing weather.   The Dental A Team (02:21.603) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (02:27.672) I agree. I agree. The 70s in December, I will take it. It's fine. We'll just see what the summer looks like. So we'll chat back around on that when the summer comes.   Britt (02:32.161) Absolutely.   We'll sound a little different then, but it's fine. It's short. It's short.   The Dental A Team (02:38.928) Yeah, yeah, I love it. this kind of, honestly, all of it kind of goes into itself and the plans and the prepping and looking forward. And we are in the business of constantly looking at where we're going. But you also have to look at where you've been. And so in order to make sure your 2025 is super, super strong, you guys, we kind of wanted to revisit some of the pieces that we chatted about towards the end or towards the last quarter, Q4, of 2024.   some of those strategic planning tips and tricks that we had given you back then. We want to make sure that you guys actually implemented them and then look at, okay, implemented, now how do we use them? So I brought Brett here because Brett, think your business brain is brilliant and I want to make sure we don't miss any of the pieces. So guys, I know we chatted about this. It might be a review.   But I really want you to dig deep sometimes when you re-listen to a podcast or when you listen to something that has similar information, you're like, gosh, I didn't hear that last time or this means more to me today than it did when I listened to it three months ago because I'm in a different space. So I really want you to dive deep. I want you to listen in. One of the biggest pieces I think practices can miss is the opportunity to look at the stats and really, really look at where you've been.   where you're trying to go, but where you are right now. for it, correct me if I'm wrong. I think 99.9 % of the people who come to us, the clients, the potential clients, the future clients, the listeners are here saying, we need systems. And WATM is here and we get to build systems. And we come in and I'm like, gosh, you have so many systems. Like the reason that you feel chaotic is because you don't know where to start.   Britt (04:03.172) you   The Dental A Team (04:25.893) Right, Britt? So how do we help them? I really want them to learn how to check trends, know where to start, know what like 2025's focus needs to be, because systems, like you've got a whole dental practice, you've got multiple departments within your dental practice, and to say systems is quite overwhelming. It's like, you know, trying to pull a raindrop out of a rain cloud, it's just not possible, and it causes a lot of chaos and confusion, and I think narrowing that down helps people to be able to see.   What needs to come next? What's that next step? So Britt, you do work with a lot of clients and you've worked with a lot of clients over the last three years that you've been here with us. Thank you so much. A little longer than that now, but almost four. But how do you help them to really see that space, especially going into the new year to say, okay, what do I need to do this year to be super successful?   Britt (05:18.5) I think Tiff, comes from planning for systems, yes, and also our big picture like ultimately shapes our priorities. So like, that's why I think even in Q4, we harp so much on like, all right, what's happened this year? What do you want to do next year? What are our goals for next year? Because having a path or having something we're shooting for helps us to prioritize some things. For example, let's say,   great, we want to grow 15 % next year, right? We've got the space, we know our schedule's not full, we want to grow our revenue, our collections by 15%, and then it's like, all right, then if.   what's going on that's keeping us from getting there. So then we like walk it back and those are some of the important stats that we need to set goals around and make sure we're tracking. If our schedule's not full, then it's like, all right, do we have enough patients to fill the schedule? Do we not have enough patients? Do we need to get more? Is it a marketing thing? Is it just better scheduling and follow up on our end? And that's gonna start to shape some of the systems. So like with this example.   The Dental A Team (06:10.801) Go.   Britt (06:16.824) Let's say our schedule's not full. All right, do we have block scheduling and how are we following up with people who don't have appointments? Those would be two systems that we would start with to get things rolling in the right direction to set us up for success in 2025 if you've got a growth goal like that.   The Dental A Team (06:17.234) .   The Dental A Team (06:31.046) Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I love that you narrowed it down from big to small. And that's what the trends will show us. And the mark that I think is truly must right is seeing the bigger picture, like you said, but on a small level, which sounds confusing and contradictory. you're like, how do you go like you're saying big, but you're saying small when we're looking at those big pieces, when we're tracking them. And I do love there's like a side tangent. I do love   the companies that come in and they pull your stats for you, right? So you've got an outside source and you log in and you can see all your stuff. You guys know what I'm talking about. There's multiple different companies and different systems out there. I do love those analytics companies and resources, but I really, really love too for you guys to know the actual numbers and to know how to pull them yourself, even if you're using an analytics company. I want you to be able to see both of them because I believe that if you   have your hands in it yourself, you're soaking in the knowledge. So either way, I want you to just verify, clarify, verify all the pieces, but having a space, I know we've got a lot of our clients, if not all of them by now, on our scorecard system. It's a simple, well simple is probably the wrong word to use there, but it's simple for our clients. It was a labor of love for us, but it's an Excel spreadsheet and I love going old school.   Britt (07:48.055) You   The Dental A Team (07:54.48) with those kind of simple tools like Excel, because I think if we can get all of that data and metrics onto one screen, right, even in a lot of the analytics, like you've got to, flipped between screens and you don't always see how one trend leads into another trend or one metric can negatively or positively affect a metric that it seems like it wouldn't. So you might have hygiene data on one screen, right, flip to another screen and you've got.   your production collections, and then another screen you got your AR. Well, guess what? There are different systems within each one of those screens, right, that affect all of them. And when we've got them all in one space, you guys, and you're looking at them, your brain is like, wait, this is a puzzle. Let me put this together. And you start seeing how they lead up or lead down into one another. So, Britt, like you're saying, our schedule's not full, right? This is a common, common, common statement.   from dental practices, my schedule's not full, or I have high cancellations. And it's very easy to be like, oh my gosh, I have all of the answers for that. Like, Britt could come up with like 15 different things for both of those problems. Schedule's not full, high cancellations. We can tackle it all, and I could implement, and Britt could implement 30 systems today, but the question is, are those systems the actual problem, or are we kind of like putting a band-aid?   over a bigger issue that's underlying that we may not be seeing underneath, right? So I love, Britt, that you said that like, great, let's talk, let's look at block scheduling. And you said, you didn't say let's do block scheduling. You said, do we have block scheduling in place? Because, you know, practices do that. Practices know how to do it. There's a million freaking podcasts. We're not the only company who does block scheduling, number one. And we have so many podcasts on block scheduling. So a lot of people are doing it. So then we dig into,   Britt (09:41.86) Thank   The Dental A Team (09:48.735) how are we doing the block scheduling instead of just saying, this is how you should be doing it. Because I do think that's the mark that a lot of people overlook as well. know, coaches come in and they're like, well, this is how I want you to do it. Well, your way might be working. It might be something else. So really digging into those pieces. So Britt, as you're looking at these scorecards with your clients and we've used analytics companies, we still do, right? We have analytics that we use from companies and we have clients who use different companies.   What is it that you look for the most and like big overarching that these practices and these doctors can really start keying into that show a space that like, want growth this year. That could mean anything. What are some overarching numbers that you like to track with your practices that will help them key into their focus this year?   Britt (10:39.78) Yeah, and I'll go through some of those numbers and we want both like leading and lagging, right? So for example, if I want to hit 15 % growth and revenue, tracking that revenue is going to be a lagging measure. So we need to work on, all right, what are some leading things to get us to that end goal that are going to be helpful to track and see what's going on? Another reason for tracking is one, if we're implementing a system or adjusting a system,   Feelings are fleeting and numbers are facts, whatever that saying is. But the numbers actually will tell you, one, did you implement something that's actually having the impact you want it to have? And number two, if we shifted something, is it shifting it in the right direction for us? So is it useful or not? And sometimes there's things that we'll implement that are so cumbersome and it doesn't do anything, then it's like, why are we doing it? It should be easy and it should be effective at the end of the day.   The Dental A Team (11:10.741) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (11:18.439) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (11:31.304) Yeah.   Britt (11:34.756) And so that's kind of my little plug for also tracking numbers is one, knowing where we're at and two, knowing if the things that we're implementing are having the impact we want them to have. So some important ones, you're gonna have your big picture ones, right? And that's, you'll notice my brain thinks big to little. That's just kind of how I think, where's the end goal we wanna get to? And then what are the things that build up to that top most important thing?   So if it's revenue, right, then of course production and collection. We're only gonna collect as much as we produce and we've got to make sure that we're collecting everything that we actually do the work for and can have the potential to collect.   The Dental A Team (12:02.645) Yeah.   Britt (12:07.64) So that's gonna be one. And then it's like, all right, next level beyond that, what leads into those two things? Production is gonna be case acceptance, how we're scheduling, right? Those are gonna lead up to that production. And then on the collection side, it's like, all right, what's our AR? Where are all our buckets at? What's sitting out there? What are we not getting collected from patients? That are gonna be some of the big pieces.   And then you can kind of walk it down from there and great track by provider, track by hygienist. And then what are the other things? What's our SRP that's going to feed to our production? What's our fluoride that's going to be feeding to our production and what are the doctors diagnosing? Right? Cause we're the buckets are right. We're only going to make as much as we ever diagnose. And we only are going to make as much as we actually like get scheduled and complete from what we diagnose.   The Dental A Team (12:30.134) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (12:49.525) Yeah.   Britt (12:54.756) and then we've got to collect on the things that we actually complete. So we kind of work our way down that way. So those are some of my favorite ones, Tiff, and looking ahead can be super helpful. What are we scheduled to next week? Just to get team members looking ahead, and if we're not scheduled to go, then it should spur a plan of, okay, then what do we need to do to get next week's schedule to go? Or if there's holes in hygiene, what are we going to do to get those holes filled?   The Dental A Team (13:18.999) Yeah, and what you just said right there to like all of that, I want everyone to take all of that and figure out how you can implement those pieces or what you're not looking at maybe, like what have you not been paying attention to that we can add in, not replace, but add into the metrics that you're looking at this year. But what you just said is if we're not scheduled to go next week, what's our action items now? A lot of practices, you know, get stuck in the lag measures. We know our lead measure, we know   we're supposed to make $250,000 each month, right? So that's our lead measure. Our lead measure is what are we supposed to produce and collect? How many new patients are we supposed to have? And then the first week of every month, we look back and we say, did we do that last month? And sometimes we did, right? Sometimes we didn't. And if we're not tracking it more frequently, like you said, if we're not looking at next week, what's next week's lead measure based on last week's lag measures?   We have to alter them sometimes. If last week or the week before we were down, that impacts us moving forward. So then we get to the last week, sometimes I hear office managers really rallying. They're like, okay, guys, we've got three days left and we need $30,000 in addition to what we already have on the schedule. And people are like, you want us to add 10 grand a day? What are you talking about? Like, yep, we need six Invisalign cases.   Britt (14:38.798) to get, we can do it guys, right? Like come on.   The Dental A Team (14:43.096) We got this, right? But what if 15 days ago, you were like, hey, we need $2,000 every day, right? Instead of three days, 30,000. Like, how do we make sure, you know, that we're looking at those things far enough ahead, but also looking at the backside? And I think you caved into it there on the weekly basis. So making sure doctors that, and this is how the scorecard works. We have it working off of.   monthly but also a weekly. The weekly will feed into the monthly for that purpose because we want to be able to see the trends within the weeks. We want to be able to predict what we need successfully so that hitting goals is easy. When I put practices on these kinds of metrics, these weekly metrics, I train a lot, does too, we train a lot of office managers on scorecards like this because it's the easiest way to learn how the numbers work and how the   small changes, like you said, Britt, affect those numbers so drastically. Sometimes you're like, gosh, ding it, our collections stinks and we've got cancellations all over the place. And so an office manager might be like, okay, guys, implement a $75 fee for every cancellations, black and white, they cancel, get $75 fee. And then all of a sudden it's like, that didn't help either one of them. We've got patients in an uproar and next month we realized we attritioned out 10 patients.   because of fees. So we might be too dramatic or too drastic in a systems implementation if we're not watching the rest of what's happening as well. So if you start to see the trends within the week, you might notice, you might even start paying attention, like, what was this week, right? We had high cancellations, but guess what? Maybe it's spring break and maybe parents forgot. So then maybe the metric we need to look at is how far out to the frequencies of our confirmations are.   Are we giving them enough notice and enough reminder notice four times like this when it's spring break rather than like, nope, cut it. People suck, $75, cross the board, we're doing it. And it's like, we weren't looking closely enough to the smaller trends within or the things that are sometimes hidden, like a break that we don't think about. So watching it on a weekly basis, I think sincerely helps with the AR. Britt, that's a huge piece that I think doctors   Britt (16:55.331) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (17:03.81) I know they don't get trained on, like they don't know, we barely know, right? I'm like, we were trained by other people and other people and now we have all of the knowledge, but most front office people have been trained by other people. And now it's like, yes, Dental A Team, please teach me my AR, because now we know, right? What are the big pieces that doctors should be watching on a weekly basis when it comes to the AR? What do you train your doctors to look for?   Britt (17:28.964) Yeah. And with AR, you want to look at the buckets, right? And buckets mean what's current zero to 30 days, then what's 31 to 60, and you look at it in 30 day chunks. So you can see.   how things are trending again with numbers, right? That's another piece of tracking it regularly is to see trends and what's trending, what direction are we heading? AR is a big one, right? We want most of that money that's due to us within the next 30 days, because it should mostly be insurance. We should have collected from patients their estimated portion at least.   The Dental A Team (17:52.056) Yeah.   Britt (18:00.612) And so it should be insurance. then from there, right, zero to six days. OK, maybe some claims take us a little bit longer to get paid. So like there's going to be a little chunk in there. And then 60 to 90, we shouldn't have as much. And by 90 plus, we really shouldn't have hardly anything, five percent or less really sitting in there. And so with doctors one knowing how much is in each bucket and then you can kind of see what insurance company was it was it United that had an issue this year and you saw everybody's buckets go from zero to 30.   The Dental A Team (18:03.578) you   The Dental A Team (18:17.242) Thank you.   Britt (18:30.566) Oh, now there's a big chunk in 30 to 60 and there's a big chunk in 60 to 90 until that got resolved and the money's coming in so you can kind of watch where that bolus happens and if there's a bolus moving along into getting older there's something happening that we need to address that's causing that to happen.   The Dental A Team (18:32.468) So,   The Dental A Team (18:49.498) Totally agree. And you're right though, you have that big insurance thing that happened this year as multiple companies. And then I think that was the one that got super hit. But also I've had clients that have tracked it weekly, monthly, all those pieces and started realizing that they had payment plans that were lapsing that they didn't realize before. So I do not advocate, know that my team does not advocate in office payment plans, you guys, I hate them for this reason. They get lost. You're not a bank. you're a provider, a service provider.   Britt (19:09.624) No. Don't do it.   The Dental A Team (19:18.661) provide the services and get paid for what you do. If you need options for payment plans, please call us. Just let us know. Hello at the NLATN.com. Exactly.   Britt (19:24.952) Pre-payment is your option. Pre-payment is the option. can force the payment and get it done once it can be paid for.   The Dental A Team (19:31.382) Exactly. I always say, me help you build a savings account and we will save it here for you. And then we can get your treatment when you're done. But I had a lot of patients that, or a lot of practices that realized all of a sudden, like it wasn't necessarily just the insurance companies. We started really looking at it on a super fine scale because of what happened with the insurance. But then they're like, wait a second Tiff.   A lot of this is patient and I'm like, because you've not been looking at it, right? We've not tracked it like this on this kind of a scale. So these are the pieces you guys that really start to jump out. These are the things that I think you guys are waking up in the middle of the night, like, my gosh, what if this is a thing, right? And you're like, give me a system. Like, we have the systems. This is the system. Like track the trends, track what's happening, track where you're going, track where you've been so you can see where you need to go. So you know where you're going.   You know where you've been. Now do we need to add anything to where you're going in order to hit goals? Make sure your money is accounted for. Call us when you need systems, KPIs, key performance indicators, scorecards that track trends, and having people in your back pocket that are there to help you. Whether it's us, a consulting company, a coach, a friend, whomever it is, also having your team members on your side. So who's filling in this information and has your back there?   Britt (20:24.141) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (20:48.508) Those are my biggest to-do's for your 2025. You guys don't over-complicate it. It's really easy to over-complicate it. It's really easy to try to tackle too much at one time. I want you guys to pull your data, pull your numbers, where are you trying to go, and which metric needs to be dialed first. So first quarter, which metric do we need to dial up in order to push you towards those goals? Britt mentioned earlier in the podcast, it might be billing.   It might be marketing. might be that you need more new patients. It might be scheduling. Like where is it that you're low in all of the different areas within your trends? So you can twist that dial, ramp it up, and then watch the other ones and see how those trends do so you can pick your next one. Britt, brilliant brain, brilliant Britt. I was going to call you today. Brilliant brain Britt. Thank you so much for all of the input and all of the work that you've put in. You helped me a ton with that scorecard.   Britt (21:33.7) you   The Dental A Team (21:42.976) for our clients, so thank you so much. cannot wait to have everyone on that ding-ding scorecard. It's going to be incredible. And you guys, if you're a client of ours, you're not on the scorecard yet, reach out to your consultant. Make sure that you've got all the data, you've got all the meetings and all the pieces together for that. If you're not yet a client, we can't wait to meet you. And if you're Forever Podcast listener, then freaking rock out, text us, email us.   Ask us what you need and if you need help with these things. always here for all of you guys, no matter what your status is. Thank you so much. Reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com Drop us a five star review. We can't wait to hear from you guys and hear how amazing your 2025 is going.  

Erika Castro, Supplier Diversity and Supplier Management Manager at Salt River Project, joins Mesa Chamber President and CEO Sally Harrison in discussing SRP's inaugural Supplier Diversity Economic Impact Report and opportunities and initiatives for suppliers.  Learn more about SRP's supplier diversity at srpnet.com/supplierdiversity. The Mesa Chamber of Commerce Inside Business Podcast is a production of the Mesa Chamber of Commerce. Each episode is recorded in the University of Phoenix Podcast Studio. Inquiries regarding the MCIBP can be made via email to info@mesachamber.org.  The Podcast interviews members and individuals/organizations on topics of interest to Mesa Chamber members. Learn more at mesachamber.org. ©2024 Mesa Chamber of Commerce

You have a limited offer you can use now, that gets you up to 48% off your first subscription or 20% off one time purchases with code GSA20 at checkout You can claim it at: https://www.magicmind.com/GSA20Have you ever gotten an email from GSA letting you know you failed to report your sales?  Maybe you're a new contractor trying to get on top of contract compliance requirements?  In any case, hop into the episode to find out more about reporting your sales to GSA!As always if you have any questions, or if you'd like direct support from a GSA consultant to help with a specific project please feel free to reach out to us at podcast@elevategsa.comLinks:For more episodes: www.elevategsa.com/podcastSales Reporting Portal: https://srp.fas.gsa.gov/

Is there a community of dedicated practitioners offering evidence-based integrative care to empower, support and bring peace to those navigating end of life experience, their caregivers, and anyone grieving the loss of a loved one? Yes, yes and yes! Today we are honored to introduce you to the Founder of The Lori Project, Caitlin Marino in this special episode of SRP. Denise Straiges & Caitlin Marino discuss The Lori Project and beyond. Learn more about The Lori Project here → https://www.theloriproject.com/ Learn more about HHN Comfort Care: https://homeopathyhelpnow.com/comfort-care/ Denise Straiges MA, CCH, RSHom(NA), PCH is fiercely committed to raising the bar in academic and clinical training for all Homeopaths. She is the President and Clinical Director of The Academy of Homeopathy Education (AHE), and established HOHM Foundation, whose initiatives include the Homeopathy Help Network, a not-for-profit, research-based initiative focused on delivering high quality, affordable Homeopathy care to all. Under her leadership, AHE was named exclusive educational provider for the American Institute of Homeopathy (AIH), the oldest medical society in the US.Denise is a 2023 graduate of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her dissertation, Contingent Evolution: Homeopathy and 19th Century Biomedicine explores how the uptake of bacteriological discoveries into the canon of 19th century medical knowledge was an interdependent and non-linear process in both orthodox and heterodox spaces. In conjunction with HOHM Foundation, she has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on clinical outcomes and education in integrative medicine, and her dissertation was released as a book in 2023. She is completing a compendium of homeopathic case analysis with expected publication in 2024/25.Denise maintains a busy practice in classical homeopathy with a focus on complex neurological and autoimmune conditions and provides clinical supervision and mentorship to students and professional homeopaths around the world. Caitlin Marino, Founding Member of The Lori Project, is an internationally recognized distant energy healer and teacher with over 17 years of experience serving clients and students from all over the world. Caitlin was first introduced to energy healing when it saved her life at the age of 25. She has since been committed to sharing knowledge to empower others. Caitlin and Lori shared an immediate and special bond when they first met. As Caitlin supported Lori through her end of life journey, by providing Reiki services and teaching Lori and her children Reiki 1 for self support, Caitlin was touched and forever changed by Lori's presence, magic, light, and empowered end of life experience. This project was born out of this special connection and fueled by a desire to share Lori's empowered way with others who are facing end of life, either personally or that of a loved one. 

