Have you noticed signs of apathy in your practice? Does your job feel insurmountable? Kiera talks about telltale signs of burnout, how to help people bounce back from burnout, and ways to avoid burning out in the first place.

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Kiera Dent (00:01)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I am so happy you're here. I'm so happy that you're spending your time with us, that you are truly here committed to making your practice, your patient experience, your team experience that much better, which ultimately impacts your life. It ultimately impacts your profitability and it ultimately impacts the success that you have in this world. This is one of the greatest opportunities for you to truly live your dream life, to truly have everything and more. And that's what I love and I'm so passionate about. And so today,

 

I just wanted to talk about some telltale signs of burnout and what to do if you are a practice experiencing burnout or what to look for to avoid burnout. know burnout is one of these hot topics and I was talking to an office today and I thought, you know what? I need to podcast about that because offices feel alone. Offices feel like I'm the only one who's experiencing this. I'm the only one who feels this way. Like, gosh, I don't even know what to do. And so I feel like it's just a really...

 

important topic that I'm super passionate about that I am excited. So today, it's going to be a quick tactical one of what to do for burnout. What does that look like? What are some symptoms and then what to do to help with that? Because I think all of us can be in that space at one time or another. And so just noticing being able to have it, I've done some other ones. There's been some other doctors that have been guests on here. But I realized that today when I was talking to this office, I realized, my gosh, this doctor is just struggling from burnout.

 

And I don't think that they even realized that. And so just giving you some quick, like, these are some things to be aware of. But then in addition to that, I always love like, but what's the solution? How do I get out of this? Because burnout, think is a little bit of a buzzword. What are truly the steps out? So I'm really excited that you're here. If you're a part of the Dental A Team family, I'm so glad you're a part of it. I love our clients. We are a consulting company that works across the nation. I'm really trying to bring.

 

dentists and team members together because I think it's so tricky when doctors are consulted but the team's not or the team's consulted and the doctor's not but getting both parties on the same page to where we can really truly thrive we can gain a lot of traction and momentum within our practice having the best team and patient experience because I honestly believe that building a dental practice should be easy building a practical building a practical and profitable practice should be easy so with Dental A Team that's what we do that's what we're here for we're the masters at team and

 

and practice success. And really we've been there, we've done it, we've done it successfully many times and I hope to be able to help you in your practice. So today talking about burnout, this doctor called in and they were saying, Kiera, I need some help. I was like, all right, great, let's talk. And this doctor, what I started noticing was there was a lot of apathy. As they were talking, they just said, I know I should be doing this and I just don't. I know that I...

 

Like these are some issues that I'm struggling with and I've just said it a lot of times and I've just kind of given up asking for it. Like when I have patients there, like I know I should be diagnosing this and not that I'm not diagnosing, I'm diagnosing, but maybe I'm just not presenting all of it because I honestly don't want to tell the patient like you've got seven crowns. So you know what? This one, I could watch it. I started hearing and I know some of you were like, my gosh, I don't want you to judge this office.

 

Because guess what? hear this from a lot of practices and I'm not sitting here judging. I never sit here and think, wow, that doctor's crazy. I think, wow, that doctor is burnt out and we need to figure out why. Doctors at the end of their careers, they get this way too. Doctors when they are at different areas in their life, they get these things. And I really hope that today we come to this with love and empathy and no judgment and no judgment of yourself.

 

and no judgment of these offices. I'm mixing and mashing a bunch of offices together so that way you can't figure out who I'm talking about because I hear this from so many practices. But it's apathy. It's saying like, gosh, I just feel like I can't find the energy. I'm tired of just asking for this to be done. It's the insurmountable to-do list. It's the, I think like as I just took that breath, I think that's how they feel. It's like I have this never ending to-do list.

 

I don't quite know what I need to do. I'm tired. I've got things going. I know I could be doing better. Do I really want to? And it's just kind of like this swirl. I also notice when officers are really at a good burnout space, they swirl. They swirl a lot because honestly, I think that their mind is swirling and they're just like, I know I need to do this and I know I need to do that, but I'm so tired. Or gosh, like I just like, no matter how many times I like tried to take a step forward, I've got 10 steps back. And what I look for when I'm

 

when I'm seeing a practice, the first thing I'm gonna ask when I have a doctor who's in this space, those are some telltale signs. And then after that, we just get to a workspace where we actually stop caring, where you don't wanna come work, dentistry is not fun for you. And so what I get excited about is like, when I get to catch a doctor before they get to that where they've lost the interest, they're not excited about it, they still have a little bit of that spark and sparkle and they're like, hey,

 

I know I need some help and they reach out. That's like the prime spot. I love to catch them even before that, but hey, we can catch you at that spot. Fantastic. Because otherwise, like I said, you go into complete and total like shutdown and it's things. It's almost like the world loses its color. Food loses its taste. Things that you used to love. They just don't inspire you anymore. You start to detach. start to, it's hard to find the energy. It's hard to find the motivation. It's hard to get excited for things. You really are just sitting in this space of

 

I feel like it's almost complete overwhelming. So your system is just naturally shutting down and it's like, all right, we're just gonna like put a, we're gonna put a blanket on that. Like it's a fire and we need to put the fire blanket on it and just like put everything to baseline zero. So we're not having highs, we're not having lows. We're just gonna settle. And I think when I look at practices like this, that's the part I don't like because you got into dentistry because you love it. And so when I find doctors like this, one of the first questions I'm going to ask is, do you have a great office manager or right hand?

 

And a lot of times I will hear, and office managers, this is nothing on you, office managers, I hope if you're listening to this, you are picking up, that's why I do this podcast. So doctors and office managers can have conversations. You can talk about this. You can say, my gosh, like, hey, these things are things we need to talk about. And so with that, what I found is usually the office manager has been there for maybe a while, but the office manager is not truly managing. And so,

 

What I like to highlight on this to these offices is like this doctor, they'll something like, Kiera, just, I know I need to hire this person, but I can't get the ads. And I'm like, that's what your office manager should be doing. They should be placing the ads. They should be interviewing. You can help with the compensation, but they should be bringing that to you. Like literally owner doctors. That's what you should be relying on your office manager for. And office managers, this is what you are supposed to be doing as an office manager. And I know there's no rule book for office managers. So a lot of times it's just.

 

You didn't even know that this is part of your job description. So things like payroll, things like website, things like marketing, things like tracking our cases, things like figuring out new softwares in the practice, things like listening to podcasts. So kudos to all those office managers out there. Doctors, if you're office manager listens to the podcast, or if they haven't started, have them join us. It would be great. We try to talk about these things so you don't have to have the awkward conversation. We have it for you. But so many things that when I look at doctors lists, I'm like,

 

well, high five, all of these things that you're doing for the most part actually should be delegated out to your office manager or your leadership team. Now again, pending upon the size of your practice, but the reality is doctors, you're an owner. And so your job is to do dentistry and be an owner and a CEO of your practice. That's what your job is. It's not to be the manager. And so oftentimes I find that the burnout for a lot of doctors comes because they don't have a strong office manager next to them. And even if...

 

because a lot of people are like, Kiera, can't find an office manager or I don't want the office manager title in my practice. And I'm like, that's fine. So we can hire a personal assistant. We can hire an office manager. We can hire a front office lead. We can build you a leadership team. The point is you need more people to help run this ship because you are the one who's producing dentistry. And without you doing dentistry, the rest of these things aren't getting done. And so that's where you just feel this insurmountable. It's like the laundry got piled on top of you and there's no way to get this laundry off of you.

 

And so what you do instead is you just fall asleep under the pile. That's called burnout. And so when I look at this, I'm like, fantastic, let's look at your team. And I'm not here and in our consulting, it is very clear that we do not terminate team members. We give them an opportunity to rise up because like I said, a lot of office managers don't even know this is what they should be doing. They don't even know how to do it. They don't know how to have the conversations. They don't know how to run the meetings. Doctors get so tired of trying to implement a system and then it falls off. They get tired of trying to like be like,

 

broken record and just keep telling this team member, hey, I need you to do this. need you to do this. Doctors, it's not your world. It's not what you're there to do. It's not your job. Even as an owner, that's not your job. That's your manager and your leadership's opportunity. That's what they should be rising up to do. And so what I found that I really love is when we meet these offices, that's where I love coming in and being able to help out. Because what we do is we now get to help coach your office manager for you. We get to help say,

 

Great, tell me everything on your to-do list. This is who in your practice should be doing this project. This is who should be able to take care of these. This is how we start tracking your numbers. This is how we help you look at your numbers to make decisions on who you can hire, on what your overhead and profitability should be. Because a lot of times the burnout also comes from not knowing your numbers, not knowing what systems to put into place, not knowing what your office manager should even be doing, not knowing what you can hold your team accountable for.

 

And I think the hardest thing is I watch so many offices and so many doctors is you feel like you come out of dental school expected to know how to run a business as well. And we hear it all the time. We don't know how to run a business. We know we don't know how to, but no matter what, you're doctors. And so you think like, gosh, like I've got this doctor degree. I'm supposed to know how to do this. And so I feel like instead of stop, like stop thinking like that's what you are supposed to do. Let's come into reality of what you really do. So for doctors, what I really need from you is I need your vision.

 

I need to know what life you want to be living. And I need to know, we're gonna need to know your numbers as well. So we're gonna need to get that with your CPA. You don't even have to give it to us. We can work with your CPA. But those are the main things. And then I need you to be a great producer. I need you to be great at diagnosing and I need you to be great at taking feedback on your case acceptance. I'm not here to be a dentist at all. You get a diagnose, but I am here to teach you how to get more patients to say yes. So you being open to that, fantastic. And then be the eyes and ears. If things aren't going well, tell me. Tell us as your consultant.

 

how we can help you. But really doctors, that's your main thing. Set the vision, get us the numbers. Yes, you need to be good at spending your money. So like, let's make sure we don't go wild on that and then be a great producer and like, let us know if things aren't going well. You also have to be willing to communicate those things and letting us know what your dream life is. Because once we have that information, amazing. Now we get to take it to the team and now we get to figure out KPIs, tracking, teams, systems that need to go into place to get these things into play. And so what I like point out is

 

Doctors, you're kind of like Walt Disney. Your job is to set the vision of what you want your practice to be. And then your team's like Roy Disney, and they're gonna go put this into place. We just need that information from you. So I hope that that gives some reprieve to these poor offices that just feel like they're under this laundry pile of, gosh, we have so many, like, I don't even know where the socks go anymore. I know I put them away for years, but like, you're just so inundated with so many things, trying to be a great dentist, trying to be on all the time. Doctors, your job is hard.

 

You're doing dentistry, you're working in a finite space, you're trying to win patients over, you're diagnosing, you've got to make sure your team loves you. You work in very small proximity. And then on top of it, you've also got to do all these other things that realistically your manager should be doing for you and your team should be doing for you. And so being able to have those conversations of like, amazing, this is what my office manager should be doing and this is how they can do it. But I think doctors get so nervous because like, well, I don't know how to do this. How am supposed to tell them to do it? That's why I love being a consultant and a coach too, to office managers.

 

we get to coach that office manager on how they can have these conversations, on how to track these numbers, on how to look at the business. Because guess what? Office managers have also never been taught this. Even if they come from other practices, it's like trickled down through the grapevine. And so working with so many practices, we're able to see this is what elite managers do. This is what basic managers do. This is what leadership teams do. This is what a very junior leadership team can do. And then we grow them into more advanced. So wherever your practice is,

 

no matter where you are, if you're already there, helping them take on more tasks and duties and utilizing the numbers and really looking at the business as a business to make decisions that help you and really truly help you grow. But I really just hope that we've inspired doctors of these are some of the signs I see consistently. This is what you need next to you. And if you don't have that person, there's a great doctor that we work with that didn't have their right hand when we started with them.

 

And we worked with them and it was a good like six to eight months before we were able to find this right hand. And it was interesting. I saw this doctor and they told me, said, Kiera, I'm so grateful for your guys's guidance because I didn't even realize what could be possible. I didn't know what it would feel like to have an office manager who actually was a true manager, not just by title alone. Like I didn't even know how to tell them what to do. And you were able to be their coach just as much as you were able to be my coach. You're able to help me see the numbers to make decisions.

 

but you're able to help the manager have the uncomfortable conversations with team members. You're able to help them know how to put meetings into place of how to track KPIs and track numbers and get the whole team on board of how to present treatment plans and schedules and block schedules and all those things you hear about. Like you guys were actually able to teach my manager and you were able to be that resource for my manager when they didn't even know. And so really being able to partner in, I think it's just important for you to realize this is real life.

 

for so many practices. This is what hundreds of offices are dealing with. And my heart goes out to you because you don't have to live like this. There are other options. You can actually go home at the end of the day and be with your family. You can actually have a team that looks at the numbers and makes decisions that you don't have to make all the decisions. You can have a team where your office manager holds them all accountable and you don't have to. You can have a team where they literally rise up. And the great news is teams want to rise up. Teams want to make you so proud. Teams want you to go home.

 

I was talking to someone the other day about my personal life and they're like, Kiera, this is the best news ever. Like, this is what you've been working for. Now you get to go enjoy this life that you've worked so hard for. And hearing that, I just thought that's what your teams want for you doctors. They want you to be living this dream life. They want you to be home with your babies. They want you to be flourishing. They love you so much. And so realizing that there's another option if you want it. And so I just wanted to pop on of the solution is

 

helping your team take on the responsibilities of what they can do and what they should be doing, giving them the tools and the resources, hoping to highlight a lot of the tasks that doctors, this is what you should be doing and this is what your manager and your leadership team should be doing. All those other things, supplies, ordering, budgets, all of that, those go to team members. Doctors, yes, we teach you how to look at the numbers so you can make sure that your business is profitable and you can make decisions from there, but we do that in tandem with your office manager if you want.

 

I understand some people don't want to share all their numbers, but I will tell you having someone to shoulder this weight with you really is just going to be able to give you so much freedom and so much happiness. And so I felt like, man, I hear this all the time and maybe you don't realize that this is normal. Maybe you don't realize that these are signs that you're, you're headed towards burnout. Maybe you don't realize that this is the solution out of maybe you're sitting there and you're listening to this podcast at seven o'clock at night because you were hanging out at the practice because

 

You had to check the charts and you had to check this and you had to check that. like, you got to make sure it's all set up. The answer is no, you don't. There's other team members and other people who should be that want to, that want to rally with you. They may not just even know what it needs to be. And you don't know. So guess what? We've got the blind leading the blind. Neither of you know what you're supposed to do. Neither of you know where you're supposed to go. So it feels really hard to get out from underneath that tunnel, but I'm going to come in and shine the lantern for you. I'm going to come show you there is light at the end of that tunnel, that there are ways out.

 

that these things are possible for your practice and really truly taking it on, giving yourself that gift because running a practice doesn't have to be hard. Going through burnout doesn't have to be your reality. Being able to go home on time, be with your kiddos, be with your family, be with your friends, go and live your life, work as many days or as little days as you want, those are reality. And so knowing what that is, then we just work backwards. We get your team on board. Things that you love to do, fantastic. You can keep doing them. Things you don't like to do, fantastic. We take those off and we give that to someone else.

 

And we train your team of who should be doing what and how they can be doing it and really empowering your team to take this on as well. So that resonates with you. Take it on. This is the time. Live that life. It doesn't have to be hard. And if we can help you in that, please reach out. I'd love to help you with your practice. I'd love to take a look at it. I'd love to do whatever we can to make sure that you are living your best life because your life is important. You are worth it. You don't need to be sitting there and stressed out, apathetic, loss of life. The world doesn't seem to have as much color as it did. You don't need to live there.

 

Burnout's real. These problems are real and the solutions are also real. And so I'd love to chat with you. If that resonates with you, reach out. [email protected] DM us on Instagram, dentalateam. We're happy to help you. And even if you're like, gosh, I just don't know, maybe I'm different, reach out because I promise you you're not so different. And there's a solution for you. And if I can give you the solution right away, easy, I will. And if we can work with your practice and your team, we're happy to do that too.

 

But really, I want you to commit to yourself that you deserve to live the best life and that you are going to live your best life and that you aren't going to deal with burnout any longer. And you're not going to even get yourself to that line if you're not there yet, but you're truly going to empower your team to be the incredible team that they are meant to be and that you are worthy of that and that your team is worthy of that. Guys, I just love you and I wish I could give you a giant hug and a high five and tell you you're doing an incredible job because you are. Reach out, [email protected]

 

Give yourself a huge hug. Give yourself a high five. You're doing better than you think you are. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

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.

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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. [email protected]

 

[email protected] and we'll catch you next time.

 

Kiera and Dana chat about ways dentists can go “beyond the chair” with passive income streams, including real estate, investments, speaking gigs, and more.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00.802)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today, man, it's been way too long. I have the one and only Dana from our team. If you've known her, if you're here as like an OG, you know Dana from Donuts with Dana. Gosh, Dana, that's like way back in the archives. But if you're newer, you may have heard her as Dainey. I don't know if she loves that one. And then Dana, what was the one that I heard? I think it was like Dynamite Dana was the last one that I heard come through for you. So those are kind of when you're like morphing over time, but

 

Which one do you prefer, Dana? And welcome to the show.

 

Dana (00:32.799)

I I think the OG of donuts with Dana is probably the one that like will continue to stick.

 

Kiera Dent (00:39.342)

It's true. A lot of people like even at events and they see you, they're like, oh my gosh, it's donuts with Dana, which is so fun and so cute, but super happy to have you. Welcome to the show today. So grateful. You actually brought up a really interesting topic that I thought it'd be fun for us to dive into from a lot of your clients that you've been talking to of like, what are maybe some passive income ideas for dentists beyond the chair? Now let's just clarify. This does not mean that you have to actually like give up dentistry that you're not working, but

 

I think we have a lot of entrepreneurial minded dentists that are just starting to like get creative, want some ideas. So today, Dana and I are here to like pick your interests, just how you start thinking in different ideas. But Dana, give some more background. know this came from a lot of your clients. What are some of the things you've been seeing and hearing?

 

Dana (01:26.34)

Yeah, I do think that you're right. I think that if you are a business owner, right, if you're a practice owner, that just naturally comes to you. And I think that people that own businesses and people that have gone and graduated dental school and become leaders are just always looking for opportunity too. I think it's just a mindset thing in that group of people. So it's come up just on calls, like, what can I do? What are some things that I can do outside of the chair? And

 

some interesting things that some of even my clients do that I thought would be really fun to share, to help brainstorm and give some ideas.

 

Kiera Dent (02:02.542)

I love it. I love a good brainstorm session like this, Dana. So this is gonna be a little different podcast style for all of you coming on. Today it's more of a rift. It's more of a like, oh gosh, I think these are like a good think tank. My husband and I, we go hot tubbing and we call it our like tub talk. So it's not Ted talk, it's tub talk because that's where a lot of our best ideas come. today is a, it's donuts with Dana and Kiera. It's like dabbling in dentistry. Like, but I want it to be better than like,

 

dabbling outside of dentistry, maybe that's what it will have this brainstorm such as, because I agree with you, Dana, and I also think sharing some ideas that some of our clients do, obviously we mash and mix, so you can't really figure out who we're talking about, because I like to keep that private and confidential for them. But I think like, again, let's spur some ideas. So Dana, I've got some ideas, I know you have some, but let's take it on of what are some of the things that dentists can do for this passive income? But wait, before we go there, I also feel like it's important to say why.

