Re-releasing a DAT listener favorite!

Dr. Dave Moghadam joins Kiera to discuss getting your hygiene team on the same page and at the same point of understanding. He shares his approach, and goes deeper into the following:

1. Gather all information and establish a flow of procedure

2. Hold a longer meeting for your hygiene team to review and add their own ideas

3. Allow a period of follow-up for questions

4. Transition into monthly or quarterly meetings to continually update

Dr. Moghadam utilized the Dental A-Team's hygiene course to help him come up with this approach to calibrate his hygienist team.

Episode resources:

Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast

Schedule a Practice Assessment

Leave us a review

Transcript:

speaker-0 (00:05)

Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I have this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you.

Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A-Teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.

Hello Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And you guys, I am so excited to bring back on one of my favorite guests, one of your favorite guests, somebody who is in the real life with you guys. He is a practicing dentist, rocks our office. I've known him for quite a while. And he's a man that creates systems, implements and executes. And today I'm jazzed to bring him back on. Dr. Dave Moghadam, how are you today?

speaker-1 (01:13)

Wonderful, Kiera. Thanks for having me back. appreciate it. It's gonna be a blast as always.

speaker-0 (01:17)

It's

gonna be great if you guys have not heard his other ones we've talked about we've gone from acquiring practices Bringing on associate doctors. We've talked about team quarterly calibrations and now we're gonna dive into something that you started I actually think you started it maybe COVID maybe you're doing it pre-covid ⁓ But but it's going to be diving into hygiene calibration, which I think is so relevant. I mean right now hi, Janice are like more Harder to find than unicorns in my opinion. They're like real real tricky

But we just know that they're real. I think it's a great time actually to bring this in. So Dave, kind of walk us through, like I said, you're practicing, Dennis, this is your real life. This is what you're doing really in your practice, which is why I love having on the podcast. So kind of take us away on this hygiene calibration, how you even got the idea for it, what spurred that. I'd love to hear.

speaker-1 (02:08)

Yeah, so I think as far as like, how did this come about? What was the situation? Everything like that. Some of the key things that were happening were I had focused a lot on a lot of the rest of the practice, like a lot on systemize this, do this, let's grow and everything else was just really just taking off. But the one thing year after year after year that was kind of like fairly consistent, not really like, my God, really, you know, growing was the hygiene department.

So I started to look into things of, how can we just improve? And I always feel like if we improve some of the other basic stuff, the numbers fall. So I think a lot of the things that I was ⁓ looking to do was just getting some consistency, make sure everybody's on the same page. At that point, had gotten, yeah, this was about two years ago. So we had just gotten a new hygienist to join our team who's been with us ⁓ since then.

We had another hygienist who was only there a day a week at that time. So it was kind of a little difficult to try and get everything all buttoned up. the way I went about it was one, I first took the big chunk of what we had in our operations manual, such as protocols, expectations, standards, record keeping, all that stuff. And then the other thing is I

contacted you and I said, Hey, what do you have for this? Because we're all going to be on our butts for a while when the world closed down for a little bit. we went through the hygiene course. I took some, some pearls from there. tried to organize things a little bit more. Uh, we did a little bit of coaching with, Tiffany as well, uh, virtually then. So we basically, the, outline for this, you know, it was basically protocols standards, you know, what

⁓ record keeping, know, what if you encounter some hiccups with patients, you know, as far as, know, those types of situations, ⁓ you know, what's the appointment flow like, what's the communication, like what are the key points that we want to hit on, ⁓ teeing up the doctor, pre-teeing up the doctor, which I'll get into in a little bit. ⁓ And then, you know, a lot of this is kind of reviewing our, basically chunking out our routes.

is very detailed and that kind of like highlights a lot of this stuff. And then we get into you know some basis of treatment planning, incorporating some bundles which is a concept that you guys helped us you know incorporate and bring in, and then just talking about some of the other basic stuff like how do we talk about fluoride, you know why is it important to ask for referrals, and then you know financial discussions which basically means just don't have the financial.

speaker-0 (04:56)