Tiff and Dana spell out how to avoid the crunch-time that always seems to crop up each December. They give advice on how to find the just-right daily metric for your practice, the power of adding procedure codes, how to get the whole team rallied for the cause, and more. Episode resources: Reach out to Tiff and Dana Tune Into DAT's Monthly Webinar Practice Momentum Group Consulting Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Become Dental A-Team Platinum! Review the podcast Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:01.174) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. Dana and I are back at it today. We are bringing you some fantastic information today, if I might say so myself. Dana, thank you so much for being here with me. I know we both had calls. You've had a million calls.   a ton of clients and you had so many calls already this morning and you pop it on podcasts to just give away more information. So thank you for being here with me. Thank you for giving me this time this afternoon. What do you have going on this weekend? It's Friday for us right now. I don't know when this is dropping, if it'll be a Friday or not, but what do you have going on this weekend? Because I think the world needs to know. I was very excited and I'm going to need a picture of your outfit.   Dana (00:41.026) Thanks, I'm super excited. We are going to PBR tonight. It's one of my kids' most favorite things and I will say in Tucson they do it up. They do get a lot of the top bull riders across the country. So my kids are pumped for that and indoor fireworks and country music. so we are pumped. I know, was like in my morning Friday five, like, yee-haw everybody, I'm super excited.   The Dental A Team (00:56.384) Dang!   The Dental A Team (01:03.222) Yeah, I'm excited. My sister and I went to PBR a couple years ago. It was up here in Phoenix and it was fun. We were honestly we went as like, I don't know, it's something to do. But we were like hyped by the end of the night. It was like two hours like 10, 11pm. And I was like, what else are we doing tonight? Like, where are we going? So I was like your kids so I get it. And my feet hurt because I wore her boots and that was the wrong idea. So it's fine. It's fine. Well, you have PBR. I have my   Dana (01:22.946) Yeah, super fun.   Dana (01:27.746) You   The Dental A Team (01:31.946) tonight. You didn't get to hear that. I know. Mariah Carey's Christmas concert and I told the team this morning this is not meant to be political or offensive to anyone. This is just true from my heart. Mariah Carey is to me what Taylor Swift is to all the Swifties of the world. I am not. I I think Taylor's would just be fantastic. I do love her music. I think she's great but to me Mariah Carey is is that. So I'm excited.   Dana (01:49.584) Yeah.   Dana (01:57.614) I'll exchange pictures then.   The Dental A Team (01:59.958) Yes, yes, we'll exchange pictures. You got PBR, I Mariah Carey, we've got it on lockdown. This is going to be fantastic night. I hope all of you are doing something fun, whatever day this might be, that you're listening to this. I hope that the weekend that we recorded this, you did one of those two things if you're here in Arizona. And really, we're looking at, I mean, we're looking at fun things towards the end of the year. This time of year,   is wild. I feel like this weekend specifically I've had like 16 different things come up that people are like, can you do this, can you do that? I'm like, my gosh, plus I fly on Sunday and I'm like, I can't cram anything else into the amount of time that I have remaining for the year and this is the crunch time, the end of the year.   where things just get really, really, really wild. And we really try to cram as much as we can into the time that we have. So personally and professionally, we start doing this, we start seeing practice, you know, schedules get a little wild. And I really want to talk about today, how to make the most of that. So end of year crunch, end of month crunch, but also Dana and I were talking and I want to not just talk about it for December, for the end of the year, I want to talk about it for   forever, for every month. How can we make sure that it doesn't get to the end of the year, the last two months of the year, that we're like, holy cow, guys, we've got $60,000, we've got to make up, we're behind. And I don't want you guys to get there. I don't want you to feel that crunch. I want you to be looking at numbers more succinctly throughout the year so that you don't feel that stress, but.   We do get there. We do get there sometimes during the year, during other months. And I want you to also be prepared for what that can look like. And Dana, you had just this really fantastic plan.   The Dental A Team (03:45.908) that you've laid out that we use for a lot of our clients, all of our clients are doing it, where they should be. If they're not, slap on the wrist and talk to your consultant. Make sure you get it implemented. But I really want to hear, in your words, Dana, how you make sure that your teams and your doctors are constantly looking at those goals, that they don't have that weird crunch time, and they can accomplish what they're looking for.   Dana (04:08.067) Yeah, and I think like you said, you start off by really looking at those numbers throughout the entire year. I think we set them oftentimes in November, December for the following year and then we're like, well, we set them, we know what they are, that's it. And that's great that you know what they are, but continuing to look at them throughout the year and really to continue to look at is there a gap in any of them? And then we are...   The Dental A Team (04:19.774) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (04:23.178) Yeah.   Dana (04:33.858) pushing the needle or spreading the gap out for the rest of the year so that we are just doing our very best and we're staying on top of where we are in getting there.   Oftentimes when we set them in the beginning of the year, those are big numbers, right? They're big numbers and for the team to digest this, we walked through with a practice on our group consulting the other day and our consultant, Christy, just did a fantastic job of saying like, those are huge numbers and to team members sometimes we have to break it down into bite-sized chunks and what can we focus on every single day to get us there? And if we can take, let's say you set a $60,000 gap, if we can take a $60,000 gap and we can   The Dental A Team (04:49.62) Yeah.   Dana (05:16.256) break it down and say, guys, that is one crown a day. Boy, does that feel so much more doable to a team member than we've got to find $60,000. Right. And I love that you said not just in December, because December, like you and I were talking about, Tiv, is like a baby month this year, like where the holiday is placed and with the time off that happens in December and all the activities like December is such a tiny month this year. And so if we wait and we save and we say, okay, well, let's look at it in December, man, we have missed some   The Dental A Team (05:25.29) Yeah. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (05:32.416) Yeah.   Dana (05:46.16) opportunities throughout the year and all the other working days that happened before we got to the month of December.   The Dental A Team (05:51.034) Mm-hmm. Totally. I think that's brilliant and it's something that should be talked about like you said every day Really we should be looking at it especially when it's crunch time and I know I've had so many teams really rally At the end of the month when it is crunch time and not that they waited till the end of the month But they're like, okay guys like we're still needing this 10k Like where are we finding it today and teams will gamify it and they'll really rally around it   when they know what they need to gain, when they know how to win. So this kind of goes into that metrics conversation that we had on another podcast of really knowing how I can affect the metric on a daily basis. I love.   the idea of doing it and breaking that and what Christy said, like breaking a big goal down to something smaller. breaking that yearly goal down to quarterly, down to monthly, down to daily is huge. And I even have practices, I talked to one today that they were like, gosh, most of the days this week were fantastic, yesterday kind of sucked. But overall for the week, we were above goal. Fantastic. So it's from a monthly to a weekly to a daily. Like, as long as you're on track over the big haul, that's what matters.   I do have practices that almost focus too small and then I have practices that focus too big. The two big practices are like, okay guys, our goal is 250 this month and we're at 125, so let's keep going. It's like, okay, cool, but what else is left? And then I have practices that are like, we need $10,000 every day. So every day they're like, are we at $10,000, yes or no?   What they're not doing is what Dana's talking about is really looking at what was our goal minus what we've done minus what's scheduled, right? Divided by the number of days you have remaining because even if I'm at 12,000 of a $10,000 goal today, if I was at 8,000 yesterday and I'm not thinking about that now $2,000 gap between the two days, I'm $2,000 short at the end of the month and I'm like, wait, where did the money go?   The Dental A Team (07:47.338) well, there's a gap somewhere that was missed. So we've got to look at all of those metrics and figure out every single day, my daily goal might change. I have a practice that I was like,   Just I Extended them that was hard to get out I extended them one year past what I they thought they could do I knew they could do it right But they had like a nine thousand dollar a day goal They had three hygienists and they had one and a half doctors had a nine thousand dollar a day goal and I was like No, you guys you guys can do 12 and they were like   No freaking way. And I was like, we're doing it. We're freaking doing it. I'm going to tell show you how I'm going to tell you how to get there. I'm gonna hold you accountable. We're gonna do it. And they did. But then next week, I get a text from the front office gal, the treatment coordinator and she's like, I'm sad to say that was really easy. And I think I know because you just didn't know what you were capable of because we weren't looking at the numbers before you had no idea that you were surpassing $9,000 on the regular.   Dana (08:24.813) me.   The Dental A Team (08:48.694) You guys were already doing it, you just didn't know. So I put that $12,000 in, blew your minds, and now you guys are like, wait a second, this was really easy, actually, if we could do more. You totally can with the right scheduling, with the right pieces put into place, but if we're not looking at it, we have no idea where we can go. So taking those pieces throughout the month, on the fifth day, you might see, hey guys, we're actually not, we're a little bit behind, we need to add $2,000 each day. Great, our 9,000.   $1,000 goal is now $11,000 until we get above that. But looking at it every day and making sure we do know what that gap is. Dana, you talked on another podcast about, like we said at the beginning of this one, how the little things that we do every single day can add up to a big thing. So even as far as you mentioned attaching all of the procedure codes, right? So what have you seen in practices that you've worked with or worked in where it's like, gosh, guys, we're only $500 short or something, like we're looking at it.   But then it comes down to those simple things. What are some areas that you feel like practices miss that are easily made up when they've got a gap like that? Like just attaching simple codes. What codes are you looking at?   Dana (10:00.524) Yeah, x-rays for sure. Anything as far as adjunct services. Sometimes we're like, well, I'm just going to irrigate just this quadrant. Well, you irrigated them, right? Or bundling perio things so that our perio patients that get the best results also have laser or ozone or stellalight or all of the other perio adjunct services. Making sure that we're adding fluoride. Even I've got lots of doctors now that because fluoride helps crowns last longer are adding fluoride to all of their crowns.   they do the seat, they're administering varnish. Even coming up with, right, as we're seeing more of this fluoride pushback come out, you know what? There's a hydroxyapatite varnish. So let's have that in the practice so that even when we get pushback, there's still something we can do. So it really is just little, little things. And I use fluoride as an example because lots of patients can benefit from that or the hydroxyapatite alternative.   If we look at, say one hygiene day, average floor, will say is $30 for the varnish. We see eight patients in each hygiene column. If every hygienist even got 80 % of their patients, that's close to a thousand extra dollars every single working day. And it's something so small. You use the example of PAs and write PAs 12, $16. But if we're doing that routinely for all of our patients, that maybe we see a little bit something or maybe, you know, they're having some sensitivity here and we add that PA.   those things add up with the number of patients that we see each day. So little things like that really do have a huge impact.   The Dental A Team (11:36.16) Yeah, I agree. I think the PAs are so easy. And I think even on like a limited exam, we'll have a limited come in and they'll do a limited and a PA. But then sometimes the doctor's like, can you get a bite wing of that? Then you did a bite wing too, right? So making sure all those are put in there. And then I thought how many times when I've done billing and gone back through and I've seen crowns, and I'm like, so many crowns and do we really not do build ups? Doc's like, we always do a build up. What are you talking about?   I'm like, well, we've never charged for a buildup. These patients are just getting buildups all over the place. And those are like $185. I've seen it all the way up to almost $300 for a buildup.   Dana (12:07.81) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (12:17.174) Making sure that every code is attached is insanely important, not just to the billing representative because he or she desperately wants that information, you guys, but also to your bottom goal. And when you come in and it's like, guys, we're so close. Or when I get the calls from the teams and they're like, we missed it by 2000. I'm like, well, where was the 2000? Where did you lose it? Was it in buildups or PAs or was it, know, two more, can we have done two more occlusal guards? Like, where does that look like? really   winning your month and knowing how you're going to get there is huge and then I think you guys talked you said on that group coaching call which I love because those doctors are just freaking fantastic and they have so many excellent questions and ideas that they're sharing but you guys brought it so granular as to like what is the thing that's going to get us there so we might be $1,200 short what is that so that's a crown   That's two occlusal guards. That's a handful of fillings for certain patients. Really looking at, where can we make that up? Where do we have time in our schedule to make that up? Do I have assistive time that if I had two night guards come through, so two occlusal guards, I could have the scans or impressions taken? Making sure that it's super applicable and that we can see the result very easily, I think is super key. And then also flip side, Dana, I have a lot of...   a lot of hygienists that I'm like, take the scan in your room. If this patient needs a night guard and occlusal guard, take the scan in your room and then get that credit over there as well. Do you have a lot of hygienists that are doing scans and occlusal guard scans, like full mouth scans to show teeth shifting, all those pieces? Are you seeing that a lot?   Dana (14:00.61) Yeah, yeah, and I'm even seeing I had a hygiene team that they even started to build a whitening column in between their   re-care patients and they would both kind of just hop and run it and manage it together. And that was a fantastic boost in production. And sometimes too, is like doctors are hesitant. I just talked to another doctor and it was like, well, you know, I could do bone graft for membrane. And I'm like, why are you going to stop and think like, would this give this patient a better result? Maybe they're not interested in implant right now, but they didn't say no ever in the future. like, let's bone graft it and make sure that those bone levels are nice and healthy or why only popped a couple granules in there? No, that's a bone graft. So let's make   sure that we are accounting for it. So I think this is a team-wide thing. And if everybody can just be like, what is one little thing? What is one little thing that if I did consistently throughout my patient base, or if I added in one whitening patient, or combined as a hygiene team, we ran a whitening column, or our FDOT had their own column and they were doing sealants in a pediatric practice. Like what can we do? And there's oftentimes so many things. And if we put our heads together, we actually end up with this list and   The Dental A Team (14:37.78) You opened it.   The Dental A Team (14:46.176) Yeah.   Dana (15:07.44) we're like, okay, well, actually, where do we start of all of these things that we can do?   The Dental A Team (15:07.946) Yeah. Yes.   Yes, and putting your heads together on how do we implement this change moving forward and what's the verbiage to feel okay with it? Because I think also, we have a hard time sometimes charging for what we should get paid for. And we say constantly, charge for what you did, charge for what you did. So that means don't leave it off and charge for what you did, meaning don't charge the wrong code just because it feels better because it feels like less I know.   I love you all dearly, all of you who are doing this, but it needs to stop. Charging a pro fee for a perio maintenance, just do a perio maintenance. If this patient is a perio maintenance, if this patient has pocketing, if they have all the pieces that add up, they had SRP, they have all of those pieces, and you guys.   You guys, this drives me insane and I'm not a hygienist, so tell me if this is totally out of line. I am okay with it. Write me, email me, Dana, call me out on it now, I don't care. But it drives me insane when I see hygienists time over time over time say, okay, well, I'm going to do it this time. But really, it's if it's bad next time, still, I'm going to SRP, I'm going do a one to three or I'm going to go I'm going to have them do three profies. Because really, they need limited scaling. But I don't want to have   to tell them that or I think I can do it with the profis like my gosh I think we get caught up in not wanting to make a patient feel some certain way and we actually are doing them such a disservice in my opinion if I have perio tell me I have perio   The Dental A Team (16:42.036) But I need limited scaling because I have had a body change. My physical body has changed because guess what? I'm older than the last time I was here. I'm on different medications or supplements or my breathing changed. I lost weight. I gained weight. I stopped sleeping at night. So many things add up to changes in our mouth that we don't give credit to and then we charge for the lesser because we feel bad. We feel guilty. That's my assumption.   That's me putting an assumption into the world. But for the love of all things that are holy, I implore upon you, charge for what you're doing. If you do a CBCT scan, charge for that. If you do a panel, charge for that. Charge for whatever it is that you're doing and stop charging for the lesser just to pad something. Now, if you want to charge it out and you're like, hey, I don't want to charge you for this, then do a write-off.   Do a write-off so that you see how much of that you're writing off and giving away as well. Because when you charge a pro fee, when it should have been a perio maintenance, you're not seeing that $60 to $100 difference of money that you're writing off every month that you guys are owed because you did the work. That's my soapbox, Dana.   Dana (18:00.854) No, I will join you in that. I will agree with you. Same thing. I was even the classic hygienist who if you came with too much buildup, I would say I need to see you every three months instead of every six months. You're still a pro-fee, but you're just a heavier builder. And I only have an hour with you and I refuse to run 15 minutes into my next patient's appointment when I could see you more frequently. So...   Yeah, you do what your patient needs and if you're prepping the patient and if you're like, oftentimes you're like, well, they're just gonna be surprised or they're gonna be shocked that they need this this time. Well, no, because you build that into the entire appointment, right? You're saying these period charting out loud. You're making them say like, if you hear fours, hey, those are warning signs. If you hear fives, we're in a little bit of hot water territory here. So.   The Dental A Team (18:25.152) Yes.   The Dental A Team (18:39.051) Yeah.   Dana (18:49.64) have the conversations that are needed to be had, do the services that are needed to be done, and bill accordingly.   The Dental A Team (18:55.57) I agree. And doctors, the same thing goes to you for those buildups, for those x-rays, for those just to fix whatever it is. Charge for what you're doing. If you did a buildup,   put it in there. If it wasn't treatment planned as it was needing a buildup, then guess what? Have the conversation with the patient, hey, we weren't actually able to save it. We thought we were going to be able to, but once we got in there, it was a little bit deeper, a little bit bigger. And for the stability of this tooth and the longevity of your crown, the money that you are investing, we had to do a buildup.   Period. It's not that much, you guys. It is on the long run to you because if you're giving away 10 buildups, it's over potentially $2,000 a month, just charge for it. Do the right thing, charge for it. So that's not just a dig at hygiene. That is everyone. Charge for what you're doing, code for what you're doing. Make the best of your months by looking at what that gap is and how can we get there and then look back and think too.   How did we get here? Is it because we forgot to charge for things? We were missing things? Do we have open hours? Do we need to tackle something within the scheduling or the treatment planning? Really look at the trends of the practice, not just what can we add same day always. That's a huge benefit and something I want you to be looking at, but look at the trends that also got you there.   So take all this information our soapbox is done you guys we are stepping off of it. We are done for the day on that one. I hope you've gained some value there are some amazing tips within this we do work with clients constantly on these same pieces and if you have questions on what you should be charging for or shouldn't be we can help with a lot of those we don't know.   The Dental A Team (20:33.246) the legalities for every single thing but we do know how to look really hard and find information and help you out as best as we can. If we don't, we know the people who can help you and we will always direct you in that direction. So Hello@TheDentalATeam.com message us there, message us on socials, whatever avenue you want to take. Drop us a five star review below, let us know how much you loved this. Dana, thank you so much for joining me on my soapbox today and for all of the invaluable information that you had to share today. This has been so much fun.   Thank you. Awesome you guys can't wait to hear from you. I hope you have a stellar rest of your day and into the week or weekend whatever that looks like today while you're listening to this. We'll catch you next time.