 

Dana, you mentioned about like a lot of these offices, these dentists want something beyond just dentistry. I also think for me, it becomes an insurance policy. Like dentist, if these little hands right here, if they break, well, that's your livelihood. So I do think for some dentists having passive revenue, passive income, coming through generating different ideas means you're not as dependent upon your hands, but more able to do that out of like desire rather than necessity.

 

So I think it's a good morphing and it doesn't have as much stress and pressure from what I've seen from doctors that do it. But again, those are maybe just a few ideas within our dabbling in outside of dentistry talk today.

 

Dana (03:42.022)

Yeah, I think it's an exciting one and I will usually always preface the conversation with like make sure you have a good financial advisor too because some of the things is Make sure that the money you're currently making can also potentially make you money. So just really connecting with a strong financial advisor so that you can maximize the money that's coming into you from your practice, whether it's in investments, whether

 

It's in bonds, anything like that. Connect with a strong financial advisor and they can help walk you through any of these ideas we roll out today in our talk that just helps them make better decisions.

 

Kiera Dent (04:19.886)

Couldn't agree with you more because also it's fun when you start to make these extra passive income ones Don't forget depending upon how it's set up what it's structured what it is Well, this could also incur a higher tax bill for you. I'm never opposed to you made more money no, I've got more tax But if you don't plan and prepare for it then instantly that can become a cash flow crunch for you end of year So agreed and with all things we are not financial advisors. We are not here to give you legal counsel We're not here to give you financial counsel. We're just here to riff with you

 

And then you need to make sure that you take this on and get the appropriate advice for your specific needs because truth be told, it varies from client to client, state to state, location to location, and scenario to scenario. So what I do and what works for me, what Dana does, they're not the same, but again, today's a fun riff. So Dana, let's kick it off with what are some of these ideas that are brewing that you've heard?

 

Dana (05:06.222)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, I mean, I think real estate is definitely something that a lot of dentists look at as like a more of a passive. I It depends on how passive you want it to be versus how active you want it to be as far as a supplementary income. So I think real estate is one. I think silent business partner in a business that is of interest. I mean, we have a mutual client who I think is in real estate and maybe even a farm. So there's those things.

 

Kiera Dent (05:35.738)

huh, true, it's true.

 

Dana (05:39.352)

and I've got another office where she is a spokesperson for a pretty big oral health company. So she does podcasts for them. She writes articles for them. She speaks at some of the conventions that they are at. I have heard of a dentist who created webinar series on a procedure that he felt like he

 

was really strong in. And so I just feel like sometimes it just takes thinking outside the box, thinking about where your passions are, thinking about what you might enjoy spending your time if it's more of an active pursuit. So I think that there's endless ideas really.

 

Kiera Dent (06:20.226)

Mm-hmm agreed and I think like let's dig a little into real estate. Let's talk about this a little more I am no real estate professional on this there's different pieces, but we'll dabble a little bit venture out into that just so you can hear a few things because I am very passionate about real estate and I'm very intrigued by how to it started because I met some people at Tony Robbins like surprise surprise started chatting with them and I started meeting a doctor community surprise surprise because I wanted my husband

 

to look for ways to not have to be always working at the hospital. I think hospitals are a little more grueling than dentistry, not as forgiving. And literally there was no way for my husband to get out of it. And I thought, well, shoot, we don't have kids. I wanna travel. But you're my travel buddy and you're always at work. So I started meeting these people and we started talking. And something I really was impressed by was they actually started talking about how...

 

Like as doctors and dentists, we have it a little bit different. You don't have as captive an income as say a lot of medical professionals do. My husband, there was no way for him to make more money. Unlike in dentistry, you produce more, you're able to create more. And so what they do is there's actually a thing called rep status where you can actually, there's a couple different ways to do it. And again, I'm no guru on this. It's just giving you a couple of ideas to look at. But if you get rep status, so a lot of times people will have their spouse.

 

become the rep status. So for example, in my situation, let's say I didn't work at dental team, let's say I had a lesser job right now, I would not be the right candidate for this relationship. But Jason, he's working at the hospital. I'm a spouse, I'm staying at home with the kids, or I'm working maybe only part time, I have more hours. What we can actually do is I can take on rep status, so real estate professional status. And what I can actually do is I can offset with deductions within our real estate portfolio, all of Jason's tax within his W-2.

 

So it's a really good way for you to actually make more on a W-2 by offsetting. Now there's a secondary loophole on there for short-term real estate where you can be full-time working, but you can actually get short-term real estate in there and you can actually offset again through rep status. Now rep status are, there's like a lot of rules. So go read up on it, go talk to your financial advisor, go talk to your CPAs about how you get this rep status and see if it qualifies for you because like this is something my husband and I have looked into exponentially to figure out, hey,

 

Kiera Dent (08:38.68)

How could we offset this? Because if I can keep the taxes that I'm paying from our W-2, is there possibly a way that we could reinvest it? So now maybe you wanna do it, maybe you don't. There's also ways if you don't wanna be that involved and take that on, or you don't have a spouse or a partner that can help you with it, then other ways that you can do it are actually through syndications or being like Dana was mentioning of being a lesser buyer into it, where basically you just put money in.

 

Those ones, they're a dime a dozen. There's a ton of them. And so usually the best deals are found through networking. So if you're interested, odds are your financial advisor probably knows someone. I know there's quite a few dental groups. I will put some asterisks around that bet. Some of the dental groups that I heard, I will not mention names. There are some dental groups that were doing investments that actually a lot of dentists lost a lot of money on. So just make sure with any investment, guess what? It's risk. We're like high five. And the best advice I was ever given on investments was

 

same thing with like loaning money to people. Once that money is gone, I kiss it goodbye. Yes, I hope it comes back, but I have to be okay losing that money and it never coming back to me. So I think that there's other ways, but also let's not forget like investments, like putting money and maximize like for me, I utilize taxes and savings on the company. Those go into high yield savings accounts. I am still having true passive income off of those investments. They're not invested. They're just sitting there. I have to keep the money anyway. Why not have that?

 

come back to me and some returns that way too. But I think those are some fun ways to look into real estate in some different zones, which again, I didn't even realize it realize and my brother didn't realize and several people I've talked to about this real estate professional status that you can achieve that will truly offset those W-2 taxes. So looking into that might be a fun way for you to see it. I am one who I know I'm not going to be getting the phone call in the middle of the night. I'm not going to be going doing the plumbing. Jason, he built custom homes.

 

He still doesn't want to do it. We might do short-term rentals. And I was like, well, what are you going to do with the freaking snow, Jay? He was like, don't worry, Kiera, it will be an upfront cost, but we're putting heated driveways in. I'm never going to have to shovel them ever. No liability on us. just looking, and I know there's some really fun things, again, depending upon your area, but you can actually pick up some short-term rentals. Again, you've got to look at the areas. You've got to look at the zoning, but there's a lot of small houses that are like kit houses that are 20 grand, 30 grand, 40 grand. They literally come as a kit. You just need to...

 

Kiera Dent (10:59.358)

slab it and make sure that there's sewer and water to it. But those who can then rent out is like really cool Airbnbs too. Now Airbnb is hot topic right now. I don't know how much people are following it, but there are a lot of places that have been zoned for Airbnbs. Like we're even talking Dallas. I'm familiar with this because I live by Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe, a lot of those places were zoned for short-term rentals. And then after being purchased, so people have had these for years,

 

they're actually being rezoned into residential, which I think is totally shady. There's opinions on both sides of this of like, yes, but we need housing. And I'm like, yes, but they bought it. But again, it is another investment. So it's not an always guarantee. But Dana, I just went on a real estate rant. Any thoughts that you've got on that? Because I agree. think real estate is usually where a lot of people do venture in. I mean, there's storage units, there's short term rentals. Well, excuse me. There's like farms. There's other things you can get into a lot of these pieces. But again,

 

Be careful, do your homework and realize that money once it's gone, it's gone. Like hopefully it comes back to you, but maybe a few ideas in that realm too. Dana, thoughts, cause I really went on a rant on rep status.

 

Dana (12:05.72)

No, I love it. I think I learned something too during this podcast, which is awesome. And I agree with you. I think it just comes down to doing your research, knowing how much time you want to invest in something, knowing how much work you want to invest in something. And also too, how much money do you want wrapped up in things like that? And so I love that walkthrough of it.

 

Kiera Dent (12:25.664)

And Dana, as you said that, I also was thinking about Ryan Isaac with Dennis Advisors. He's my financial advisor and he reminds me that like really the biggest way to make wealth are independent businesses, real estate, and then like private equity and venture things where like you're going into venture capitalism. And so I also want to highlight while yes, we're talking about these getting outside of the chair, never forget that your business is your greatest asset in a lot of ways too. Now.

 

For me as a business owner, I sometimes love all my eggs in my own basket. Other times I absolutely hate that my eggs are all in my own basket. So, but never forget that sometimes even investing like hiring an associate in your practice or expanding what you're able to do in your practice or expanding your hours or opening up more chairs, that's also a way where you can get, I mean, truly, I'm not trying to like sound like unreasonable.

 

That's passive income. You have someone working for you. I get that you have to still own the business. You still have the liability on it. So it's not as passive as say a syndication, but you have somebody literally in your practice that's producing for you that they may be taking 30, 35%. Yes, you still have the additional overhead of your team, but that is passive in a lot of ways too. So I really want to highlight like, don't forget the greatest asset is your business, but you might want to have an insurance policy around that where you have other revenue streams, not just dependent upon the practice. Dana.

 

thoughts on that because I think people forget that their businesses are an asset as well.

 

Dana (13:52.536)

Yeah, I agree with you. you know what, too, I think that sometimes I've seen like even just getting creative with your space, right? There's offices that are doing dental assisting schools within their practices. I've got a couple offices where they've got myofunctional therapists coming in and they're renting space and they're using operatories that they're not ready to build out yet. So even if you have space within your practice, what can you do with that that can generate some passive income? And I love, like you said, like it is your number one investment and probably the

 

easiest, simplest way for you to continue to grow and expand your portfolio is growing and expanding your practice.

 

Kiera Dent (14:28.238)

And Dana, as you said that it reminded me, I have a friend who's a dermatologist up in New York. This woman was smart. There's a business that's doing it and I wish they were doing it a smidgey better. I've thought about doing it. But what they're actually doing is they're like renting out professional spaces to other professionals. So she's a dermatologist. She's only there three days a week and she literally rents her space out to like an optometrist or something. Like it's literally like someone within the healthcare field. She's like, here, I get paid to have my space.

 

by someone else coming and using it. So also maybe can you moonlight your practice? Who could come in? Like I love these had myel functional. I've seen some offices where they have a spa within like eyebrows, microblading, facials, like literally you don't even have to that as a service within your practice. It's just like one little nook, one little space or when you're not there after hours, obviously check your liability insurance with your building space. But I have seen a lot of offices doing that as well.

 

Like I think that that's so clever because I'm like, I already have this practice. I've already paid for it. And now I get to just have basically a renter within my space in a different zone. I love the dental assistant program. feel like it's a win-win. You're giving to the community. You're also able to cherry pick your best dental assistants. Like so many cool things for you to be able to do within your space. And some offices even have built like really cool lecture spaces and then they build a dental community and do study clubs within their area.

 

they get paid to host it at their location as well. You don't even have to be there. You can just have the space that somebody rents out from you. And hey, perk is you get all these these benefits of listening to these great speakers come in. We've done that in like several areas. We've spoken at those groups. I think it's a I think you're right. Like what do you have? What can you do? Jason and I love like we literally love in our tub talks to sit there and think of ways to make money. I will tell you door dashing is not my number one best idea. We did try it.

 

I was, I didn't realize like how hard it is to make money. Like it like humbled me a lot. But like there's so many little ways that you can actually do stuff outside. Like look at your home office, could you rent out spaces? Like there's just so many crazy cool things that we're able to do. I think you can create a lot of income in a lot of ways if you're creative with it. I also love the dental assistant one because you can have a dental assistant make more money by running the program for you. So you're getting the benefits, the assistant's able to grow and you're coming like

 

Kiera Dent (16:51.508)

wins all the way around, again, depending upon your state, because there are laws around it. But gosh, like I get nerdy on this type of stuff because it's fun to think outside the box for sure. So Dana, talk to me about speaking gigs, because I'm sure people are like, how do you get into that? How do these people get into this? Like writing webinars, becoming a keynote speaker, becoming an expert, writing blogs, because I think a lot of people have passion for that. But how do you actually do that and get into that?

 

Dana (17:16.826)

Yeah, and I think it comes down to the same thing that you said about real estate is networking, right? Going to conventions, starting by even writing things, right? And then and maybe speaking on a podcast, right? And then maybe writing a peer reviewed journal article, and then just growing those things, networking, reaching out and letting people know right? Companies that are a part of whatever you want to speak about letting them know that you know, you are experienced in that, that whatever it is topic.

 

And that you are available to speak I've had it I had one doctor that like just video like did a video presentation and sent it out to conventions and to people in that industry and Other office or other dentists that just started out small started out with simple articles started out just with networking letting companies and and Areas know that they were available

 

Kiera Dent (18:12.782)

brilliant and Dana as you said that I do agree like get on people's podcasts I can tell you how many clients have had like hey Keira I have this great idea of like selling charts or have this great idea that I'm super passionate about how to make composite crowns you guys I don't do any of that that's not stuff that I do I am NOT a clinician so we are a great podcast for you to get it then you say I've been like I've been on this podcast I've spoken to this place I love like just being a little scrappy there's several people that do things like this I also think if you're really passionate about something

 

Put it on your Instagram too. You can start to showcase your work. I know some people have become pretty popular on social media by doing cosmetic dentistry, by doing composite veneers in certain ways. like, I also think don't sell yourself short. There's probably some cool things that you do. And Dana, I'm just going to throw another idea because I forgot. I do have a client that does this. They are an expert witness. I want someone else to do it. Someone else go become an expert witness. Or if you are an expert witness, I want you to talk to me because I to put you on the podcast. Like you can get on with me.

 

but an expert witness is one, like I literally have a client and they tell me like, all right, Kara, gotta go meet with this person. And they make a truckload of money by being an expert witness as a dentist in like crimes. And I told my husband, was like, go be an expert witness in pharmacy. And he's like, I'm not doing that. I don't wanna get close. Like that creeps me out. But I'm just gonna throw, that's another random idea out there that I think again.

 

I'm hoping someone on the podcast is an expert witness. Please, I want to podcast with you. I want to hear your stories, your ventures. And for all of you listening, if you are someone who does real estate really, really well and you figured out the rep status or, I want someone who's not like dabbled in it, I want you to be a freaking expert on this. Like you've done at least a couple of things in it, or you're a speaker at locations where you're getting paid for that as a side gig, or you have a dental assistant program within your practice.

 

I want you to reach out [email protected] because I'd love to get you on the podcast. think sharing our knowledge, sharing with each other, I think it's freaking fun. And I think like, Hey, let's all rise each other up because guess what? You're probably not going to be a forensic witness at the exact same space everyone else is like, they need tons of those people. So anyway, Dana, this was a fun rift for me. Thanks for, thanks for rifting with me. Any last thoughts you've got as we wrap up.

 

Dana (20:24.9)

I think just get creative, right? Find, figure out if there's something that you're passionate about. Figure it out if you have space for something. Figure out what it is that you really want to spend maybe some extra time doing. And there's definitely ideas that fall around it.

 

Kiera Dent (20:39.596)

I love it. Dana, thanks for bringing this brilliant idea. Thanks for doing dabbling outside of dentistry with me today. Dabbling outside of dentistry with Dana today. Thank you for that. It was always a good time. And for all of you listening, this is what we love to do. We love to help dentists get the freedom to be able to have the creative space to think outside of just their day in day out. So giving them the ability to build their practice, build their leadership teams, be able to create. So that way you're able to think outside and also to help offices think in these ways and get them connected to people.

 

that are resources. if this is your world, or you're like, Hey, I'd love to have a little more mind space out there. I'd love to have less stress on my practice and more creative space. Reach out. That's what we're experts at. We're helping to help you and your team. So reach out. [email protected]. And as always, thanks for listening. Catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Kiera shares exactly how Dental A-Team helped a practice with over $2 million in accounts receivable break even — and learn how to never fall behind again.

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Transcript

Kiera Dent (00:01.848)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and welcome to the podcast. I hope today you are truly just so happy. I hope that you are honestly just living your best life and I hope you know that you're truly doing better than you think you are. So you guys, this is where we are. We're here to help you. Dental A Team is obsessed about helping you and your team thrive. To be able to give you guys the guidance that you need to navigate the challenges that we have in dentistry. so welcome. This is what I'm obsessed with. I hope that you just know that I

 

I truly love and adore this podcast family. I'm so grateful for you. I'm grateful for you sharing this with your friends. I love, love, love seeing you tag us when you're driving to work or listening in the car or taking us on a road trip. And my goal is to be always something of value for you on this podcast that you can go and implement immediately to make your life and your practice even better. For those of you new, welcome. For those of you who are OGs, welcome. I'm so happy to have you here. As always, please.

 

like and subscribe and leave reviews for our podcast. That way we can reach all the practices truly out there. Right now we have impacted several, but I know there's thousands of other practices that we could reach and guide. And the only way I can do that is through your help of sharing this. So as always, if you've shared, thank you. I just gave you a high five or a hug to say thank you. And I'm so glad that you're here. All right. Today I'm going to give you some quick tacticals on some billing help.

 

how to handle old balances. think old balances are just annoying and I help practices with this all the time. Just to give you a little story, I kind of like stories on podcasts. I'm usually I'm here to rattle and roll and today I want to just take you down a little bit of memory lane. But there was a practice who reached out to us and wanted us to be a consultant for them and asked us to help them with their billing department. And I was like, all right, sure, like we do this. I'm more than happy to help you out. Let me know what you need. And this practice said,

 

Well, Kiera, our over 90 and our total amount is about 2 million. And I was like, that's all right. It's not the worst I've ever seen. Tell me a little bit more. And they said, we literally have no handle on what we're doing with billing. And I was like, fantastic. So we got on. We started working with, they had a few different practices, 2 million. Could you imagine? Like, this is why I get paid what I get paid. Because we go and we find these little money holes in the practice and we patch them up.

 

Kiera Dent (02:20.622)

and we're able to add all this money back into your practice and to help you put systems into place so this doesn't happen again. I think that's the biggest thing is let's make sure this does not happen again. And so with this practice, what we ended up doing was we started checking in Trulie every single week with this billing team. We created spreadsheets. We had them download the AR.

 

We prioritize which balances for them to go after first. And then we started like just chipping away at it. And we were heavy on our accountability. You better believe that I was hot to try on this practice. And it was every single week I was getting a report and update how many claims that they worked through. We looked to see, I think we had over 5,000 accounts to go through. So what we did is we said, all right, I'm gonna grab my calculator. I don't know off the top of my head. We said, all right, 5,000 accounts. We are working 20 days.

 

That means we need to get through 250 accounts per day. We had three people working on it. That meant 83 accounts per person. Now that's not realistic, right? And so what we did is we took those 5,000 accounts and we did that over three months before we ran a new AR account. That way they could feel like they could get through that because then you have 5,000 charts. We have 60 days to work, right? 20 days times three. And then we had three people working on it that broke it down to about 25 to 30 accounts per day.