Right. Yes, I love it. Well, and I love it. Something I wanted to point out is I feel like there's actually a ton of opportunities all around us. It's just, we willing to see them and then actually execute on them? So you saw COVID as a time we're all hanging out. We've got nothing to do. This is the area that I haven't spent any time on. So like, let's make this rock solid. And I think there's so many opportunities like that. Hopefully not another pandemic shutdown, but there.

all around us all the time. So Dave, let's actually deep dive if you don't mind on a lot of these topics. I know that's kind what we came today for just so people get an idea of how you calibrated your hygiene team on this. Like you gave the resources. Yes guys, if you want to get our hygiene course, we're constantly updating it. It's getting ready to move to all videos. Once you purchase the course, you have it for life. definitely

speaker-1 (05:43)

You're kidding, right? I wonder who gave that suggestion.

speaker-0 (05:46)

That was Dave, which is great because I came in with steal of a deal and said like give me honest feedback and then I felt bad your team was going through as we were rampantly

speaker-1 (05:56)

That's really going to button it up. ⁓

speaker-0 (05:59)

Good

good. So we're working on videos working on audio, but we're constantly updating and innovating it and asking for your guys's feedback So if that's helpful for you fantastic, like Dave said we did do virtual calls with his hygiene team very spot specific but kind of like walk us down through this Of like what exactly does this calibration look like you listed those items kind of deep dive with us on it. Yeah

speaker-1 (06:19)

Yeah,

that was just a lot of verbal diarrhea there. I just kind of threw it out there. So we'll break it down. We'll go section by section. Yeah. is what happens. So basically, as far as protocols and standards and things like that, I mean, that's just kind of the basics of what are we expected to do. It's kind of like if you think of onboarding, it's repetitive. It's a review. But kind of like, what do you expect to do in the morning, during the appointment, at the end of the day, kind of going through, making sure everybody knows what the

all that looks like, making sure that they're very clear on like what's expected for the end of day sheets that, you know, that they take pictures of and turn in every day, all that stuff. You know, record keeping, you know, how often are we doing, you know, probing, how often are we taking x-rays, you know, what kind of photos do we expect? And then as far as like pickups that relate to that, I mean, we, I think of it in a positive way, half our patient base is 60 and a

I love it. It's a really a wonderful type of practice, but in over the past five years of, ⁓ know, initially early on transitioning and taking over a practice like that, and then taking in other practices like that, we get a lot of stuff where people think that the X-ray head is gonna melt their faces. And, you know, because of that, it's kind of like, well, let's figure out a way, what's gonna be our kind of standardized way of how we're gonna address these concerns.

What are we going to go ahead and do? So we like a little pamphlet basically that shows some examples of things, why we take x-rays, what could be missed, all that stuff. Very simple, very straightforward. Has a little chart that we just kind of found somewhere on Google about radiation, the mouse, like that. And they kind of have their set kind of like, hey, we go through all that stuff. And if it kind of becomes a push versus shove moment, they have to come grab me, which I don't really love, but it is what it is.

And then we kind of go from there. So that's not to get sidetracked, but that's kind of, you know, one of those things. Like when we have situations where things may not necessarily go smoothly, it doesn't matter what the actual answer is. Everybody just has to know it.

speaker-0 (08:23)

Right, right. No, I love that. And I was going to say, Dave, based on our last podcast we did, you know, they've to come get you maybe throw that into your calibration role play. What do we say to these patients? ⁓ But I really do.

speaker-1 (08:36)

I don't necessarily want to encourage.

I like to do dental treatment and sit at my desk and drink water.

speaker-0 (08:43)

I definitely agree and that's what I feel like most dentists feel. So I like that. So with that, I like that you do that. So how does this kind of hygiene calibration look? Do you do it consistently? Is it like once a year that you do it? Did the hygienist help create it with you? They brought up the issues that they were coming with. I kind of break it down. Like if I'm a brand new office, I don't really know. I want to do this. I'm hearing you do this. What are kind of the steps to be able to actually get this into my practice and start running it?

speaker-1 (09:10)

Yeah, so I think the big thing is I think you gotta just like deep dive into it, like do it once over whether it's like one really long appointment or like maybe a couple of weeks of a couple of hours. I think it's a lot to try and like just be like, yeah, you're gonna like remember all of this stuff. Like even if we do every three months, stuff like that. ⁓ And right after we did it, we were doing weekly hygiene meetings.