Curious about solar energy? Before you jump in, watch this video to get a full understanding of what solar really means for Arizona homeowners. Door-to-door sales reps might make solar sound like a no-brainer, but the reality has layers that you deserve to know. In this episode, Scott from the State 48 Homeowner podcast breaks down the full picture about solar for Arizona homes, including what most salespeople leave out. From financing and tax credits to the impact on home sales, we dive into the details with insights from real estate pros, solar techs, and roofing experts to help you make an informed decision. What You'll Learn in This Video: • Avoiding Sales Pressure: Learn why high-pressure sales tactics are a red flag in the solar industry and why it's essential to take your time before committing. • True Costs of Solar: Get a clear look at solar financing and leasing—how it affects your home's  potential buyers when you're ready to sell. • Roofing & Maintenance Considerations: Discover what adding solar panels means for your roof's lifespan and maintenance, including the hidden costs when repairs are needed. • Arizona-Specific Advice: Understand the impact of utility providers (like SRP and APS), local tax credits, and incentives that could make or break your decision. Featured Experts: • Rob Martin, Klaus Team Realtor • Twila Edwards, Klaus Team Realtor • Steve Farrington, Loan Officer, Unity Home Loans • Scott Kooiman, State 48 Homeowner Podcast Host and Real Estate Associate Broker, Klaus Team If you're considering solar, don't miss out on these essential insights. Whether you're looking for long-term savings or trying to make the most informed decision, this video will help you decide if solar is right for you in Arizona. Hit “Subscribe” for more homeowner tips, and let us know your thoughts in the comments below! 0:00 Intro 0:58 High Pressure Sales 2:18 Financing Solar 3:49 Equipment on a Lease 4:07 Roof Maintenance  4:50 When Does Solar Work? 5:37 The Bottom Line

The NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP) is hosting a Risk e-Learning webinar series focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to advance environmental health research. The series will feature SRP-funded researchers, collaborators, and other subject-matter experts who aim to better understand and address environmental health issues by applying AI and machine learning approaches to complex issues. Recent advances in AI and machine learning methods show promise to improve the accuracy and efficiency of environmental health research. Over the course of three sessions, presenters will discuss how they use AI and machine learning approaches to improve chemical analysis, characterize chemical risk, understand microbial ecosystems, develop technologies for contaminant removal, and more. In the third and final session, ML & AI Applications to Understand Omics, Metabolomics, & Immunotoxicity and Optimize Bioengineering Using Datasets, Models, and Mass Spectrometry, speakers will discuss how they apply machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to analyze mass spectrometry and microscopy data and optimize models for understanding metabolomics, metabolite pathways, and immunotoxicology To learn about and register for the other sessions in this webinar series, please see the SRP website. Grace Peng, Ph.D., is a co-coordinator of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund's Bridge to Artificial Intelligence (Bridge2AI) program, bridging the gap between the biomedical, behavioral and bioethics research communities and the data science/AI communities through a consortium of diverse experts to set the stage for widespread adoption of AI/ML in medicine. Dr. Peng will give an overview of the Bridge2AI program and introduce one of their projects at the University of California San Diego — Trey Ideker, Ph.D. Dr. Ideker will discuss the cell maps for AI (CM4AI) functional genomics project, one of four major data generation projects under the Bridge2AI program. The goal of the project is to provide a comprehensive map of human cellular components through generation of major spatial proteomics datasets. John Efromson, M.S., will present on Ramona Optic, Inc.'s Multi-Camera Array Microscope [MCAM(TM)], which is used to automate imaging and computer vision analysis of zebrafish and greatly improves previous throughput and analysis capabilities. Multiple applications of machine learning will be discussed, including behavioral pose estimation and phenotyping, morphological analysis, and cell counting and fluorescence quantification, as well as how these distinct analyses can be used together for pharmacology, toxicology, and neuroscience research. Speakers:Grace C.Y. Peng, Ph.D., Division of Discovery Science and Technology (Bioengineering), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and Trey Ideker, Ph.D., University of California San DiegoJohn Efromson, M.S., Ramona OpticsForest White, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)Moderator: Hunter Moseley, Ph.D., University of Kentucky To view this archive online or download the slides associated with this seminar, please visit http://www.clu-in.org/conf/tio/SRP-ML-AI3_112224/

The NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP) is hosting a Risk e-Learning webinar series focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to advance environmental health research. The series will feature SRP-funded researchers, collaborators, and other subject-matter experts who aim to better understand and address environmental health issues by applying AI and machine learning approaches to complex issues. Recent advances in AI and machine learning methods show promise to improve the accuracy and efficiency of environmental health research. Over the course of three sessions, presenters will discuss how they use AI and machine learning approaches to improve chemical analysis, characterize chemical risk, understand microbial ecosystems, develop technologies for contaminant removal, and more. In the third and final session, ML & AI Applications to Understand Omics, Metabolomics, & Immunotoxicity and Optimize Bioengineering Using Datasets, Models, and Mass Spectrometry, speakers will discuss how they apply machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to analyze mass spectrometry and microscopy data and optimize models for understanding metabolomics, metabolite pathways, and immunotoxicology To learn about and register for the other sessions in this webinar series, please see the SRP website. Grace Peng, Ph.D., is a co-coordinator of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund's Bridge to Artificial Intelligence (Bridge2AI) program, bridging the gap between the biomedical, behavioral and bioethics research communities and the data science/AI communities through a consortium of diverse experts to set the stage for widespread adoption of AI/ML in medicine. Dr. Peng will give an overview of the Bridge2AI program and introduce one of their projects at the University of California San Diego — Trey Ideker, Ph.D. Dr. Ideker will discuss the cell maps for AI (CM4AI) functional genomics project, one of four major data generation projects under the Bridge2AI program. The goal of the project is to provide a comprehensive map of human cellular components through generation of major spatial proteomics datasets. John Efromson, M.S., will present on Ramona Optic, Inc.'s Multi-Camera Array Microscope [MCAM(TM)], which is used to automate imaging and computer vision analysis of zebrafish and greatly improves previous throughput and analysis capabilities. Multiple applications of machine learning will be discussed, including behavioral pose estimation and phenotyping, morphological analysis, and cell counting and fluorescence quantification, as well as how these distinct analyses can be used together for pharmacology, toxicology, and neuroscience research. Speakers:Grace C.Y. Peng, Ph.D., Division of Discovery Science and Technology (Bioengineering), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and Trey Ideker, Ph.D., University of California San DiegoJohn Efromson, M.S., Ramona OpticsForest White, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)Moderator: Hunter Moseley, Ph.D., University of Kentucky To view this archive online or download the slides associated with this seminar, please visit http://www.clu-in.org/conf/tio/SRP-ML-AI3_112224/

The NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP) is hosting a Risk e-Learning webinar series focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to advance environmental health research. The series will feature SRP-funded researchers, collaborators, and other subject-matter experts who aim to better understand and address environmental health issues by applying AI and machine learning approaches to complex issues. Recent advances in AI and machine learning methods show promise to improve the accuracy and efficiency of environmental health research. Over the course of three sessions, presenters will discuss how they use AI and machine learning approaches to improve chemical analysis, characterize chemical risk, understand microbial ecosystems, develop technologies for contaminant removal, and more. In the second session ML & AI Applications to Environmental Engineering Contaminants & Bioremediation, invited presenters will discuss how they apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to environmental engineering applications including contaminants and bioremediation using biosensors, microbiome compositions, and screening tools. To learn about and register for the other sessions in this webinar series, please see the SRP website. Kei-Hoi Cheung, Ph.D., has an extensive history in data science, and has leveraged that expertise to lead natural language processing (NLP) projects in annotating, extracting, and retrieving environmental exposure data. He will present on the use of these NLP methods combined with ontologies in the in the context of scientific literature on emerging water contaminants. Mohammad Soheilypour, Ph.D., will discuss the application of a suite of computational methods to identify and predict microbial metabolism of various chemical compounds, with a focus on gut and environmental microbiomes. Specifically, he will cover the potential application of machine learning models in this context and their integration with other computational methods to enhance both accuracy and utility. Paul Westerhoff, Ph.D., will highlight the work of his research team utilizing and comparing two advanced multiple data imputation techniques, AMELIA and MICE algorithms, to fill gaps in sparse groundwater quality datasets to support State agencies in prioritizing future sampling activities. Historic water quality databases are often sparse due to financial budgets for collection and analysis, posing challenges in evaluating exposure or water treatment effectiveness — and this project aims to account for those by accurately assessing and managing risks associated with inorganic pollutants using this technology. Speakers:Kei-Hoi Cheung, Ph.D., Yale University School of MedicineMohammad Soheilypour, Ph.D., Nexilico Inc.Paul Westerhoff, Ph.D., Arizona State UniversityModerator: Rodrigo Rimando, U.S. Department of Energy To view this archive online or download the slides associated with this seminar, please visit http://www.clu-in.org/conf/tio/SRP-ML-AI2_112024/

The NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP) is hosting a Risk e-Learning webinar series focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to advance environmental health research. The series will feature SRP-funded researchers, collaborators, and other subject-matter experts who aim to better understand and address environmental health issues by applying AI and machine learning approaches to complex issues. Recent advances in AI and machine learning methods show promise to improve the accuracy and efficiency of environmental health research. Over the course of three sessions, presenters will discuss how they use AI and machine learning approaches to improve chemical analysis, characterize chemical risk, understand microbial ecosystems, develop technologies for contaminant removal, and more. In the second session ML & AI Applications to Environmental Engineering Contaminants & Bioremediation, invited presenters will discuss how they apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to environmental engineering applications including contaminants and bioremediation using biosensors, microbiome compositions, and screening tools. To learn about and register for the other sessions in this webinar series, please see the SRP website. Kei-Hoi Cheung, Ph.D., has an extensive history in data science, and has leveraged that expertise to lead natural language processing (NLP) projects in annotating, extracting, and retrieving environmental exposure data. He will present on the use of these NLP methods combined with ontologies in the in the context of scientific literature on emerging water contaminants. Mohammad Soheilypour, Ph.D., will discuss the application of a suite of computational methods to identify and predict microbial metabolism of various chemical compounds, with a focus on gut and environmental microbiomes. Specifically, he will cover the potential application of machine learning models in this context and their integration with other computational methods to enhance both accuracy and utility. Paul Westerhoff, Ph.D., will highlight the work of his research team utilizing and comparing two advanced multiple data imputation techniques, AMELIA and MICE algorithms, to fill gaps in sparse groundwater quality datasets to support State agencies in prioritizing future sampling activities. Historic water quality databases are often sparse due to financial budgets for collection and analysis, posing challenges in evaluating exposure or water treatment effectiveness — and this project aims to account for those by accurately assessing and managing risks associated with inorganic pollutants using this technology. Speakers:Kei-Hoi Cheung, Ph.D., Yale University School of MedicineMohammad Soheilypour, Ph.D., Nexilico Inc.Paul Westerhoff, Ph.D., Arizona State UniversityModerator: Rodrigo Rimando, U.S. Department of Energy To view this archive online or download the slides associated with this seminar, please visit http://www.clu-in.org/conf/tio/SRP-ML-AI2_112024/

The NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP) is hosting a Risk e-Learning webinar series focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to advance environmental health research. The series will feature SRP-funded researchers, collaborators, and other subject-matter experts who aim to better understand and address environmental health issues by applying AI and machine learning approaches to complex issues. Recent advances in AI and machine learning methods show promise to improve the accuracy and efficiency of environmental health research. Over the course of three sessions, presenters will discuss how they use AI and machine learning approaches to improve chemical analysis, characterize chemical risk, understand microbial ecosystems, develop technologies for contaminant removal, and more. In the first session, AI & ML Applications to Understand Chemical Mixtures, Properties, and Exposures and their Relationship to Human Health, speakers will discuss how they apply machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to understand chemical exposures and their effects on human health. To learn about and register for the other sessions in this webinar series, please see the SRP website. Naomi Halas, Ph.D., and Ankit Patel, Ph.D., will share updates on their work combining surface-enhanced spectroscopies (Raman and Infrared Absorption) with machine learning algorithms with the goal of developing simple and ultimately low-cost methods for the detection and identification of environmental toxins. As part of their discussion, they will share several approaches, including the use of machine learning algorithms to detect individual constituents in complex mixtures and the use of facial recognition strategies to identify specific chemical toxins in human placenta. Jacob Kvasnicka, Ph.D., will present on a project he supported while he was a postdoctoral researcher at Texas A&M University SRP Center's Risk and Geospatial Sciences Core. There, his work involved developing an ML framework for predicting safe exposure levels to chemicals to avoid cancerous and reproductive/developmental effects. Most chemicals lack toxicity data related to human health, and this study uses ML to fill this gap, greatly expanding the ability to characterize chemical risks and impacts. Trey Saddler will give attendees an overview of ToxPipe — a platform for performing retrieval augmented generation (RAG) over toxicological data. Comprised of a web interface, agentic workflows, and connections to various data sources, ToxPipe enables toxicologists to explore diverse datasets and generate toxicological narratives for a wide range of compounds. Speakers:Naomi Halas, Ph.D., and Ankit Patel, Ph.D., Rice UniversityJacob Kvasnicka, Ph.D., U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyTrey Saddler, NIEHS, Division of Translational ToxicologyModerator: David Reif, Ph.D., NIEHS, Division of Translational Toxicology To view this archive online or download the slides associated with this seminar, please visit http://www.clu-in.org/conf/tio/SRP-ML-AI1_110424/

The NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP) is hosting a Risk e-Learning webinar series focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to advance environmental health research. The series will feature SRP-funded researchers, collaborators, and other subject-matter experts who aim to better understand and address environmental health issues by applying AI and machine learning approaches to complex issues. Recent advances in AI and machine learning methods show promise to improve the accuracy and efficiency of environmental health research. Over the course of three sessions, presenters will discuss how they use AI and machine learning approaches to improve chemical analysis, characterize chemical risk, understand microbial ecosystems, develop technologies for contaminant removal, and more. In the first session, AI & ML Applications to Understand Chemical Mixtures, Properties, and Exposures and their Relationship to Human Health, speakers will discuss how they apply machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to understand chemical exposures and their effects on human health. To learn about and register for the other sessions in this webinar series, please see the SRP website. Naomi Halas, Ph.D., and Ankit Patel, Ph.D., will share updates on their work combining surface-enhanced spectroscopies (Raman and Infrared Absorption) with machine learning algorithms with the goal of developing simple and ultimately low-cost methods for the detection and identification of environmental toxins. As part of their discussion, they will share several approaches, including the use of machine learning algorithms to detect individual constituents in complex mixtures and the use of facial recognition strategies to identify specific chemical toxins in human placenta. Jacob Kvasnicka, Ph.D., will present on a project he supported while he was a postdoctoral researcher at Texas A&M University SRP Center's Risk and Geospatial Sciences Core. There, his work involved developing an ML framework for predicting safe exposure levels to chemicals to avoid cancerous and reproductive/developmental effects. Most chemicals lack toxicity data related to human health, and this study uses ML to fill this gap, greatly expanding the ability to characterize chemical risks and impacts. Trey Saddler will give attendees an overview of ToxPipe — a platform for performing retrieval augmented generation (RAG) over toxicological data. Comprised of a web interface, agentic workflows, and connections to various data sources, ToxPipe enables toxicologists to explore diverse datasets and generate toxicological narratives for a wide range of compounds. Speakers:Naomi Halas, Ph.D., and Ankit Patel, Ph.D., Rice UniversityJacob Kvasnicka, Ph.D., U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyTrey Saddler, NIEHS, Division of Translational ToxicologyModerator: David Reif, Ph.D., NIEHS, Division of Translational Toxicology To view this archive online or download the slides associated with this seminar, please visit http://www.clu-in.org/conf/tio/SRP-ML-AI1_110424/

  There's a new wave of gel desiccants that are showing statistically significant results as an adjunctive treatment to SRP. They just might make your life in the op easier! Annie Walters, MS, RDH Read by Jackie Sanders  Read Article Here: https://www.rdhmag.com/pathology/periodontitis/article/55137638/the-role-of-desiccants-in-the-management-of-periodontitis

How FEMA failed and how a private organization filled the gap.Doug examines how the federal government cannot do what private business and grassroots patriots can do in efforts to get aid to hurricane Helene victims.-----------Please prayerfully consider supporting doug's show by setting up a monthly recurring donation at www.DougBillings.us----------FreedomGoldUSA.com/DougSupport the show