 

that felt a lot more doable. Now remember, a lot of these accounts just needed to have a resubmit from insurance. It was a denied insurance claim because we didn't attach an attachment. Others, we just need to call and collect from a patient. Others, there was more work that needed to be done that we had to dig into. And then there was the dun-dun-dun-dun, old accounts. Like, what do I do with these old balances? We can't collect on them. And so that's really where we started to work. And so with this practice, it took us

 

Truly, I'm not exaggerating, it was about six months before we started to get a good handle on it. And then like at a year mark, they felt like very confident we were able to get through all the accounts. We had good processes in place. We started collecting when people were coming in the door and that way all those accounts of this billing team looked to see who on the schedule we could collect from. Because that then, instead of just these three people working on it, we also had all of our front office team working on it, all the back office team, we were prepping the route slips.

 

Kiera Dent (04:33.774)

which a lot of billers will tell me that just feels like a waste of time, Kara. I don't want to do that. I don't want to prep these charts. And I think, yeah, but think you probably see, I don't know, 25 to 70 patients per day. And if we could collect on all of those that come through and collect those balances, well, now I'm not having to go and like look for all this stuff everywhere else. I can just get this done like in real time. So again, I'm a person of let's work smarter, not harder. And so this practice started doing that. So that became a system of then we chart prep.

 

consistently making sure that, my gosh, like let's get all these patients there. We put into a process for the front office to collect at time of service when they checked in. And then we also made sure that we were really good on our treatment estimates to make sure that we didn't get into this hot water. And the reason this office got into hot water is not because they were doing anything wrong, but because this practice did not consistently work there.

 

their insurance. And so they got all these old accounts, they got all these old balances. And guess what? That's no fun for anybody. That's not fun for the patient. That's not fun for the practice. That's not fun for cashflow. That's not fun for the billers. I mean, gosh, like when I look at 5,000 accounts, I'm like, all right, we got to work. Like we've got our spreadsheet to get through. And so for these practices, I just want you to know that no matter where you are, there's still hope. If we can help you on that, by all means reach out. Even if you're not there yet, like that far.

 

Let's great, like let's catch it because the ultimate goal is that you have no more than one month's worth of production in your total AR. So if you're producing a hundred thousand, then guess what? I want no more than a hundred thousand in your AR at any given moment. Also, I really watch your over 90 accounts because those can tip to where they're no longer collectible. So what I recommend we do is when I'm working with a billing team is we're going to start with those big balances and then like, let's make a big hit. Like let's do a good impact.

 

So I have people put it on an Excel spreadsheet. We have it color coded. It's actually so simple. And once billers get into this rhythm and doctors, when you have it, it becomes truly like flawless. It's so beautiful. It's so easy to do. So we put it in there. We sort it. You can use it and sort the list and sort your AR list. So that way I can look usually within your over 90. It's usually held up in like five to 10 accounts. So what we do is we actually go hit those accounts that are going to give us the biggest bang for our buck and our time.

 

Kiera Dent (06:48.238)

and we're gonna go try and collect on those accounts, figure out what's going on with those accounts and try to collect. Now, when I have an office that has a lot of really, really, really old balances, there comes a question of, we just write this off as bad debt or do we try to collect? And my opinion is you did the work, let's try and collect whatever we possibly can. So on those offices, I usually send out statements. You'll be shocked at how much you actually can collect from those old balances, that old debt.

 

And then we go, we try to collect, I usually send one, two or three statements, depending upon the practice and the doctor's choice. I do not think it's aggressive to send three statements. I also call, I'm making sure I call these patients. You can even let them know like, hey, we're updating our system and we noticed there was an outstanding balance. So we needed to get that collected for you. This is the total. And I can take Visa or MasterCard, which do you prefer? Collect right over the phone. It's very simple. I know it feels weird. It's like, my gosh, we were supposed to have collected this a while ago.

 

Well, high five, we updated our system. Hashtag we updated to actually looking at it is what we're trying to tell people. We should have collected this. We didn't, but now we have a process in place where we do this every week. And then from there, what I like to do is have you guys truly start collecting on those calling. I am amazed at how many practices do not call. Also amazed at how many practices do not have an online payment portion. Well, that's a really easy way to get old balances. Cause if you're expecting them to call during working hours or send you a check,

 

or write their credit card on a little piece of paper and send it back to you. Well, we've just made it to where it's like so much of a time delay. Why not just have them get on the phone, get on a call with you and start making the outbound calls. I just gave you the script, use that for your team. That's how we start to work with these old balances. So now we've tried to collect everything. We're working on it. I also am very sticky that our billers are working at least two days a week. Billers, I'm going to tell you, you can work more efficiently. And I say that with grace and love and a hug.

 

Because I don't want you working on this all the time. What I want you doing is I want you clumping things together, clumping insurance plans together, looking for all the patients that I can call, working A to J and then my, what is it? JK, K to Z. So we work those every other week. We're sending out statements, we're sending out text messages, and we have a rhythm. I have a billing calendar that I share with offices so that way we don't get off track. Yeah, you're going to have some hard work to do at the beginning, but once we get this on track and we have a system, guess what? You'll have to work on it like two days a week.

 

Kiera Dent (09:08.75)

It really does cut down time and doctors, just so you know, again, that's pending upon the size of the practice. When we have multi-offices, it's a full-time job. When we're at one practice, one provider, it should be a two-day job for billing. Now billers might hear this and they might be angry with me. Billers, I'm saying that not because I think that you are doing things wrong. I'm just saying that most offices can do it that way. So let's give you the efficiency tips. Let's help you out. Let's make sure that you're able to do it too. That way you're able to...

 

Do this in the most effective and efficient way as possible. My goal is to not waste time. Let's not waste time on hard things, but let's actually do things that are fun. You can also outsource this to third party companies as well. That can also help. They're working. They're hugely less expensive. So if you're struggling with billing, those are some solutions. So I promise you old balances. We've now gone through, we've done all this. We still have debt.

 

We still have these balances that we can't collect. We've sent out our three statements. We've been contacting them. We've called them three times. This has also been documented in their ledger. So we know it's really been done. Doctors, can run reports when it's documented. I usually do made up codes for these, but that way doctors, can run reports to see how many of these procedures are actually being, or how many of these calls are being done consistently. okay. Now it's a choice. You have choices. So depending on how old it is, what I usually like to do is I run my AR report.

 

And then doctors, it's your decision here. I'm not going to tell you what to write off. All this money is technically owed to you. You did the work, so you get to decide what you want to do. I'll tell you my preference and I'll tell you what I usually recommend. But at the same time, this is your money and I want you to know you are entitled to every single penny that has been billed in the practice. I usually recommend anything below $20. If we can't collect it, it's not there. There's no way for us to collect it. Just write it all off. I also like to do this at a strategic time point.

 

where it's probably at end of year or end of quarter. So that way I know at this point in time, I wrote off all this bad debt because then we can move forward and we know that was like a bad time. We're never doing it again, but this was my one time. So anything $10 or less, $20 or less, just write that off, get that out of the accounts. It's gonna clear up quite a few accounts for you. Then, well, and before we do that, we've tried to collect also any person who has a balance on their account.

 

Kiera Dent (11:27.79)

I don't usually think sending someone to collections over $20, that's not my jam. I'm not usually a big proponent of collections, but again, every penny is entitled to you. So you decide what's best for you. So we write it off and then from there we get to start deciding what we're gonna do. Are we gonna call these patients and do a 50-50 split with them to where if they pay 50 % today, we're then gonna write off the additional 50%, but most likely they're probably not welcome back in the practice. Are we going to send them to collections?

 

Are we just going to say these balances are never going to be collected? And we like pick through them and decide, but doctors, once we have this bad debt, it's your decision to decide what are you going to do with it? Look to see how much it's there. Look to see how much we've contacted them, called them. Can we do anything else? And then we really get to decide, we write this off? Now, if you do write it off for bad debt, it does need to be adjusted off. There needs to be a note on that practice, on that patient. And that patient does not get to come back to the practice until they've paid their debt. Let's not get ourselves back into hot water.

 

but that's how we're gonna handle these old balances. And I know this feels like icky sticky, but when we get to this, like that practice, we worked on it six months, eight months, nine months. At the end of the year, we decided, we showed the doctor, we said, this is all, this is everything we've collected from this 2 million pile of these 5,000 accounts. And here we are. And I think we ended up writing off about $50,000 at the end of it, which that feels like a bad day, but $50,000 out of 2 million, I think they did a really, really great job.

 

We had bad systems in place. We didn't have people collecting consistently. And that was the reality of where we got. But they then moved forward and we made sure we were at 98 % collections. We kept that claim amount low. We kept our AR low. We made sure we never got over one month's worth of AR ever again. And this practice is happy skipping along, but it was hard work. So I want you to know that it is tricky, but it is doable. And this is hopefully a quick tip for you of how you're able to handle those balances.

 

Now there's a lot of other pieces, there's a lot of other options, there's a lot of different things. I just kind of gave you a highlight reel today that hopefully will take you through to see, all right, what is my AR? Am I at one month or less of my AR? What are my highest balances? And what are my oldest balances? Can I get those collected? And then what do I need to start writing off? So those would be some of my quick highlight tips for you to get started. You know at Dental A Team, our passion is making sure that you are so successful.

 

Kiera Dent (13:44.76)

that you're able to have the know-how, the things that you need to do, the things that will make you the most successful, and also the less stressed, and also to help your team, because I know doctors, you're not taught this in dental school, this is really tricky, and so this is what we're able to do. We're able to work with your billing team, we're able to work with your teammates, and the entire practice, including yourself, to understand A, what is the process, B, how do we get ourselves out of this mess, C, how do we never get there again, and D, how do we make sure that this is something that...

 

literally becomes a system that is forever running rather than something that's person dependent. So that's what we're about. If that resonates with you, I'd love to hear from you. [email protected] or just go to our website and click on a call or DMS. Either way, I'm happy to help you. If you're in a billing sticky spot, I'm happy to assess it with you, give you some free guidance, get you on your way, but always reach out. [email protected] And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team Podcast.

Kiera gives listeners a “choose your own adventure” challenge for planning practice growth. She touches on comparing your growth to others’, how and what to expand, taking advantage of opportunities (or not), 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 (00:00.856)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera, and I hope you are just having such an amazing day. I hope that you remember why you went into dentistry. I hope if yesterday was a bad day, today's a better day. And I hope that Dental A Team podcasts truly boost your spirits, lightens your mood, and gives you tactical tips that are gonna be able to make your life incredible because at Dental A Team, we're obsessed about making your life happy. So today, I wanted to get on of a choose your own adventure. This is kind of fun. I think it's fun to just kind of like...

 

dabble in where can our practice go? What are some ideas? What are some things to think about? And we do this with our clients. And I just got jazzed about this one today. It was a really fun one that I chatted about with another office. And I thought, I think our Dental A Team family needs to have this. So if you are new to our Dental A Team podcast, welcome. I'm Kiera Dent. Dent really is my last name. I just make the joke. That's not really a joke. It's my real life. I had to just get three fiancees to get this last name. I didn't marry any of them. I just married the last one and

 

I love dentistry, I love helping practices, our team loves helping offices. We truly are experts at what we do of helping doctors and teams come together to have the best practice, the best opportunities. We fly to your practice or we do it virtually. Both are super incredible. We also have an in-person doctor community that we go to as well, which is really magical. And really our goal is to make sure that you are living your best life, that you are profitable and that your team is thriving. And so really, and we're the experts.

 

that do this. We have been team members ourselves. Every one of our consultants have been team members. They grow multiple practices, to hundreds and hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars. So we, are experts at doing this and we love to just share resources to help you and your team be absolutely the most incredible that you possibly can be. So with that today, I wanted to just dabble on a choose your own adventure, giving you a short tactical choose your own adventure. So there's a practice. So this is kind of an office autopsy, if you will.

 

There's a practice and they started out kind of small. So they had a few ops and don't worry for all of you listening, I do smash a few practices together so you'll never know which practice I'm talking about. And I do that intentionally to keep practice confidentiality. So with that, this practice they started out kind of small. They had four operatories and they were in that practice for about five years. The doctor was taking on about 1800 patients solo. That's a lot of patients. And they were just booked out.

 

Kiera Dent (02:25.72)

They worked four days a week and they knew they wanted to expand. So they expanded to 10 operatories and within about two months of expanding, this is not an exaggeration, they had basically outgrown their space. So they had another associate that they hired. They brought in more hygienists. So they had four hygienists and they had an opportunity to add another associate and also another hygienist. And it kind of was coming to a crossroad of what do we do? And so I want to just place this for you in practices and I'm going to bring a bunch of

 

choose your own adventure because I think a lot of times thinking outside the box really becomes something we don't do. We feel like we're living in a day in and day out. And so this practice made me think of like, let me bring to the table some options that I've seen with other practices for you to not compare, but to create a What do I want my practice to look like? What do I want my life to look like? So step one is that I'm really, really pro whenever we work with an office is A, we've got to know what you want to do. And I usually like to do it in 2-5 years stints.

 

thinking about your kids, thinking about your age, thinking of who you are, where are you gonna be in the next 2-5 years? So when we look at that, But then I also wanna take it and expand you out to 10 years. Reason being is because decisions you make now actually might impact where you wanna be in 10 years. So for example, with that, if you were choosing your own adventure, let's say in the next 2-5 years, you're like, gosh, I really wanna scale back, I wanna be home with my kiddos, I wanna do some different things, that's really what I'm looking for in the next 2-5 years.

 

Well then kiddos get older, they're in school or maybe your kids are graduating and you're like, gosh, in like 10 years, I actually want to be building a bigger practice. With that, if we scale down now in the next 2-5 years, your 10 year plan is actually gonna really be a problem because now you're gonna have to build it back up because you scaled it back down. So maybe there's a way that we could get you to scale down now without killing your patient base that's going to help you within the next decade of your life.

 

So that's where I really love this choose your own adventure. And I get so giddy about this and I love helping doctors dream and I love building out dream boards with our doctors to help them see, all right, where do we wanna be in 2-5 years? But then where do we really wanna be in the next decade of our life and or the legacy of our practice? Because for some, some wanna grow these massive practices. For others, they wanna just have a solo practice. Something I'm really like, this is where I'm gonna get on a rant in a soap box.

 

Kiera Dent (04:44.738)

I get really frustrated with offices that are just growing for the sake of growing. They're looking on social media. feel like social media is such a blessing and a curse because we compare and we're like, gosh, like, what am I doing over here? I'm just schmucking over here and I'm not really building a practice. And my gosh, I only have four ops and they have like 17 ops. And what am I doing over here? And gosh, that one just grew. And this one has like 12 practices and like, I'm just sitting over here in four ops. And I really get annoyed by that because

 

There's no reason to grow unless that's ultimately going to serve your life. And I really want to hone that in today of is your practice serving your life or are you serving your practice? Because you can have whatever life you want to live. Some people who have 12 practices are like very miserable. Yeah, they look great on paper, but their life is miserable. And I think about that ballerina picture. If you haven't seen it, go do a quick search where a ballerina is on point. So that means they're standing on their tippy toes and they're in a beautiful ballet slipper.

 

And the picture says like, everybody wants to be a ballerina on point until they see the work that has to happen. And the other foot is like this bloody ripped up, like the toes are gnarly. And you think about like, you can't see that behind the beautiful ballet slipper of this gnarly foot that's been like beaten thrashed and like, just chewed up and spit out on the other side. And I think about that often about these offices, like, we don't see what their life is like, we don't see.

 

the problems that they're having. And I'm also not here to say that growing is bad either. I'm not here to say that if you're like 12 off, isn't it like, gosh, like my life's terrible and I wish I was a four off practice. I'm tired of the comparison. I'm tired of people just feeling like whatever they're doing is not good enough. And I think that that comes from comparison left and right. And so when we look at this, choose your own adventure, I also think it's choose our own adventure, but let's also choose the life we want to live. Choose the life that's going to make us freaking passionate. Choose the life that's just going to inspire us and do all the things that are.

 

are going to be great for us and then be able to just flourish from there as well. So when we say that, with this practice, the choice is where do I wanna be in two years? Where do I wanna be in five years? And where do I wanna be in the next decade? And then there's options that we can do. So for example, with a practice, four ops, they have a choice. We can expand, we can maybe go next door, we can maybe find an op within our practice.

 

Kiera Dent (07:06.574)

Um, but what is the reason why for this office, what they were doing is they had so many patients, tons of patients, they couldn't see them all. And so they wanted to expand. So they knocked out the wall. They made it a 10 out practice. They were only going to do eight. And I said, Nope, always go for more ops. You will never be sad about adding more ops in. This doctor was so grateful that they added more ops in, uh, gives more choices, more opportunities, especially when you're growing that way. So now it's a matter of, all right, what do want to do from here? Do we want to keep growing? So that would mean we might expand out, bring on other people.

 

Could we expand our hours so that we're not having to expand our days? Could we bring on more providers? What are some of the choices that we could do? And I think getting really creative in the space that you've got. So it's not always having to expand out, but could we add an operatory? Could we expand hours? Could we add another provider? Could we, if a doctor wants to pull back and only work two days for right now, but we don't want to drop our patient base, can they work two days and then maybe come in and do hygiene checks on another day to fill a doctor's schedule? I don't know what are the solutions? What are the things that we could do?

 

are the things that I really love for you to look at. So when we look at that then, the next thing we're gonna ask ourself is, this is why it's important to look at your two year and your five year and your 10 year. Then from there it's, okay, we could keep doing that, we could scale back. Or if we have too many patients, maybe we consider dropping a few insurance plans. But be careful, because if I drop those insurance plans and in a decade I want to grow my practice back up, well, it kind of is like cutting my arm off and then I need to use my arm in the future. So what are some solutions that we could do now?

 

Maybe with something where we say, is where we wanna be. This is what I want my life to look like for the next 20 years. Awesome. Then we know we can scale back. We can start to be more fee for service. I have a practice in there, six ops. And they're like, here, we're going out of network. And I was like, are you sure? And they're like, we don't freaking care. They have their new patients wait for three months. But guess what? They're busy and they know that they don't wanna expand any bigger. They want six ops. They wanna work four days a week. And they wanna be home with their kids for the next two decades of their life.

 

They are so clear that now they're making decisions that impact their life rather than dictate their life. And so that's really where it's choose your own adventure. Do you wanna maybe scale back and only work a couple days a week? Do you wanna be working five days a week? Do you wanna have you and one provider? Do you wanna have you and then two other providers so you can scale back and maybe do some other things? Do you want to build a bigger building? I know I've got some practices that are like 17 ops. Gosh, I've got one that I think is pulling in a 50 ops.

 

Kiera Dent (09:32.12)

practice. That's insanity to me. I'm like, you're going to have to be like a hospital with a parking garage. Like that's not even a joke. It's like a 50 bed hospital, but it's a 50 op practice. Those things sound so dreamy, but again, that's fun. And if that's your vision, but this doctor has been practicing for about 20 years, who's building a 50 op location. but looking to see what do we want to do? Also, I like if you're in this practice and we're kind of bursting at the seams, there's a practice that I've got where we expanded them out, similar to the one I was

 

alluding to at the beginning, they expanded out, they now have, think, 15 operatories, and they're like, we need more space. So they looked around, there's some real estate, and they're like, we're gonna build a surgery and a sleep center across the street, we're gonna keep this as our general. So are there other building locations, and do we wanna do more surgery or more sleep, or I have a practice that does a tongue and lip tie in their location, do we wanna add a dental assisting school, so that way, instead of it just being dentistry, we're also doing dental assisting.

