Does your front office feel overwhelmed? Kiera shares what the problem is 99% of the time, as well as how to clear up the confusion, and three tactics that bring about clarity and control very quickly.

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Trasnscript:

Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today, I just wanted to talk about front office overwhelm. Like, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. That's a real thing, it's a real deal. This happens all the time. And I just want you guys to be able to fix that quickly and easily. So today, we're here to wrap. We're here to have a good time. We're here to talk about the front desk overwhelm and how you can fix that and do it with a ton of ease. So.

If your front office feels overwhelmed, if you feel like they're overwhelmed, if you're ever scared to walk up there because you're like, my gosh, they're always stressed out. This is the episode for you and your front office team, because honestly, it's usually not that they have too much to do. It's that they're just, I call it front office soup. Then they're just all like, it's a bowl of spaghetti and we're all slurring and slopping and it's just a mess up there. But because we just have to figure out what matters and who does what.

And it usually, in front office team members, I hope you hear me loud and clear, I'm not being a jerk, I'm Kiera Dent from the block and I've sat in your shoes and I understand it and I've been in your shoes and I know this overwhelmed feeling. It's not usually a workload problem. Usually what it is, is it's a role clarity problem. 99.9 % of the time, if we clean that up and we like untangle the ball of spaghetti, everybody's super happy, everybody's clear and things start rocking and rolling. So.

Again, this is where we're at today. I wanted to just give a quick tactical podcast for you for that front desk overwhelm. And I want you to just know that like at Dental A Team , every single consultant on our team has been in your shoes. ⁓ I don't just say these words on the intro to the episode. We don't just understand you. We genuinely are you. We've been in your shoes. We've sat in your shoes. We've sat at the front office. We've taken the phone calls. We've had the schedule fall apart last minute. I've had the treatment plans not close. I've had doctor on my case saying, Kiera.

get the schedule full and I'm like, I don't really know what to do, okay? I've had that phone running a million miles a minute. We get it. It's chaotic up there, but it doesn't need to be chaos. And so when we have all that, how can we take the urgency away and help you focus on the important thing? And so this is gonna help us kind of figure out like, why do people get overwhelmed? How do get the confusion cleared up? And then what are three things that bring clarity and control very quickly? That's not gonna take months and months to get that stabilized, but to actually do it really quickly.

If you don't know us, hi, we're the Dental A Team. I'm Kiera Dent. Dent really is my last name. It took me three fiancees. You can ask me about that later. It's a real joke, but it's a real life. I love dentistry. I love helping people have their best lives. And I love the dentistry as the platform that brings us all together. I've been a dental assistant, a treatment coordinator, a scheduler, biller, an office manager, regional manager. have all my own practices. I took my first office from 500,000 to 2.4 million in nine months and opened a second location.

To say I've been around the block is not a lie. I have bought practices, I've sold practices, I've been parts of DSOs, I've been part of boutique practices, I've merged offices, you name it. I don't think that there's a single thing that I haven't done yet in dentistry, so try me. I'd love to meet somebody that I'm like, yep, never heard of that before. ⁓ And our job is to make dentistry fun again. Our job is to make you love your life again. Our job is to bring simple clarity. But as a business owner myself, I hated where I'd go to conferences and people would just talk.

to me and I have to go back and rally my team and I realized I'm gonna create a business that's gonna make your life easier. So we actually work with doctors and teams. We help doctors set the vision, where are we all going? And then we figure out your finances. Let's make sure you're profitable. And if you have tax aversion, like you're so scared of it. Not that you don't pay it, don't get me crazy on that, but that you're so scared because you feel like you're making money but you're always broke. We help offices actually like find the money, keep the money, make the money. Like let's have you be profitable.

And then the other part is how do we do system and team development together? I call that the yes model. You first vision, making sure you're taking care of E stands for earnings and profitability. S is systems and team development. Doing that yes, success model. So you can say yes to more in your life. Truly, truly. And teams freaking love us because guess what? We get this. We understand it. Doctors love us because we're magic magicians that can fix it with your team, but also help you be profitable. It's like.

Let's put a bow on all the beauty together. So let's talk about your front office because everything freaking feels like a priority. my gosh, I gotta answer the phone and check patients out. I gotta try and schedule all the doctors asking me questions. I gotta keep my doctor busy. I've got constant interruptions nonstop. As soon as feel like I get patients checked in, that hygiene team's bringing them right back out. It is nuts. And it's because we just don't have priorities hierarchied. And also we're not using time when we need to.