Kiera and Britt discuss ways a practice can make sure their new patients are sticking around, including the importance of gaining feedback from those folks who are leaving and double-checking there's a chain of accountability in the first place. Episode resources: Reach out to Kiera and Britt Tune Into DAT's Monthly Webinar Practice Momentum Group Consulting Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Become Dental A-Team Platinum! Review the podcast Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:02.16) Hello, everyone. I am back again today with the one and only brilliant Brit. I have coined her new name and it's sticking it's gonna fit. Add it to the list. She's got about 15 of them. So your 16th name brilliant Brit. Thank you for being back with me today. I am on pod nine. just recorded another podcast that I cannot actually wait to release to the whole world here because I love The Dental A Team (00:26.852) when we can dive into stats and numbers. So Britt, thank you so much for being here with me today and recording these with me. I'm excited for this one as well. How are you? How are you doing? How's life? How's the world of brilliant Britt?   Britt (00:39.03) I mean, I'm here with Spiffy Tiffy, so it's a good time.   The Dental A Team (00:42.074) That's fair. That's fair. That's fair. I can't believe how well that name stuck. comes on a just so everyone knows. When my anniversary comes around every year, I get something marked some sort of memorabilia marked with Spiffy Tiffy. And they haven't let my even though our caricatures are gone. If you've never seen our caricatures, you need to go do some Dental A Team digging. They're out there somewhere. And this year's came with my character because they know   Britt (00:51.573) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (01:10.339) that Spiffy Tiffy Care for sure cannot die. So thanks for reminding me of that, Brit.   Britt (01:13.218) Definitely not. And it's one of the best nicknames, so it's a good one and it fits you so well.   The Dental A Team (01:17.23) you   The Dental A Team (01:20.749) thank you. Thank you. I feel like I have an easier name to rhyme with. you know, brilliant, Britt. I like it. Awesome. Well, thank you for all of that. Today, I wanted to chat new patients. And in the dental industry, we focus a lot of attention on new patients. And we focus a lot of attention on new patient acquisition. But it's something that I've noticed with a lot of my clients recently.   Britt (01:26.136) Yeah.   Britt (01:29.992) Thank   The Dental A Team (01:48.556) I've done a really big focus this year for all of my clients on their active patient count and just making sure that that's continuously growing because I just don't think that there's enough emphasis put on that on the business side of practice ownership. So I've been really working with my practices on that this year. Part of that is looking at those new patients, that acquisition, but then also are they staying, are new patients returning? And I don't think that that's something   we're constantly watching. We'll watch active patient count, new patient acquisition, and sometimes practices are watching their attrition. So what patients have left from their active patient count and looking to see with that, you guys are gonna look at, Your new patients minus your attrition gives you your actual active patient, like additions, right? Your actual new patients acquired, but you're not gonna notice that those new patients   are not coming back likely until six months later when they should be coming in. If they randomly end up on some sort of follow up someone decided to do because they don't actually have re care in the system because there should have been SRP or in 18 months when they fall off as a nutrition patient and they're no longer your active patient count. So not watching that in between to me is like, I don't know, I, it actually makes me think of when I order off of Amazon so often.   that I forget that I ordered something and it never came. That's what it feels like to me when you pay for a new patient, and you're not making sure that they're coming back. It's like ordering off of Amazon, forgetting you ordered it and never noticing that they took your money and didn't give you the product, which doesn't happen often. But I have had it happen where orders are delayed, orders are delayed. And I have to request it like sometimes you have to work for that stuff. It's not just as easy as a click.   That's what our new patients are like. So when we're paying to acquire these new patients, and we're working really hard to get them in the schedule, you guys, making sure that they're coming back is going to be huge. Britt, I chatted with you about this like five minutes ago. You have a ton of really great ideas on that. You know, my space is always like, well, relationships, if they love you, they'll come back and like we could dive into that forever. But there's a million podcasts on that. I actually really loved the ideas that you have wrapped around   The Dental A Team (04:12.971) how to make sure how we're tracking it, how to ensure that they're coming back and how to make them really value that space. So I would love to hear when you're working with clients or in the past when you worked with more clients, you guys, she's not up for grabs, okay, I'm just gonna put that out there. She's brilliant, is behind the scenes. But when you were working with clients before and what you see a lot of the other consultants doing, what are like top three spaces, top three ways   Britt (04:28.17) Thank   The Dental A Team (04:41.874) you think a practice could do really well in making sure that those acquired new patients stay.   Britt (04:46.926) Yeah, I love your analogy on Amazon because I think we've all come that person either like that we don't recognize it doesn't come or something shows up and you're like, huh, what is that? And that's when I know I have a problem sometimes. good, good analogy. think number one, I'll start with like being aware, right? So how many new patients are we getting and what's our attrition rate? How many patients did we see 18 months ago?   The Dental A Team (04:49.962) Thanks.   The Dental A Team (05:00.765) Yep. Yep, agreed.   Britt (05:14.21) that have not returned for an appointment, think is a reality check for everyone to see, do you have more new patients than you're losing? Do you have about the same, so we're running like even, or are we not even getting as many new patients as we're losing so that we know where we're at? And then I think some of the tips, you probably hear all the time, make sure everybody leaves with an appointment.   Make sure everybody leaves with an appointment. like, number one, that's it. Hygiene, everyone should be leaving with appointments so that they don't fall off this, like fall off our radar. Cause then we've all got to just work to try to get them scheduled. They have to try to remember to get themselves scheduled. So that's number one. I think number two is going to be making sure that we have some sort of recare reminder for those ones that fall through, that fall off the schedule.   We're doing texts, we're doing emails, calls if we need to. There's some sort of system around Recare to make sure that those patients are coming back and are getting back on the schedule, I think is huge. And my number three is anyone who's leaving the practice or doesn't come back, I want feedback. If they're moving, fine, no problem. Like if they're willing to give me feedback, I want anything so we know if there's a problem happening for why we're losing our patients. So we can fix those things and retain as many people as possible.   The Dental A Team (06:30.927) Yeah, I think that's fantastic. And that feedback, you guys can come in the form of like Google reviews for sure. We always want to push Google reviews. But then also to my, to my phones team is what I'm going to call it. Whoever's answering calls or making calls, really being diligent when a patient says, no, we don't want to schedule or no, I'm okay right now. And really asking the hard questions of, know, can I ask why you're not returning? It's really   important to our practice to ensure that we're top notch and that we're doing everything we can for our patients. So just want to know, we miss the mark somewhere? Are you, you know, are you moving? Like, can I just ask why you're not returning? Just asking that question being open for feedback and then not getting defensive, right? For sure not getting defensive. Don't take it personally. It's not you. Okay, it's a system. It's a it's a system problem in the practice if we're losing patience for anything other than like them moving and   I've had I've even had patients where they're like, actually, my son just graduated dental school. So like, we're going here. I'm like, my gosh, for sure. Absolutely. Totally understand. So asking for that feedback can be a little bit uncomfortable, but it's super important, especially you guys, when we have new patients that aren't scheduling back. A lot of times they're overwhelmed. They feel they can't afford it. They feel maybe they didn't get the time that they deserve. They don't understand their treatment plan like   really digging into those things because there's a lot I think for it when you're asking for that feedback, and you get feedback like that, that's an opportunity to be like, my gosh, I would hate to know that you you go into the world to any other dental practice and go confused. Like, can I at least can I take a couple of minutes with you and really dive into it and answer any unanswered questions that you might have? Whether you stay with us or not, I want to make sure I do my due diligence and you have the information.   that really like that vulnerability I feel like really makes a person like, okay, show me what you got. And it can save a big save a patient, I've done it, I've saved patients that way. But regardless, I think our reason for being here is to ensure that people are healthier when they leave than when they came in. And even if that means a patient going to get a second opinion or going to another office and they get the treatment done somewhere else, at least you know, at night when you go to bed, you took your time.   The Dental A Team (08:51.074) and you took their time to make sure that they understood. So, Britt, I think that's brilliant. And that follow -up kind of goes into like asking for the reason for leaving has to come from a phone call that was initiated most of the time that patients are not calling our practices and being like, hey, by the way, I'm moving. So please cancel my account. Like I'm not coming back. They don't think about the dentist, right? Or, hey, you made me upset and I'm not comfortable there. So I'm not coming back.   Britt (09:03.458) and   The Dental A Team (09:20.803) just FYI, I'm going over here. Like they're not gonna call and tell you 99 .9 % of the time. The way that we get there is with follow -ups. So Britt mentioned making sure that patients always have an appointment when they leave, making sure that we're doing our due diligence on follow -up if they don't schedule that appointment or if they fall off for whatever reason. So we're calling on re -care, but then Britt also there's the side of the treatment follow -up. And I think we think treatment and we think doctor.   Britt (09:44.992) you   The Dental A Team (09:48.211) When are they getting the crown done? What about that implant? What about that ortho? Like all of these pieces, but what about that SRP you guys? How many patients, how many new patients fall off the radar because you guys, your systems aren't automatically putting them on re -care. They're not coming up automatically on your re -care if they didn't get their pro -fee. So they leave no pro -fee, no re -care setup. They need SRP and then they're not getting called. And then   Britt (09:54.732) Mm -hmm.   The Dental A Team (10:17.452) two years later, they're like, Hey, and we're like, you're basically a new patient, like I've been seen there and I want my cleaning. Now like this pickle is conundrum and it happens all the time. So making sure we're doing our due diligence there as well. Britt, what do you do? Or what did you what do you do for your clients? Like what do you suggest for that kind of follow up so that those SRP patients are limited or you know, perimenopathy, full maltebrate, like all of those patients, how do you make sure that they don't fall off the radar?   Britt (10:47.598) Yeah, so hygiene treatment is just the same as doctor treatment, right? So you're gonna wanna follow your 2 -2 -2. So two days, two weeks, two months.   Like Tiff said, if someone's not scheduling, ask the hard questions. I can only provide solutions or work through it or help them in any way if I understand where they're coming from and what's going on, what's the true reason why they're not scheduling. So try to answer the question, solve it then if you can. If they still don't schedule, then set it up that like, hey, is it OK if I give you a call in a couple of days just to follow up, answer any other questions you have? So genuine concern for, like Tiff said, I want them to get the treatment taken care of. Wherever it is, I want   them to feel like they've got a place that cares about them, that they get the treatment taken care of and take care of their oral health, and that we're following up. And we're going to continue that follow -up two days, two weeks, two months. And then at two months, I want to make sure they've got something scheduled for their next visit. So if they need scaling and route planning and they haven't done it yet, what solutions can we come up with? If we don't have a solution for that, then at least schedule their next exam if we're not going to do something else. Make sure it's really clear if they can't do that right now. We want them to do something   But we want to make sure they're coming back so we can make sure no other issues arise and we have a chance to have a conversation to talk to them about the thing that they haven't gotten done, answer questions, make sure they know what's needed and walk them through it so they don't just get lost and never get that thing taken care of.   The Dental A Team (12:12.095) Mm hmm. Yeah, beautiful. I love it. I love it. So making sure our new patients are returning is really going to come down to the scheduling and the follow up you guys and like we said in the beginning, you're going to see it in the attrition eventually, but I don't know about you. I don't want to wait 18 months to see if my money that I spent to acquire a new patient actually worked. And I don't I give like 50 % credit to a new patient number.   Britt (12:40.802) Hmm   The Dental A Team (12:41.661) Like it's a new patient today, but are we still, are we maintaining that patient? So really watching those numbers is super important. And I'm going to just reach out to the practice owners here, the doctors, the dentists, and just say, you guys, it is your job to make sure that your team understands what their job is. And if they don't understand that our job is to make sure that our patients are healthier.   and that means caring about their health, and we do that with these systems in place, that goes back to leadership, that goes back to practice ownership, and it goes back to making sure that everything is super clear for all of the positions within your practice. So I would look at the different positions, not the people, the positions in your practice, and look at who, which position would be best.   to take on this kind of a role. Like who's making sure that our new patients are coming back? Who's making sure that the treatment follow -up is there, that re -care follow -up is there? Who's making sure patients are leaving with appointments? And who's the buck stops here? Because if my hygienists are responsible for scheduling their next appointment, but a patient comes up and they don't have that appointment, is someone at check -out checking that? Is our front desk team equipped to really take a look at that and know   check for an appointment, listen in the handoff, do our handoffs, talk about that. Like where is the accountability set up and what's the process there? Because it's really easy. I'm gonna tell you right now as like a one man team, right? It's really easy as one person for that to be my responsibility and no, it's a job that I dislike. Maybe it takes a little bit of time and nobody's actually gonna ask me if it's happened. And when the schedule falls apart, I'm like, I don't know.   Britt (14:34.188) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (14:34.48) Well, the schedule fell apart, right? Because there's no accountability attached to it. didn't actually do the re -care calls I was supposed to. And now it's hard to get patients into the schedule. So that was my soapbox for practice owners. Please make sure that your team knows what's expected of them. And that also means like these follow -ups are happening because you're paying for these new patients and I want you to make sure that they're staying. So Britt, you said patients never leave without an appointment.   Britt (14:48.002) you   The Dental A Team (15:04.55) We're doing our due diligence on re -care and we're getting the feedback. So re -care and follow -up, we're gonna tie those two together. So re -care follow -up and diagnosed treatment follow -up, that also counts SRP, you guys, that gets lost in the shuffle very, very often. And then getting that feedback from patients so that we can address systems when they need to be addressed and make sure that things are flowing the way we need them to. Now, flipping from like easy implementable, easy to see,   Britt (15:06.936) Mm   The Dental A Team (15:34.467) Now you're going to flip and I'm going to talk like relationships. I think that this is huge. And I think this is the foundation of really getting patients into your practice. We work really hard at new patient acquisition, at new patient phone calls, making sure that everything's set and it's beautiful for a new patient. But what about when they're no longer a new patient? They've come in today, had their new patient appointment. They're no longer a new patient anymore.   What does that relationship look like? Are you maintaining that level of relationship, that level of customer service that you have for a new patient being acquired? Are you maintaining that for the patients thereafter once they're not new patients anymore? Because that is really easy to feel and it's very easy to see and it's very easy to lose patients out the back door. So way back to the beginning when I said paying attention to your active patient count, you guys, if you're   If your attrition is high or near your new patient acquired number, you're likely needing to look at that relationship piece and look at what the patient experiences after having become a new patient. I would hate to leave this unsaid and see doctors out there trying to see 80 new patients a month just to impact their active patient count.   when you likely could be doing something around 25 to 40 new patients a month, plus maintaining an active patient count through your re -care, through your treatment follow -up and having a profitable company. If all of those systems, foundational systems are in place. I really like 40 at top 40 to 45, maybe some of my high producing doctors and like efficient doctors can cut that. But I really, really like   40 or less, 25 to 30 really, but up to 40 new patients per full -time doctor provider max, because you're gonna lose out on a lot of pieces after that. That's a whole nother conversation, but making sure that those new patients are staying is gonna be really tracking those numbers. You're gonna track active patient count, attrition, case acceptance, diagnosis amount, and obviously your new patient number.   Britt (17:39.711) Thank   The Dental A Team (17:55.766) Now, Britt, what's something that you've seen, you've been into a lot of practices in person and what's something that you've seen that just stands out to you on like this office is stellar. There are new patients, there are re -care patients, like just their patients walking through the door feel like family, whether they're brand new or whether they've been here for years. What's something that really stands out to you that makes you feel that way when you walk into a practice?   Britt (18:19.66) Yeah, some key pieces, right? And to keep in mind, I love that you said, right, that new patients and returning patients, right? What's that experience? They don't feel a shift. They feel just as important. Today is the first time they came to our office, even if it's years later, if not more important, because we know them a little bit better. So with that, think some key pieces are some of my awesome practices that are so warm. They greet their patients really well from the get -go, right? On the phone and when they walk into the practice,   Like they are genuinely acknowledged and people are excited to have them there. It's not a burden, it's not a problem. They're excited to have them. They greet them well and they try to be really efficient with the patient's time and be respectful. I think these days, right, time is important to everybody.   Yes, some people like to come and chat with us and spend time, but most people want to be efficient. They want to have a good time while they're there and they want to get on to their next thing. So being efficient with their time and communicating really well about what's going on when it comes to treatment, when it comes to finances, communication is really big and making sure that they're acknowledged, right? We try not to really leave them alone. We try to get them in and out and be efficient and not make them feel like they've been left or forgotten at any point within their experience.   The Dental A Team (19:29.525) you.   The Dental A Team (19:37.161) Yeah, I agree. I love that. think you're like, you hit the nail on the head with that, like warm, that warm welcome over the phone or in person. think you guys know, you just feel that energy and you can feel when someone being genuine. And when someone genuinely knows how to do their job, what their expectations are, and how they can win is when they're really genuine with the patient base. So I love that. Okay. So   Making sure your new patients are sticking you guys you need to start tracking some things or looking at items that maybe you're already tracking. Active patient account, attrition, new patient numbers, and your case acceptance and make sure that you guys have so I want you to pull those items start looking at them start digging into those trends and then I want you to make sure that you have a re care system in place and an unscheduled treatment system in place that really works. We like the 222 like Britt talked about.   If you want info on that, can email in Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We would be happy to send it over to you. It's a quick form. If you want training on it, reach out to us. We train the practices every single day on things just like this. So let us know how we can help you, but I want you to track those items. Start watching for those trends. Start digging into the systems that are creating the trends and then make sure you have a good solid re -care system and a good solid unscheduled treatment system. And someone is responsible for both of those.   with accountability attached. So someone else is making sure that they happen or helping with it as well. Britt, thank you so much for your time today. I truly appreciate it. I value your input so much. You are a stellar consultant and a rock star administrative piece to this company and you have impacted so many lives. So thank you so much for being here with me today. I value you and your brilliant Britt brain. Thank you. Yeah.   Britt (21:32.376) Yeah, well, always good to be here with you, I like when Tiff gets on her soapbox. She's always got good things to share. So you better listen up when Tiff starts going, because she's got something good. And Tiff is such a huge relationship piece with people, right? She trains teams on it all the time. And that really, right, people remember how you make them feel. So when it comes to patients, even if they're not there for long, and even if it's a scary place, they're going to remember you. So make sure you give them a good impression. That lasts a long time and builds loyalty big time.   The Dental A Team (21:59.888) Awesome, thank you. I love that. All right, go get the feedback, go do the hard things, go do the easy things and reach out to us, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com anytime you need and we'll catch you next time.