 

So our building is being double utilized and we're able to have another revenue stream in there. Do we want to bring in other specialties under one roof? These are the conversations that get me so lit up because I feel like there's so many choose your own adventures, but it's really choose your life. So if we choose our life first, then these adventures can really make something exciting for us and make something really fun for us that you can then determine what you want to do, how you want to do it. But I think it's really important of two years, five years, and then 10 years. That way these mash up.

 

And so you might have opportunities right now and just because you have opportunities does not mean you need to take them. But I'm also very cautious of let's make sure we're not turning down opportunities too early or because we don't feel like we can get creative enough to think outside the box. And that's something I think as consultants, our job is really paramount to help offices do is to really 100 % help you think down the line, two years, five years, 10 years, what's gonna come your way? What do we need to do today to prepare you for?

 

the future. And I think that's something just really fun and consulting of where is your practice? Where is your life? What do you want to do? And getting into this creative space. And so for you, I'm curious. And if you want to email me, you want to pop on a call with me, I love to choose your own adventure with offices. Like, let's talk about the possibilities. Let's talk about what you're capable of doing. Let's talk about what options are available to you. Let's let's dream. Let's think like, we're maxed space. I love when people give me their problems. So hey, if you've got a big problem, like I had an office and like, Kiera,

 

Kiera Dent (11:55.734)

We cannot see any more patients. I found space for them to add a whole other hygiene operatory in their practice. You might not like it. Like I had a doctor and I found a whole other operatory and she's like, Kirea, but I don't want to like be that cramped. And I said, all right, then that's your choice because there is space for you to add another operatory. So I don't want to hear you can't. I want to hear that you're choosing right now because that's not your priority. So when we have that, that's what I love. Give me your juicy problems. I love to hear them. I love to figure out how we can think outside the box. I love to think of

 

What things have we not thought of? Like there's a practice and you're like, I can't get new patients in. I was like, all right, let's look. Could we add maybe a couple hygienists starting an hour earlier so when doctor comes in, they can catch all those hygiene exams and we can actually add quite a few more hygiene patients. Could we maybe run an afternoon of assisted hygiene? Could we maybe expand our hours? Could we bring on another provider? Like what are the tools in our toolbox? What are the crayons in our coloring box that we could actually start to use?

 

to look at our practice in a different lens. And that's honestly, think something beautiful about consulting is I don't live in your house. I don't get to be there just like you don't live in my house. And if you were to look at my house, you'd be like, Kiera, you could move your dishes over here, could put your silverware here and it would actually work a lot better. That's the beauty of not working in your practice with you is we're able to see outside of it and to help you choose your own adventure. So I'm just curious if you were this practice, what would you do? Would you expand your max out? You've already expanded out past your 10 operatories.

 

Would you expand? Would you drop insurance and stay where you're at? So you're working less but making more. Would you scale back your hours? Would you build a bigger building? Would you build a surgery center and just keep GP there? Would you expand your hours and maximize your space? Would you add a dental assisting school? Would you bring on another provider? So you've got three providers now, so that way you have more flexibility. What would be your dream?

 

I'd love to hear from you. Email me [email protected]. I think it's fun because what's crazy about this is there's no wrong answer to this. I think there can be wrong timing, but I don't think there's a wrong answer. And so really looking at what your life is, two years, five years, 10 years, choose your own adventure. I'm here to help you in any way we can. If this resonates with you, if you're like, gosh, I just need someone who's outside my practice looking in, I'd love to help you reach out. [email protected]. I'd love to hear what you would choose. And I want you to remember that

 

Kiera Dent (14:16.942)

everything within your practice you get to choose. You get to choose your life, you get to choose your practice, you get to choose your team. You get to choose and how blessed are we that we get to have these opportunities? How blessed are we that we get to have these problems? How blessed are we that we get to choose our own opportunities and our own adventures of what we want to do and what we make with our life as our opportunity? And so just challenge you and encourage you and implore you to make sure that you're living your life on purpose, that you are living the dream life that you want.

 

And as always, I just adore you and I hope you remember that. And I hope you know you're doing better than you think you are. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Dentistry has a unique space in the medical world when it comes to building relationships with its patients. Tiff and Dana discuss effective ways to create trust with your patients, including the critical foundations your practice can’t do without.

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Transcript

The Dental A Team (00:01.08)

Hello, dental A Team listeners. We are so excited to be here with you today. I have my gal, Dana, on the cast with me today, and I am just so excited. Dana, how are you today? How are you enjoying this heat that we've got coming through? I know up here in Phoenix it's hot down there by you. It's gotta be warm too, but how are you?

 

Dana (00:19.955)

I am actually enjoying this weather. I was out a lot this weekend for sports. I have some wacky tan lines, but I am loving the sunshine and the extra warm weather we've got.

 

The Dental A Team (00:30.958)

I it. I keep getting the like bottom of my legging to my sneaker little I got a nice tan right there on my leg and I think it's the only spot on my legs at all that even knows how to tan anymore. So I feel you.

 

Dana (00:45.779)

Yeah.

 

The Dental A Team (00:47.086)

Today we have a really fun one, docs and teams that are listening and today's just all about relationship building. I really wanted to pick your brain today, Dana, and really see what you're doing with a lot of your practices, what you've done in practice, and very specifically maybe even like our pediatric practices that we have. What are we doing to keep the relationships?

 

with our patients to keep the patient. So how are we investing in those relationships from a doctor's standpoint and really from a team member standpoint as well? I know a lot of my doctors out there, we definitely focus in really heavily on the team side. What can the team be doing? How can the team build the relationships? And that is super, super, super important. But I want to stress the fact that this is for you guys today too.

 

It's very important also that you're building those relationships and that you're showing your team the kind of relationships that you want to have built so that they know what the heck you're looking for. So Dana, I'm excited for this one. I know we've got quite a few pediatric practices between the two of us and Christie's got some pediatric practices as well. So that's a space that I think is really fun in the relationship building area.

 

And it does translate to GP, to oral surgery, all those pieces as well. So if you guys are not pediatric and you're listening, don't fret, this is for you too. But I thought it would be fun actually to pull in some of that pediatric side because it's just so cool, in my opinion, what they do, right? First of all, that they are just serving so many amazing little humans and creating an experience that these patients are forever going to love the dentist, which I think is amazing.

 

but also they've got their hands kind of tied, especially when it comes to this relationship piece, because they're not, they are building a relationship with the patient, but their focus really is making sure that the parents are happy, that the parents understand what services are being rendered, why it's different, why their kids are getting such excellent treatment.

 

The Dental A Team (02:45.666)

Dana, how are you right now? You've got, I know one pediatric practice in general I'm thinking of, you've got quite a few, but one pediatric dentist in particular right now is really working on the new patient acquisition side. And a lot of that comes down to this patient relationship piece. So what do you suggest for your pediatric practices and really your general practices to really get that going and get that spearheaded for those?

 

Dana (03:10.299)

Yeah, I love this part of dentistry. think it's something that is like unique to dentistry as far as healthcare because we tend to see these patients multiple times for years and years. And so it's a unique space for dentistry and it's something that I think is so fun. And you're right with pediatric. I think that it's

 

twofold right they've got the kiddo and they've got the parent and because pediatric relies on volume of patients they've got to build relationships really really quickly too right because they are churning and cranking through patients and parents all day long and the first thing that I always say to any pediatric practice is you have to

 

The Dental A Team (03:39.192)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

They are.

 

Dana (03:50.877)

build the trust to be able to build the relationships. So as much as you can focus on the comfort pieces, the showtell do the walk them through everything. I love a pediatric practice that will pull the parent over and hey, let me show you right like, yes, we want to talk about flossing technique. Let me actually show you as I do it to your kiddo. Let me show you that spot that I'm talking about. Let me take a picture. Let me

 

walk you through it. And as I'm taking the picture, letting the kiddo know exactly what they're going to do each step of the way starts at one visuals, we can't really deny the things that we can see with our own eyes, right? And trust and comfort when we know everything that is going to come next, and what it's going to feel like and what it's going to look like and how we're going to navigate that together. I think that pediatric practices like creating that space is something that's truly magical.

 

and that a lot of general dentists can learn from because no matter what practice you're in, you're gonna have patients who are nervous, who are uncomfortable, who have anxiety. And I think kiddos like top the charts by 10, right? Because they're also little humans who are learning to manage those emotions too. And so if you can take any of those pieces that pediatric practices do really well and incorporate it into your general practice, but just that foundation of...

 

Trust and comfort will go a long way in building any sort of relationship, whether it's with the patient themselves, the kiddo or a parent.

 

The Dental A Team (05:20.298)

Yeah, I think that's brilliant. And it translates so well to continuing that relationship as they age. So building those relationships for the kiddos. I love the the sea show tell do right all those pieces of like, this is what we're even just this is what we're doing today. Let me show you let me let me teach you how to do this at home. Let me show you all these pieces. It's the same thing when we become adults, right? We should be translating those similar practices in building those relationships, but really

 

building a firm foundation of comfort for our patients. And part of that comfort level is really the amount of conversation we're willing to have with the patient. Sitting in silence, sitting there with a dental assistant or with a hygienist that's just like, I'm uncomfortable. I don't know what to say. It's awkward. So if they're not the ones initiating and creating the relationship or the doctors coming in and just going straight to work, not like...

 

opening it up, not being introduced to the room, not having those spaces where communication is really abundant can really hold a patient back from being open. And that openness, that vulnerability is what builds the relationship. So I think just as you do with your pediatric practices and then...

 

really taking a step back and reviewing the whole appointment, reviewing all of the information with the parent. We should be doing that in a GP, older adult practice as well for adolescents and adult patients and really sitting them down and covering what are we doing today? What questions do you have? Like let's really thoroughly go through this and make sure that you're comfortable before we start. So I think that's brilliant. I think it's awesome that we start at the pediatric ground level and really make the parents comfortable too.

 

And then for the, you know, GP practices, for my adult practices, if they're getting this kind of care for their child at the pediatric dentist, they're going to change some expectations in my opinion for what they should be receiving as well at their own practice. So really ramping those spaces up is going to be critical.

 

The Dental A Team (07:26.668)

communication is the center focus of it all. So with oral surgery practices, endo practices, perio practices, GP practices, and even pediatric practices, you guys, where does that start? Like consider where does the communication start? And I know I had a call with a doctor the other day that was like, gosh, my front team just still will not put in the notes on my limited.

 

emergency exams and it's driving them a little crazy. And it makes me think right there, right? That's an opportunity. It's a very easy opportunity to enhance and increase a relationship with the person just by letting them know.

 

we paid attention just by caring enough to have that information already ready to go. So if you're taking an emergency call, really documenting what it is that we chatted about or call for a filling that's high or anything at all that's out of the ordinary on treatment that was recommended, a patient might say, I don't know, a patient might even call and say, hey, I had a crown that was diagnosed, I never.

 

I never scheduled and now I'm in pain. Well, that needs to be documented. Schedule the crown, document the pain because when that patient comes in, we can really pour the love and the care and the attention into the situation rather than finding out firsthand. And the patients love that because they feel seen, they feel heard, and they feel valued. And Dana, from your experience even in office and working with practices, where else are you seeing some spaces that practices can really increase or

 

even just like capitalize on what they might already be doing to really build those relationships so that patients keep coming back and they refer other amazing people to our practices.

 

Dana (09:07.347)

Yeah, I've been coaching a lot of practices one thing is new patient paperwork, right? We've asked a lot of questions on that new patient paperwork and we ask them because it's a valuable information and so getting practices to build in part of their exam protocol and their prep for patient protocols We actually look at the answers and we notate them somewhere so that we remember to discuss them I've got a lot of practices that are incorporating smile Raiders to try to you know open ortho discussions and those are great absolutely, but we have to

 

The Dental A Team (09:11.277)

Yeah.

 

Dana (09:36.089)

engage in it. It's not enough just to ask it on a piece of paper. We have to actively look at it, plan, prep, and then actually bring it up and discuss it with the patient. So I think new patient paperwork is a space where a lot of practices have best intentions of getting that information and making it super personal. We just have to make sure that we're looking at it and we're translating it and we're talking about it in the exam for the patient to understand.

 

The Dental A Team (09:45.027)

Go.

 

Dana (09:59.895)

how that information corresponds to their care in your office. Same thing with new patient phone call, just like you gave an example of that limited saying that, you know, hey, I was scheduled for that crown and now I'm in pain, right? And notating the pain. Same thing on the phone call, the questions that you ask to make sure we get that information to the team and the team is prepped and ready so that they can dive in a little bit deeper with the patient and have the patient feel like, hey, man, they asked me those questions on the phone. They heard my answers. The team was prepped and ready.

 

for it and we jumped right in with my main concerns with the things that I'm here for. Even if it is just establishing care, right? Making sure that we are reinforcing that we know that that's why you're here because we took the time to get the information. So a lot of times we take the time to get all the information. We just don't actually utilize it with the patient.

 

The Dental A Team (10:50.414)

And I think that's a great action item you guys is really take that back to your teams of anywhere where we are gathering information making sure that it's put in the appropriate space and you guys that there's Consistency and where that space is so that everybody knows where to find it everybody knows where to put it But having that conversation with them of making sure that that information is put in that space and it's relayed to the next person Huge huge huge caveat here if we're putting the notes in the biggest

 

easiest way to deter a front office team from putting phone call notes in the appointment is for you to not use them. So if you're gonna ask for it, make sure you're using it. I don't know how many times when I was up front, somebody would come and they'd say he tipped it. Is this patient on any medications? Are they taking Tylenol or anything? Like I'm about to go get them. Like what's the stitch here? What's the scoop? And I would look at them and be like, did you read the notes?

 

I'm happy to have a conversation with you if we have to like that. I'm fine if you need clarifications, but I'm not I'm not going to double dip. So I'm either going to put the notes in or I'm going to talk to you every single time. I'm not I'm not going to double dip because I am not a person that will

 

work harder than she has to. So I'm not going to duplicate my efforts. I'm just going to do the path of least resistance and whatever is going to be the most efficient. And if they're not, the notes aren't being used for me, that's an inefficiency. I'm working for nothing. And so I'm going to reduce and remove the inefficiency and go with whatever the rest of the team is going to accept. So I would stop making the notes and then they'd get frustrated. So you just have to stick with it for an office teams.

 

Remind them, refer them back to the notes. They've got to get used to it. And back office teams and docs, just make sure you're utilizing those notes in the best ways you possibly can. On the notes of really building the relationship, I want to remind everyone that our words truly matter.

 

The Dental A Team (12:43.8)

The words that we use, the way in which we use them make a difference because the person you're talking to is interpreting those words and they're gonna interpret them however they see fit in that moment. So if we're not very careful with our words, we could turn a situation into something totally different. And it doesn't mean it It could be catastrophic, but it doesn't mean it's gonna be catastrophic every time. It just literally changes the tone.

 

in slight variances, dependent on what you're doing. And I have to tell you this story, Dana, and everyone listening, I have to tell you this story.

 

Aaron and I were out on Saturday. We went to our favorite little golf club, you know, restaurant, and he had just passed this really, really hard, crucial, studied for a year test, and we were celebrating him, and I was just so excited. And we're at the, we decided to sit at the bar because we did not make a reservation, and it was wild in there. But regardless, we're sitting there so I can hear other conversations going on. And the couple next to me, they wanted a recommendation on wine.

 

and they asked the bartender who came over, hey, which one do you think we should get? And the bartender, like it wasn't wrong, but immediately my brain was like, my gosh, I can fix this for you. It wasn't wrong, but the bartender said, well, I don't really drink wine, but I can tell you which ones are most asked for, which ones are the most popular.

 

And in my brain, I thought you just planted doubt in their minds on your recommendation because you told them an unnecessary statement. They didn't ask which wine would you drink. They asked which wine do you recommend? You planted a seed of doubt in the recommendation by saying that you don't drink wine. So the first statement was a negative. It was a defense to defend if you don't like the wine. It's not my fault because I don't drink wine. I know nothing about it.

 

The Dental A Team (14:41.646)

but let me give you a recommendation anyway. So he planted the seed of doubt in this couple's mind instead of just saying, oh yeah, for sure, let's take a look so I can tell you what our most popular wines are, what most people drink here at the restaurant. And if their follow-up was, what about you personally? Fine. But the statement out the gates was, I don't drink wine.

 

but I can tell you and I thought I looked at Aaron because my brain cannot ignore it and I looked at Aaron and I was like why is it so hard? It's not that was unnecessary. So my point in that is we sometimes say things that are just unnecessary statements to fill space.

 

And that space filler, just like corn and everything that we eat, is unnecessary and it's harmful. We have all these foods with all these fillers that are harmful, but it makes it look better. So you fill the void and you fill the statement with something that makes you feel better about how the outcome is going to happen. And what it can do is it can hurt the conversation. So I want everyone to really like...

 

Let that sink in and think about how what you say, the words that you use, and the way in which we state them really make a difference. And think about, I don't really drink wine, but what I can do is tell you what our most populars are compared to, my gosh, yeah, absolutely. Let me tell you what our most popular wines are, the ones that people are really loving right now.

 

It's a totally different situation because of trust. You lose trust when you start on a negative. So if a patient says, I'm off on Fridays, you had said, what day of the week works best for you? Knowing you were only open Monday through Thursday, you said what day of the week? Your patient says, I'm off on Fridays. That would be fantastic. And you're like, gosh, well, we're not open on Fridays. Is there another day? Well, now you just told me no. And I'm like, well, it's my day off.

 

The Dental A Team (16:45.292)

So now I'm in a different state and a different mood than I would have been if you had said, we're open Monday through Friday, which day in that portion of the week would work best for you. Now I know that's all I have to work with. And it just like...

 

Dana, that conversation, overhearing the conversation, like, I can't get it out of my head. This was days ago and it's still in my head. Like, I just want to help this man sell more wine. Like, he's gonna, he would sell so much more wine if he just changed the sentence slightly. He's still giving, he's not lying. He's not changing anything except removing the seed of doubt because the recommendations are gonna be the same either way.

 

And it's just been driving me crazy, Dana, driving me crazy. And these are spaces I know that you see in the practice too. So there's, you know, the one hand of scheduling, but where else do you see it? Like treatment planning, billing, like where else are you seeing that?

 

Dana (17:26.259)

Yeah.

 

Dana (17:38.013)

yeah, I see it in treatment planning all the time. We want to fill the space with we automatically jump to their financial concerns. And truly, it could just be that the patient's thinking about their work schedule and when they can find an hour of their time, right. So It happens in treatment planning all the time. It happens when we're bringing on a new doctor, right? It's a scheduling thing. But it's like, well, you know, are you willing to see this doctor? Do you want your doctor you always see? Well, you just like They probably would have had zero.

 

The Dental A Team (17:48.503)

Yeah.