So when front office is jumping between five tasks and finishing none of them well, that's chaos. And so how can we actually make it to where things aren't as chaotic? Because yes, you're always gonna have interruptions. And I think for us to never feel like, I can never have interruptions, like that's not my perfect date. That's not real life. We signed up for an amazing job that's very busy up front. And I feel like my job in front office, I say like, I'm here for air traffic control. Like that's my job. And I'm gonna make sure every plane lands easily, AKA every patient has an appointment. I get them scheduled. We're gonna have calm.

Like I want to feel like JFK's airport. Like we're there. I just think about that airport and that air traffic control. I'm like, they have people flying in and out like mayhem or you can go to Atlanta or you can go to like any big city. Like think about that air traffic controller. And that's who like, I want to be at the front office. So front office team members, hopefully that's a good vision for you of, Hey, yes, we've got a million things going on, but we are laser focused on what's the most important thing. And so I love to give like, okay, number one, our scheduling person, what's their number one job? Their number one job is to make sure our schedule is filled to goal every single day.

That's your job. So hygiene and doctor like bada bing, bada boom, that's your role. You keep them on there and you do not leave the day until your schedule is full. Like I'm not having you go home like, well, I did my best. ⁓ Outcomes over activities. I am big on this. We own our role. We don't just do a job. We own that. So if I'm a scheduling guru, you better believe I'm going to have my hygiene schedule full, full. That doesn't mean perfect. It means full and productive. And I'm going to have my doctor schedule the goal.

treatment coordinators, your number one job is to have your doctor's hitting goal or exceeding goal every single day. Not a full schedule. I don't want all the white space filled in. But if my doctor needs to be hitting 5,500, you make it rain sister or gentlemen, you go figure out how to do it. You go look at your unscheduled treatment plans. I'm not gonna say you sit here and call 20 unscheduled treatment plans unless you're an office that's 7.5 million, then yes, maybe we'll put that as a job. But 99 % of the time, your job is to call as many as needed to get your schedule full, period.

So scheduling coordinators, it's to make sure we're running on time, hygiene's full. Sometimes I have doctor over there. Treatment coordinators, you're always responsible for getting doctors scheduled to go. Billers, 98 % collections, non-negotiable. We gotta have money in the bank, otherwise we're broke and we can't feed our team. And we've done the work, we need to collect the money. So from there, and then office managers, your job is to make sure profitability is there, KPIs are being hit, and the whole team is flourishing. So that's just like a very simple like.

Yeah, but Kiera who's first on phones first on phones is scheduler first person they're always on it unless you guys like no we want them to be concierge style we have a concierge then they're not first on phones but we have somebody who's first who's second who's third on phones so as that phone rings we've got it can you set up a phone tree so where if they've got billing questions it just goes to the billing line and the biller can help with that if you're like Kiera I only have two people in my front office fan freaking tastic we need to have dedicated power hour time so front office and scheduler usually does insurance verification too typically that's who's gonna do it

but sometimes my treatment coordinators, like they want to make sure that they get all their insurance verification done and they have maybe a bit more time than our schedulers do. So again, it's who's got the most amount of time and who's the best with bandwidth on that. That's how I'm gonna set it up. If you have a bill or a dedicated bill or they're gonna do insurance verification for you, insurance verification should take you two to four hours max. And I'm talking to max a day. If we're taking longer than that, we gotta figure out how to be a bit more efficient and I got great ways to do it, like lump them together. I got a ton of podcasts onto it.

but we've got to just make sure that each person, and I love end of day checklist where, and it's not we wait till the end of the day, it's we get this stuff done during the day, but by the end of the day, all this needs to be stamped, signed, delivered. So scheduler, you're responsible for hygiene, making sure it's full and up to par, possibly insurance verification, possibly doctor, depending upon your office. Treatment coordinator, non-negotiable doctor scheduled to go every single day. I'm talking if I'm working four days, three of my four have to be to go, period. And the first patient of the day,

Please, please, please, please, please do not leave me one that's unconfirmed. And you're like, well, it's full. If they're unconfirmed, they're not showing. Like I might get lucky, but don't do that. Make sure it's a guaranteed confirm. Move those patients off. I've got a ton of verbiage for getting patients off the schedule. So we're not sitting there with like, to me, those are like gap fillers. Like it makes us feel good, but it's not gonna actually, like that's not me owning. I know that patient's not gonna show up. I call and call and call until I get people.

So I start doing my confirmations at usually eight or nine in the morning. So I've got time and I do a 48 hour confirmation guarantee. So if they're not there, and then we started implementing with a lot of offices that if they don't call and confirm you, we are moving you off the schedule to open that space up because we do need confirmation you will be here. I have moved patients off the schedule. Yeah, I'm gonna have about five people mad at me, but guess what? It's gonna fix 95 % of my problems. I can handle those five upset patients with me. I can handle that. If someone comes in duplicative, I can handle that.