Tiff and Britt talk about how practices can give a boost to the hygiene department's profitability, especially as 2024 gets closer to its end. Specifically, the two give insight on increased re-care, appointment efficiency, and consistent SRP. They also discuss ensuring your practice has enough hygienists in the first place for your client load. Episode resources: Reach out to Tiff and Britt Tune Into DAT's Monthly Webinar Practice Momentum Group Consulting Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Become Dental A-Team Platinum! Review the podcast Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:01.525) Amazing to have you back, Brittany. Thank you so much for podcasting with me again today. I stole you again on another podcast day and I truly appreciate it. I'm excited today because I've got some hygiene stuff I want to chat with you and for the dental world out there listening. Britt and Dana are both trained hygienists, trained and licensed. And so I always like to steal you guys when I have some hygiene stuff. So Britt, how are you doing today?   Britt (00:29.875) I'm excited to be here. mean, I do love a good hygiene topic, but I love all of them. You know, it's always fun to podcast and chat dental. That's us dental nerds over here.   The Dental A Team (00:35.084) I know.   The Dental A Team (00:38.734) It's true. It's true. You do. And I appreciate that and I value it. So thank you so much for being here today. Brent, it is hot. And I know it's funny because we had a call this morning with a company that we're just partnering with and doing all kinds of fun stuff with this company. And he's in Utah. And this morning, he's like, gosh, it's hot. And I think, I don't know if you agree, but like, I know it's hot.   But it seems to me when someone like acknowledges it, that they're like, how are you living there? That's when I'm like, yeah, it's like really hot. So then I'm like all day, I'm like, now I'm hot. Like I was fine. But how are you? You're 20, 30 minutes away from me in the same city. But the weekend was beautiful. Like, how are you feeling about summer so far? I feel like it's been a little wild with weather, but how are you feeling?   Britt (01:23.758) you   I same. love it's been a little while since we've had a monsoon. So maybe that's why right now I'm like, it's, it's hot. Yesterday I was outside and like, no way is it only a hundred degrees outside. Like it feels way hotter than that. So it was a little more humid cause we got a little rain, but we haven't had a good storm. feel like really come through and cool it off very well. And at least like a week or so. So I feel like that's what gets me through the end of summer. I love it. It's gorgeous. Most of the time I enjoy the heat, but July, August is like the   The Dental A Team (01:28.203) I know.   The Dental A Team (01:38.241) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (01:46.966) Yeah.   Britt (01:54.413) I'm ready for it to be a little bit cooler.   The Dental A Team (01:56.653) I totally agree. I totally agree. I was chatting with someone yesterday, she's getting ready to do a half marathon in DC in September. And I was like, how are you training for this? She's here in the valley, like, how are you training? And she's like, well, I was running this morning at 430 in the morning, and it was only 104. And I was like, okay, well, at least the sun's not beating down on you, I guess. But like, training for that sounds like right now. So I agree for all of us. I know.   I know for all of us Arizona natives and Arizona livers and goers like you got to enjoy the heat, which I do. I do. I enjoy it more than the humidity. So we'll stick with it. anyways, topics today, I really wanted to focus in on some profitability. We're nearing the end of the year coming up on quarter four. It's right around the corner and really just looking at what do we have left?   Britt (02:38.114) You   The Dental A Team (02:51.017) this year to accomplish for these doctors to hit their goals and these practices to really see that profitability increase this year. And I wanted to really speak to the fact that there are multiple people that are involved in the profitability of the practice. It's not just our dentists and our doctors who are filling their schedules. And it's like, do more, do another crown, do another bridge, do this, do another ortho case, like always getting these things in for sure. But when their schedules are full, their schedules are full. Coming up towards the end of the year,   their schedules are going to be really full. And one piece that I like to slide in here is really how hygiene can help increase that profitability. And Britt, think it's, it's even more important towards the end of the year to look at it because just like doctor schedules fill up really fast for any of your benefits, things like that. Hygiene, recare fills up really fast because people are trying to use that last cleaning of the year, which makes this portion a little bit wonky. So really just kind of working through some of those trouble spots and   and difficulties, but seeing how can hygiene increase the profitability. And Britt, I want to pick your brain specifically because you've done hygiene, you've been in that chair, I've done hygiene assisting, I've done hygiene scheduling, I've done all the other pieces, but I've never been a hygienist. And I think one of the pieces that I see most frequently come up when I am consulting practices is the hygiene department really feeling like one, we don't put enough emphasis on our re -care.   Britt (04:02.603) Thank   The Dental A Team (04:17.161) And so we're always clamoring for more, clamoring for new patients without regard to the re -care. So making sure they're in there. But then two, also a lot of my hygienists are like, gosh, what more can I do? Like, what are you asking me for? So really I'd love to hear from your standpoint, some areas that you feel like within re -care, not necessarily new patients yet, but just within re -care.   How can hygiene really make sure we're handling our re -care patients with care and attention, seeing them, and also leaving room for that growth in their schedule? What did you used to do, or what did you like maybe with your scheduling or what have you when you were chair -side hygiene?   Britt (05:00.01) Yeah, think number one when it comes to profitability and hygiene is just kind of knowing where we're at, right? So where's our hygiene department at when it comes to productivity?   Are we being efficient with our time and our schedule, things like that. And some tips when it comes to efficiency, right? With our appointments, yes, it's appointment length. And I think sometimes it's hygienist, we can forget how much re -care frequency can impact our efficiency. So like one little tip is sometimes those patients who aren't doing all their work at home, I have a lot of work to do when they come in. I am stressed over the amount of time in the appointment to get everything taken care of because there's so much work to do.   you   looking at those patients and sometimes they might just need to come in more often. So I can get done efficiently. It's not so stressful on me. We're getting them healthier so they're not having so much to do every single time, reinforcing home care more often for them. So there's one idea of something to look at. Look at our efficiency. Look at our timing. Another one when it comes to hygiene that's around like efficiency and timing is I'm a big fan of starting same day SRP where we can. If I can knock out a quad that first visit while still giving them that great experience or if it's a re -care visit and they're like,   needs to be gut dead, get something started for them in that realm, get a quad done and have them come back for the other three. There's a lot of like little kind of efficiency things like that are just little hacks to get the production in and it's not just for the production, it's patient care first and making sure we respect our time and the work that you're doing that you're getting paid for the work that you're doing and if a patient's not doing the work at home and they need to come more often then have them come in more often because it's   The Dental A Team (06:22.598) Mm   Britt (06:37.964) the right thing to do by them and it's going to help your schedule.   The Dental A Team (06:41.146) Yeah, I think that's really important. What you just said is that it's also the right thing to do by the patient because I fear often what's put ahead of that is insurance frequencies, out of pocket costs, like maybe feeling selfish because it's more work on you. So you're just like, gosh, I'll just, I'll take the hit. I'll take the brunt of it. But at the end of the day, the bottom line is that their mounts are unhealthy and we know that that's a systemic issue.   no matter where the unhealthy meter is at, where it's lying, it's still a systemic issue and it still leads to more more problems down the road. I think the more like all this gut health and all of these things surface and are coming out, I think there's going to be even more tied back to even simple routine home care. So I think that's really huge. And for that to be the forefront of our thought process when we are diagnosing, when we are treating patients, so even a patient that you've seen forever,   might come in today and they might have one quadrant that just needs SRP like that quadrant or two quadrants or four quadrants like things change and people change. I didn't have gut issues that I was aware of prior to five years ago, but then something changed. My body reacted to the world around me, the stressors around me. And all of a sudden now I have to be more consciously aware of the things that I eat, the,   you know, stress that I put my body under and things like this, but we forget that that happens, like that affects everything. And so our patients who have been seeing us routinely, oftentimes have changes in their lives that have affected their home care, their routines, or just the makeup of their body and their mouths are included in that. So I love that you said that because I think that's something that more people in the dental industry can really take to heart to kind of dispel some of the guilt.   that's wrapped around trying to do better for our patients and feeling maybe selfish or something in the middle of it. So I think that's huge. Now, a statistic, a stuff that we use here at the Dental A Team is we truly want our hygiene departments to be about 30 % of overall production for a practice. So that's increasing profitability rate there. Most practices, I'm gonna tell you that are not tracking it, aren't looking at it.   Britt (08:33.282) Mm -hmm.   The Dental A Team (09:02.69) Most of the time from what I've seen, the clients that I've worked with, they're typically around 17 to like 22 % production overall, which isn't horrible by any means. I've seen 12 and 14%. So 17 to 22 being my average isn't the worst. love pushing 25 to 30 % because that really, really helps to increase that profitability and make it so that the rest of the practice providers can really   use a schedule that flows well for them. So with that, your increased recare, your increased efficiency and making sure we're doing that same day treatment, we're doing SRP on people who need it, no matter how long they've been with our practice or not, things like that are going to hugely benefit that 30 % marker. with that said, we're adding, like we're like, gosh, you really need three cleanings a year. So we're to add a cleaning. So then that adds an appointment, right? Or we're going to do SRP. So then that adds an appointment. And then this   realm since 2020, hygiene appointments have been few and far between. hard to come by. So I think if I've got hygiene listeners on here, which I know I do some hygienists out there, they're like, cool story, bro. How am I going to put these patients? So what did you do to help with that? I know we implement a lot of block scheduling within the Dental A Team. And how did you work that into your own schedule? Because I know you're a huge believer in a patient always leaving with an appointment and   Britt (10:15.622) huh.   The Dental A Team (10:30.428) always leaving with an appointment from the hygienist. So how did you do that projecting and creating your own schedule for your future patients?   Britt (10:39.532) Yeah, for those of you that are having full schedules out there and sometimes, right, we've got to make our block schedules and depending on how many hygienists we have or if we're trying to hire someone right now, understandable that we've got to plan things out a little bit. Block scheduling for sure. So with those patients that I would like to see more often.   Sometimes with block scheduling, might push them out a little bit. And with those patients, I'll say, hey, here's what we have right now. You can always call us and see if something opens up sooner, right? There are shifts in the schedule every day. Doesn't mean there will be something, but there are shifts, so you may be able to get in sooner. So if there are one that I'm like, hey, here's what I can do for you.   We have a lot of patients to manage, right? Our front desk does the best they can, but they're not gonna be able to call every single patient that's out there that needs to come in sooner. We can have a short call list to work through, but if it's important to that patient for them to come in, then they can be the ones that are responsible for calling to see if something opens up sooner to get those appointments in. And schedule them out for the year. Usually I'll schedule out, if they're coming three times a year, don't just schedule the next two, schedule the next three so that they can get on the books.   The Dental A Team (11:45.097) Yeah, I love that. I tell practices that a lot and it seems to be working really, really well. Okay, I'm going to pivot a little bit away from your hygiene brain. Britt, if you guys aren't unaware, it has an incredible business brain and business like projecting introductory and numbers and all of these pieces. She's fantastic at that the HR side, all of those pieces. So want to pivot over to that side of, of your world, Britt, and really start diving into more of these numbers because I think hygienists like   Great, we've got some tips there. We'll kind of come back to that so that doctors and hygiene and team members can kind of see different areas where we can be more profitable. But as you're talking, I'm thinking, gosh, I wonder how many practices or how many practice owners out there don't have enough hygienists and maybe even don't know it. There's plenty of us out there who are out here who are searching for hygienists and hygienists. If you're out there, like come out from under the rocks, we need you. Let us know where you're at.   Britt (12:37.592) Thank   Britt (12:41.152) huh.   The Dental A Team (12:43.335) So there are plenty of practices that are in the hiring mode right now, but I think a lot of practices maybe don't even know when they need to hire to expand on hygiene time and hygiene hours. So we're stressing and we're like squeezing tight on the hygiene realm and we're like, get them all in there, you're fine, you're fine. But what are some areas and some stats that practice owners and docs can really start looking at to say, I think it's time to hire another hygienist to add this into my schedule. Is it?   and how far out were booked, how which a lot of practices struggle. I'm going to caveat here. lot of practices struggle with me on that one because they're like, cool, I'm booked out six months, but tomorrow fell apart. And so why am going to hire a hygienist? So those are systems, systems in the background that needs to be fixed on a foundational level. But as far as like booking out availability, hours, like number of patients, is there any staff that you like to refer to when you're looking at a practice building out their hygiene?   department that you suggest to your practice owners.   Britt (13:46.254) Yeah, so let's talk about the number you said first, Tiff, right? So hygiene, want that to be like 25 to 30 percent of our total production. We want to account for hygiene. You guys, a lot of numbers are just general markers to see kind of industry -wide, based on the average, where are you sitting? So if you run that number from the get -go, like Tiff said, like we definitely had some practice sometimes that are lower percentage, right? That's just going to be your flag to be like, all right, like what is it that's going on? For some practices,   is it's like, well, we only have one hygienist and really we know we could do two and if we doubled it, like our percentage would definitely go up and that's the thing that's holding us back right now. So it's going to tell a story and you've got to kind of take into the factors and see if there's anything you can do about it to change it. Now when it comes to how much hygiene we need,   The Dental A Team (14:23.643) correct.   Britt (14:36.878) Yes, scheduled out, like that's gonna give you an idea. I like going by active patients. How many patients do we have that have been to the practice within the last 18 months? And planning by that. And what you can do is just do the math. If a patient, let's say just a healthy patient, re -care patient coming twice a year to our practice, it would only take about 200 patients coming twice a year to fill one day a week, every week for the year.   So if you're looking at like, well, should we add a day? Well, let's see, how many hygiene days do we have? How many active patients do we have? Do we have, you know, about 200 per day right now, or do we have way more than that? If we have way more than that, then let's look at adding some hygiene days. How much more do we have and how many days might we need to add? Because the thing is, that's gonna be a super conservative number of about 200 patients, because really, you add to that, we're gonna have new patients coming into the schedule.   The Dental A Team (15:34.242) Okay.   Britt (15:35.052) You're not period maintenance that are coming more often or there's re -cares that are coming more often. So really that's going very minimum for they just came twice a year. Like that's, what you would need to cover a full day. And really they're going to be more than that.   The Dental A Team (15:47.353) So if I'm doing this math, I love that math, that makes it super simple. So if I'm doing this math and I'm saying, 200 patients per full day of hygiene for the year. So then if I'm like, great, I'm gonna say Monday through Thursday, I have hygiene, so I have four days of hygiene. And if I have one hygienist every single day, full time, right? So I've got four days of hygiene, that's 800 active patients. That's beautiful.   Britt (16:15.116) Mm -hmm. Yep. And that's not even adding in your new patients or anything. So with that many active patients, it's going to be a full schedule even for that hygienist because really you're going to have more than that.   The Dental A Team (16:18.305) Right.   The Dental A Team (16:24.856) For sure, for sure, that makes sense. So then these practices that we're seeing that are 2100 and 25 and 2800 and they've got three hygiene half like part time, like this is why we're struggling to really be able to get those hygiene hours in. That makes sense.   Britt (16:42.392) So look at your total number of hygiene days. And even there's some practices now, right, where they've been able to piece it together and they've got a good crew. They know how to communicate. So everybody's on the same page and it runs really well. So of course, we'd all love to have our full -time people forever, but like.   right now, sometimes it might be piecing together some part timers and they help each other out and cover even and it can work out really well. Just communication is really key. And then there's some practices that have gone to with their hygienist, maybe it's an accelerated hygiene, right? And it doesn't have to be all the time or every day, right? It can be something very specific to what works in your office, what works for your team to be able to see and take care of our patients while we maybe look for someone more, look to add more time. So those are some   things to consider now. Sometimes it's that we don't have enough hygiene. I strongly believe for hygienists, if you're doing the things that are needed for your patient, getting your x -rays done, right, periodontal charting on a regular basis was ultimately doctor sets the standard, but if you're doing those regularly according to your standards, periodontal charting, recognizing periodontal disease when it's there, treating it when it's there, you can hit   that 30%, that 25 to 30 % by doing right by your patient. And then if you've got Adject Services you can add to it, awesome. You'll have even more opportunity to be able to add to it and contribute to that production.   The Dental A Team (18:08.469) Totally agree. Okay, so I love that. Thank you so much for letting me pick both both pieces of your brain there. You have so much so much to offer and so many reasons why you're an incredible consultant and business administrator here on our team. So thank you for that. Now what I'm piecing together here guys is really just looking at like how can our hygiene department help us increase that profitability when you pull those numbers. That's why we talked about that 30 % first at 25 to 30 % first because like she said,   Britt (18:13.324) Thank   The Dental A Team (18:38.165) that's going to tell you your story and really give you a baseline of where you're at and where we can increase. So if you see that your hygiene department is less than that 25 to 30 % where we really like to see our practices, now you can dive into trends and really look at why is it less? Is it less and we're full? Is it less and we have a lot of cancellations? Is it less and we're not doing adjunct services? Is it less and we're, so if it's less and we're full, now we're looking at, great.   Britt (18:59.661) Yes, ma 'am.   The Dental A Team (19:07.912) What's our active patient count and do we need more hygiene space? Because one thing that I've found, and it sounds like it would be the opposite, right? Because your hygiene schedule's full. So it should be more percentage, right? It should be providing more. But one thing that I've seen in practices that are really struggling to understand that they need more hygiene hours is their hygiene department percentage will be super low because there are so many patients and so much happening on the doctor's side.   that the doctor's easily far outweighing the hygiene department because there's not enough availability for the hygiene department to get that percentage up. So we're living on like new patients and limited and same day treatment and churning and churning and churning on the doctor's side. And hygiene is scrimping by with re -cares because they don't have space for anything else. And so their percentages that 14 to 17 % and they're just like pulling their hair out.   because their doctors yelling at them to get more production. But really we have to do our due diligence and evaluate, are we giving the hygiene department the availability? If yes, tons of tips and tricks and just this podcast and a ton of podcasts we've done on how to increase that profitability. But we've got to look at first, if it's no, then what do we do to help increase that profitability as well? think that's huge.   Britt (20:23.926) Yeah, and Tiff, that comes back to, right, when you look at that, if we're not kind of hitting that mark, usually if our hygiene production isn't quite where we need it to be, it comes back to that volume and value, like conundrum, like is it, are we doing everything for those patients and we're doing our adjunct services, like truly we're providing the top notch level of care that we want to provide to all our patients, but we just don't have enough hygiene, so we're not hitting it, so we need to add more volume, we need to add more hygiene, or is it,   The Dental A Team (20:35.984) Mm -hmm. Yeah.   Britt (20:53.378) We've got the hygienist, which lucky you. maybe we're not like completely doing all of our standards to the highest level that we want to be providing that care, not that we're providing bad care, but like what's our top standard that we want to be talking to all our patients about the level of treatment we want to be providing. Let's make sure that we're hitting that mark. And I'll make the caveat, right? I've definitely had some hygiene practices where if we've got doctors who do a lot of like   The Dental A Team (20:55.922) Yeah. Congrats.   The Dental A Team (21:05.745) Mm -hmm.   Britt (21:22.318) surgical or all on X like super high producing doctors, right? That might impact your percent. So like that's part of your story. And I've had some hygiene departments that they're actually like over that 30 % within the practice, right? They're cranking it. Hygiene team is doing a phenomenal job over there. And it's like, all right, look at the doctor side. Is there a volume or value issue over there on the doctor side that we can work on? So.   The Dental A Team (21:26.289) question.   The Dental A Team (21:33.659) have to. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (21:47.056) for sure. No, I love that you said that I've definitely seen that or my hygiene department. I've come in and I'm like 40 % day and ladies are like, yeah, we're killing it. And I'm like, yeah, what's going on with diagnosis? Where can we where can we increase? Where's the balance? Exactly. I think that's the perfect word. So what we found is that balance is like right around that 30 % marker. So I love that. All right. So you guys, you've got a ton of information out of this podcast from us. What I want you to do   Britt (21:56.716) It's not balance.   The Dental A Team (22:15.95) as I want you to go pull the stats and pull the numbers on your specific practice, dig into the trends that you're seeing. Just get a baseline. Where are you at? And are you in a space that you are right on the marker there? You've got that balance, you've got the profitability coming from both sides, or are you not? Are you swaying on either side? And then do your due diligence there and dig into why. You guys, brilliant Britt over here. That's gonna be your name, brilliant Britt. I finally figured it out.   Britt (22:42.919) Too nice, Seb.   The Dental A Team (22:44.687) Brilliant Brit. Brilliant Brit over here has provided us some really great tips and tools. And I want you to like go backwards in this podcast and listen to those stats and those numbers that she pulled and that she chatted about. Those are the important factors that 200 per day during the week of hygiene patients, that's going to be huge. That's your active patient count pulling those. am a huge advocate for watching your active patient count just as much as you're watching your new patient count. So keep an eye on both of those.   If there's anything you guys got confused about anything you want clarification on anything that you need or if you need help figuring this out or projecting or getting these in line or talking about the systems that are behind the scenes on all of these, I want you guys to talk to us, email us, write in hop on this link on the podcast and schedule a call like whatever you have to do. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Leave us a review below and we always read those. always respond to them as best that we can and we will   like we will gladly help you in whatever ways we can, we have a million avenues for you to choose from. But I want you to go do your due diligence first, pull those numbers, know where your baseline is, and then reach out when you guys need help, the resources are here. Britt, thank you so much for today's podcast. And thank you so much for the work that you do with our clients and with our non clients, people, like I said, who are just reaching out and they are future clients are never going to be clients, we don't care.   Thank you for everything that you do for all of them and the incredible value that you provide all of us. And thank you for being here today, Britt.   Britt (24:16.438) Yeah, thanks for having me. You know, we all love it. Tiff too. We like to help anybody we can in dentistry. So we're always here.   The Dental A Team (24:18.573) course.   The Dental A Team (24:22.859) Yep, absolutely. Great. Awesome. All right, guys, go do your homework, reach out in whatever capacity or way you need to. We are always here for you until next time. Bye guys.  