 

Dana (18:02.589)

zero hesitation, they said they loved their appointment. They didn't complain at all about the new doctor that they saw, but you just planted that seed in their mind that it should be something that they should consider or be upset about. And so we do it all the time in dentistry. And I love love that you pointed that out and like truly be careful of those things and watch your words because again, that is part of relationship building, right? If if I make you feel like everything that you went through today was successful.

 

right? And that you won your visit, you got the doctor that you love you all those things. And then I plant that little bit of a seed, right? It's like you just chopped that relationship down. And you gave them something to be upset about or concerned about. And so I love that you pointed that out, because I don't think we often connect like our words with that relationship building, but it truly can impact an experience.

 

The Dental A Team (18:43.17)

Go.

 

Dana (18:58.971)

with something so simple like that.

 

The Dental A Team (19:00.926)

I totally agree. totally agree. Erin tells me constantly, babe, you're such a great communicator. I agree. I have taken a lot of communication courses. I can agree. I can figure out some dang good communication. But mostly, I'm choosing my words really wisely. And I'm manipulating how I form my sentence to get the results that I'm after. And the result that I want is that we stay in good communication, that we both stay in a positive state, even if one of us can't give the other what you want.

 

or it looks a little different. I'm here to ensure that the words that I use and the way that I structure my sentence and my statement doesn't put any negative feelings on you. I'm going, my best result is that we both walk away still happy, even if we didn't get what we thought we wanted. That's the result I'm after. I'm not here to talk anybody into anything they didn't want. Never. I could.

 

use my words to do just that. But my result is we're both leaving happy, no matter what the situation actually turned into, because we communicated so well through it. I might be telling you that I can't give you exactly what you asked for, but I'm going to find a solution around it to get as close as I can so that you still feel taken care of. And that's why communication to me is so...

 

so important and why the structure of the sentences, of the statements, and the words combined can make such a drastic difference. I don't know how many times I've heard people on the phone, no, actually we don't take that insurance.

 

We bill to them on your behalf, but we don't actually work with them. I'm like, my gosh, just say, goodness gracious, we have so many patients that come with that insurance. We know exactly how to work with them while we're out of network. We still obtain and receive as much of your benefits as we possibly can, and we work really hard on your behalf to ensure that you're happy. I don't know, say anything else, say anything under the sun different than what just came out. Just practice.

 

Dana (21:03.323)

Yeah.

 

you

 

The Dental A Team (21:08.174)

Practice getting the results that you want and let that result be that no matter what, we both walk away still happy.

 

Dana, this was fun. I love talking communication. I love relationships. I love diving in on it. And I think wrap us, I'm gonna let you wrap us up. Wrap us up on some, I know, I haven't shocked you with anything lately. So there you go. No, wrap us up with some like quick action items that you think I let you mostly talk about that or asked you to talk about the fetal stuff and all that. So what are some action items that our doctors and our teams can take away from today and really push forward with?

 

Dana (21:30.962)

No.

 

I see.

 

Dana (21:46.833)

Yeah, I think biggest thing is build trust focus on relationship building. I love that you said watch your words, make sure we're focusing on how we can win with the patient versus putting roadblocks in front of them. And the biggest thing as far as structure and systems is notes. Where are we putting the things that we find out about patients? How are we reviewing the intake of their paperwork or the phone call information that we get from them? And then where are we using that in our exam flow?

 

The Dental A Team (22:15.926)

Love it. Beautiful. Thank you.

 

Okay, you guys heard it from Dana. You heard it right here. Thank you so much, Dana, for being here with me today. You know I'm gonna pull you in for some more, so y'all will be hearing her voice in no time at all. Thank you everyone for being here, for being constant, just superheroes for us in this world and sharing us with everyone you know. We truly appreciate that. We are always looking to help and reach as many people in the dental community as we possibly can. So share this podcast with a friend. If you're a current client, thank you so

 

much. Share us with all your friends. If you're a soon-to-be client, we cannot wait to meet you. And for those listeners who are just on the fence and out there wondering, keep listening. We're here. We're always going to come back and we are always here when you're ready for us. So for now, we'll catch you guys later.

Kiera is joined by Dr. Robert DiPilla to talk about his world of dentistry, including the transition from cosmetic to holistic services, how he educated his patients, lessons learned during his multi-practice ownership, and more.

 

About Dr. DiPilla: Dr. Robert DiPilla studied dentistry at the University of Detroit-Mercy, and then went on to attain a Fellowship for Dental Implants at the Harvard Club. He was quickly recruited to Manhattan, where he honed his dentistry techniques, and had the opportunity to work on many high-profile clients. Dr. DiPilla became a partner at the renowned Rosenthal Dental Group on Madison Avenue, and earned the title “the dentist’s dentist” by his peers in the industry. Dr. DiPilla has had the privilege of perfecting the smiles of celebrity clientele such as Kathie Lee Gifford, Wayne Gretzky, Steve Duchesne, and Sarah Ferguson among others.

While Dr. DiPilla maintains a Manhattan office, he now focuses on the location where his career began in the Detroit Metropolitan area. He contributes regularly to nationally circulated trade publications, and continues to be recognized as a leader and expert resource in aesthetic dentistry.

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Transcript

Kiera Dent (00:00.768)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera And today I am so jazzed to have an incredible guest. We have been following this man. We've been wanting him on our podcast. He is incredible. And I feel like what he's doing is changing the way dentists are doing dentistry. I think he's kind of in this new age, new era, adapting with the times. And so was so excited to bring him on and have his knowledge. So welcome to the show, Dr. Robert DiPilla. How are you today?

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (00:25.484)

I'm doing well. Thank you very much. I'm excited to be on your show. There are so many great things about you and your show. I I once again, I went back to some of your podcasts and you some great, great guests on.

 

Kiera Dent (00:37.376)

Well, thank you. am quite shocked. Dental A Team is about to release their thousandth episode. And I was thinking, I cannot believe I've been on this microphone a thousand times. So I'm super honored that you are a part of that journey. And really everyone who listens to the podcast knows our ultimate goal at Dental A Team is to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. so bringing guests on like yourself, people who are passionate about dentistry, making sure that we keep the passion alive in dentistry, making sure that people realize

 

I believe we're in the best industry we possibly could ever be in. And so I'm super excited because I feel like you're taking a new edge spin to some things in dentistry. So before we get into some of these fun topics, Dr. DiPilla, why don't you take us through kind of your journey? I know you have a pretty interesting route of how you were able to go from where you were and where you started in dentistry to where you are today. So if you kind of want to take us on your journey, that way the audience gets to know you as well.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (01:31.854)

That journey starts 36 years ago. I graduated at the University of Detroit, Mercy in 1989, and I did a residency at Harvard at the Harvard Club for doing implants. And from that, I really was interested in the cosmetic realm. So you got to think about in the early 90s. And it was kind of like touched upon. And I was very fortunate.

 

to take a course with Bill Dickerson and Larry Rosenthal. And this is the first time they were together in doing these particular courses. And my first patient for my aesthetic course was my sister, believe it or not. when I mentioned this, it was an amazing journey. She was very appreciative. It was a great case. And from that, one interesting point.

 

Kiera Dent (02:16.68)

Wow, that's brave, an aesthetic course.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (02:30.828)

when I was in the lecture and they were talking about different materials, different processes, the way to do things. I know once again, I just graduated, I did like a little surgical residency and I thought to myself, mean, the auditorium was packed, there's probably like a hundred students. And I'm like looking around and I'm thinking myself, am I the only dumb one here that doesn't know this?

 

I said, this is insane. And they're going over these seven different steps to do bonding and veneers. I'm like, my gosh, did I learn this in school? you

 

Kiera Dent (03:05.28)

Did I skip that day? I promise I didn't miss too many, right? That's what you're probably thinking, like I was there.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (03:10.237)

I would promise I was there. But I promised myself since then, it was like a real, not say a low point in my life, but it was a low point in the sense of how come I didn't know this? And I kind of pride myself in understanding things and certain process and procedures. And I said, from that day, this will never happen again. So that journey led into teaching with Bill Dickerson before it was LVI and also

 

aesthetic advantage with Larry Rosenthal. And as you know, there were two separate groups and I had to make a decision on what camp was I going to go into. Was I going to do the LVI camp in Vegas? And mind you, I'm in Michigan. Or do I go to New York route? And my decision was New York was closer. So I went with Larry Rosenthal. So I was an instructor with him for about three or four years. And then I was invited to be a doctor in his office.

 

And I was there for a good 10 years. that journey right there was probably the highest point of my life in that particular aesthetic office. There was a lot of great contacts, a lot of great people that we met. And I always say everything is a blessing for me. I don't hold anything back as far as this was a disappointment. This didn't happen for me because I think everything is a growing experience.

 

So for me, being in Larry's office was really, truly, truly, like I said, a blessing. It was a great thing for my career. And then I knew that when I started having a family and kids, New York for me personally wasn't the place for me. Coming from the Midwest, Midwest values, I wanted to have the family where I grew up because my mom is still here and my extended family is here as well. So once again, from that, I left New York.

 

Kiera Dent (04:51.21)

You

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (05:01.806)

And then, but I kept a practice in New York as well, because I had a lot of patients to see. And I started my own practice in Birmingham, Michigan. And that was in 2000, probably 2003, 2004. And then from that, you know, we grew to five different practices. So it's been a really challenging once again, but it's been a great journey for us.

 

Kiera Dent (05:15.338)

Wow.

 

Kiera Dent (05:25.706)

That's incredible. And so I'm curious because when I first started as a dental assistant, one of the doctors that I worked for had a practice in California and Utah. And so every Thursday or Wednesday, I think it was, we would close out in California and he'd catch a flight and he'd go to his practice in Utah. He'd be there Thursday, Friday, fly home, and we do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So did you fly back and forth between your two practices?

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (05:45.93)

I did the same thing. When I moved back to Michigan, I would work in Michigan Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, would fly out to New York and work Thursday and Friday. And then plus New York's a great city and I stayed for the weekend and I flew back the first flight out 6 a.m. on Monday morning to make it to my practice at 9 a.m. So I did that for seven years. So back and forth. then once again,

 

Kiera Dent (05:56.106)

Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (06:02.806)

sure.

 

you

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (06:12.462)

It was great. To me, people, how did you do that? Why did you do that? It was just my routine and it worked out really, really well. And then there was some point where I kind of have to slow down and kind of give that up a little bit because I wanted to build more practices in Michigan.

 

Kiera Dent (06:27.414)

Sure. No, that makes sense. And I was just curious because when that Dennis would do it, I thought like it was so wild, but it made sense of how he was able to have the two practices. So it's either you fly back and forth for a while or you get associates. Did you end up keeping that practice in New York or did you have an associate running it or did you end up selling it and then focus in Michigan?

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (06:45.186)

Yeah, no, I actually, believe it or not, a lot of my New York patients actually will fly to Michigan to have their work done. And then the rest is I gave it to a really good friend of mine, Dr. Michael Krause, that's in the city on 49th and Madison. So, you know, basically a lot of my patients just kind of ended up with him.

 

Kiera Dent (06:52.564)

Incredible.

 

Kiera Dent (07:06.728)

Amazing. And that's great to know. And I hope dentists heard that of when you are really great at your craft, they will fly, they will come to see you. And I think that that's something that's different in today's world. I think that it's very common for patients to fly other places rather than just going to their dentist down the street. I think people fly for different surgeries to different places. Now I think for your day in day out routine dental care, you'll probably stay closer to home. But also we only go six, like two times a year. So it's really not that much to travel if you want to.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (07:25.919)

percent. Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (07:34.798)

Yeah, there's a lot, know, as you know, there's a lot of patients that will seek out plastic surgeons and they will go to a certain destination if it's New York, LA or Miami. And that's the same thing with dentistry. I mean, I've been very fortunate. I've had a of patients from Miami that will fly up and for me to do their work, their veneers, New York, of course, all the way even from LA. So it's been it's been a wonderful thing. I'm very humbled, you know, to do that. I don't take that take that lightly.

 

Kiera Dent (07:40.214)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kiera Dent (08:02.812)

No, and I think that there's when you love what you do and you're really great at what you do, people fly. I mean, I am a dental snob. think being in dentistry, it makes me one of the worst patients. And so I'm always nervous. And so I do travel to dentists out of the state. And I think it's something of the world has changed. And so I love your journey. I love the passion you have. I love that you've built multiple practices. I think you bring an interesting perspective. And so I'm super curious because you've kind of gone into a holistic route as well. So

 

I'm curious, how do you go from dental implants, veneers, which feels very cosmetic, into holistic? Like what's kind of the bridge? How have you done that? Because I think people feel like I'm either traditional dentistry or I'm holistic dentistry. And I feel like you're bridging this gap. And I think the world is bridging this gap as well. I don't think it's as polarized as it used to be, but what's kind of your take on that and how did you transition? What got you excited about that? Give some insights.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (08:53.684)

I mean, you

 

You know, for you as you know, being a hygienist, know, to me, for our patients, we want to make sure that they have a healthy foundation. a healthy foundation is the bone and also the gingival tissue. And, you know, it doesn't matter how great of a cosmetic dentist you are, how great of an implantologist you are, the tissue has to be stable. It has to be making sure that, you know, the oral microbiome is sufficient.

 

Kiera Dent (09:05.299)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (09:25.774)

You got to make sure that the biofilm is eliminated. And one of the biggest things that, I mentor 22 doctors here in Michigan, from guys who've just, guys or gals who've just been out a year and guys like myself that been out for 36 years. One of the things that I try to impress upon them is that don't be a mechanic of the mouth. And my feelings,

 

is that dental schools right now, and once again, different than my era, is just really, they're really teaching you how to pass the board exams. And then the real age of dentistry is what you get after as far as continued education. And I think it's really important, as you know, even being a hygienist, is that you have a patient that comes back, yet you did scaling and root planning.

 

Kiera Dent (10:01.694)

Right.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (10:17.15)

and you see him back in three months and they're saying, yeah, I brush every day, I floss every day, I have the water pick that you recommended, I'm doing the oral care, I'm doing this. And they come back and it's like, my God, are you really flossing? Are you really brushing your teeth? No, no, I am. But why is that? Why are we doing maybe supervised neglect or super profis? The question comes in is that we have to understand why, my biggest thing is the why, why is that happening?

 

You know, we incorporated now we're doing genetic testing, we're doing saliva testing for our patients because as we know, a lot of, you know, reintroduction of refractory periodontitis that happens. So even the same thing with my hygienist, you know, we're very strong in continuing education. We're very strong in not just scaling and root planing teeth, just for the matter of fact of doing it. And one of the things that, you know, my hygienist, they all know,

 

is that if you're doing Scanlan Root Planning, what type of attachment do you want back? So I think you have to have a strong foundation in histology. You have to know the periodontium very, very well. And a lot of times in school, yeah, yeah, that was that class. I had it, but this is what I want to do. So I think for us in dentistry, you have to move away from being that mechanic of the mouth, because I can teach my assistant to prep a tooth, easy. But you have to understand the diagnosis and the

 

Kiera Dent (11:26.774)

you

 

Kiera Dent (11:38.368)

you

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (11:42.094)

And it also goes back to different materials. The whole rage now is zirconia, crowns, and it's a lot stronger. But is it really? Is it lithium disilicate, or is it philospathic porcelain? So I think there has to be an understanding of where to place those materials in the proper patients and proper occlusion. So because a salesperson comes in, oh, this is the latest and greatest, doesn't mean that you should buy it. So I think.

 

Kiera Dent (12:09.824)

for sure.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (12:10.894)

For me, it's kind of taking a step back and understanding dental materials, understanding the periodontium, understanding all that. I the classes that we hated in school, believe it not, I've been doing this for 36, are probably the most important now than anything else.

 

Kiera Dent (12:25.67)

No, for sure. And I'm so grateful you talked about that because agreed like the healthy foundations, I think it's so easily overlooked. So I'm curious, how did you start to incorporate this with your patients? Because you didn't come out of school having this, you didn't learn all these things right away, you started incorporating it. I think people are oftentimes afraid to add this into their practices due to patient pushback. So how did you, how did you educate your patient base?

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (12:48.702)

Well, yeah, I think it's just having a good communication with your patient and being authentic. with our patients, we're there for them in a sense of we don't push anything, we don't sell anything, we just educate our patients. And a lot of times, if I've seen a patient for 10, 15, 20 years and I'm watching them get worse,

 

And, you know, I'll just have that, you know, that radical candor with them saying, hey, listen, you know, where do you want to go with this? What do you, how can I help you? You know, do you, mean, for some reason I'm watching you getting worse and I don't want that. So what can I do to help? And then we kind of castor them in that, in that direction as much as possible. You know, there's, we'll do a lot of like nutritional counseling and we see a lot of patients that, as you know, they come in, you know, they're not, they're not healthy. And I have the,

 

Kiera Dent (13:39.51)

All right.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (13:42.21)

I guess the personality to talk to my patients and say, listen, I want you to see this person. I care about you. I've seen you for many, many times. And I just, you know, I see some things that I don't like. So what I want you to do, here's a referral. I want you to see them. And then nine out of 10 times they'll come back and say, my God, thank you so much. I didn't know I had this underlying condition.

 

Kiera Dent (14:07.84)

That's incredible. And I agree that education, I think is the new age of communication. I think a lot of patients want to understand more. think we live in this digital era where people are consuming so much more information rapidly and they want to be educated and they want to know what's going on. And I do think social media has, has ramped this up exponentially for people to want more education rather than just blindly following. And so I really love that you took it that way. I want to ask you a couple of questions about

 

growth of practices because I think so many people grow practices or they feel that they need to grow practices or they need to expand their practices. I'm curious after having done that, you've had practices in multiple states, you've grown your, like walk me through, like when do you grow as a dentist? When do you not grow as a dentist? What are some things that you learned through that growth of multi-practice ownership, especially with dentists that are in today's world? I think that there are some that are brand new.

 

There's the DSO on the radar and on the horizon for people. Walk me through some of your thoughts around this practice growth, multi-location, when do I grow, what do I do with DSOs? I'm super curious because you've done it and you've done it for a long time. What are some of your thoughts around that?

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (15:08.718)

100%.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (15:17.582)

I'm going to let's go back when I was like I said, very fortunate to be in Larry Rosenthal's office in New York City. And everyone knows Larry Rosenthal is the premier, know, veneer office to go to. So I was once again, I was very, very fortunate to go there. But well, my dismay, I was the young kid.

 

Kiera Dent (15:37.364)

It's incredible, by the way. like, like, let's just stop for a second. Like, that's incredible that you got to work there with him.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (15:44.622)

So think of a patient that's there, know, we had celebrity CEOs, we had every mogul you could imagine we had. And you got this young kid walking in and they're like, well, kid, move away, where's Larry? Where's Larry? So what I had to do, I had to kind of reinvent myself. And, you know, and I had to figure out what type of avatar patient, you know, do I want? And I think that it doesn't matter if I'm in New York, if I'm in Birmingham, Michigan.

 

Kiera Dent (15:44.947)

Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (15:57.715)

Yeah.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (16:11.274)

I'm if in Salt Lake City, Atlanta, doesn't matter. You just have to figure out what avatar do you want. And then you kind of go where that avatar is. So an example, this is what I did. So in New York City, I need to get a haircut. So for me, I went to the biggest celebrity hairstylist you can get. And it was Orbe in New York City. And why did I do

 

Kiera Dent (16:37.556)

Yeah. Okay. I mean, you do have great hair, by the way. So, I mean, it must have worked out for you. I like it. It looks great.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (16:41.582)

Well, thank you so No way. It's not what it Well, thank you. So I went to Orbe and why did I go to see him? Because Orbe has what a lot of celebrity clientele. And for me, it was building a relationship with Orbe. You come in, your first appointment, who are you? What do you do? Oh my God, yeah, I have a dentist and that, that, that. As you know, when you say you're a dentist or a hygienist, oh, by the way, can you look at this?