Ladies and gents in the front office, air traffic controllers, you're also word ninjas. And you gotta learn to word ninja your way through a lot of things. Words are free. You can handle those hard conversations, but what we can't handle is not having productive schedules to where doctors aren't making money, we're not making money, and we're gonna go under. We can't handle that, but I can handle one or two upset patients. But I can also set up expectations so they're not upset with me, because I don't want to get berated. That's no fun for anybody.

So clear ownership, who does what, what are the simple KPIs for each of them? Put that in place, have us track it. That just right there, hopefully cleaned up 90 % of your issues. Now everyone was like, yeah, but we all do it together. High five. I love that you have teamwork. Like genuinely love it. Teamwork though is that game where it's who's on first, what's on second, I don't know, is on third. it's like who, like what thought everybody was going to do it? Everybody thought nobody was going to do it. So then somebody picked it up, but then nobody respond like,

It's a mess. So I love that y'all help each other. We just have to know at the end of the day, who's the one who puts the button on it? Who's the one who puts the final bow on it? Yes, we can all help each other, but I need a clear owner of each specific thing. I need a clear owner of hygiene and getting them scheduled. I need a clear owner of insurance verification. I need a clear owner of doctor's production. I need a clear owner of collections. Like I need those clear buttoned, tidied, and I need a clear owner of who answers the phone first.

There are several others. I know that there's more and you're like, but what about this? What about this? Again, it's just playing this game and you guys can get sticky notes, write them all up, put them there. I have end of day checklist. I'm happy to share with people, but we've got to have roles are shared, but they've got to be owned. So like it's a clear owner. You can have help. I'm fine with that, but you have to own it and you've got to own those results. Again, it's outcomes over activity. I am so grateful you called 50 people, but if we don't have people on the books, you gotta call 51 or 52 or 53 or 54.

And when you own that and you know that, guess what? How do I become a killer treatment coordinator? Because I knew I had to put people on the schedule and I wasn't gonna call them all night long. I was like, I got a family, I wanna go home. But I knew that that was my responsibility and I owned that result. So when we have shared responsibility, it actually creates drop in responsibility. So clean it up, if everyone owns it, no one owns it. So we have clear owners. And then what we have from there is we just have set systems. So what is our system for doing scheduling?

What's our power hour? I put schedulers back there, I put insurance for everybody. Put them behind the door for two hours where they're not being disrupted. Unscheduled treatment plans. Give that treatment coordinator one hour of blocked time. Go make it rain, honey. Like call the patients, text the patients. We are focusing on highest level priority things. Look over your treatment tracker. Practice your verbiage. What are the things that aren't closing for you? Why? But we actually spend it. And so put the systems into place. What is it? Some people have like...

To me, these are slightly aggressive checklists, but if it works for you, it's not aggressive. It's like by 10 a.m., all confirmations need to be done. By 12, all insurance verification needs to be done. By two o'clock, all of the schedule is filled to capacity. And then we're scheduled two days out or whatever it is. You can have it where it's benchmarks like that so we don't get stuck and then it's like four o'clock. I'm like, where did our day go? Sometimes those mile markers really can help, but we have to have set systems, set processes that everybody's following and we all know it.

And that's going to help because this helps when we bring on new people. How do we schedule? How do we treatment plan? How do we follow up? Getting those protocols written so it's not just living in our head. If it's in our head, we're dead. We got to get it out. We got to have those systems and protocols written. so systems don't live in people. ⁓ Systems like we're not relying on people. We're relying on systems. So when I look at that, systems are on paper or in video form, not in memory. That then helps.

Like if there's just one person that's like, well, Sue's out. We had a Sue in one of my offices. I'm like, I don't know how to do the billing. I don't know how to collect the money. I don't know how to schedule patients. Sue did it all. But if Sue goes on vacation, the practice is donezo. Like you cannot be reliant on a Sue in your practice. We need to have systems. We need to have processes. Yes, I want clear owners. But if that owner's on vacation, which they should be like our marketer Eve, she just went, she's like, it was awesome. I disconnected for an entire week. Didn't check Slack.

I knew everything would be taken care of and I came back and she had like three Slack messages of things that were missed. That is truly a systematized organization. Yes, I'm having a little kudos moment. It just happened yesterday. So yes, it's a brag moment on our side. But I think about that. Like could your Sue, Alison, Kiera, Tiffanie, Jenny take off for two weeks and would you guys be okay? And if the answer is no, we gotta get those systems written and then we need to send them on vacation and test it and see how we survive.

because we've got to be able to have it. So the three things that will fix this very quickly is number one, we've got to get clear ownership and that's ownership, not just job descriptions. Ownership, who owns scheduling, who owns phones, who owns our collections, who owns our treatment plans, who owns our doctor schedule. Get those things and eliminate overlap. Everybody in the front office is going to feel 20 times better and then have it on KPIs where we're tracking it every single week so we can see the progress and make sure it's true ownership, not just checking boxes.