Rereleasing one of DAT's most popular episodes! Dr. Dave Moghadam returns to the Dental A-Team podcast! This time, he's giving the goods on priority scheduling, something he's been working with for over a year now. He and Kiera go deep into priority scheduling with the following highlights: How to map out ideal schedule Keeping it flexible Rolling out to the team Space for emergencies How hygiene fits in And more! About Dr. Moghadam: Dr. Moghadam was born and raised in Morris County, New Jersey. After completing his undergraduate degree at Rutgers University in New Brunswick he went on to obtain his Doctor of Dental Medicine degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry (UMDNJ) in Newark. During his time at UMDNJ, Dr. Moghadam received extensive recognition for his outstanding leadership, academic and clinical aptitude, and dedication to the profession. Some of his achievements include receiving the William R. Cinotti Endowed Scholarship and the American Student Dental Association Award of Excellence, as well as induction into the Gamma Pi Delta Prosthodontic Honor Society. He then chose to complete a general practice residency at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick where he received advanced training with an emphasis on comprehensive restorative treatment, endodontics, and implant dentistry.  Episode resources: Reach out to Kiera Watch DAT Podcasts on YouTube Practice Momentum Group Consulting Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Become Dental A-Team Platinum! Review the podcast Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:05.742) 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.   The Dental A Team (00:51.438) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And you guys, today I am so excited to have back on one of my favorite doctors. He and I tend to come up with some fun ideas to podcast on. And so I'm super honored and grateful to have Dr. Dave Mogadam back on the show today. If you haven't heard, he and I have chatted so many different topics from mergers to practice to bringing on your hygiene team and how to calibrate your hygiene team. And today we're gonna take it on another direction with scheduling. So Dave, how are you today?   I'm doing wonderful. How about yourself? Great and guys just so you know if you heard the last one Dave's got a killer mustache going on again today He's got like I wish you guys could see him because he came like ready to go today rocking and rolling Dave How's the weather where you're at today? I mean you've got the mustache going on perfect haircut today I mean you're looking   You know, it was one of those things where I got fooled in the Northeast. You know, we have these fake spring days. So yesterday was really, you know, beautiful, sunny, everything like that. So I threw on a T -shirt and a vest. I was walking outside this morning and somebody asked me where my sleeves are. It's freezing. Well, that's how we are over here. Today's the coldest I think I've ever seen Reno and it's at 11 degrees today. And for me,   freezing cold. Like I don't know what this is. We also had that fake spring. was almost in the seventies and then plumbing it down, got lots of snow. So it's probably coming your way. So get ready for it. Here it comes. But you know, here we go. So Dave, let's, let's dive right in. about, mean, you guys have a fun day. get customer service with Disney today. So just going to throw that out there. That's going to be a fun day, but let's talk scheduling. I'm going to just tee everybody up for a possible other conversation on customer service, Disney style,   Priority scheduling, you're a dentist, you guys have grown a lot. Tiffany works with your practice, she's excited to come see you again. So kind of walk us through this priority scheduling and what you guys have found successful in your practice. So yeah, it's a really good topic. about a, a year ago now, I was really thinking about, know, what is going on with our schedule? Because for years and years, as we've gotten busier,   The Dental A Team (03:07.126) Monday through Wednesday has always been like gangbusters and awesome. And then we get to Thursday and it is just like, my God, what is going on here? It's all the little ancillary nonsense that you just don't want to deal with. And everybody's running around and trying to deal with like seeing a bunch of patients and our practice is not really, you know, like that or geared for that really. And you work harder, it's less fun and everybody really just does not enjoy it, especially me. Right.   So for years and years, we've kind of always heard the big consultant saying, you got to schedule to production and this and that. And that just never really resonated with me in the least bit. Because I always have this, and know my philosophy is about this is kind of schedule everything else right, plan everything else well, do the right things, treat everybody the right way. And the numbers come. I feel like when we fixate on the numbers, it's   I don't know. just don't feel good about it. And I don't think my team does either. But what I can get behind is, well, everybody wants to have a better experience at work. And when myself and the other doctor are happier, everybody else is happier too, because we're not just walking around like grumpy pants. So I'd heard the idea of priority scheduling through a bunch of other podcasts. And I said, you know   think I can get behind this. know you guys had been a big proponent of actually managing the schedule, setting time out better, everything like that. So I sat down and I figured out, what does an ideal week look like? What type of procedures do I want to do? How do I want to break them up? How do we set up time where the flow of everything's better? Where do we put in the ancillary stuff so it's not something where we spend one day running around and we just end the week on just like a ugh.   kind of note there. So we started doing this, think, last March. And it could be the perfect storm. It could be a lot of factors. But between that, ramping up our marketing, everything like that, all of sudden that month, we were basically up maybe 20, 30 percent. And we've pretty consistently been doing that, except for not the last couple of months. Hashtag COVID. So, what are you going to do? That has more to do   The Dental A Team (05:30.216) all the other factors that come into place of, you know, switching, switching over associates, switching over hygienists, all the lovely stuff that, you know, puts all the pressure on myself and the rest of the wonderful team here. Right. We're doing it. So I love that. And I love that you brought that up of you. Number one, I think it's really impressive that you're a dentist, you're the doctor, and you're the one who thinks through this. Because while yes, teams can do it. And I encourage teams to think like this if your doctors don't.   But Dave, I love that you're always a very proactive dentist. You are always thinking about like, okay, what causes this? And instead of just focusing on the symptoms, you go to the root cause. Like what is causing us to have Thursdays that aren't as productive? What is causing us to have successful Mondays through Wednesdays? And what can we do to change that? And I then love that you went and took this to like, what would my ideal schedule be? Because as a team member, that's literally what I need from you. I need to know what my doctor prefers. Because I can put together a schedule   But I know working with hundreds of dentists like Kiera Dent knows that not every dentist likes to practice the same way. Some doctors love to rock and roll until about noon and then like just fill it with fluff at the end of the day. They do not want anything hard. They don't want to be doing any production. Other doctors like, nope, that's when I like to do my surgeries, put my surgeries in at the end of the day. And so it really is paramount for our dentists to give us this like ideal schedule of what they want. And then we can word Ninja as team members.   I Dr. Dave loves to see his patients for this procedure at this time. So there's a lot of different ways we could do it, but how did you kind of come up with your ideal schedule that you actually wanted to do? Like, how did you even map that out? Cause I think sometimes people are like, well, I don't, don't actually know what I want or how much I want to produce. Like, did you have only the type of procedures that was going to be ideal for you? Or did you have the dollar amount that was going to be ideal for you? Like, how did you build this out for priority scheduling? Yeah. Now I only did it based on the type of procedures. I actually,   zero thought to the dollar amounts. I think, you know, it kind of all comes full circle and just kind of the way that we do everything here. And it's going to be super different in every office. And I mean, I've shared my template that I made in Excel with, you know, other friends and stuff like that, but it's not going to work for other other offices for a variety of reasons. I am very different than   The Dental A Team (07:49.228) the guy next door or across the country and everything like that. And I mean that in a positive way. We all have our strong suits. We all have what we like to do. We all have what makes us successful and how we want to go ahead and practice. Just like you guys can't walk in and give somebody a cookie cutter template for consulting. It's the same thing here. So I think really, how did I figure out how to do it? What do I want to do? What do I find is helpful? What do we have a demand for in our practice?   I mean, these are all factors that come into play. mean, I could love to, let's pick like a random procedure. mean, I could love to do immediate dentures every single day, but unless I'm in a place where we're just a denture -lating every human being, like that's not gonna happen. So it's a matter of taking like all these factors into account, figuring out what works and then kind of some of the logistics, like what is different on different days? We have a wonderful, wonderful dental assistant who's with us only on Wednesdays and has been for forever.   and she takes care of all our denture stuff. She'll make flippers immediately for patients in the chair. She'll add teeth. She'll turn partials into dentures, stuff like that. So Wednesday mornings is when I'm lining up a lot of my setting up her implant kind of cases or just big extraction cases, things like that, where it's kind of like in a pinch, we can do the extraction and grafting. She can give them something temporary or stuff like that. So a lot of that stuff, we just kind of line   things like that up that way. Other than that, I mean, I like to go ahead and get the day started with at least something moderately, you know, productive. So, you know, the way we do crowns in our office, we do them in a single visit. So, you know, it's either, it's going to be a block, like, you know, we start with that. The next hour is going to be, you know, something smaller space for emergency. and then, you know, kind of sprinkle things out throughout the day, having blocks where it's just going to be just longer, you know, quadrant kind of stuff.   So I mean, that's the starting point. But the I think the big thing for, you know, doctors and team members listening is like, yeah, this is like the template. But it doesn't mean like it's it's set in stone. And if you don't get anything a day before, like tell everybody else to take a hike. Right. I mean, it's a matter of having that kind of idea of like, what makes sense for you guys is it 24 hours?   The Dental A Team (10:08.494) 48 hours before where we're going to go ahead and just basically put either whatever or switch it up. Or if we're like a week out and we really got to get somebody in, let's switch the block, but then let's make sure we change it in the surrounding areas to accommodate for things so we don't have, you know, weird odd dead space. Right. Exactly. And I think that's a key piece that I feel like a lot of people almost become robotic when you do have these blocks in there. And it's like only put filling here.   And it's like, no, no, no, guys, like we still need to utilize our brains and we need to think of what's going to be the best flow for our patients and also for our practice. And you're right for me, my standard is typically 24 hours before I don't put anything in that block or that space because my goal is to try and fill it. I also think it's really important. I know as a treatment coordinator, I just like I was, was building a puzzle piece all day long. So patients, almost saw them as puzzle pieces and where could I fit this patient?   to fit with all the rest of the patients to make a really beautiful schedule. And so if somebody walked up and they said, okay, I'm fillings today, but I know I've got a bigger block, I'm not gonna stick this puzzle piece in the big block because it's not gonna fill that space. So I'm really looking to put this patient in where it's going to work best for our practice and also for the patient. But so often I think team members are like, well, this filling wants tomorrow, Kiera. And I'm like, well, yes.   A child also wants candy every day for dinner too. And so just because the patient says they want that, what they ultimately want is a great experience. And as a team, what we ultimately want is a great experience. So let's kind of word ninja, help the patient realize like, hey, Dr. Dave actually prefers to do his fillings at this time. Let's reserve this for you. So that way I'm really doing it. Also guys, like I'm gonna give some tips to the front office and for all team members scheduling, cause I'm also not just pro front office, but also back office.   Please like don't set yourself up for failure by saying what day works best for you. Because as soon as you open that floodgate, that patient's gonna tell you what they would prefer. That then you get into a pickle. Like what if we only have this assistant on Wednesdays that does this procedure, but they said Tuesday? Well now I've gotta tell them the great news of, our assistant's amazing and she's only in on Wednesday, so we gotta schedule you on Wednesday, but they just told me they want Tuesday, so I'm already in a losing battle.   The Dental A Team (12:25.038) be proactive and say, fantastic, Dr. Dave loves to do his implants on Wednesdays. Let's get a time reserved. I've got 9 a or 3 p What works best for you? So that way I'm being directive on the conversation as well. It's going to help minimize that frustration and also make scheduling a lot easier in that priority scheduling. So I think the 24 hour rule before and then also making sure we're as team members setting it up as well so we're not having frustrated patients merely because of how we ask the questions rather than guiding   the conversation. So Dave, I'm curious when you built this schedule out, did you kind of do a rough draft and then take it to the team and ask them of what they thought? Or was it, Hey, let's try this out. How did you roll this to the team? Cause I think a lot of doctors worry that they'll, that they'll ruffle some feathers with the team members. So how did you roll this out to your team to get some solid buy -in from it as well? So the way we actually ended up doing this in the first round, it was myself.   my previous associate and my office manager sat down and kind of did, you know, the, the two doctor schedules. And it was nice to do that. because I mean, I'm just going to probably be like, I just wanted to do this. And then, you know, they'll have to like reel me into be like that. Just, just probably pretty inappropriate.   It's true. Doctors always think that they can get things done so fast. They're like, yeah, I could get that crown done in 30 minutes. And I'm like, I'll be honest, it's going to take you at least 45 minutes. Like, I've watched you for the last five years. Like, I know your schedule, doctor. So it's good to have somebody balance you out that knows a reality check on it as well. So I think that's a thing. You definitely need at least one other person to either look through it, talk through it. I think if you get everybody involved, you get too many cooks in the kitchen, that's generally   like pretty unhelpful. there's that to it. But the other things to take into account and everything like that is like, let's say different doctors have different skill sets and everything like that. Well, you kind of have to really take into account like, well, you know, if this doctor is the only one who can do these procedures, we need space for that and this and that. And, you know, if this doctor only does, you know, these types of things, there needs to be more variety in things.   The Dental A Team (14:40.702) as a result, you know, I hear a lot of, Dr. Dave, like we, can't get this patient in for a filling with you for XYZ time. And I'm just like, yup. -huh. That's okay. It's just like, it's okay. Like, you know, it's, one of those things. And like, that was a big, yeah, a little, little bit of a tricky situation. We were in a pension the last couple of months where we've been, much more shorthanded, but now that we're trying to grow another schedule again and balance everything out and as our, newer.   doctor in the practice is growing her skill set and incorporating more things and it's actually perfect. Totally. And I think you were really wise in saying to one, bring the other associate, if there's another doctor and an office manager, like a front office scheduler, whomever that is in your practice, because you guys then are going to really build a really beautiful puzzle together of where it goes. I remember I had an office and, there were two doctors who could both do root canals. However, logistically speaking, they only had.   one set of root canal equipment in the practice. So for us to ever schedule double root canals at the same time, and this was a pretty root canal heavy practice, they had to get really smart of where can we put this to make sure, and same thing like with utilizing a mill. If you only have one mill, you don't want to have two doctors doing two crowns at the same time, because then you're going to get into a mill issue. And so I agree, I think it's just really smart how you guys did that. And then also being able to pivot with your team.   I love that you've held the line though of like, Dr. Dave, we don't have a spot to put a filling. Like team members need to realize that it's okay. An ideal schedule for us, priority scheduling for our team does not mean we're doing a disservice to our patients. I have found that when we create chaos for our team, that does not give a good patient experience, nor does it give a good team experience. And so really being okay to say, hey, this doesn't, like we have this spot available for you.   versus it being like, let me try and shove a filling in and we're gonna try and make this schedule work. Like schedule should not be work in my opinion, they should flow. Yes, you need to be creative. Yes, you need to look for those puzzle pieces and fill them in. Be proactive, make those extra phone calls. Don't just wait for the patient to show up, like proactively call, look through. Guys, I don't know if you know, but on unscheduled treatment plans, you literally can filter by procedure code. And so you can actually go look like if I know I need a crown, I can sort   The Dental A Team (17:04.694) my list of unscheduled treatment and find all the crown patients and contact those patients. Again, I'm looking for a certain puzzle piece. I'm not going to just get any puzzle piece. I want that certain one so I can make those strategic phone calls maximize my time. So Dave, I love that you built this out. I love that you shared and I love that you really prioritized your team and what you guys wanted. And then we're able to fill the patients in. Like I said, like puzzle pieces trying to make a beautiful schedule and it really is doable.   It just requires, I think the whole team to be on board and bought in. Otherwise it gets pure mayhem. Like if one person's doing it, but the other person's not in the front office, it gets wild. And so everybody needs to play by, by the rules. And I think there's great success. Any other tips you've got on priority scheduling, Dave, you've shared so much already. thank you. mean, I got, I got a handful. can, we can all right. I think, I think another thing to take into account here, just like with everything else, you got it. You got to take it with a grain of   You know, if you have a long established patient who can only come at 8 a and needs a filling, the patient in. Like, know what saying? You got to give your team that flexibility and that leeway and saying like, look, this is this. And just kind of, they give me a heads up of like, it's so -and -so, like we had to do it. like, okay, like it is what it is. Like, you know, change it up, do this. Like, you know, we're going to make it work because at the end of the day, our patients are our priority. You know, as much as like it's great if we can go ahead and word ninja things and shift everybody around and everything like   That's not always possible. That's not always, you know, the thing in every practice. I mean, it's, it's, it's nice if we can, we can do it, but you know, there has to be leeway and flexibility. And the only thing I ask of everybody is, okay, just tell me what's up and change the, blocks, shift some stuff around. So things match up. So it's not like, you know, we have like an odd like wall or like, you know, nothing going on. And, know, at the end of the day, depending on where you are in your, your practice life cycle and what's going on sometimes having.   blocked out space and time is actually really helpful to help, you know, get emergencies and grow things and stuff like that. So for sure, not always the end of the world. I could use more time sitting at my desk. I know, but then we feel like as team members, our doctor goes to what I call like the black hole, like you guys going to your office. I'm like, then I'll never get you back. but I think it's one of those pieces. Also, I think you brought up a good point. I think so many offices forget to find space for emergencies. cause guess   The Dental A Team (19:28.12) there will always be emergencies and emergencies can actually be super great in a schedule. I actually loved emergencies because they're great same day treatment. They're great opportunities. It's great to be able to help patients. And so I think that that's a good piece to actually build into your schedule template of where you actually want these emergencies to go. Guess what guys, when somebody's in pain, they will come wherever you tell them they can come if they're truly in an emergency situation.   They do not need your 8 a They do not need your 4 p Like if they are truly in pain, they will show up at whatever time you have. So I think it's very paramount to get those emergencies in there as well because that will throw an entire day for your team if there's not emergency space in that schedule to fill it in. So agreed with you. I don't like long walls, but I definitely like to plan for those emergencies when we would like to see   Yeah, I think it's super, super helpful. I think at the end of the day, also something that I've always been a big proponent of, what we consider an emergency appointment in our office is very rarely kind of like, Hey, this is what's going on here. Subscription or let's reschedule. It's kind of, it's really along the lines of if it's something that we can do without, you know, having any type of negative impact on our other patients and the flow of everything else, we're going to do it. I've been big proponent of   If the tooth needs to come out and wants to come out, there's no way we're not going to work that in because if you do this for a while, it doesn't take that long. Somebody can understand and be pretty patient and say, hey, I'm going to work in the schedule. I definitely want to help you out. have a lot else going on, but if you can hang out for half an   you know, 40 minutes, I got to take care of a couple of the things first. I will get you all set today rather than like, yeah, let's schedule you in, you know, two weeks. And then, you know, by that point, you know, there's still in the schedule, but they saw somebody else and, know, you have, same thing with, with, know, a crown if you can, I mean, why not? Like, you know, prep it, temp it, you know, take your impression, get everything all set, take your scan, you know, make the crown, whatever you do in your office. Like if you can work it in the schedule, if somebody's patient,   The Dental A Team (21:32.45) Like why not get that done the same day? think that's doing that is what, you know, I feel like really built our practice in the first couple of years that I was here. I love doing stuff like that. I love trying to help somebody out the same day. People really appreciate it. And that's what's really going to build goodwill. Exactly. That's, that's raving fans right there. Yeah. Yeah. I love same day treatment, same day treatment. I heard a quote once I said, what's the most productive chair in a practice. And it was an empty chair.   because that's the chair that you can flip. Like don't prefer to have my schedule have empty chairs. But let's be honest, like that same day treatment is always very, very, very beneficial for patients. Like I feel like that's a VIP customer service that we can offer. And so I love that you've built a culture of a team that if we can do it, we will say yes. And we're always looking for how we can say yes versus how we can't say yes. I know I've shared this with so many practices   There's the I just say with same day treatment, it's all about timing. You've got to be really quick and we've got to be able to say yes, because a window is only so big and it only lasts for so long with same day treatment opportunities. So being proactive and like let's say yes sooner than later, because honestly, if I can have the patient say yes and have the financials done while Dr. Dave's in the chair with me, he can get the patient numb that can move along a lot quicker. I can be taking all of my prelim work and with crowns, I think it's also important   especially for same day, you don't have to do A to Z the entire way. Like you don't have to complete the crown if we don't have time. Like you said, you could temp a crown and bring them back and you can mill it and seed it. If you've got time to mill it and seed same day, fantastic. But I think especially with those same day emergencies, like say yes, but realize we can do, we don't have to do the entire process. We can still get them out of pain as other alternatives to being able to say yes. I know we did same day crowns all the time.   but I also had very minimal chairs and we were always like very packed with all those chairs. So instead of like taking up a huge chunk of time while that crown was milling, we would tempt them sometimes and send them out and bring them back for a crown seat on a day where I had space for that. It wasn't my preferred, but that was a way we were able to help a lot more patients within the confines of our practice. We only had five chairs. I was running three doctor chairs and they were all jam packed cause I had Eddas.   The Dental A Team (23:55.246) It's like little mini dentists all the time. So I was literally implant, implant crown. So there wasn't a lot of space on chair time because I had another surgery coming right after, but there's still like, wanted to paint that picture because no matter what your practice is, you can still say yes to same day and train your team to say yes and say it quickly. That way you guys can help more patients same day. Yeah. So, so, so a couple of things with that. Yeah. If you can expand your facility to be able to accommodate things,   one, it makes things very easy and stuff like that. Like I don't, I don't, I won't, almost never make temporaries because of that, because we have an extra chair and stuff like that. the crazy thing with that is, you know, you're going to spend a lot of money on doing things. You're going to be like me who, has, you know, walls being knocked down and your office is a dust storm and has to have to stand in your attic to do a podcast. War zone right now.   But, know, I'm a little nuts. I think it's worth it. You know, that's all part of it. I think the other thing that, you know, I really want to make sure that we clarify is don't say yes if you can't say yes. Like don't make it a not good experience for, you know, your other patients, respect everybody. Don't rush yourself. You know, do what you can do within the confines of things. It's just my philosophies of, you know, let's try and make it work if we can to try and help somebody out within reason.   Hello, Dental A Team listeners. What would it take for you guys to just completely and utterly change your practice? Like truly, if you think about it, because for me, I know oftentimes it's just having somebody right by my side, pushing me along, holding me accountable, having somebody to spin ideas off of. And honestly, that's all it takes most of the time for us to go from good to great. Usually it's taking the knowledge that we learn and actually executing   That's why I would love to invite you to join our Platinum Virtual, where we do a coaching call, a Zoom team training. We invite you to our community and we just really dive deep with you. We're that partner right by you to help you go from good to great. So if you're wanting to join, take your practice to the next level and you know it's time for you to implement, execute, and go to that next level, email us Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And I would be so excited to welcome you as our newest Platinum Virtual member. Can't wait to see you there.   