 

Kiera Dent (17:10.633)

haha

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (17:11.758)

So what that does is that it kind of opens up the dialogue as much as possible. So from him, I've been seeing him for two to three years. And once again, it's something that you always have to continue going. If you do it once or twice and it doesn't work, well, that's not going to happen. So they go into the gym, you work out once or twice, you're not going to be in shape. it's of those things that you perpetually just have to do. So I was very fortunate seeing him for years. And from that,

 

Kiera Dent (17:32.083)

Right.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (17:39.49)

I had my own celebrity clientele that came into Larry's office. It was great. All right, how about another one? So I was fortunate they had the LA Reebok Club where I used to live on the Upper West Side. And then joined a gym, of course. And I wanted to find out who was the best trainer who trained all the celebrities. And then once again, the same thing. So I think it's important.

 

Kiera Dent (17:44.308)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (18:06.818)

you know, to find out because I'm going tell you a lot of the celebrities and a lot of moguls, they're not calling to make the appointment. They have someone as an assistant to make their appointments for them. So I'll give you an example. I was working out in East Hampton for a little bit because I bought a house in in Amiganza. And as I was doing this renovation, I never really worked on Fridays, but in East Hampton, I worked some Fridays and I was fortunate

 

that I had a logistics manager for the Rolling Stones that came in. Built a relationship with her. And then from that, because she's a logistics manager, she does everything for the Stones. So I was very fortunate. She called me up, hey, Mick has a concert tonight at Madison Square Garden. He wants his teeth cleaned. He wants them checked out. Can you do it? Sure. What time? Nine o'clock at night. What?

 

Kiera Dent (18:39.082)

Well.

 

Kiera Dent (19:01.735)

I'm

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (19:03.342)

So those are the things that you have to do. If you want that type of avatar, you want that type of clientele, then you kind have to do whatever it takes to go above and beyond to make sure that that happens. So don't think that if you want that type of practice, there's going to be some sacrifices that you're going to have to do. So for me, my personal story, for me being in New York, I was so driven, driven, driven. That's all I did. That's all I did. And I was married at the...

 

at the time. you know, looking back in retrospect, it affected my marriage. So, you know, my ex-wife, we're great, we're still great friends, but it affected because I just, for me, I was driven. This is what I wanted to do. I was out. I was going to opening of galleries. I was opening up to restaurants and because I wanted to be successful. But with that, there are some consequences that come with it.

 

So you have to kind of be prepared. You they always say, you know, the balance of life, you know, what to do as far as your career and work. I mean, there is, but you're going to sacrifice, you know, somewhere. You can't have it all, as they say. So you're going to have to kind of give up some.

 

Kiera Dent (20:12.853)

Great.

 

Do you, looking back, are you grateful that you've made the decisions you've made or do you wish you would have done things differently? Like knowing what you know now. Walk me through because I think people people often wonder this.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (20:26.466)

Yeah, there's no, for me, there's no regrets because even if there was a regret, I always look at it as something that will make me better down the road. mean, listen, we're all gonna have failures. Things are gonna happen, but you have to learn from that. I mean, for someone to say, this has never happened to me and da, da, da, either they're lying or they have not, they've just graduated yesterday. I didn't tell my associates the same thing and that they had a bad day.

 

Kiera Dent (20:49.724)

Yeah.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (20:56.046)

patient was complaining or something, I said, listen, it's going to happen. As long as you know in your heart you did the right thing, that's all you can do.

 

Kiera Dent (21:05.593)

I that. And I appreciate that because I think so many times people feel like I should have known this right from the get go. But I think a lot of learning is experiencing too. And so going through it and making different decisions. And like you said, what's the type of life? What's the type of avatar do I want? And then crafting your practice around that. I really love that you highlight. I feel like you crafted your practice and your craft around the avatar, patient and life that you wanted.

 

I think at the beginning you probably hustled a lot more than you thought you would need to, but I think that that's the beginning of practice ownership. I think that's the beginning of any career. And then you're able to then start to curate it into what you wanted it to be. And I think so many dentists don't realize that that is a possibility for you if you want it to craft it for what you want.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (21:50.486)

No, listen, mean, there's many different practices, as you know. There's the elite practices that are doing, know, veneers and an example who took over Larry Rosenthal's office is Mike Appa. Mike Appa is a great dentist. When I was leaving Larry's office, he was coming in and he took it to the next level. And I missed, from my era, we didn't really have Facebook or Instagram or anything like that. So I'm kind of like the, know, the lagger in that particular point.

 

But he took that and made it to a different level as far as his career going to Dubai. And now he has multiple, multiple practices. But once again, there is some sacrifices. I'm sure it has not come easy to him. He has put in a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of dedication to craft that for him. I look at it as, man, that's amazing. Good for him. Other people can get jealous of that.

 

but they don't understand the hard work what it takes to get there. It's like the basketball player, like, my God, he's making all this, how did he get that? But he forgot all the thousands and thousands of hours being in the gym and also practicing. Sometimes we forget that.

 

Kiera Dent (22:58.037)

Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (23:03.55)

Right. Right. I think that it's been so just I love I love your passion. I love the life that you've lived. I love the I love that you were so committed to never being that person and then look at how that that drive and that determination took you from where you were to where you are today. I'm curious speaking to dentists who are maybe I don't know two three four years out.

 

What advice would you give them from all your years of practicing of the things you've been able to do, the clientele you've had, the team you had? What would be advice you'd give to that population of dentists right now? Knowing everything you know, knowing the climate, knowing the, like I said, DSOs are on the horizon. Do I become a private practice owner? Do I work corporate? Do I own multi-practices? What would you give? Again, we're talking four or five years out. I feel like this is right where they're starting to get that itch. They've got their, they figured a lot of things out.

 

Well, what advice would you have for that dentist?

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (23:57.454)

So it's funny that you say that because three of my associates, I have been out four to five years. And we get together, which is great, which I love is we get together once a month at my house over here and we kind of go over some kids' education things and just kind of talking to them as far as what their successes are, what their stresses are, and also what they're stuck. We call that three S's. And I always tell them, listen, I don't want you to be me.

 

Kiera Dent (24:03.528)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (24:27.5)

I want you to be you. If you're interested in Invisalign, then go for it. And I think that a lot of younger dentists feel that, my God, I have to do that endo. I have to do that extraction. I have to do that filling. I have to do this because there's so much money and debt from dental school and you can't do everything because something's gonna, you're gonna get hurt on one perspective.

 

My advice, I've been doing this, like I said, for 36 years, find out what you really, really love to do and then do that. Is it gonna pan off the next day? No, it's gonna take time. And I think we live in a world that it's instant gratification and everyone wants everything done yesterday. It's just the law of averages. You're just gonna have to do it, do it, do it, do it and keep it until you get there. For me, like I said, I was going for the implant route.

 

Kiera Dent (25:16.519)

Right.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (25:26.474)

I loved surgery. And then I found that niche that I wanted to do was the aesthetic world. And then, okay, I'm doing some aesthetics. We're at Larry's office. We're doing 10 veneers on the bottom, 10 veneers on the top and the bottom. And I'm thinking to myself, yeah, the bite doesn't look that great. I said, well, there's something more to this. And then I went down to Rabbit Hole. I did Pete Dawson's chorus.

 

Kiera Dent (25:47.568)

I'm

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (25:55.746)

I remember at Panky. So I went another route as far as now doing full mouth rehabilitation. Going back to, you know, Facebook, Centric Relation, doing everything that needs to be done. How am supposed to get back to that? Right? And then, you know, getting there. So, you know, for me, that is my niche now. And from, you know, I'm building a bigger office in Birmingham. I think I'm crazy what I'm doing right now.

 

Kiera Dent (26:08.108)

The baseball, that's a throwback.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (26:25.016)

but I still have passion for what I do. feel like, you when someone said, you've been out for 36 years, I feel like I've only been out for five years. I still love this profession. I love what it's given me, the opportunity, but sometimes I don't like the direction where it's going in. And that kind of goes back to what you mentioned about the DSOs. Don't get me wrong, I'm not popo-ing DSOs. I mean, I think there's a place for everyone.

 

Kiera Dent (26:33.611)

Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (26:47.198)

Yeah, I'm curious on your take. You've been in this for a long time.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (26:55.24)

I mean, know dentists are in Medicaid offices, great. We know that patients are in PPO offices, great. Fee for service, better. And then also group practices that, you know, my associates are in. And then there's DSOs. Once again, I'm fortunate to be part of Dicama's group, and it's one of the premier law firms that have put all the DSOs together.

 

Kiera Dent (27:06.698)

Yeah.

 

Kiera Dent (27:18.805)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (27:25.358)

And some are great, some are amazing, but some have failed. And I think one of the problems I feel that corporate has is that if you do the CEO, you're looking at what? You're looking at the numbers, you're looking at the metrics, right? You're looking at the KPIs. But if you're in the trenches, you can't treat every office as the same. It's different. The hygienist has a different personality. dentist has a personality. You have different patients, demographic of patients.

 

Kiera Dent (27:31.04)

Right.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (27:54.648)

So I think for dentists, we're just a different animal as far as the field that we're in. It's very, very personal that we have as far as our offices. And like I said, I have five offices. All five are completely different. If I try to implement every single detail thing in Birmingham to do it in Detroit, no. Same thing in Detroit to do at Sinclair Shores, no. It has to be customized to that particular practice.

 

Kiera Dent (28:22.782)

Yeah, no, and I think that's such wise wisdom because working with hundreds of offices, I don't have an A to Z cookbook. I don't tell them like implement this. I know systems that will work, but we customize it to your area because the patient base, like you said in New York compared to Birmingham, Michigan, they're going to be very different patients. They're going to have different needs, different like all of it is different. The pace of it is going to be different. Your attrition rates will probably look differently. And so I agree with you completely that

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (28:36.046)

That's great.

 

Kiera Dent (28:52.52)

Everything is not apples to apples. I'm curious, how do you lead all five of those practices? Do you have, like, what does your team structure look like? Because so many people do get stressed out with multi-practice ownership. What have you done to reduce that stress level for yourself and make sure that they're all successful?

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (29:06.262)

Yeah. No, it's, we just had our all company meeting. I call it the summit meeting. And, you know, it's amazing that, you know, 10 years ago, I had one office and maybe four employees. Now I

 

Kiera Dent (29:13.672)

Thank you.

 

Kiera Dent (29:20.928)

Did you hear that everyone? 10 years ago. So this is something that in his 36 years of dentistry, he did 26 years. I also think people need to realize they sometimes feel like they're too old to open up multiple practices. They feel they're too far in their career. They needed to do this earlier. So I hope people are hearing your timeline of 26 years solo practice and now 10 years making five practices, but also there is a timeline around that. So continue please. But I just want to highlight, this was not an overnight thing for you either.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (29:23.5)

Years ago, Yeah. Single practice.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (29:51.054)

It's not. I'll go back and I'll tell you the reason why for that. And for me, like I said, going to New York, I wanted to be the best. I wanted to be that celebrity dentist. And when I came back to Michigan, I centered everything around me. People came, they flew in from out of state to see me. And one of the things, I can't scale me. And one of the things that I have to open up

 

Kiera Dent (30:12.63)

Yeah.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (30:20.174)

the offices and kind of passed the baton to my other associates. So, you for me, that was like the biggest thing is the key is letting go. And like I said, we had a summit meeting two weeks ago. And like I said, I had five employees in one practice. Now I have five practices with close to 70 employees. You may say, my God, how do you do that? I hire smart people smarter than me.

 

Kiera Dent (30:43.082)

Yeah

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (30:49.79)

to do that. I have a great CFO. I have a great regional manager and I have great office managers. And one of the biggest things that we, we constant, constant role play a lot of the things that we do in the office. And why is that important? One of the things that we did when COVID happened, before we opened up, we had a month where we did Zoom calls.

 

like this, and we did a role play because when patients come back, they're gonna have questions. And what are we doing to protect them and ourselves? And it was really important for the front desk, it was really important for our managers, hygienists and assistants to make sure we're getting our message across. One of the things that I never wanna hear on the phone is if a patient asked a question,

 

and our front desk, our personal, I don't know. I don't know what we're doing. So, you to me, it's just having those questions answered. And what we did is I call it the kind of the soft opening, like what a restaurant would do before they opened up fully, they would kind of, you know, bring in some of their guests or their family members to have a soft opening. So that's what we usually do from that. But the main thing, you for me,

 

Kiera Dent (31:51.997)

That's

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (32:15.112)

is I just hire great people that are around me that will integrate the vision that I have. So there's a great book and I highly, highly recommend for dentists. And I know Gina Whitman very well, it's called Traction. I don't know if you've heard the book or. And it's amazing. And then the follow-up book is Rocket Fuel.

 

Kiera Dent (32:33.75)

We are diehard traction people. We help offices with it. It is incredible. Yes.

 

Kiera Dent (32:41.903)

Amen. When you were talking about integrator, was like, he's a visionary needs the integrator. Did you, did you hire?

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (32:45.198)

I'm the 100%. I mean, for me, I'm definitely the visionary. know what I want to see. And then my CFL is the integrator. I have so bad ADD, I'm like, don't squirrel. Okay, what happened over here? No, no, no, no, get on track. We gotta do this. So for me, like.

 

Kiera Dent (32:57.848)

you

 

Kiera Dent (33:03.382)

How did you find your CFO integrator? you go through one of Traction's hiring things? Did you find them through? How did you find that integrator? Because I think that's such a key piece in growth. How did you find yours?

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (33:14.572)

Well, luckily she was with us and within the company and we just hired up for her. She just went from low level to higher hiring and she got it. She understood the whole process. mean, when she read the book, she, I mean, my God, this is the missing piece for us. And I love that, that passion that she has for that and then just kind of put everything together. So I was very fortunate in that respect. But when we do our hiring,

 

Kiera Dent (33:21.462)

amazing.

 

Kiera Dent (33:32.118)

Yeah.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (33:43.746)

We hire within our culture and who we are. And sometimes it's difficult to do that. We did that right after COVID because some people didn't feel like they wanted to come back or didn't feel safe to come back as far as some employees, which is fine. And there was a shortage of dental assistants and hygienists wasn't an issue for us. It was more assistance. And I hate to say that we hired people that weren't the right fit.

 

Kiera Dent (34:08.97)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (34:13.71)

And I'm going to tell you that was a big mistake because it's going to take you longer to find another person. So I'd have no one. do it myself compared to not have the same, the right person that would fit in our culture.

 

Kiera Dent (34:29.974)

I agree. That's wise wisdom. And I think so many people get desperate. And I mean, I've done it. I think we've all done it, right? We've all made those hires and we're like, agreed with you. We'd rather wait it out till the right person comes through rather than doing those desperate hires. And I think it's

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (34:41.966)

Yeah, it works out. And really works out. I'm a true believer that, I mean, there is a plan and you just kind of have to wait it out and it comes in because the same thing in our downtown Detroit office, we were waiting for someone and we thought someone, oh my God, she's going to be great. Oh my God, she's moving from Boston. She's going to come here. She's ran a periodontal office. Oh my God, we love her. And then got ghosted. Like what the hell happened? And then the next day,

 

Kiera Dent (35:07.38)

Mm-hmm.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (35:10.85)

We got another resume. Lauren, I mean, amazing. I mean, just that blessing that comes through. So I think the best thing to do is just wait it out, hire within your culture. And if they don't fit, they're not the right team member for you.

 

Kiera Dent (35:28.916)

I love that. Dr. DiPilla, something I have found so fascinating with our podcast today, just so appreciative. I feel you have wisdom. And I think wisdom oftentimes lacks. And I think it comes from experience. I think you've learned from the things that you've done. I'm not saying you're old. I'm saying that I hear wisdom from you. And I think you had this wisdom even when you first started your career. I think you learned things. But I feel you lived your own.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (35:42.114)

You're saying I'm

 

Kiera Dent (35:56.438)

I feel like you grew because you wanted to grow, not because you felt like you needed to. I feel like you waited when I'm sure a lot of your other colleagues were building multi-practices and you're like, this is what I'm enjoying doing. And what I've heard is as you've shifted and morphed throughout your career and the way you've presented it, it sounds like you've done it based on intrigue and curiosity and things that still keep the passion within you. And I feel like...

 

You're a great example of someone who can be practicing dentistry for 36 years and still have passion, fire and fuel behind it, rather than the what I see a lot of right now of burnout. And I was trying to put the pieces together as we were chatting and I'm like, I think honest to goodness, you've done everything because it was a passion and a curiosity and it fueled you rather than drained you. And I also really love that

 

you believe that there's a higher path for you. Like you said, it's just because one door is closing, it means the other door is opening, but that door is not quite ready yet. So be okay with this door closing. But that would how I would summarize you. Obviously, please fill in any gaps I may have missed. But I think that that's so refreshing to hear that I think a lot of us can take stock in and learn from you as well.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (36:49.806)

100%.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (37:05.474)

Wow, well, thank you for that. That's, thank you. But for me, right now, I think it's important to, like I said, pass the baton to my other dentist and kind of elevate them as much as possible. And I think if you're in a group practice or if you're in a single practice, sometimes we live on our own little island and you don't know where to do. would...

 

Kiera Dent (37:10.197)

You're welcome.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (37:31.66)

get a couple of your friends, colleagues, whatever, just go out to a restaurant, hang out and kind of talk your story. Because we're all in it and we all go through the same things. And maybe I'm blessed with mental resiliency, I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of things that are kind of thrown at you. But for me, for my upbringing, mean, things bother me, don't get me wrong, I am human.

 

But I know that my purpose is stronger than the noise that hear that's behind me. And for me, where am I going to go from here? What's the next 10 years look like? And For me, my legacy and what I want to hear is that when I'm long gone and a patient goes to another dentist and says, hey, who's your other dentist? And I say, well, I went to DiPilla All I want to hear is that, you know what?

 

Yes, I heard great people. That's all I want to hear. You went to one of the best. That's it. That's all I want to hear. I mean, I that's my legacy is that make sure that we as a group, as a team or organization, we've done the right thing by you and also by the the patients and also our team too. We got to take care of our the team that supports us very,

 

Kiera Dent (38:54.25)

That's beautiful. And I think as you said that I think maybe a takeaway from today would be figure out the legacy that you want to leave. think that that legacy, just did a mastermind group with some people in person and I had them write when they were, you know, I didn't give them an age. I just said, when you're sitting back looking at your life, what do want to feel? What do you want to experience? And what do you want it to be said about you?

 

And it was crazy because people started making different decisions in that moment because the legacy of who they want to be and what they want to leave behind radically shifts what you're doing today. And I think that that's a beautiful takeaway from today. I have loved our conversation. I thoroughly enjoy you as a human. I think you're just doing a beautiful work, an example of keeping the passion alive in dentistry and doing great things no matter what's going on. any last thoughts you have, how can people connect with you?