So we kind of will like chunk out, you know, little pieces of this to kind of get a little bit more granular or kind of talk about how we improve doing weekly meetings is a lot, it just was really, and we were just being very, very inconsistent with it. So I was kind of like, ⁓ like it's Tuesday and yesterday was Monday and Monday was really hard. And now I'm really tired and you know, Dr. Seth's not here today and I'm around all morning. So you know what? I just feel like,

not doing this at once. That's what would happen. So now we basically have at least one scheduled each month and a second one that's kind of like floating. Where so that one we're going to no matter what kind of go through some of this. And then if there's another topic that we kind of want to dial, you know, dive into a little bit more, that's at the second one. It makes it a lot more manageable to go ahead and do things that way. I think when you chunk it out like that, these are not like 20, 30 minutes. You know I'm saying? Like, you know, after everybody's kind of

had some time to relax before we're to start to see our patients again. But I think the first thing is really making a big, you know, let's get all the information organized together. Let's go through it all. Let's make sure somebody's on the same page. ⁓ I would assume, you know, as we're going to hopefully be onboarding, we'll find an onboarding another hygienist, you know, over the next several months, it would be something that would be a big chunk of the onboarding process. But I think, you know,

we'll get to it. I mean, there's a lot, a lot more to go through, but I think having done this for a while and I realized sometimes when you kind of have this, even if somebody, if they've helped make it and you're kind of just driving those points home sometimes, you know, like we talked about in our podcast, things will get stale or there's a way to do it better. And I really have felt that, you know, uh, over time, if I've in the times that I've tried to really, you know, ask for feedback and listen in an environment that doesn't seem so

confrontational, know, hygienists and all my team members really sometimes bring these just like amazing, wonderful ideas that I never really would have thought of about. And that's really how I think it really kind of starts to really grow and evolve. And that's hard because, you know, a lot of times everybody, every team member is different. And we have some that are a little...

touchy about things. And a lot of times I try and explain that, you know, everything that we were talking about here is not like, Hey, you did like a crap job at this. It's kind of like, Hey, like, I want to try and see how we can make this a better situation for our patients, for you, for me, is there a way that we can maybe try this to see if this is better? Like what suggestions do you have? want to make sure you know, overall,

That's the thing, because I always am that type of person that's like, let's make this better, better, better. Sometimes people think it's like, hey, you're doing a not good job. like, no, you're doing a great job. I just don't sit still. And that's kind of a problem. I'm sorry it comes across that. So I've gotten my office manager a little bit more involved as far as like, you know, she's in the meetings as well and asking some more of these questions that I think it's led to a little bit less of a like.

confrontation, a lot of this confrontation, but less, you know, heated kind of environment. That's a great idea has come out of things here.

speaker-0 (12:53)

Well, I think it's because you're also getting into that. Yeah, you're also calibrating with them. And so it becomes more of a learning versus a dictation. And that's where I think the freedom is the freedom to come up with ideas, the freedom to give that feedback when it's when it's coming together to calibrate and to connect versus judging critique. And so I feel like you did a good job of spinning it getting everyone there. So if I'm breaking this down for an office, it sounds like one.

gather all the information of like kind of the flow of the procedure. Like what is it, what's involved in that? Thinking of, mean, Dave gave you a really great checklist real quick of those items. And then from there, it sounds like set up a time, maybe over lunch, maybe do a longer one to two hour meeting where you kind of have the outline of it, go through it all. I did this with an office that I was consulting with and I literally gave them about an hour and a half. They went through the whole process, looked at everything, added pieces in. And then the next day we followed up, it was very short.