Number two is we have a priority framework for an office. So what is it? Because like I can have my checklist and I can know this. Number one is my KPI. But before my KPI, patient in front of me, always. Always, always the patient who's in front of me. Then it's my KPI, that's my number two. And then it's gonna be team needs. And then from there, always phone for me. Phone is pretty high up there. Like I say, it's patient in front of me, phone. And then it's gonna be my KPI.

So you can be like, well, that phone's ringing. Okay, great. So then I can throw it and be like patient in front of me, KPI phones. Phones are so valuable. And if we don't answer and take care of it, but let's get a phone tree because we don't need to answer every phone call. The phone calls I really need to answer are my new patients. That's what I need. Also stop letting cancellations happen on your voicemails. Save yourself some time. The dermatologist that I'm going to, no voicemail. Like literally it's not even there. I can't leave a voicemail. And I have to call during business hours, period.

Like that's just how it works. And if I want to get into them and you might be like, but I'm so nervous. I'm going to have patients that won't call. That's fine. But I leave a voicemail and I have it. And I say, don't accept any appointment changes via voicemail. Please call during business hours. I also do not accept them via text message. I make my patients, if they're going to break up with me or having a phone, a voice to voice conversation, you're not just able to text me. Like we don't break up via text here. You get to call me, have a conversation. And that's how I'm going to help save my time on that as well. Have a phone tree.

Make sure that it's really set. So you know it's patient, my KPI, phones, whatever your guys' thing is, but make that priority framework for you so everybody's following it, we all know. So that way we're not sitting here with this like built up resentment of like, duh, you should be fixing the schedule. When it's like, they're with a patient. Now, team members, I have that priority framework, but that doesn't mean I don't get to own my KPI. My number is my responsibility. And yes, I can sit here and chat all day long with my patient, because they're number one, but that doesn't mean that I don't get to own my number.

I'm responsible for owning, like own that thing, air traffic controllers. You can't just be like, well, my job is to like make sure the plans land, ⁓ treatment and schedules. And then be like, but like I got busy and we were chatting with the pilot. They're gonna crash. No, you can chat, but you need to still own your role, okay? And then number three is build simple, repeatable systems. So that way like Sue, Jenny, Sarah, Kiera, Tiff, anybody can go on vacation.

and we're not gonna drown and think, yes, we'll be tired and we'll be glad they're back. Like I missed Eve, I'm super happy she's back, but our company didn't go under without her. And that's how your team should be as well. So, front office overwhelm is usually not about the team, it's just about clarity and consistency. It's about roles and systems being clear and defined, so that way confidence can go up and stress can go down. And I know you might be like, this was such a like 20 minute podcast to clean up my whole front office. And I wanna say like, it really can be that easy.

I think that teams get in this, I think ego gets a little bit in the way of like, I've always been doing this. I think it's a little scary to shake up a role cause you're good at it. ⁓ But I think, not I think I know, if I have done this in 500 plus practices with our entire team, I know we can do it for you and your team too. And it's not a set, deadly team is not a set like, you have to do this. Like that's a cookie cutter. That was me like pressing my Christmas tree into the cookie. ⁓ You don't have to just be a Christmas tree or.

an ornament or a square or a triangle. It is what is best for your practice. We will share best practices, but ultimately this is your teen year practice. They live there, I don't live there. So let's make it a place that they're happy to live. Let's make it a place that you're clear. And then doctors is great for you. So if you need a scheduling issue, you go to Kiera. If you have a treatment plan issue and your day's not scheduled, the goal, you go to Sarah. If you have an issue with billing, you go to Monica. Like you just go to your correct people. So that will help you. So look at that, see it really does like.

clear front office creates a calm place. And ⁓ I just want to say that it's very doable. We do this all the time. think I'd say probably like 70 % of our consulting is on front office and just helping because it is a slush pond up there and it does get messy and we're all trying to help each other and we all have the same goals and desires, but it's on the execution of those goals and desires and how it's being done to create the simplicity or the chaos. So reach out. I'd love to help you out. Let's see if you're a great fit. Let's see if we can help you.

take the pieces, implement today, whether you reach out to Dental A Team to get help for your front office because they just don't know it. If your front office listens to this and you guys have a meeting and you divide it up and make your end of day checklist, whatever it is, but do something to go from that chaos to that calm. It is very doable. We do this all the time. I would say we are freaking experts at it. So reach out, [email protected]. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.