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (39:34.926)

Thank you.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (39:44.238)

I think for anyone guys who have been graduating, this is like the best time to be a dentist. I mean, I'm so excited. mean, the technology is amazing. Things that we used to do before and we can do now, digital workflow, 3D printing, AI, it's amazing. So, for me, I go into work every day. I'm very passionate what we need to do. But for me,

 

It's time for me to kind of like maybe work maybe in the chair once or twice a week and then work on the business. And that's where I'm more passionate about as well. And then kind of like I said, elevating everybody else. But once again, this has been a real, real pleasure and I can see your passion as well and much, success for yourself.

 

Kiera Dent (40:28.682)

Likewise, thank you so much for joining today, Dr. Tafilla. I hope everybody who's listened takes away a few golden nuggets and gems because I really do believe there was so much value and wisdom in this podcast today. I think that there's so much beauty. love podcasting with people like yourself that are just so optimistic of the future. So thank you for joining us and for all of you listening. Yes.

 

Dr Robert DiPilla (40:49.816)

My pleasure.

 

Kiera Dent (40:53.78)

All of you listening, thank you for joining us. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

 

Tiff and Kristy share not only how to cut down your accounts receivable, but also how to develop systems that will keep your AR low. They discuss time management, clear job descriptions, protocols, and more.

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Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:01.752)

Hello, Dental A Team. I am so excited to be here with you. I have Kristy back here with me today, and we are excited to talk to you about a really fun subject today. It's not always the top of the fun list. think billing gets pushed down in the fun category, and a lot of people put a lot of stress on it, which I totally understand. But Kristy and I are here today.

 

to bring some fun to the billing department and to bring some fun around how to make billing work within your practice. Kristy, thank you so much for being here with me today. How are you?

 

Kristy (00:34.658)

Good! It's a good Monday!

 

The Dental A Team (00:37.955)

Good, I know. Our Mondays get busy here at the Dental A Team. They are our meeting days and our project days and they just, they get chock full of so much stuff every single week and we absolutely love them. We get to spend a lot of time prepping for our client calls and our client visits. A lot of us have client visits coming up soon and just getting all the things together. So Mondays are always a little chaotic. Kristy, in your...

 

In your experience, you've got a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of experience behind you. What was your favorite position or your favorite space to work when you were in practice?

 

Kristy (01:16.704)

interesting. Favorite Space was probably really helping getting patients the care they deserve, filling that patient advocate role. here's the thing, I know we're talking about AR today. If we

 

If we aren't cognizant of a patient's budget, we're really not doing good by them. So being cognizant and finding a way to fit it, you know, the care they need within their timeline and their budget is, it's rewarding.

 

The Dental A Team (01:50.047)

I love it. I totally agree with you. think making sure that we're giving them the best experience all the way around, no matter what is the best space to live in within a dental practice. can get homes fulfilled us. It gives us a purpose and a reason to be there. And on those notes, I think you're absolutely correct. If we don't know what the patient wants, what their desires are, what they can do, and we end up down a path.

 

that might not be the right fit for them and ends up not being the right fit for us because we end up in situations where we have high AR, outstanding claims, outstanding bills, all of those pieces. I also know one of the biggest reasons that people leave a dental practice or write a bad review, I have so many practices that are like, don't put me on swell, I want to have control over who gets reviews and who don't.

 

And I just think everybody should get a link for review. So I love advocating for that company and for within our marketing. But I know that the biggest reason that we're afraid of something like that and that people that patients leave their practice is for billing inconsistencies or billing issues. So really having standards and protocols and just everything wrapped around the billing department is so imperative and so important because even down to that patient advocate space.

 

When you're that patient advocate, which is also sometimes, you know, patient coordinator, front office check-in, like all of those are kind of wrapped around similar spaces within the practice. But when you're sitting in that space, Kristy, so many times you are walked into a really hard conversation because there was confusion over previous billing or you're the one that's responsible for collecting today's balance that's due or outstanding balances. And so you kind of walk into really uncomfortable situations because

 

you're not sure what it is sometimes, the patient doesn't know what it is, and sometimes that patient comes in upset. So knowing how to diffuse those situations too, think Kristy is a really great space and just builds that relationship as well. I think I love your answer.

 

Kristy (03:50.149)

Thank

 

The Dental A Team (03:51.193)

That's my wrap up there. So today I've brought Kristy here to talk with me and chat with me for you guys today about really cutting your AR down and hopefully building systems that keep it so that your AR doesn't get high. And just so you guys know, doctors, your AR is your accounts receivable. So this is money that's supposed to be coming to you, but hasn't made its way through the door yet. And so we're trying to get that money through that door into your bank account to help your overhead ultimately.

 

and by increasing your collection. So we really don't want a lot of money sitting out in that AR, in the accounts receivable, that outstanding collections. We really don't want a lot of money out there, but it is also flip side of that unrealistic. Many of you are like, I shouldn't have any AR. I should 100 % collect. While that is, you know, the dream, it is very unrealistic. So there will always be something outstanding, even if you're a free for service practice, in my opinion, there's always going to be something outstanding. So

 

Just building those systems and those protocols is going to be absolutely fantastic. And for you doctors that are listening today, which I hope you guys are here because I hope you're ready to cut your AR down or keep it from ever increasing, I want you guys to know the back end side as well, because I don't want you to be afraid of your billing department anymore or afraid of money. A lot of doctors, I think, steer away from even looking at bank accounts or overhead or...

 

Any of that I think we do in our personal lives too, just because there's so many misunderstandings. So if you can get involved in conversations like this today, really know the expectations of different spaces like that. I really think that it helps to build your confidence in moving forward and keeping those ARs from getting any higher. that's my caveat for today, doctors. I want you listening, I want you taking notes, and then want you taking it back to your team, because this is gonna take a whole team to get a lot of these things done. Kristy.

 

Where do you see the biggest hang up in practices you have worked with? You've worked in many practices, you've consulted many practices in your current clients too. Like, where do you see the biggest hang up when it comes to accounts receivable and that outstanding money? Where do you feel like, gosh, it's really just stuck here if we had to say one space.

 

Kristy (06:04.576)

one space. Honestly, probably in the insurance realm, verifying and getting the correct breakdown so that we're giving the proper estimates and therefore collecting the proper copays, right?

 

The Dental A Team (06:20.264)

I totally agree. Yeah. And I think that's a space that gets really confused. And I think doctors get very confused about it. Like, what is that supposed to look like? What should I be doing? What should I be expecting from my team? How can they get it all of those questions? So I totally agree. We have so many different podcasts on so many different aspects of that. We have so many clients that are working on all of those pieces as well within their consulting with us. But I agree that

 

You have to remember whatever you put into the system is as good as the information you're going to get out of the system. So while it's a computer, while it's software, like it's supposed to, you know, at one point be smarter than us, like it can only be as smart as we can make it. And so the information that you're putting in is going to spit out the information that you're going to get out of it. And if we're rushed, if we don't have clear clarity on what's expected or

 

clarity on what's the most important. Like things get muffled, things get confused. So I think when practices have high AR or to keep them from getting high AR, I always recommend like three basic things. The first thing is time management. We'll dive into time management. The second is ensuring you know what's the most important. So how do we figure out what's important and what's not important? And then the third is having really clear systems and protocols.

 

to be able to use. Those three things, you guys, if you have time management on your side, you can decipher what's important, what's not important, and you have really simple protocols and standards that you consistently use all the time, that's going to propel you to really have cut AR or no AR, or little, I should say minimal AR in the future. So.

 

Kristy, what are some areas that you've worked with your clients or you've worked with in the past that you can say, gosh, these really work in the time management realm? Where do you see things working over there for you?

 

Kristy (08:21.58)

Yeah, for time management, honestly, I think it's about dedicating the time and getting it into your schedule. We like to call it, you know, putting that power hour and really diving in and creating that time to focus on the AR.

 

The Dental A Team (08:36.616)

Yeah, yeah, I love a power hour because you can let it.

 

Kristy (08:43.694)

Okay, sorry.

 

The Dental A Team (08:46.026)

way because I think a power hour, I love power hour, I've used it in multiple facets. I used it in my personal life as well. Power hour, you guys, is so simple. It blows my mind every single time at how well it works, and I utilize it for all kinds of positions in the practice, but I think it's amazing for the billing rep position. So, Kristy, I love that you mentioned that the power hour, literally you just split an hour into like four chunks or two chunks, but you always make sure

 

that you've got it scheduled. So your time management piece, right, is making sure that you've got it scheduled somewhere. And then you've got your list of things that you're going to be doing within those 15 minutes. And you've got some sort of timer handy, even if it's your watch, if it's your phone, like whatever, you're gonna set for 15 minute timer. So you guys, it's that simple. And you're gonna say in the first 15 minutes, I'm gonna do X, and Z.

 

In the second 15 minutes, I'm gonna do ABC. In the third, and so on and so forth, and you're gonna set that timer for those 15 minutes where your billing rep is going to, you guys do this as well, you're gonna set that timer, and at that 15 minute mark, you're gonna take inventory and you're be like, okay, what did I get through? Did I get through the top most important items? Do I need to shift one down to the next 15 minutes or am I ready to move on to the next set of most important items? So.

 

I love that Kristy. So we have the power hour. What other things have you utilized?

 

Kristy (10:12.718)

yeah, Putting the block schedules into the appointment book so everybody knows that you are dedicating that time and working specifically on AR.

 

The Dental A Team (10:12.81)

sketchbook.

 

Kristy (10:29.022)

And I would also say be sure that we detail this because AR can be broken down into two different categories. We have the patient AR and the insurance AR. you know, dedicating time. And I would say, you know, weekly dedicating time to work on these and specific timeframes.

 

The Dental A Team (10:46.174)

Yeah.

 

The Dental A Team (10:49.802)

I totally agree. I love that. And I think we think block scheduling and we think patient schedule only. And it's so interesting to me to consider any kind of system or protocol. Like there's so many spaces where it can be dropped, like copied and pasted into another aspect of life. And when we think about block scheduling, which we have talked about so much for patient schedules.

 

we can now copy and paste that into like even our personal lives, you guys, if I wanted to get crazy with it. But really, if we look at the positional duties, like what is it that I need to do as a billing representative and how do I block my schedule to fit that? I'm going to think, okay, just like thought, doctors, I made you go think, where should I do a root canal? Like where should my high priority pieces be? My high income procedures, where am I going to put those? Where should I do root canal?

 

flip-flop that over to your billing representative, right? And we're not gonna like call on patient balances at 7 a.m. So where is it likely that I'm gonna be able to call on patient balances? So I'm gonna build my schedule using time management skills that I know how to do because I know how to build a patient schedule. So if I start thinking of my duties, the things that I'm responsible for in whatever position I hold, even treatment coordinator, whatever position it is,

 

If you take that same thought process, look at the duties that you're responsible for, and then figure out how do I manage this in my day, what makes the most sense? So do I want to start my day at 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. with patient calls? Gosh, probably not. Or is it smarter to maybe check on unpaid claims at that time? If you start unpaid claims from 8 to 9 a.m., that's your power hour.

 

Right there, 8 to 9 a.m. I'm working on unpaid claims and I'm divvying it out by the 15 minutes or whatever, right? Or maybe by week, first week I'm doing zero to 30, second week I'm doing 31 to 60, et cetera. But if I'm divvying those hours out, I know the insurance companies are gonna be open at 8 a.m. no matter where I'm at in the country, right? If it's 8 a.m. Pacific, it's now 11 a.m. East. So I know no matter where I'm at in the country, if I start at 8 a.m.

 

The Dental A Team (13:05.931)

I can get a hold of the insurance companies. Then I move on to a patient, then I move on to statements or whatever, but I'm power blocking and utilizing locked scheduling rules to get the same results in my position as what I'm looking for in a patient's schedule. So you can literally copy and paste that over and manage those times. But something, Kristy, that I think gets lost in translation sometimes, you can think, power block, I'll time manage, sure.

 

But the second piece, right, first piece is time management, learning how to manage your time, learning how to see that. But the second piece, I can't time manage if I don't know what my duties are. So if we don't have job descriptions, if we haven't been taught how, you what are the results that are driving my position? Because those results that are driving my position that are within the job description, that's going to allow me to be able to see what's the most important thing. Because, Kristy, you said earlier too,

 

getting the information in is gonna affect the information out. But then we sit in this space, I think, of like trying to figure out, do I get the verification? Do I call on unpaid insurance claims? Do I call patients? Do I send statements? And we're just like, my gosh. And so how do you help doctors to be able to help their team really figure out what that driver is and to be able to say, this is the most important thing or this is where I can time manage these pieces because I can see

 

What I'm responsible for, how do you help doctors to really be able to help their billing departments figure that out?

 

Kristy (14:39.692)

Yeah.

 

Absolutely. So even with AR, there's the lag measure and the lead measure, right? So the lead measure part of it, I always feel is the verification process. So having somebody that's dedicated and is working ideally two days out in advance to get those benefit breakdowns. Obviously, our goal isn't to be insurance driven, but we want to be insurance accurate, again, so that people working and collecting over the counter have

 

that information and we're giving proper estimates and even making proper financial agreements, right? So first off, again, that pre-working ahead of getting the verification, but then also at time of, you know, it's one thing to treatment plans, but it's another to present and understand how the patient's going to take care of it with the financial arrangement. understanding

 

The Dental A Team (15:18.413)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kristy (15:40.114)

who's doing the verification, who's our treatment coordinators that are going to cement the financial plans. And then last piece of that is who will be doing the follow up. Who's doing the follow up on patient AR and who's doing the follow up on the insurance AR. So kind of just painting that clarity in the duties and then supporting each other in those blocked times, right? So each person has their dedicated time.

 

The Dental A Team (15:51.113)

That's it.

 

The Dental A Team (15:56.846)

Thank you.

 

The Dental A Team (16:07.852)

Yeah, exactly. And those job descriptions really narrow down to those results. Like, what is the result that we're after for the insurance verification, right? The result is that we're two days ahead on making sure that all the information is in the system. The result for the case acceptance is to ensure that we have, you know, 98 % case acceptance because we're living in a world of dreams, right? But we've got like 75 % case acceptance as our goal. So how do we do that?

 

and they all lead into each other. So what Kristy's like leading to, right, is if we can get that information right on the verification, now our treatment coordinator is able to present accurate or as close to accurate estimates as we can, which means that on the back end side of that, whether it's the treatment coordinator or checkout person collecting, they're collecting over the counter correctly, and our billing department hopefully has the least amount of money possible that they're chasing.

 

So I love that because it leads into one another. Now, sometimes you guys, your practice, you might only have one person or two people that are doing all three of those things. And that's okay too. You've got to figure out what are the most important things for my practice to know before a patient gets here? What are the most important pieces? Like, what am I going to be treatment planning? What kind of an estimate do I need to give to my patient?

 

that's the information that you need to get on your verification. So you might be able to really dwindle that down as compared to a practice that's got five or six part office people and they're doing surgeries and they're doing all on fours and they're doing an anesthesia in the office. Like all of these pieces that you might see other practices asking for, you might not need those. So really figuring out what is it that I need for my practice that I can get the right information and who's doing it.

 

The job descriptions are huge. When we know our lead measures, like what is it that I'm after? Now I can see, okay, is this affecting that? Like, is this going to positively impact that or is this busy work? Because sometimes we might get lost in, I don't know, confirmations, which are incredibly important, but is that my job? As a billing coordinator, right? Or if you've got two or three for an office who don't have...

 

The Dental A Team (18:19.893)

really segregated duties, I oftentimes will walk in and I'll see three or four different people, like, everyone's doing confirmation, like, well, we got to the appointments confirmed. Absolutely. But can one person do confirmations while someone else does something else? Because there are 5,000 things that we have to get done in a day. And if we're all doing confirmations, then we're probably only hitting five of the 5,000. So really figuring those spaces out.

 

making sure that it's twindled down so that somebody can say, okay, these are the most important tasks of my day today, and this is how I'm going to manage my time. Third to that is going to be the systems. You already, you know, alluded there and spoke about the systems of getting the information in. But then, Kristy, I think it's insanely important for a billing coordinator to have a system and a protocol for all of the other pieces. Like, I've seen so many practices I've walked in and they've got

 

I had a practice that had over $200,000 in outstanding claims, and I'm like, gosh, that makes me sweat, right? Because it's so stressful, and they're like, well, I call when I have time. Well, there's our time management space, and they don't know how important it is, right? So they don't know how to manage their time, they don't know when they should be calling, because they don't have it blocked out.

 

And then two, they're not understanding that this is one of the most important things that you could be doing in your position. So they're doing busy work. I've literally seen, I walked into a practice and I love this practice dearly. We've gotten so far. But I was watching the billing coordinator get interrupted because the billing coordinator was the only one who had the information in her head on the insurance metrics. And so the treatment coordinator would need her to do.

 

the estimates for the treatment coordinator, but then also she knew all the patients. So she was doing some of the like phone calls that were coming in and she was doing confirmations. And I was like, well, this is why you have $200,000 of insurance claims. Like it was wild. So that one, that one practice like encompasses all of these. The billing rep didn't know her job descriptions because she didn't know the most important pieces or she didn't know how to do them. So she wasn't doing them. She didn't know how to manage her time. And then the

 

The Dental A Team (20:29.266)

protocols just weren't set in place yet. So one of my favorite protocols is really making sure that you have at least one day a week that you've got dedicated time to work on unscheduled unpaid claims. And then also a separate, would do them on two separate days just because I don't like to do them all together. It's overwhelming for me, right? So I do one day of unpaid claims every week, some hours in there, and then I would do maybe two days later.

 

patient balances, calling on unpaid patient balances. So you can do them together. I don't care what you guys decide. That's how my brain works. But Kristy, that's how I like to do it, where it's like week one, you've got four different brackets, right, of unpaid money on both insurance and patient that you're working on. So I literally have practices, and the way I did it when I was in practice is that I just split it up by those four, right, those four brackets. So week one, I would do zero to 30.

 

week two, to 60, right? And so on. And then, Kristy, what I did as well is I started to rotate when those statements would go out or the reminders for those. So I'd be calling on one bracket and sending statements that same week for two brackets later so that hopefully by the time I got to them, they'd also received a statement. So they were getting statements.

 

phone calls, if I had to leave a message, I'd leave a text. Like this whole rotating system was put into place and I put it into place for a lot of practices and it's helped a ton of really being able to see how I needed to break out that week. And I think if I were to walk in to a new position and I didn't know that these were my metrics, I don't know that I would have been able to think, okay,

 

How do I take what my job is, what I'm supposed to do, and do it in a manner that I can get it done? So I would do those. one more piece I did forget, right? Splitting up the alphabet for your statements, you guys. Holy cow. Like, don't send them all at once, split them up. But Kristy, what else do you have? I know you work a ton on this stuff with a lot of practices. I see the emails and the texts like currently going back and forth and really dialing that in because dentists and doctors, owners, they don't really know that space.

 

Kristy (22:24.391)

Yeah

 

The Dental A Team (22:43.879)

So we've got rotating weeks, we've got patient and insurance, we've got all the pieces. What other piece do you feel like is super necessary to have within some sort of protocol for time management and all of those pieces?