Just to make sure like what questions that they have Then they can roll into like monthly meetings on this or or every quarter just kind of calibrating reviewing checking to see But I thought you also brought up a good point of making sure that once it is solidified Which again duns better than perfect because guys it will never be perfect. It will constantly updated So don't spend your next three and sixty five days trying to perfect this darn thing like get it done So it's at least something for when you onboard people and then continually update it as well. So

Dave, you had said there's more that you want to dive into. So take it away. I'm not going to stop you. Give some examples.

speaker-1 (14:20)

No,

for sure. mean, there's a lot. we've gotten talked about, you know, protocols, standards, record keeping stuff, you know, kind of any hiccups like in that, you know, so making sure everybody knows what the expectations are, you know, what to do if there's there's pushback there. The next thing we kind of will dive into is the flow of the appointment. You know, every office is different in how they want to go ahead and do things. You know, I always feel and I'm not the best at this, even though I preach it all the time.

that if you wait until like the last five, 10 minutes of the appointment and you sell somebody like, hey, you have all this stuff that's wrong inside your head, like you just run out the door. So I always feel that in the first 20 minutes, should be, records should be, ⁓ all gathered together, hygienists should start reviewing everything that they potentially see as a problem, kind of warming things up in a sense with the patients there.

and the doctor in that sometime in that next 20 minute window, ideally, somewhere between 20 after 30 after can get in there, talk about what the situation is. And then this time the patient has more time where they can ask questions, go over things. The front office has the heads up if it's something that's involved. Although a lot of times, honestly, if it's more than, it kind of moved more towards this.

If it's more than a couple of things and somebody is going to be in a sense spending more than 5,000 bucks, may want to set up even a small appointment just to re-review things, you know, with the doctor or somebody upfront or something like that. Cause it's all, it's a lot that they can. And honestly, a lot of times, you know, five, 10 minutes doesn't really do the justice that some people will need to really understand what the problem situation is and really own that.

speaker-0 (16:10)

Right.

speaker-1 (16:11)

comes

across as kind of like, my God, they want like, you know, 10 grand from me. I don't even know what the hell's going on.

speaker-0 (16:17)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. No, you're exactly right. And I think something I love that you just talked about on that is you actually helped your team make better decisions without you always having to answer it by saying, hey, I want a consult if it's over 5,000, this is where we should be setting up a consult. I literally just had an office ask me, hey, Kiera, when do you recommend setting up a consult? And I'm like, it's doctor dependent. Because some doctors are presenting 30, 40, 50,000 and they're like, those are fine. It's just laissez faire.

Other dentists are saying, like, no, over, you know, five grand, 10 grand, let's bring them back for a consult. But by having this, like, just expectations and helping your team know the parameters, they can then make a lot smarter decisions moving forward. Independent and confident.

speaker-1 (17:03)

There may be other people out there who are very slick and can get somebody to give them $30,000 in three minutes. That's just, that's.

speaker-0 (17:10)

Right, right, exactly. Exactly.

speaker-1 (17:12)

But

at the end of the day, wouldn't want it to be like that. The way we kind of do everything is like, let's really kind of make sure somebody understands something, makes feels comfortable with the decisions that they're making. Because I would much rather not do anything if somebody doesn't feel comfortable with it than do it and have an issue.

speaker-0 (17:29)

For sure, absolutely.

speaker-1 (17:31)

So I mean, think that's a newer thing that we're kind of moving towards. I think we kind of ballpark it in a sense. Sometimes it's not even a financial thing. Let's say somebody has been going to the same dentist for a long time, they show up and then it's like, my God, there's like, know, 16 surfaces of decay. And like, it's just like, okay, well, yeah, this is not gonna be a two minute conversation. This is like, hey, I see a lot of things going on. Let me highlight them for you, but let's have you come back and let's really talk about, you know,

what the options are and if something really involved I encourage them to bring a friend or a family member or a second set of years somebody that they can rely on as well because it's a lot of information you it can be overwhelming.

speaker-0 (18:12)

Wow.