The Dental A Team (26:15.636) Agreed and thank you for that clarifying because the worst thing that I see is people are like, okay, we're going to say yes to same day treatment, but that ends up messing up the schedule for all the other patients that were scheduled that were coming that came on time. And that also is not VIP care. So you're right. It's kind of this nice healthy balance. but I have found that team members who are, are quicker team members that have the philosophy of, will say yes as often as possible within reason.   they just think quicker. Like I know we could have a crown prep set up within like less than like two, two ish minutes. Like I was like, doc, numb, I'll have this whole room set up for you and come right back. And so I think it's that mindset of, know I need to move quick cause I don't want to throw the rest of my schedule off. But like you said, never, ever, ever compromising care. Cause I think some people can get caught up in that and then dentistry is not as good. And that, doesn't actually serve the patient longterm either.   You want to talk about the other side of priority scheduling? Yes, I do. Take it away, Dave. Hygiene. Yes. All So this is something you probably have a better scope and handle on me. I'm pretty sure you guys were the ones who a long time ago started kind of pushing me more towards the lines of make sure that you put blocks in for new patients and   You know, you could do separate blocks. You could do the same kind of blocks. You just need space to be able to help somebody. The worst thing in the world is like, hey, you have this crazy disease, but guess what? We'll see in three months to try and address the situation. Super important, right? It great. It makes me laugh every time. Every time. Like, man, you've got this like terrible disease. We've got to take care of it. I can't see you for six months. Cool. All right. I mean, it sounds real serious. Yeah. Yeah. Like we just told somebody their teeth are going to fall out of their head.   and we can't see them for a while. Wonderful. No, it does not go well ever. Yeah. So I think that's one big thing. I think that is one of the handful of things that really helped us grow as far as being able to get more new patients was actually being able to see them and fit them in the schedule rather than kind of like we have this jam -packed hygiene schedule of one prophy after the other. You know, it helps create variety, helps mix things up, it helps grow things in your office.   The Dental A Team (28:32.398) last couple of months of kind of not having those spaces have really helped me realize, you know, yeah, you can go from seeing on average 50 new patients a month to 20 when you don't have any space to put anybody and you don't have the providers to see them. it sucks for sure. I think that that's people always ask me that, Kiera, how many new patient spots do I hold? And I say, go look at your schedule, see how many new patients you've got. And you've got to, as a minimum, have that many spaces in your   that are held for these new patients to come through because they will keep calling. And new patients, if you don't have space, they might wait for you, but they also might go somewhere else, depending upon the dynamics around your practice. If you're in a busy area that's got lots of dentists, they're probably not going to wait that month or two to come see you. And so I agree. I typically say, guys, build it out, however many spaces you need for new patients. Let's get that   And then also get creative because I know there's some people who listen and they think, well, new patients should go in the doctor's schedule. And there's other people that think new patients should go in the hygiene schedule. And what I will say is both ways work great. They both can. I would say if you don't have any new patient spaces in your hygiene schedule, but you did block them, like I'm going to give you this caveat. If you're not blocking them, start blocking first. But if you are, sometimes some doctors will have those new patients come through on the doctor's side, make it a shorter appointment and have that hygienist come in and.   you can swap it out while they're doing an exam. But that way you can still see those patients on the doctor side for a much shorter appointment and just let them. I think some good verbiage on that is like hey, Doctor Dave loves his new patients so much and he wants to make sure he sees you. So we're going to get you in on his schedule and something opens up for you to get a cleaning same day. Fantastic, but we want to make sure we get you in that way. Doctor Dave can see you find out what kind of cleaning you need and that's a great way if you have that. But then next   block more spaces and people say, Kiera, we're booked out for six months, hygiene's booked out for six months. And I literally tell you guys, start putting blocks in today. There is space where patients have fallen off and start holding all of those spots as they do fall off for new patients to come through and then get those blocks in for six months. as you are scheduling out the next six months, you're making your life better in the future than not. So Dave, how do you guys do it? Do you hold it only for new patients or do you do new patients and SRPs? What's kind of been your magic?   The Dental A Team (30:53.208) formula you've found in your practice? I can't say that we have the magic here. It's a work in progress. I think we've kind of just been doing longer blocks to accommodate for both. I think something that I've been toying with more so lately to kind of get to your other point of like, you put them in the doctor's schedule, the hygiene schedule, stuff like that? If we're doing a good job,   in the front office and really asking the right questions. And once again, that goes with a grain of salt because my front office team does do a good job and they do ask the right questions, but sometimes, you know, the patients will tell us something that's insane and doesn't really match. But the point I'm trying to get to here is like, if somebody hasn't been in like 10 years and they're in their, you know, forties, fifties, and they, you know, they're giving you signs that very likely it's, you know, a potential train wreck, probably not gonna do   the hygiene visit that day anyway. But if you have an hour in hygiene and said to that hour and a half, like why not just go ahead and help them form that relationship with the hygienist and say, know, we're going to go ahead. It sounds like there may be a lot going on. We're going to get you in. We're going to take a full set of records. The doctor's going to come in and you know, you guys are going to work through kind of putting the plan together and we're going to go ahead and go from there. But you know, with the, with what it sounds like, you know, your situation is we really want to make sure that we, take a pause here.   We take a second, we make sure we evaluate everything well and then go from there. Now, mean, they very well, their periodontal status could be perfectly fine. It happens, you know, where that's the situation. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's not something where somebody is expecting like, my God, I'm gonna go ahead and do that. Most patients who haven't been in 10 years, they know they haven't been in 10 years. They expect things to be a little bit of a mess. Sometimes,   they're perfectly fine, you that happens, but at least, you know, it wasn't something where their expectation was like, my God, I was going to get everything done. And like, this is all you guys did. Right. And I think, like you said, the biggest piece I hope everybody's taking from here is it's all about how you say things and you manage people's expectations. And so I think it's really important to, help them realize like, we're going to take great care of you. we're going to do a great, thorough exam on you and we're going to come up with a game plan together. And I would say to the hygienist.   The Dental A Team (33:16.334) I know that sometimes patients come through that we think are going to be perio and I know it's not the most ideal timeframe where you're like, I only have 45 minutes and I really need an hour and a half. What I would say that I've seen with lots of other hygienists and Brittany and Dana both would attest to this, they're both hygienists. I think hygienists back to our same day treatment, let's see what you could do. Is there a zone that you could do? Could you do a debridement? Could you do maybe just one quad? Could   and start looking for those things and seeing how could you say yes to help this patient? Because at the end of the day, you have 45 minutes. And if we send them away and try and get them scheduled back, yes, that can happen. But at the same time, could you maximize their time and your chair time to help that patient out, at least in a small way? Now get it. I understand insurance is crazy. And you're going to give me all these other reasons that things can't work. I will tell you that there are a lot of opportunities that we could do. So look to see what could you do during that time frame. And is there a way that you   you can help this patient out so you're maximizing their time and your time as well. Yeah, think you bring up some really great points and some things that more so recently we've been thinking about and pivoting towards. It used to be like a big waste of time, honestly, in our hygiene schedule. Like we have an hour and a half hygiene appointment, they need scaling or root planning. let's set this up. Like, are they gonna come back? When's it gonna be? Rather than, hey,   you know, this is what the situation is at this point, the patient is as bought into it. I'm most concerned about this section over here. Let's go ahead and let's get you started at least here. Let's get things moving in the right direction and let's get you set up, you know, in two weeks to go ahead and go ahead and do these two areas. And then we'll finish off with, with this one rather than just kind of like waiting and hoping, I got to do like one half now and run half the other day. Like, let's say it's going to be, you know, two to three visits, like let's show them like, Hey, that this area is that's worse.   We're going to focus on just that by itself. mean, I don't, you know, I think if you explain things in the appropriate way, that builds a lot more value than kind of like somebody not coming, you know, somebody coming back one more time, like, great, they're still investing the same amount, but it shows that you're investing more in them in a sense, because you're going to potentially, you know, spend extra time. For sure. And I think that that's just the piece of like, I guess you said that they have an hour and a half, but they need quads of   The Dental A Team (35:36.11) Just do something. You have the time, so please do something. And I know you're going to say, but Kiera, insurance only covers this. Guys, I want to put out a really big piece. Like most periopatients have more going on than just SRPs. So odds are they're probably going to max their insurance anyway. I'm 99 .9 % sure that almost every single periopatient has more going on. And at the same time, I'm going to work with that patient financially to make sure that it actually works and we do maximize their benefits. But please,   Like don't waste an hour of that patient's time in your chair time because we're so concerned about insurance. Like there are a thousand ways that we can work around that. Because at the end of the day, like let's not let insurance dictate what we do for our patient. Let's make sure we're taking great care of our patients as well. So I love it, Dave. I'm glad you and I are on the same page. If you guys could have seen my face when he said, I don't have to have, I was like, my gosh, like don't even say that. Find the way to say yes, because like you said,   You just told this patient they have ferio disease and you have some time that you could start in an area like let's take care of them and let's see how we could say yes versus not, especially where hygiene is booked out so far. Hygienists are hard to find. We would love to have an ideal schedule, but it's like how could we maximize the hygienist time and the patient's time today without compromising care? So it's always with the caveat of like let's not compromise care, but could we say yes in some of these areas? And I think if we really were all honest with ourselves.   we could say yes more often than we probably do and we can help our patients. That's at least my thoughts. I think that's the big thing too. I think, you know, we, a lot of times we'll make a lot of excuses in situations and sometimes they're valid, sometimes they're not. I think really at the end of the day, everybody being on the same page in the sense of kind of what is best for the patient, how we want to do things and what our philosophies and mentalities are about, you know, patient treatment   and care. And, you know, at end of the day, this also takes the right team members. If somebody wants to just kind of be there, punch the clock, mail it in and gets annoyed that like, my God, like, you know, just do the other two sealants, you still have half an hour, like don't bring them back and kill time and schedule. That's not the right team member. And sometimes that's hard.   The Dental A Team (37:58.482) know, sealants, floor, like those are all opportunities that taking impressions or scans for night guards, like taking scans for ortho. Like there are so many ways that we could maximize that hour. And I will say, hygienist, I will go to bat for you all day long to protect your hour appointment. With that said, I will also go to bat that hygienist. You do maximize that hour and you are productive with that hour as well. You look for opportunities that you can do same day as often as possible. And I agree with you, Dave, I think it's important.   to have the right team members. So I'm curious from your stance, like you've hired a lot of people, you've transitioned a lot of people. How do you, I mean, you're hiring new people now. What are some tips that you've found to possibly like set the tone that this is our culture, this is what we do to find these people that are like, yes, like drivers, gunners, like I am totally going to say yes. Any tips you've got on how to find those people and create that culture? I wish I had like a real good answer for you because I mean, I could use that knowledge and so every other.   you know, office owner in the entire country. I mean, I think, I think it's really, it's, very difficult right now. It's always difficult in general, honestly. I think, you know, as I kind of do some soul searching on the, topic here and really kind of, you know, really kind of dive into it there, just being very upfront about kind of what your practice is, what your expectations are, and really kind   weighing it all out there, not being afraid. Like, my God, am I going to scare this person? Because at the end of the day, if they come in with the preconceived notion of like, hey, this is going to be like this, and then like they see, yeah, shit, this is like very intense. I've been trying, I've tried the last five episodes, not to swear. Like biggest like potty mouth ever. I'm impressed. mean, was the editor some work to do here. No, it's because we're talking about team and the frustration of team. It just comes out. I get it. I've definitely -   I might have said a word or two myself. You're already. That's the thing. You can ask Tip how much I swear when I talk to her. This is like every other word is something there. Anyway, not to get sidetracked. I mean, I think it's a matter of really setting the tone and the expectation of, this is how we are. This is our practice. Because at the end of the day, we've always been able to find pretty good people based on how they interact with each other and what our culture is like and everything like that. But if somebody doesn't want to really   The Dental A Team (40:21.186) work and really get everything going and stuff like that. It's, well, you know, at the end of the day, we're, buying time until it's going to transition out. Totally. Cause for us, it's really important to, to work hard, to grow, to learn, to spend the time doing training, to sit through all the meetings that we do, to, try and really, you know, work on, work on you as a person and a part of the team. But if somebody just kind of says like, my God, this is amazing for a year. And then it's kind   wreaking havoc and punching the clock for another year, that actually had more of a negative impact than a positive. Well, for sure, because it sets the tone to the team that everybody else can do this. I remember another fantastic quote, guys. I'm not quoting all over here, but I don't know who says it. So go find out who said this. This was not me. But they said, the worst thing that a manager or a leader could do to good team members. So the worst thing we can do to good team members is tolerate poor performance from another team member.   Because what it does is it just tells those great team members like hey, we actually don't care We're going to allow this other team member just to be a punch like a clock puncher where I expect you to stay super like proactive so I think when I I Heard that I thought as a manager like that is my job I need to make sure all of my team members are at the same level understanding that everybody has their own levels as well But I agree with you Dave. I think that that's the biggest thing I found I remember when I was hiring and we   late hours. I used to try and like sugarcoat it and I'd be like, yeah, so like maybe. And what I realized is they came in expecting not to work these evening hours. Then all my team that was there that was working evening hours were livid. That new person hired gets off at five o 'clock and they're here till seven or seven thirty. And so I just found like, just throw your dirty laundry out there. But I don't think culture is dirty laundry. I think that's a hey, it's kind of like dating. And I'm like, hey, this is who I am and I'm not going to sugarcoat who I   does this vibe and jive with you? And if it doesn't, like high five, you're gonna find somewhere that does vibe and jive with you. But we're an office that is like super passionate about growing ourselves. We're an office that says yes to same day treatment all the time. We're the office that busts our buns all day long and we love it we get a freaking high on it and we all wish we could wear roller skates so we could actually see more patients. Like does that lifestyle work for you? And then also give me an example of how you've done this at your past practice. And   The Dental A Team (42:42.808) quick things that are going to put them on the spot. As I found like rogue questions, people have, they've got answers for you, but I'll ask them on the spot. Like one of my favorite questions is, what's the worst thing anybody would say about you at your last practice and why? And people are like, but they have to give me an answer right then and there. And I'm going to find out also a trick question is what's your biggest pet peeve of other team members and what they tell   is what they are because we only see in other people who we are. So that's kind of anything. If people say, I can't stand lazy team members, odds are this person's probably going to be a lazy team member. Not all the time. It's not like a fail proof question. But some of those things I think can really help. But like you said, Dave, I think it's so paramount to say this is who our team is. Also have your team members interview them and see what they think. because   when a person comes in and they see the whole team is jiving, the whole team does same day treatment, the whole team is this way. One, they're either going to level up and rise to that occasion or two, they'll be like, this is not what I want to do. And that's okay. Let them find their dream job and you find your dream employee as well. I that's, I think that's a big part of it. I think another thing is, you look at the end of the day,   I am a lot of the personality of my office and it took me maybe a long time to understand that and be okay with saying that and just be like, no big deal, but that's it. So if they are not really okay with how intense and passionate I am about certain things and this and that, and they're gonna not be happy with like, okay, we need to do this. That's just not gonna work, sorry.   And we kind of fool ourselves and we kind of buy time because we worry about like, what are we going to do? Like being shorthanded, but I mean, been shorthanded for like three years now. mean, it's always that fear of the unknown, but I'm like, guys, we've actually been in the unknown. You just forgot that you've lived there for quite a while. Like it's totally fine. Don't stress. I love that you just said that Dave, cause I think so many doctors, so many managers, I'm like, know thyself and be free and don't be afraid of it because guess what? They're going to see your true colors.   The Dental A Team (44:50.654) They're going to see what it's like and I'd much rather present exactly how I am I tell people I'm like do you want to work with me? I'm a pretty intense boss I have the highest standards you will ever come across and I don't sugarcoat if that doesn't jive and vibe with you It's cool. Let's high five and move on because that's what I will expect of you and then Don't be afraid and I say this because I just had to do it myself Don't be afraid that if people aren't performing to the level you want and you can see they're writing on the wall it's time to have that conversation sooner than later and don't be afraid   of what your team will do. Cause I promise you, your team will like, they'll rise up, they'll figure it out. They'll pivot with you if they're the right team members, but don't, don't hold onto team members longer than you know, should. Yeah. think another thing also is, know, as things have changed and, now we're there, there are people who are coming into dentistry who don't really know much about dentistry or what it is. I found   probably most helpful in one of our most recent hires, which is our new assistant who assists me, who's been with us for the last two months. Before she even came in for an interview, I spent about half an hour on the phone trying to tell her how bad of a job being a dental assistant is. And really just kind of saying, look, at the end of the day, it is very difficult work. You may feel underappreciated because it's so   and days are hard and what we do is sometimes thankless. And you know, there's a lot that goes into that. I need you to understand that before you even walk in the door. If you're not going to be okay with that, it doesn't mean that I don't appreciate you. doesn't mean our patients don't appreciate you. That is just what happens. Right. So if somebody's not going to be okay with that, then like, this is not like a new career path to try and like hop into.   I think if somebody understands that and they they're passionate about things they want to learn they want to go they want to create a new thing great let's do it I will teach you more here than you'll learn anywhere else. Which I think is brilliant and it's funny because Liz she is my coach and she actually interviews all of our consultants and Liz and I are a good duo I like people to like me and Liz is more direct because she has no skin in the game and she knows the skin in the game is my happiness and stress level.   The Dental A Team (47:03.534) And Liz will literally talk to consultants and tell them the worst terrible experiences. She's like, are you OK to be on the road 80 % of the time away from your family? That means four out of the five days. Are you like? How do you feel getting stuck in an airport having to spend the night? Your flights are canceled because of weather and you can't get to your office like you don't eat for three days and I'm like, Liz, don't make and she's like no Kiera. I'd rather make this sound so awful and see if they're still willing to have that grit to come back. She's like because at the end of the day.   A consultant has to have grit. They have to have pivot. They have to have that stamina. And I'd much rather have it be like the most like horrifying interview. And if they're like, yep, no problem. Like Britt, Britt, haven't met her yet, Dave, but Britt is somebody like, it's fine. I actually ended up getting stuck in another country because my friend had appendicitis. Like I'm totally good. And I'm like, that's even like more than I've got in my travel, travel life. She's like, I'm totally good. So I think it's important, like you said, really lay it out of not the best highlight reel.   of the job, but the worst highlight reel and see if they still want the job because expectations are clear. It's hard in general. It's hard for anybody to get behind when it's kind of been just hard to find people, you know, but I think I do have a good feeling that things are starting to turn. I do feel like there's a lot more people out there who are looking for jobs now and a lot more wonderful people. feel much more positive about it than I haven't in a long time here. So I think it's a good   for everybody to be okay with sacking up a little bit more and feeling okay with that and being more straightforward about that. I think it's a hard thing for anybody to do in life in general. It's not really my personality, but I think it's important to go ahead and do that for the greater good there. For sure. Again, this quote, I do know this was from Keith Cunningham and he said, as a CEO, do your job.   And that has like hit me like a knife because while Dave, yes, that is not fun. It's not a fun conversation for anyone to have as a CEO, as an owner, as an office manager, people that are interviewing that are hiring. It is your job to make sure you hire and hire really well. So yes, it's an uncomfortable conversation, but that uncomfortable conversation is going to weed out a ton of people that wouldn't have lasted anyway. And I don't like to band -aid approach of like, let's just get somebody in and have a body versus it being.   The Dental A Team (49:27.246) No, I want somebody who's here with me for the next five years and they're going to like go through the highs and the lows and they're going to be awesome. So I think you've just like pivoted on so many fun ideas, Dave of like number one, the priority scheduling guys. So building that schedule out with doctor, office manager, associate, making sure that you guys build an ideal schedule and then having kind of the parameters for your front office of how often do we hold these blocks and when we need to do a pivot change, for example, that 8 a patient who needs those filling times at 8 a   to be able to shift those blocks around and really viewing the schedule like a puzzle and we're trying to fit perfect puzzle pieces and realizing we're ninja it, love the patient. Then going into same day treatment and how you're able to do that, let's say yes more often and look for that. Then going into hygiene and holding those hygiene new patient blocks. So get those new patient and SRP blocks in there. Let's make sure we have space to get that perio and also having the mindset   Hey, if I can do this, let's do it today. Let me find ways that I could say yes to maximize this patient's time in my chair time. And then moving all the way into making sure you have the right team that has that same mindset with you. And yes, culture shifts are not easy. You might today be like, I want to have the practice like Dave, but I'm not there. Dave, I know you would attest to this. Dave's not there. You didn't start here though. not there. You didn't start there. Dave's not there yet. It's a work in progress.   And I love I always feel like I listen to podcasts a lot of time, like, my God, this person has to figure out. No, that's not the thing. Like, you know, I'll give you bits and pieces. There's a lot of stuff that is not good. But the point is, if I shared that, like as the only things we shared, this would be a very like depressing podcast. At the end of the day, you know, you want to go ahead and like share what to aspire for, what's worked out well. knowing like, look, at end of the day, there's it's hard for   Like, and there's a lot more that goes into things. And you know, you could sit here and you could listen to Kiera and myself for the last 40 minutes or whatever and think like, my God, like, you know, be able to all figure it out. No, nobody does. No, they don't. Don't try and get better. Exactly. And that's what I was trying to paint the picture of Dave didn't start here three years ago. This has been a work in progress the whole time. And what I would hope is you guys at least start somewhere today, start making your tomorrow's better by some of these tips that we have. I don't care what you choose to implement. I don't care how you choose to implement.   The Dental A Team (51:44.61) I don't care if you choose to implement this quarter or if you put it off to the next quarter, but I just would say make sure you have it scheduled with yourself, make your practice better and do something. Because every day, like Dave said, it's a work in progress every day, but let's make sure we're progressing towards where we want to go rather than just staying stagnant, which is ultimately going backwards. So Dave, I love your mind. I love that you are a dentist, that you'll share these things. I love that   as dentists are willing to put in the hard work and actually show up and do your job. I think it's very inspiring and I love having on the podcast. You inspire me. So thank you, Dave, as always. I just truly appreciate you. Thank you. I appreciate you a lot too. This has been wonderful. Awesome. All right, guys. Well, I encourage each of you to take something today, go implement it, make your tomorrow a better, better than it is today. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.   The Dental A Team (52:37.582) 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.