 

Kristy (22:57.39)

Yeah, well, much like you, I love breaking it up. It serves for two purposes, right? Number one, it's more manageable for the team. And number two, it helps keep the revenue coming in all month long, right? And also you have to remember every time we send those statements, typically phone calls follow. So when they're doing them all at once, we're creating a huge load for the team. I like you identify daily, weekly and monthly duties and make sure I mean, I know we're

 

The Dental A Team (23:09.267)

Yes.

 

Kristy (23:27.344)

talking AR, but everything funnels into that, right? So make sure you're sending your claims every day, not once a week, not once a month, every day. Make sure we're posting every day those checks that are coming in. And I would also say weekly run your unclaimed or unattached procedures and any unsent claims, any unsent secondary claims, right?

 

The Dental A Team (23:34.899)

Yep.

 

The Dental A Team (23:52.113)

Yeah.

 

Kristy (23:55.61)

And like you, I like the technology. Utilize your text to pay feature too. Like once we enter those payments, don't wait for the end of the week to send a statement or end of the month to send a statement, right? Send a text to pay right then or the next day. And again, it's chunking it out so it's more manageable.

 

The Dental A Team (24:03.463)

Yes.

 

The Dental A Team (24:11.635)

Yeah.

 

Kristy (24:21.775)

And also you can make your calls with insurance, break it up by insurance company, right? Being more efficient with our time that we have blocked out.

 

The Dental A Team (24:28.052)

Thank

 

The Dental A Team (24:31.74)

Yeah, I love that. And I would even put that in my power blocking, right? If I knew that I might even say the first 15 minutes is going to be Delta from zero to 60 outstanding claims and my second might be met life or something like that. So I love that just makes my brain go, okay, actually with that idea, I can make it even more efficient than what I have been doing just by adding Kristy's idea to what I've been doing. So thank you, Kristy I think that was brilliant.

 

I think there's so much meat today to consume. There's so much information packed into this short, like just under 30 minute podcast. So I hope you guys have been taking notes. I really, really want you guys to learn how to cut your AR in half if it's already there or how to keep it from getting high. Remember, your AR should be less than one month's total production goal. So if your goal is 300,000.

 

You better be under that 300,000. If your goal is 60,000, you better be under 60,000. Like it doesn't matter. You need to be under one month's production goals and or whatever your consistent average is. So go work on those protocols. You guys, have three action items. You need time management. So figure out some time management skills, work with your team and teach them the copy and paste method. You guys already know so much about block scheduling. Make sure your job descriptions and the duties.

 

Number one, are divvied out between multiple people. And number two, super clear. Even if you only have two front office people, you guys, and they always say, no, it's fine, we do everything, we work together and we get through it. I want responsibilities to each person. They can still flip-flop, they can do whatever they want, but they need to be held accountable to certain items. I don't care how many people you have up there. So number two, job descriptions. Number three, set standards and protocols, especially around your billing, you guys.

 

Start from the beginning for sure. Make sure that the information going in is accurate, but right away you guys, if you're trying to cut down your AR, get those standards into place and make sure that they are working on these pieces. Because the thing I see most often is that we don't have time because there are other things that are taking precedence. And to me, that just tells me they don't know how to figure out what the most important thing is. And you've got to go back to step two, job descriptions. Hey.

 

The Dental A Team (26:50.167)

Kristy, thank you so much for being here today. I knew you'd have some brilliant, brilliant ideas. love, I am like efficiency minded and I go there, but then you always stack something, layer it, something else on top of that, or I'm like, my gosh, even that again would make it more efficient. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you for bringing your ideas. And Kristy, is there anything departing statement that you want to leave our doctors with today?

 

Kristy (27:15.5)

No, just have fun with it, you know, and be in relationship with your patients. If there's a little balance afterward, make that quick phone call. I mean, it could be as easy as, hey, know, insurance, there was a little bit remaining. Did you want to add it to your last auto debit or are we scheduling it for one more month? You know, really be in relationship because ultimately it's about getting them the care they deserve and collecting for the treatment you're doing. So, yeah.

 

The Dental A Team (27:42.232)

You always have a nugget at the end. Thank you so much. Doctors, I hope you loved this. Take this information back to your team. Share this podcast with them. Team members, if you're listening to it you're like, actually, my doc needs to know what I'm doing, send it over to your doc. Let them listen to it. And you guys always, always, always reach out with any questions, any concerns. If you need help with the protocols or more ideas, hello.

 

Kristy (27:45.294)

Of course.

 

The Dental A Team (28:05.418)

At thegeneralateam.com, we are always, always, always open to sharing all of our information and getting those things over to you. Thank you all, and we'll catch you next time.

 

Kiera gives listeners 3 tactical tips on exactly how to find and put a stop to cash flow leaks and grow your practice exponentially.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00.824)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and welcome to today's show. You guys, I'm so excited to have you here. I absolutely love podcasting. I can honestly not believe that we have created as many podcasts as we have and thank you for being a part of this journey. So today, you guys, I wanted to just ask you that like, are you struggling with cashflow leaks in your practice? I think this is such a big hot topic for you that I cannot wait to go into it because honestly,

 

Every dollar leaking out of your practice is a dollar not reinvested into your growth. So really there's a few couple quick cashflow leaks that I see in tons of practices that I wanted to share with you. These small little changes, tweaks are going to add up to exponential amounts of cash in your practice just by stopping these small few cashflow leaks. We did a webinar on this the other day and it was super, super popular. So I thought I'd bring a few of those highlights over here to the podcast.

 

As always, you guys know we are the Dental A Team and our job is to help practices optimize profitability, increase their happiness and fulfillment and truly make teams and doctors get on the same page to be able to live the best life that they possibly can. That's what we're about, you guys. Honest to goodness, I do know that cash flow is the lifeblood of a practice and the way that we prevent these leaks and the way that we're able to grow our practices is by being great stewards over the businesses that we have. This is gonna be a short

 

actionable podcast for you. guys know I like tactical practical and I'm super happy you're here. If you're new to the show, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. If you've been an OG, which stands for original gangster, I used to think it was an oldie but goodie. I found out that that's not the case. If you're an OG, I'm so glad that you're here and that you've been on this journey with me. Please, please as always, leave a review if it's helpful for you and make sure that you're sharing this with friends because the reality is our goal is to positively impact the world.

 

in the greatest way possible. And the way we do that is through expert consulting for dentists and teams. So we are the Dr. Seuss of systems. We are the gurus of making practices, like truly be simple, living at profitable practice and making it simple. All right, are you ready for these three simple tips? I hope you are. Number one, I want you to, like I said, we just did this of how to stop these cashflow leaks. And what you wanna do is you wanna look at some numbers. So you wanna look at the last six months production.

 

Kiera Dent (02:18.902)

You want to look at the last six months collections. And then you also want to do your collection percentage per month and also your collection percentage over the last six months. The reason it's important for this is some months will actually have a lower collection percentage. That's okay. So for example, a lot of practices in December only worked 2 weeks. And so then you have to think that money rolls 30 days. And when it rolls 30 days, then what's going to happen is we're going to collect that money. So if in December we only did 50,000, then in January we did a hundred thousand.

 

Well, I only have 50,000 over here to collect to then be able to go into my 100,000. Well, that's going to be low collections. But over the course of the year, we should be averaging a 98 % collection amount. We also want look at our patient AR, our insurance AR, our adjustments, claims not sent to insurance, procedures not attached to insurance, P &L revenue matching collections, because a lot of times maybe we're not collecting even though it looks like we're collecting. So making sure money in the bank actually matches the money that's coming into the practice.

 

And then doing an overhead deep dive, are there things that we could cut, subscriptions we no longer need, things that we've been paying for forever, just like in personal finance, right? Like when you go look and you're like, my gosh, we're paying for all these subscriptions, we're not even using half of them, that's a cashflow leak. So a lot of common causes of cashflow leaks are going to be unnecessary adjustments in your practice, claims and procedures not sent to insurance. Literally this one report, have literally...

 

brought 50,000 into a practice in one simple report. So it's a huge, huge zone to take a look at. Over-the-counter collections, maybe those aren't up, they're not high enough. And then not having a good claim follow-up, insufficient AR follow-up. So claims are one thing, we're sending out those statements. And the other side is that we're actually looking at our AR, following up on those claims, making sure that they're not having denials, resubmits, those types of things, high expenses, and then not producing enough to cover our expenses. So.

 

A lot of these things come in tandem. And so I just wanted to walk you through a quick three things to do. So #1 I want you to really focus on tightening up that insurance and collections process. Like truly, truly, truly, how are we doing this? Because I brought in $1000s to a practice. There was an office I consulted in Oregon. We were able to take them from producing about a $100,000 to $150,000 by being in their practice one time. And in 30 days, they were up to that amount. People were like, Kiera, how did you do it? And I'm like, well, 1

 

Kiera Dent (04:37.1)

We've made the scheduling better and we presented full treatment. And 2 we were able to increase their collections simply by just collecting at the end of the appointment. And I know that sounds so like primary and so juvenile, but the reality is all of this is simple. It's very simple. And so I hope that you take this on and you realize that these are just simple things. So when we don't have a good insurance process and collection process, then what happens is we delay the money even further. Already with insurance as we're on a 30 day delay.

 

most of the time. You can actually be faster than that in practices. I have some offices that get paid in 2 weeks, but the reality is usually we're on a 30 day delay. So going back to our December example where we made 50,000, then we were produced 100,000, well, our collections are going to be down, but just think what if we actually are even further delayed? Well, that's going to send it down further and further and further. I've seen offices where in their over 90, they have tons and I'm talking millions sitting in their over 90. Well, that's very stressful because A,

 

that's money that should be collected. You did the work and B, if it gets too far out there, we actually can't collect from insurance. So what we wanna do is we wanna make sure that we're verifying the patient's insurance benefits before they come into the practice, make sure we have correct fee schedules attached so we're able to present correctly. Then we wanna make sure we're submitting claims within 24 hours at the most. I either like them submitted at the end of the day or the next day. Make sure all of our attachments, all of our narratives, all of our inter-orals, all of our x-rays are truly like attached correctly.

 

Clean claims out, clean claims in. Like we wanna make sure that we're paid and then make sure that we have an automated way to have like our balances collected once we get the insurance there. So we wanna be watching our insurance payments and we also wanna be watching our patient payments. So we wanna collect a time of service. So whatever their patient portion is, I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend that we collect at time of service. We're also watching for balances when patients are checking in that we're actually collecting at that time as well. So.

 

When they check in, if there's a balance, we collect right then and there. Also when we present treatment plans or when they're doing their treatment, we're collecting payment at that time as well. I understand they're not going to be perfect. I understand there's a lot of fear around this of, Kiera, what happens though if we misestimate? And I'm gonna say you become an amazing word ninja. I would much rather you collect rather than chase money. I think all of us would rather get paid rather than chasing our paychecks down the street. Same thing with patients. Once they're gone, there's no longer a need for them to be doing

 

Kiera Dent (07:00.35)

to paying for it. So I really, really, really, really, really encourage you to do this and then make sure that what we're doing is we're actually checking our insurance every single week. So we're checking and working those 30, 60, 90 day claims. We're making sure that we're working on the biggest balances first and then we're able to then chip away at it and collect. Patient portions, go call them. Please, please, please stop sending statements. Call those patients right now. Get them on the books. Make sure we're getting them taken care of.

 

That is one of the easiest ways to stop these cashflow leaks in your practice. So the goal is make sure great insurance verification is there, make sure we're submitting claims, and then make sure that we're actually speeding up our collection process by staying on top of it every single week, hitting those biggest balances. There's more in depth for it, but that's a quick highlight of what you can do. Step 2 is control our overhead and unnecessary expenses. So now we've talked about, we fixed the problem with hopefully collecting. We fixed the process of making sure that we're getting our payments faster.

 

And now we need to make sure we're looking at our overhead and the expenses to see what on there is unnecessary. Like I said, like all those subscriptions, I don't know how many times I see like in real life, we're paying for Netflix, we're paying for Hulu, we're paying for Amazon Prime, we're paying for all these different ones, but we're actually only using one or 2 of them. Could we cut some of those out? It doesn't change our quality of life, but it does change our bank account and small little things add up. I did a podcast on this, a little areas where you can find this in your overhead expenses.

 

But the reality is like, can you start to actually order your supplies through something like Synergy or Ordo, which are 2 great companies that are actually supply companies that do it in bulk to reduce, like you're getting the exact same product, but you're able to actually reduce the cost. Why not do that? Just asking questions like we're buying the same bread, let's get it for half off or pay full price. I'm gonna get it for half off. It's the same bread, same price, like same quality.

 

just different pricing because we're able to buy it through group pricing. So can we negotiate? Can we talk to our reps? Can we make sure? Also, can we set a supply budget for the person who's ordering? I like four to 5 % for supplies. You take your pick for ordering dental supplies. So last month we collected 100,000, 4,000 or 5,000 would be our supply budget. Give that budget on Excel tracker to your ordering team member and have them deduct down making sure they stay within budget.

 

Kiera Dent (09:16.856)

This way they're able to then assess and make sure we really are spending the appropriate amount. This gets them scrappy. They start looking for better deals, but it cuts those overhead expenses that are unnecessary for you. Can we also look for better lab deals? I know we love our lab person, but maybe there's a new lab that's come onto the scene that's just as good, if not better, but maybe not as high of pricing as our current labs. I'm not here to say cut dentistry for one second. I'm just saying kind of like car insurance, let's go look around and see. And I'm not saying that labs are equal. I understand that all labs are different.

 

and we wanna make sure we give our patients the highest quality. I'm just saying if you haven't looked for a while, let's see if we could get a different way to have a different lab fee for us. Can we negotiate other areas within like our subscriptions, looking to see what can we cut, going line by line by line to see are there extra expenses in there? I know like I pay for audible, but I switched over to Libby. Libby is great, I use a ton of it, I'm constantly on there. Do I still need my audible expense on the overhead?

 

Do we still need to be paying for the subscription? Like I know for us, we have a lot of subscriptions, a lot of softwares. Is there a software that we could get a discounted rate? What about our credit card processing fees? Could we maybe switch over to a company like Mula and maybe save on that? Honest to goodness, plug for Mula. If you're looking at credit card processors or you're questioning Mula, tell Mark from Mula that we sent you over there. Clients who I've recommended to Mula have loved it because they're cheaper.

 

They're more affordable, their rates are incredible, there's no contract, they're able to get their membership plans on it, they're saving money. Even that one or 2 % change on your credit card statement can radically increase the cashflow leaks in your practice. And then just like make sure that our payroll, like let's look at our human capital. I am not here to cut costs for payroll. I'm here to pay our team members insanely well, but let's make sure that can we re-utilize our human capital? Could we maybe outsource certain things that we don't need in-house?

 

What do we have? And let's just make sure that what we're doing and producing, we're adequately staffed, that we're adequately doing our jobs. And that if there's easier ways, like we've outsourced certain jobs for virtual assistants. And I know a lot of offices have done that and it's been great. It's been amazing. We've been able to benefit from it. You have opinions about that. I'm not here to tell you one way or another. I am here to say, maybe be open to the ideas around it, just to see what can we do. And so my call to action on tip number 2 for controlling overhead.

 

Kiera Dent (11:38.038)

and unnecessary expenses is go and do an expense audit and look to see what can we do to cut costs. Maybe there's nothing, but I promise you there's probably one, 2 or three things that you could actually change or adjust. I do this every single quarter. So when the quarter ends, the CPA sends me over a detailed P &L line by line by line. I'm looking at that to make sure that I'm actually staying in track. All right, step number three.

 

is I really want you to look at making sure that we're producing enough. So are we optimizing our schedule and are we producing enough? Because a lot of times cashflow leaks come from the insurance and the collections and the overhead, but maybe we need to also look at our scheduling to make sure we're productive on there. And we're also making sure that we're producing enough for our expenses. So what I like and what I prefer is 50 % for expenses is what your overhead should be, not including doctors.

 

So if we're producing 100,000, 50,000 should be our expenses. So trying to just get that into line for you. So now if I know my costs are 80,000, we'll just double that, we should be producing 160,000. So that's very loose math. Don't worry with our clients, I do this a lot more in depth. Not always can we get to 50 % in all states, but generally speaking, we're able to get there by doing a lot of these pieces. So now I'm gonna look at your schedule and see.

 

If we need to produce 160,000, A, do we have enough spots for new patients? B, do we have block scheduling in place to make sure that with the new patients, with the SRPs, with the perio maintenance, we're then able to produce what we need to produce for what we actually need to pay our practice. So if we need to produce 160,000, well, do we have enough blocks in there? And we figured out the puzzle pieces to make sure that we're actually able to produce that amount. And then when we do have cancellations or different things in there that we're

 

filling the schedule that we're doing the 15 minute quick fill that we're looking for little ways to optimize our schedule because a lot of times practices don't hit their overhead that they want to hit not because they don't have the space in their schedule but because they have so many open spaces. So what's your open time in your schedule? Let's look at that. Could we reduce that down? What are some different areas that we could really make this easier for you? And then making sure that we're actually hitting our goals consistently and we're working as a team for that. So.

 

Kiera Dent (13:50.828)

The reality is I have a lot of practices who do these things, not a lot, all of them. So as consultants, we're looking at what is your block schedule? How many new patients do we need to have? How many, can we optimize this? Let's look at your overhead month over month. Let's look at your collection percentages year over year. Let's make sure that we are actually collecting the amount that we need to. Let's look at the different items within. Let's track your KPIs monthly with you and look at all these expenses. I was on a call the other day and the doctor, we were like, gosh, their overheads high. And we looked.

 

We were spending a lot on marketing. We were spending a lot on supplies. so making these small little tweaks and changes are how we find the cashflow leaks. And I know you want this, maybe like ding, a little fairy godmother over here. Yes, I can do that as we're a one-on-one private consultant for you. But listening to the podcast, I want to encourage you to take these three steps on and to truly go and look at how is our collection process and what are we doing? Then I want you to look at your overhead and unnecessary expenses and then do an audit of your schedule to see

 

Hey, what adjustments could we make to make this actually be better? So these are some of the quick hits for you on the cashflow leaks that I know really can help you out and can grow your practice exponentially. This is what I'm passionate about if you can't tell. I love helping offices learn how to stop the cashflow leaks to be able to produce what they wanna produce and be able to provide the lifestyle that they want for themselves and for their team members. And it's through like little, little things like this. Consulting's nothing crazy or sexy.

 

The changes that we make in practices are usually so simple, but the simple things are not always easy. And so making sure you have an accountability buddy, someone who's gonna check in with you, someone who's gonna make sure you're doing this consistently, because consistency is key when it comes to these cashflow and overhead leaks. I'm so excited for you guys to try this. So if you want some help uncovering some cashflow leaks in your practice,

 

Just DM me or even go to our website, TheDentalATeam.com. We actually do a free practice assessment for offices where we look through to see what areas can we help you optimize your practice. So if that resonates with you, I'd love to chat with you. But truly you deserve to have the financial strength and the financial guidance that you truly want and deserve. And the reality is we're here for you. Denaliateam is here for you. We love and adore you. And I know that everything that you want that you are truly hoping to achieve.

 

Kiera Dent (16:10.368)

is going to be capable for you. So as always, thank you for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

 

Block scheduling can transform your productivity into profitability. Kiera makes the implementation as easy as 1, 2, 3:

1. Identify your practice's production goals.

2. Design your ideal block schedule.

3. Implement, train, and track.

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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, [email protected] 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. [email protected] And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.