Right. Exactly. But I think like overarching big picture on this is you got your hygiene team calibrated with you. You got them because at the end of the day, I feel like hygienists tee up so much for the doctors. They're the ones who spend so much time with these patients. Doctors run in, run out, like you said. I also love that for you. And again, this is doctor preference. Some doctors don't like to do exams when they're not polished and clean, but I like your actually really love your thought process on it. You're right. If you come to an exam,

Lastly, right before that patient leaves, there is no time for them to ask questions to anybody but the front desk. And oftentimes if they have a lot of questions, they're out the door if they plan to be there for an hour. Whereas if they had exam can be in the middle of the appointment, they can ask questions to that hygienist. That hygienist can re-emphasize treatment as well, helping them see like, this is why, can you fill this catch with my instrument here? Like this is what Dr. Mogadam was talking about. So I really love that philosophy and I love that

Again, I think what I'm pulling from this that I hope a lot of other offices are hearing is that you are giving them confidence to make decisions independent of you that are in a line with the direction you want the practice to go. And when people have confidence, they know how to win the day, they've helped co-create it with you, they know how to give the patient the best experience, that gives team members freedom. That gives team members so much, like, just...

just help and greatness that they can do. So I really, really love that you brought that up and how you calibrated your hygiene team. Any other thoughts you have on it, Dave?

speaker-1 (19:43)

other thing that I would mention that it's kind of beneficial if I actually get off my butt and show up at the time that I'm supposed to is let's say somebody has something that's not like, my God, over the top, like, you know, taking out a tooth, graphing it, placing an implant, restoring it, lot of in that. And we have like explosion codes in open dental, but somebody still has to kind of organize it. And then I always want that double checking kind of, you know.

What are we anticipating that their insurance may help them with all that stuff, kind of doing the breakdown. So, oh, know, a lot of times if it's something a little bit more involved, we don't need to bring somebody back though. I'll just walk up front and just say, hey, you know, we're doing this, this and this for Mrs. Jones. Just make sure you have that ready. So it's a much quicker, easier checkout process and just immediately get them scheduled. know, anything beyond like a couple of things, I usually make an effort to walk up there, give them a heads up and, you know, sit at my computer for a minute or two.

a fish, not a

speaker-0 (20:38)

For sure. I love it. And again, I think it's important like guys, Dr. Dave here is telling you like this is what he prefers. This is his style. This is his flow. This is the vibe he likes to have and he's been able to create it in his practice. I will tell you from a team member's perspective and I'll be all I want my doctor super happy. That's literally what makes me so happy. So if I know that Dr. Dave wants to go drink his coffee and wants me to take care of everything else and he's given me the parameters of what to do. Awesome. I'm going to take it on.

If I know Dr. Dave's a dentist who doesn't want to let go, I'm probably going to push him a little bit and remind him he should let go because I got this for him. But at the end of the day, I'm going to do what I can to make him super happy because I know when my doctor's happy, that's one, what I'm there to do as an assistant, as a front office. I'm there to help my doctor's lives be so simple and easy and also to give our patients the best experience. So I just love like you, you looped it all together. You gave the parameters, you co-created with them.

and then you, now you get to have the life that you want to have. Go drink your coffee before seeing your patients, whatever it's needed, because then you also probably have a much smoother day that you look forward to. You probably enjoy dentistry a lot more, which means you're probably going to be a better diagnoser. You're probably going to be better to our patients, probably do better clinical because you are happier. You've got it set. We're able to all flow and gel, which is how the whole practice can move smoother.

speaker-1 (22:00)

definitely. And not to sidetrack us, I'm going to forget if I mention it now. could set something up another time to kind of talk about scheduling protocols as far as how to remember to put borders together for bigger procedures that are multi-step and even also actually creating a schedule where everybody's going to be happy. Because there's the concept of block scheduling, but there's also the concept of what we started doing. I mentioned this to you a little while ago where we schedule based on the types of

procedures that we want to do, not necessarily financial values and stuff like that. And just like with most things that I do, that's not something that I learned myself or created out of thin air. You know, it was something that I heard in other podcasts that I love. They call it in their terms, they call it priority. You know, creating priorities for the types of dentistry that you want to do, which in my mind is way better. You know, I always gear towards things of like,

How do we want to go ahead and make things a better experience for our patients? How do we want to do more of the types of dentistry that we want to do rather than like we're chasing this magic number at the end of the day? Because as for myself, for my team, I know that doesn't really push the needle. But when we kind of talk about all the steps of what's going to get us there, all the stuff that the numbers go up and down, it's good. And then we keep the lights on and we continue to grow and we help more people and employ more.

speaker-0 (23:19)

I love it. I love it. And I'm so glad that you said that and I agree. I think that'd be a really fun podcast to dive into. Because again, scheduling, and I love hearing it from a doctor's perspective, because I will harp on this all day long and say a schedule that you want is actually the best schedule for your patients. Because you're happier, you deliver better dentistry. And when you guys have those boundaries in there, it's so much happier for everybody. So I definitely want to dive into that. I also want to dive into our IT podcast as well, which will be a real fun one.

But to wrap up on hygiene calibration, how often, Dave, do you recalibrate with your hygiene team?

speaker-1 (23:58)

So it's not something that we've done. It's just mostly because we do our meetings. So we kind of loop around on areas that are kind of falling through the cracks a little bit and then expanding on other teams. And a lot of times, you know, we'll get, ⁓ because of what we've talked about where we have like these discussions, ⁓ we'll incorporate some other great things. like we were kind of at certain times where things were getting a little bit lost in the shuffle as far as like, consistently doing probing at the times that we want to or basically having the ⁓

the appropriate codes in for when we're checking the patients out and you something gets lost in the shuffle of the handoff and this and that. So one of the hygienists thought of a great idea of, why don't we create just a dummy code for probing as well? And then, know, when then we talk about how like, you know, when you're creating your next appointment, put everything in that's going to be there, you know, put in put in the probing, put in whatever x-rays are necessary, put it all there. And then when you're doing you're basically you're setting up for the morning huddle.

in six months, it's very easy. All that stuff is basically there. And then we can start focusing on some of the stuff that I want to focus more on as far as like this stuff that actually relates to the patients, what's going on with them, their lives, because everybody can read the schedule, you know? So if that part is not important. Yeah. Yeah. Side note, I don't really love our morning puzzles. That's something we're going to work

speaker-0 (25:18)

That's the next calibration one there Dave. So don't worry. got lots of tips on morning huddle I've revamped those many times and many practices, but I like it. ahead

speaker-1 (25:30)

Yeah, I think getting back to some of the other things that we kind of talk about aside from, you know, appointment flow and everything like that. A lot of what we want the, you know, to all talk about, we have a nice route. So if it kind of goes over, like these are all the things we're checking. So, you know, that makes kind of teeing up the doctor pretty, pretty easy there for the most part. What I wanted to mention about pre-teeing up the doctor is let's say you get another doctor in the practice and it's

it's the first time, it's the second time, it's the third time, whatever time it is, people are going to be like, who is this human being that is walking in the door? So, you know, I think really, you know, taking a second and making sure that, you know, the hygienist know, you know, when they know it's going to be that doctor doing the exam, they know what to say. So what we kind of scripted out here is, you know, we've been fortunate enough to continue to grow as a practice to make sure that we spend enough quality time with each patient.

You know, Dr. So-and-so has joined our team. We're happy that we found another great doctor who shares our philosophies to join us and help take care of our patients. I'm so excited for you to meet them. I love it. know, something like that ahead of time is disarming. It sets everything up. It shows that we have, you know, confidence in this other person who's joined our team, that it's not a second rate situation and they're being pushed to the side. I love And then, yeah.

speaker-0 (26:55)

Well, and something else that I want to point out is Dave, you have this all on a PowerPoint. You actually shared it with me, which I appreciate a ton. and something I love about is you've got pictures in there, you've got verbiage in there, you've got links in there and you update it, but that's a very quick, easy onboarding packet as well to give a new hygienist joining your team. It's also very quick for you to update it. And then there's no question of what is that? And so, and I also love that you guys use the route slip. I think that's a pro tip. If you guys aren't doing that open dental.

This is only for our open dental offices. There might be some others, Dentrix and Eaglesoft. Sorry, Charlie, you're out. But you can actually edit your route slips and you can put these questions in there. So a lot of the things like I'm big on not depending on human memories. I think the human brain is brilliant. I also think a lot of times in practices we try to implement new behaviors, but it takes quite a while for that new behavior to actually take off. So constantly thinking of if you want this to be hygiene checklist.

how could you make a quick checklist? If you can't put it on your route slip, you can create a laminated checklist that they check off for you for every patient. Some offices who work in Dentrix and Eagle Soft, they literally have their hygiene checklist printed on one piece of paper and then on the backside of it, that's where they print their route slips. So lots of ways to get creative with this. But what it sounds like you've done, Dave, is you went through the philosophies with your hygienist, you had them help co-create it, you've given them the parameters so you have a great schedule.

And then we also put into play a way for them not to forget. And that's, think, a key piece to success. And then you're continually talking about this in your quarterly meeting. So I would say for offices wanting to do this one, just start, like start right down every piece, get information, learn, get your hygienist together and get it all put together. Again, Dave, I love that you put it in a PowerPoint. Two, make sure that everybody's aligned. Three, add to it, have a set cadence of when you'll do it. Are you going to do it on a quarterly calibration?

Are you going to do it once a year where you review it, make sure it's up to date. But that's where oftentimes these great systems, these great protocols come into play, but fall off the bandwagon because we don't have a set cadence to do it. So Dave, I love it. I love you guys like breaking it down. And I'd say for all those offices wanting to do it, go for it. Reach out to Dr. Dave. He's awesome. start though, he gave you a really great list. Read, listen to this podcast, write it down. He gave you a lot of step-by-steps. know that's hours and hours of work that he put into this.

Lots of resources, lots of time that you guys already have a jumpstart. So take what he's given you, execute on it, and have a really calibrated hygiene team. So Dave, any last thoughts? I love what you've done. Thank you for sharing. It's always fun. You have so many great ideas that you love to share.

speaker-1 (29:34)

I mean, I think there's a lot more that we could dive into. I think some of the other key takeaways is, I mean, working with somebody like yourself or other people, they can kind of give you some more of these ideas. Like we wouldn't have thought about kind of bundling procedures, things like that, trying to make things a little bit more clear overall. ⁓ Other key things as far as,

new patient blocks, lot of these key principles, all these other things, incorporating them and making sure that everybody's on the same page. Because we started to do that, didn't really have a discussion with the hygiene team. They started just not, you know, regarding or understanding that and putting things in. Then it's a whole big to do in a sense to try and reorganize the schedule there too. So one, if you're going to continue to learn and grow and incorporate new things, one, I encourage it and you should, but you should probably talk to everybody and not forget to do that.

speaker-0 (30:28)

Amen, I do it all the time guilty Guilty people like care you forgot. I'm like, yeah There's like seven other people attached to this decision and I forgot to share with all of you and Dave Thank you for that agreed if we can help you guys I know Dave you reached out to us for resources. We also did virtual training with your team. We come to your practice So if there are ways this is something that you guys want help getting kicked off the ground by all means Please reach out to us. You can email us. [email protected]

this is literally what we are made to do. This is what we love to do is where we are passion lies. and just kind of being that outside, think outside the box, giving ideas to, to make your life easier and more efficient. So Dave, as always, I appreciate you. Thanks for being on our podcast today. Thanks for sharing your ideas. You're just a wealth of knowledge. So thank you. All right guys, that wraps it up. Go execute. Don't just take this knowledge. Think it's a great idea, but actually execute, stick it in your planner, in your schedule, on your calendar, wherever you need to.

so you actually make it happen because you are always just one decision away from a completely different life. All right,

always, thank you for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

That wraps it up for another episode of the Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.