This week we discuss the Tour de France Femmes and the greatest finish ever? We transfer the SRP belt, talk the smallest amount about Poland and the Vuelta before Tim and Spencer work on Matts fall race calendar.  This podcast is supported by the generous and amazing donors to the Wide Angle Podium Network, and but Hammerhead cycling! Visit hammerhead.io to check out the Karoo cycling computer, and use code SLOWRIDE at checkout to get a Heart Rate strap for free! Find us, and other fantastic cycling podcasts on the Wide Angle Podium Network, at wideanglepodium.com! Check out the brand new WAP app available in the Apple and Android app stores! You can email us at theslowridepodcast@gmail.com

Tiff and Dana drill down on how practices can avoid their hygiene schedules falling apart, including the benefit of ASAP lists and their opinions on re-care. Episode resources: Reach out to Tiff and Dana Tune Into DAT's Monthly Webinar Practice Momentum Group Consulting Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Become Dental A-Team Platinum! Review the podcast Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:06.99) Hey, Dental A Team podcast listeners, we are back at you again. We are so excited to be here. I have Miss Dana with me today. You guys know she's one of my favorites to podcast with. Dana, I have to say, I know a couple podcasts ago, you guys may remember, I asked her about some legging recommendations. She gave me some hiking, like legging recommendations. I wasn't able to find the specific pair that you talked about yet, but I did find a Lulu pair.   that I used in Yosemite last week. And honestly, I've used them for a couple of hikes here in the Valley as well in Phoenix. Amazing. I was so happy because they were specifically that material. It was a different kind of material than regular leggings. And I'm so happy. And I was thinking of you the whole time. And I was like, my gosh, she was right. And it had so many pockets for my phone and all the things. So thank you, Dana. And I know you've also been really, you've been working really, really hard.   in personal life in your world of fitness. And I think it's really cool. And I wanted to acknowledge that today. And I wanted to let the world know that Dana is a freaking rock star. She was so strong. saw, I don't even remember the rec the other day that I saw you, you posted something and I was like, holy cow, like the things that this woman is capable of doing are incredible. So kudos to you, Dana. I love it. What is your, I always like to ask you a question. What's the most fun   thing in CrossFit that you're doing right now. Like what's something that you're working to overcome, accomplish, you're killing it on, something that you're really having fun with right   Dana (01:40.331) Yeah, I mean, I feel like I'm always working on something, right? And I think this year I turned 40. It was a big birthday. And my goal was to be the strongest that I've ever been. So I've been focusing a lot on strength, but I always am practicing skill work. And I finally got my rope climbs down. So I can actually do those like consecutively. So that's exciting. And I've been working on my handstand pushups to the point where I can do five in a row. So I'll take that.   The Dental A Team (02:02.895) So cool.   Nice.   The Dental A Team (02:09.935) Okay. Well, I mean, I struggle with five regular pushups, not on my head. So that's impressive to me. I know that in CrossFit there's people that are doing a lot of amazing, wild things, but to me that is amazing and wild. So congratulations. That's huge. Awesome. I love it. I love it. Well, you work really hard in and out of the quote unquote office. So thank you for always being here and thank you for always being willing   Dana (02:24.629) Thanks.   The Dental A Team (02:39.722) record these podcasts with me for our listeners. I know they're super beneficial. Today's content is actually really fun for me because by trade in case you guys did not know, Dana is a licensed and trained professional hygienist. That is what she did. I mean, she's done it all. She's done all the positions really most of them I should say not dentist, none of us has been a dentist, whatever, it's fine. But she was a hygienist, you guys for a long time and she still is a hygienist.   I think it's really cool. think it's always fun for me to have these conversations with you to gain your perspective from your side as well. Today I wanted to talk about really keeping the hygiene schedule full. So I know from my perspective from dental assistant and then from my perspective as a front office, which you also have that perspective, it's kind of like a free for all a lot of the times. And it's really just not always first or high priority.   But from the hygiene standpoint, Dana, what is that like? Let's just go through, what does it feel like when you look at a schedule and you're like, great, this is a killer day, it's gonna be awesome. You get through your first patient and then you look back at your schedule and it's totally falling apart. Or you look ahead and you're like, gosh, I only have scheduled, I'm only scheduled out a week and a half. Like, what is that like as a hygienist looking at your schedule and seeing   Dana (03:55.689) Yeah, I mean, it can be stressful because really for me, I mean, you probably know this about me, Tiff, but I'm pretty goal oriented. And so obviously, I know when I don't have patients on my schedule, that affects my ability to get to goal. then to like, I am there, the reason why I'm there and what I love is that patient care and being able to take care of my patients and do the things that they need when they're in my chair. And so if my schedule isn't full or isn't ideal, I don't get to do that as much as I ideally would love. And so it can be stressful, it   The Dental A Team (04:01.997) Yeah.   Dana (04:25.633) be frustrating, right? Because so many times, like hygiene is just like your routine care, right? And so it's, it doesn't, it is stressful as far as like, did I not build enough importance for that visit? Or where did maybe, you know, my communication with that patient make it so that they didn't value their time with me? And so I think that it can be frustrating and stressful for every hygienist.   The Dental A Team (04:49.836) Yeah, I think that makes sense. And I think that's important what you just said, because you just took it from a spin that I didn't even expect. And I think most probably team members for an office workers and assistants don't expect that either because it feels, or we allow it to feel, we take it very personally when a hygienist is like what happens to our schedule. But you have taken it personally when a patient falls off of your schedule. So you're already in a space   unrest of like upset of gosh, what could I have done differently? Or how could I have been better? And then we come out I'm gonna say we for the front office, we come out at oftentimes of like, hey, I did the best that I could, what do you expect from me? So then you're already you're already in a space of upset and unrest and, and trying to figure it out. And then we come at you like, don't come at me. And now you're you know, the hygiene team   then maybe take offense to that and become defensive. So that makes sense. I'm actually really glad I asked you that question, because I'm not sure I've ever asked that or dove into that. And I hope the listeners heard what Dana said as well as, and then can kind of see that picture painted of how an upset could occur between two people or two groups of people very easily because of one misunderstanding. We're both kind of taking offense to a situation without understanding the other person's point of view.   That was actually incredible. Thank you. I knew you would say something really great, but I wasn't even expecting as far as that went. So that was really fantastic. Thank you. I see within that a space of communication. So making sure clear expectations are made from the get -go. That we're always asking more questions and assuming less. That's a reminder I love to give everyone in my life. Ask more questions, assume less.   and assume the only assumption can be that you don't know the answer.   The Dental A Team (06:50.57) ask more questions and assume less and assume the only thing you can assume is that you don't actually know the answer because you're not the other person. So that's huge right there because I think that's a space where people can really say, hey, let's talk about this. And if we have solid systems set up from the get -go, a good foundation of what do we do if something falls off the schedule? What do we do when the schedule falls apart?   That's a really easy space to meet expectations and hopefully refill a schedule before a hygienist even notices. That's my favorite thing to do is to make sure that he or she has a full schedule and doesn't even know it fell apart. So with that, some common, common ways to do that, we're gonna dive into a few for you guys today so that you can really be prepared to meet those expectations and really clear up a lot of communication between the two of those two departments or three departments.   My favorite and Dana, think we work on this a lot with practices, blocked scheduling and ASAP lists. Those are my two favorites. I love blocked scheduling. We talk about this in a lot of different podcasts for a lot of different reasons, but within hygiene, it really helps set and build the value and ensures that your new patients are scheduled where they need to be. When those new patients schedule blocks and those SRP blocks are in place correctly, we're scheduling   out into the future. as they come off, it's very easy if someone falls off the schedule, maybe an SRP got called into work and can't come later today. Well, guess what, I've got another SRP that's very easy to find, that's probably about the same time, if not exactly the same time of day, that can likely come in and I can choose that one to call and bring them in earlier. The ASAP list is super similar, like what time of day are they looking to come in, making sure we're notating all of those things, every system as far as I know,   Has the capability of an ASAP list. know Dentrix does, Open Dental does, Dana's saying yes, so that means Eagle Soft does. She knew that was my crux. Ascend, I can't answer that question. And then Curve does, and I bet Care Stack does as well. So utilize those ASAP lists. If you don't know how to do it within your system, Google you guys. I know we get a lot of those questions and I'm happy to answer them. So you can reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com as   The Dental A Team (09:08.058) But usually if we don't know the answer, we're typing it in Google for you guys. So Google at first reach out to us if you need it or if you need help creating the system around it. But that ASAP space with those blocked schedules really helped to solidify a grouping of people to pull into those holes. Dana, how do you help practices see the system behind a good ASAP list? Because I know a lot of practices really struggle to see the value   creating it and can sometimes feel like it's redundant or they're like, gosh, I've called all these people. What kind of systems do you put in place for   Dana (09:46.707) And I think this keeps coming up more and more right now because a lot of offices are short on hygiene hours and so the last thing we want to do is have an opening and there have been an easy person to put in there but it's not easy because we rely on our memory and let's face it as much as our memory is great, right? Four or five even close to six months later not so great if we're all being honest with ourselves and so I think the Where I see a lot of the pushback on the ASAP list is if they've tried it and it's messy,   The Dental A Team (10:09.57) Mm -hmm.   Dana (10:16.373) There's no cleanup system. There's no like we just keep calling the same people. There's no anything There's not great notes in there So my first thing is who do you put on the ASAP list and really the ASAP list is anyone who rescheduled who canceled right or rescheduled and didn't get back on our schedule I guess so they just canceled or   The Dental A Team (10:30.012) sorry.   Dana (10:35.749) They didn't and they didn't reappoint so putting those people on your ASAP list because you know They were due or our past do and need to get in fairly quickly Anyone who we had to schedule out a little bit farther than we'd like to and who wanted sooner or anyone who we put in a not ideal time for them and they would actually prefer something different so those are who goes on your ASAP list and then it's a really it is just when do we call them and When do we clean them   Right? And so it's just kind of creating those rules of thumb. So when we call them, obviously when we have a cancellation or we have somebody who even we anticipate calling side booking if we need to. So that would be when you would use the list and then it's just an easy cleanup   how many times are we gonna reach out to this patient and offer them something sooner before we take them off and we just give them their original appointment because we've tried to make it within our schedule and we don't wanna keep also bugging them to a certain extent. So it's just kind of coming up with that cutoff. I usually say like three or four times and then they just come up the ASAP list or making sure that we're checking our ASAP list and is somebody on there already have a sooner appointment? Like did we already do something and we just left them?   The Dental A Team (11:23.946) Okay.   Dana (11:49.039) on there. So it's just having those strategies that make ASAP list work. just oftentimes can get clunky because we don't have those strategies in place when we start it.   The Dental A Team (11:57.04) Mm -hmm. I totally agree. I totally agree. And there have been so many times when I was in practice that I would say to a patient, like, gosh, I know for me it would be really hard, you know, to move my appointment up in my life, but I like to think that it would be easy. So I know we've offered a couple of times, but I don't want to keep bugging you. Do you me to keep calling if they come up, or do you want me to take you off the list? And oftentimes patients will be like, no, it's not a bother at all. And I know it's annoying. Like, I can't make this one, but please keep trying. And I'd be like, totally fine. It's not a problem whatsoever. I just want to make sure I   driving you crazy with the phone calls or patients would be like, yeah, you know what, you're right. Like, I'm probably never going to be able to come in early. So just take me off. I'd rather just keep the plan that I have. So it helps to clean it up. Just asking a simple question of, is this beneficial for you? Or is it a nuisance? Because either way, I want to make sure that you're satisfied. So and I think we think we're invading, right? That's always the issue. We always feel like we're invading somebody's bubble or we're bothering them. And we don't want to be a   So then we shy away from calling them or like, gosh, I just called them two days ago. I'm not going to call them again. But if we ask them upfront and they tell us it is, or is not a bother, now we can make that decision that goes back to not making assumptions. So I think that's huge. Now, Dana, I preach this to all of my clients, all of my practices I work with, re care, make her re care, re care. When I was first new into dentistry, I was a few years into dentistry, my   dearest doctor they worked for for a long time. He was a re -care maniac and he used to drive me insane until I saw, okay, I get it. He's like, we're not six months booked, we've got a problem and he was just hammering this re -care constantly and I was like, what is the deal? But when we stop calling people and we stop being like front of mind, right? Top of mind, we're not in front of them anymore is when they forget about us. So whether they're scheduling or not,   us sending the reminders, the text messages, the emails, the quick phone calls, it's just like, hey, checking in on you just wanted to see where you're at in life. That's putting us top of mind so that when they do have a second to schedule that appointment, we are the place that they're calling. I say, call until call and text and remind until someone says I'm not coming back. Dana, what's your philosophy on re care, especially coming from a hygiene standpoint, right from a hygienist?   The Dental A Team (14:21.601) who needs to see these patients and wants to see these patients again in your chair, how do you feel about the repair space?   Dana (14:27.531) I mean, I 100 % agree with you. I consider myself a fairly good patient, but I'll be honest that it's most important when I'm in your office. And so if I don't schedule when I'm in your office, I'm going to need those touch points because life happens. And as much as I want to stay on top of my dental care, I want to be there every six months. Sometimes I just do that friendly nudge of like, hey, don't forget, you never did schedule with us, give us a call. And so I agree with you. think putting it in automated and then also reaching out personally, I think hitting it from both sides.   really can help keep people consistent and keep you, like you said, top of mind.   The Dental A Team (15:02.156) Totally agree Dana. I think that was beautiful. You have such an amazing perspective coming from the hygiene side and really just seeing how the dental assisting side, the hygiene side, the front office side, like all of these departments just combined together to get the job done on keeping a hygiene schedule full. It's just so important. It's so imperative. And I love what you said there. And just gathering all of those pieces, hygiene department, this is coming from you guys in my opinion. And I hope you guys share in that because it was a really cool perspective. Now,   I just want to recap, Dana, thank you so much for being here with me today and for allowing me to pick your brain and put you on the spot. I know you're never expecting all of the questions that I ask you and you take them with grace and with love and dignity and all of the pieces and you showed us some aspects of hygiene and that I wasn't expecting today. So was really, really cool. So thank you. And you guys out there, I really want you to put this powerful message into play. I want you to take all of these bits and pieces and really help keep your own hygiene schedule.   super full, that's what we're here to do today. That's what we're hoping for is to just have this amazingly full hygiene schedule. Now, here are the things you guys ASAP list if you're not using it within your system, do it now. I know a lot of people like the handwritten notes, like we said, but put it in place. Always, always, always be calling your re -care. You guys, I know this can be scary when you don't have anywhere to put them or you're worried about where you're going to put them,   When we back off is when we start to see in the future, the schedule really start to slow down. Blocking out new patient spots. And then you guys just have a plan for what happens, what you're going to do, what your team is supposed to do. What's the system for when things fall off the schedule? Who is responsible? How are they going to fill it? And who are they going to enlist to help if they can't do it themselves? So make sure that you have all of these systems in play, you guys, and in place.   The plan is going to be my number one spot because all those other pieces fall into that plan. You guys go do it, go implement it and let's see what you can do with this hygiene schedule. As always, thank you for being here with Dana and I today. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. And if you have ideas that you're open to sharing to the dental industry and the dental world, drop them below in a five star review so people can see them. They do read the reviews, especially when it comes to individual   The Dental A Team (02:26.671) podcast so if you've got some ideas pop them in there otherwise find us on our social platforms as well the dental a team and then Hello@TheDentalATeam.com is where you can submit any emails over to us if you have ideas if you have questions if you want some systems if you want to bounce ideas off of us we're here for that and open to it thank you so much guys and we'll catch you next time. 

If you're a liquor store owner, there are 3 words you hate to hear, "Got any Blanton's?". For today's modern whiskey consumer, we know about the iconic bottle shape, the collectible letters, and there's a few different expressions. However, Blanton's played a critical role in the history of bourbon and there are a lot of super rare expressions you will never get a chance to see in your lifetime. To tell this history, Dominic Guglielmi who's the author of Warehouse H comes on the show. He has the one of the most renowned collections of Blanton's on the earth and he even refers to himself as the Ultimate Tater. Beyond just collecting the most coveted bottles around, he has taken the knowledge he learned and the complete history of the brand and put it into a fascinating book that will make you respect it's past and what it has done for the current bourbon landscape. Show Notes: Above the Char with Fred Minnick (@fredminnick) talks about palletized warehouses. What's your coming of age tale with Blanton's? What was your first rare Blanton's bottle? What's the most limited bottle ever released? Why was Blanton's created as a product? Who owns the brand? Where did the bottle come from? What releases go into different markets? Is the demand as strong internationally vs domestically? Does the price remain at SRP internationally? What are the secondary prices on the most rare bottles of Blanton's? What do you think of today's typical Blanton's releases? Where are the best Blanton's ending up across the world? What is new Blanton's culture like? Support this podcast on Patreon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices