When it comes to assessing practice success, understanding various returns on investment is critical. Kiera and Kristy explain what the Dental A-Team is looking for when it comes to understanding the success (or lack thereof) of various investments. They specifically touch on the power of five different KPIs that'll keep your practice in line.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today it's the KK podcast. Kiera and Kristy hanging out today. Kristy, how you doing today?

DAT Kristy (00:10)

Good, it's a good day.

Kiera Dent (00:12)

It's a great day. you like, I feel like I want to like KK. I mean, it's not, it's only two K's everybody listening, but I feel like it's like the Kit Kat. I don't know. It feels kind of like that between you and me. don't know why, but yeah, double the, or we could be like double mint, like double the flavor, double the fun. It's Kieran Kristy on the pod. Like there's just the two of us cause there's no other K names in the consultant world. It's just Kieran Kristy. So I mean, we got

DAT Kristy (00:36)

That's right.

Kari and Kristy, you got it.

Kiera Dent (00:40)

Kiera and Dana, so that could be my initials, cute. Then there's Kiera and Trish, but there's Trish and Tiffanie. Then there's Kiera and Brittany, no BS, Britt, she's on her own realm. And then we've got Monica. So, see, it's the two Ks, it's the double the, like, we're just gonna have fun here. Like, you get two of us, two brilliant brains. And believe it or not, Kristy and I actually might just be rivaling for like some of the biggest gains this quarter, so.

DAT Kristy (00:55)

Yes, it does.

Kiera Dent (01:07)

⁓ not that we're here just for gains on clients, but Kristy does give me a run for my money, which all the consultants do. And Kristy's just like, she's, she's coming on hot this, this quarter. So I thought it'd be really fun, Kristy, for us to kind of dig into. Like either quarterly or twice a year annual reviews that we kind of do with clients and how you assess it. And we show the ROI that clients are getting, just cause I think it's important for clients to see like, what should you be assessing in your practice quarterly or two times a year?

How's the practice going? And Kristy, I think you're really, really strong in this. And I think you're really talented at looking at the practice and about their numbers and about, like, you love that. You and I will geek about numbers all day long, which is why it's the KK club, the KitKat club. Like we're here for the numbers. We're here for the fun. ⁓ But yeah, Kristy, kind of take it away of how do you set this up? What do you look at with clients when you're assessing their practices? Because always client style is like, I want ROI on consulting. And you do like,

amazing job at showing that ROI. So kind of take it away of what do we look at? How do we determine ROI? And I know this is your jam. This is what you love to do.

DAT Kristy (02:15)

I love it. You're right. I do. You know, we all.

Kiera Dent (02:18)

Do hear that little

giggle? I hope everybody heard that. Like that's Kristy's like. Kristy lives for this stuff and it makes me so happy because I do too. Like it's fun. It's fun to get the gains.

DAT Kristy (02:28)

Yeah,

absolutely. Well, you and I have talked about this before. So many doctors just look

their bank account to see if they're on track or off track. And it's such a false sense of security looking at or lack of security, one of the two. with that being said, ⁓ there truly is like five

Kiera Dent (02:36)

you

Mm-hmm.

DAT Kristy (02:48)

KPIs that we're going to look at. And a couple of them are lag measures. A couple of them are lead measures.

⁓ first view would be production net production collections. Yeah.

Kiera Dent (03:01)

Yeah, don't even get into that gross. We don't want gains that are fake all y'all, okay? Like get

out. ⁓ Jason and I were talking the other day about guys, there's this, okay, Kristy, I'm gonna go on Tanger for a second. There's this really attractive actor on this show we're watching and I'm like, truly I was so disappointed when they kind of cut him from a couple episodes. I was like, no, she's gotta get back together with this guy because he's so good looking. And my husband and I, we look, because he looks pretty short.

DAT Kristy (03:13)

you

Kiera Dent (03:28)

So I like scoped him and I was like, how tall is this guy? And he says he's six foot and Jason's like, there's no way he's six foot. He's like, but do you ever hear some guy come in and they're like, yeah, I'm like 5'11". He's like, no, they all push them to the six foot. And I feel like that's what gross production is. It's like all of us are like, yeah, like I'm basically six foot. Yeah, I'm basically like a millionaire. Yeah, I'm basically there. Like, so we're talking, no, get out. We're here for like actual gains that you're actually getting net production.

my little side tangent, it's okay. It's okay if you're 5'10". It's okay if you're 5'9". It's okay if you're 5'11". We in production want to know the real number that we can actually collect, not the artificial one that makes you feel good when you're chatting with friends. You can fluff your height, but don't fluff your production.

DAT Kristy (04:15)

love that 100%. So we got the net production and then the collections,

Kiera Dent (04:16)

you

DAT Kristy (04:22)

dollar for dollar percentage. Obviously we want them to be 98 % or higher. And then on the flip side, where are we diagnosing? What's our case acceptance? And so many people just look at the percent of case acceptance, but I also want to look at the dollars of what you're diagnosing because is it enough to reach your goal?

you know, where's your profit point at and what do we need to hit? Because we can celebrate 100 % case acceptance, which I don't think anybody ever has 100%, but you know, if you're getting 50 % case acceptance, which is still a very good percentage, 50 % of what? If we need to hit 150 every month and we're only hitting 100, it's not enough to get us there. So those would be the main five KPIs that

⁓ tell us the health of your practice, right? And go ahead, care.

Kiera Dent (05:18)

I

was gonna say, and Kristy, as you said that, diagnosing, don't think people realize is as important as it is. For whatever goal you wanna hit, there's a industry standard that you need to diagnose three times what you wanna produce. So if you wanna produce 100 grand, you need to be diagnosing 300,000 minimum to be able to get there, and you better hope you've got a great treatment coordinator who can close. And this is actually like...

I'm gonna like give a little secret away that we'll see if people are smart enough to pick up on in future years. This is the number one thing I actually look for in a consultant. I look to see, do an interview, we give them some stats and if a consultant cannot pick up this practice like without fail, they come in and they wanna talk block scheduling, they wanna talk other things. But I need a consultant to be able to see that a lot of times the reason a practice is not hitting their goals is due to a lack of diagnosis. And another reason we do that is because

Kristy and I are not dentists and we're not here to tell you how to diagnose. We're just here to help you see that based on industry standards and what you should be diagnosing of a healthy practice. If you're not getting enough diagnosis and doctors, you've got to hear this. If you are not diagnosing enough, this is a doctor issue and we're not saying to overdiagnose, but you have to diagnose enough. If you're not diagnosing enough and there's not enough treatment coming through, your practice will not grow. And that's not your team's fault. That's a you problem.

And so making sure that you, your hygienist, you use AI, but Kristy, I'm so glad you brought that up because production collections are always easy. But what impacts that, like you said, is the diagnosis, then the case acceptance, the new patients. And that's where it says lead and lag. Like everybody's looking at the lag of production collection, but it's like, what did we do to get there? And Kristy, I love that you bring these five things up every single quarter, every single, like twice a year with your clients, because people don't realize your bank account is a lag measure.

of what you've been doing in the practice. And then like another one is your overhead and what are you spending? Because if those things are in check, but we're spending everything we're making, we're not saving for taxes. Well, yeah, that's a real fun moment. Your bank account's really gonna look bleak, even if everything's working in the practice. So I really hope people take note because it's such a good thing for people to be aware of.

DAT Kristy (07:09)

.

Absolutely. to that point, Kiera, like so many people think if that number isn't where they want it, let's go get more new patients. And then they want to spend more money on more new patients. And nine times out of 10, this is exciting time of the year because we're halfway through the year. Take a look at what you did treatment plan. I mean, I see a lot of practices, you know, let's for easy math, they're diagnosing a million dollars and we've closed 500,000. Holy cow. Even if you captured, you know,

percent of that difference like what would that mean to your bottom line and this is a perfect time to take a step back and go my gosh we have five months left in the year what would that look like break it down chunk it down to simple

pieces that your team can digest and you guys have fun with it. It's all about getting patients healthier. Let's face it, you're not diagnosing things patients don't need. So let's go get it. Let's get our patients healthy and gamify it. See one more crown a day or one more implant a month. What is it? Right?

Kiera Dent (08:35)

Yeah. And Kristy, I think something you do so well that I hope people heard is you're not going for the big gains. You're going for the little like squeeze the juice, like get the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube of toothpaste. And I don't think people like that's not sexy. It's like, hey, I heard this podcast that I'm supposed to like go look at these small things versus we're getting all these new patients and we signed up for marketing. Well, but like this is where the elite practices shine. This is where the like really superior

Practices go people are like here. How do you do it? How do you guys like add? 20,000 40 that I Kristy I was looking at some of your stats girl. You're like, like I said, I love a good hustle and some of your practices you're adding like 50,000 a month to their practices and that's Incredible and people like how you do it Kristy's literally telling you it's through squeezing the tube of toothpaste in these small little moves that actually are not that hard going and getting new patients and signing up for marketing and all that that to me is actually hard fixing your diagnosis

getting your whole team on board, looking to see at what our production collections are, making sure our collections are tight. Those things are way easier. They're not as fun, they're not as sexy, but way easier than having to go like hunt and fish for new patients, even though it's way more fun to tell people you signed up for marketing. It's not fun to be like, yeah, we got a new billing thing in place. Like we got our AR fixed. That's not fun to admit, but it's way fun on the bank account and the profitability side too.

DAT Kristy (09:58)

Yeah,

100%. And again, ⁓ so going back to the new patients, they want to spend more money to get it. But then have you looked at like, how are we answering the phone? How are we capturing the patients that are calling? Maybe you really don't need to spend any more money to cap, you know, they're coming in, we're just not capturing them, you know, and I'm always a fan of, you know, there's the internal marketing and external.

everything Fred Joyle said it best right everything is marketing we are marketing so get real intentional and get in relationship with your patients figure out what they want and tie their care back to it you know

Kiera Dent (10:39)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think it's brilliant. And I think it's like you said, everything we do is marketing. And so if we realize that and so many people want external marketing, and I think to me, the reason people want external marketing, and I'm not here to say not to do external marketing, I think it's a, it is a piece and a part of it. But I think it feels like a diet pill sometimes, like, let's just let's just throw money over there. And let's hope it fixes our problems. Let's out produce our problems rather than fixing our problems. And I really want people to realize like,

elite business ownership and being part of the elites, and we're not talking big practices, there's no right size to it. That all comes actually from doing these small little things and internal marketing, once again, is so good. These patients already love you. You already have a base of people that love you. And if you treat those people really well, rather than constantly going to try and swoop and get more people in, those people then refer, they refer better people to you.

It's easier. I have a practice and it was wild. They're like, Kiera, we signed up with marketing and we're trying to get it. And again, this is not a bash on any marketing companies. It is definitely necessary. ⁓ but they're like, but we're just not getting more, more new patients. Talk to another client. They're like, we, we just signed up with a marketing company and it's actually gone down. And I'm like, well, tell me what were you doing before to get patients? And they're like, we were at the church, we were in this magazine. And I'm like, well, get back in that because it was, it was showcasing the good things you're doing. It was being this like,

more B2B, it was being more connected rather than just trying to go for the masses and it's wild because internal marketing can be so much more effective if done right. And like you said, be in a relationship with your patients and know what they want. And great Google reviews, great Google reviews are your fastest, easiest marketing. So pay with Swell, like let's throw another plugin for Swell. It's been a few months since I put them in.

Go to Swell, SwellCX.com. Tell them Dental A Team sent you. Literally Zeke and I met when he founded the company. So you still get like founding prices, because that was the promise he and I made that you guys would get that. But honestly, just get your Google reviews up. Save the money. I don't know. Kristy, you and I are such birds of the same feather. That's why we're KitKat over here. We just think very similarly. And I think that's why we get very similar results as well.

DAT Kristy (12:55)

Yeah, I think that the other big thing here is to recognize so many people are afraid of numbers. The members just start to tell a story and what we fail to realize is there's a system behind every one of those numbers. And if the number isn't where we want it, we need to pull up that system and figure out the system's a recipe, right? It's our cookbook. If it's not where we want it, then let's go back and figure out, did we mess up the recipe? You know, or

is the recipe, we're following it to a T and we just need to change up and find a new recipe because it's not getting the result. So ⁓ I love digging into those numbers because that tells us where we need to focus on this quarter to get the results we want.

Kiera Dent (13:40)

And I really love that you said numbers just tell a story and there's a system behind the number and this makes it so much easier like going back There's a podcast I did a little while ago where I talked about the yes model and Dental A Team to help you say yes to more It's focusing on you as a person your vision which Kristy alludes to like are we on track or not for that vision and then E stands for earnings and profitability and S stands for systems and if you put them in that order So you've got your vision then we look at the numbers just like Kristy said

then you put into place the systems based on what those numbers tell you, it becomes a much more manageable and easier to digest process rather than being like, I need all the systems. And it's like, no, no, no, you just need the systems based on what the numbers tell you because I'm sure you're doing a lot more right than you think you are.

DAT Kristy (14:25)

Absolutely. And I also think, you know, it's a good time to take a step back and evaluate where you are on the culture scale too, right? Happy team creates happy patients and happy patients pay and refer. So it all goes hand in hand.

Kiera Dent (14:39)

Good

thoughts on there. Okay, so what else do you go? You go through the production collections, diagnosis, case acceptance, new patients, lead lag measures. Then you move into, we on track, off track for our goals of where we're at this year? What are the things that we could do now to get there by end of year? Are they still relevant? Are we still on track? What else do you look at with your clients when you're doing these assessments, Kristy?

DAT Kristy (15:02)

Yeah, well, I always like to start the year off with projecting where we're going. And so also calculating back to that. And you and I talked about overhead. If we take what our average overhead is for the year, are we on track for meeting that or not?

Right? Because we can project all day long. I can want to make $3 million, but this $3 million cover overhead expenses and our savings for the year. So always measuring back to that. And if we're off track figuring out how can we get on track, right? Did doctor take off more time or do we need to add in a Friday to get to goal? You know, those types of things. Or are you, ⁓

okay with where we're projected to land and you feel confident about that. You know, once in a blue moon, well, I shouldn't say once in a blue moon because you and I do get them up there, but you know, it also relieves them and they can maybe even take an extra week off or a few days off because they're ahead of goal. Yeah.

Kiera Dent (16:06)

Totally.

And those are the fun ones. That's what we want. We want to be ahead. We don't want to always be behind. And I agree with you, Kristy. The offices that are ⁓ diligent and consistent at looking at these, we look at these monthly, we look at these quarterly, we look at these annually, we assess, we redirect. It's like, I don't know. I feel like what you do is there's a plane. I just flew back from Greece, which was a very long flight. And it was very fun. This is where I watched.

DAT Kristy (16:13)

Mm-hmm.

Kiera Dent (16:35)

so many of these shows of this very good looking actor. I thought I was like, how tall is this man? While my husband's sitting next to me, it's okay, it's all right. We're allowed to have a few celebrity crushes. ⁓ But on our flight back, it was like a 12, 13 hour flight home. And I think about if that pilot would not have checked to see if we were a few degrees off, I could have easily ended up somewhere else. And that's just by a few degrees. And so what I feel you're doing, Kristy, on these quarterly, these monthly, these annual check-ins is making sure

that we're still navigating towards Greece or towards wherever we're trying to get. And are we on track or like you said, do we need to do a small navigation at a Friday, change this, look at our spending to be able to end up there at the end of the year or like, are we so far off course? So we need to like correct a little bit and then get back on track for next year. But the hope is that we catch that soon enough because we're never gonna go in a straight line. It will never be perfectly across. There will always be hiccups, there will be turbulence, there will be.

things that you gotta go around, you gotta redirect places. But if we're constantly looking at it, we stay much more on course and charter to where we want to go rather than like hoping and wishing we end up where we actually set out to go.

DAT Kristy (17:43)

Yeah, 100%. And sometimes it's also looking, where are we spending? Right? Is there something that crept in there? We talked about this before too, with, you know, the subscriptions or, I mean, it's funny because the very first doctor that

I remember him telling a story about an airline and I was just sharing this recently with a client. I think it was like American, you guys could probably Google it and find it, but it's back in the day when they would serve meals to everybody and this airline decided that they could cut one olive.

Kiera Dent (18:17)

Hmm?

DAT Kristy (18:17)

and it cut their bottom line by a ton. Like what is the cost of one olive? So where can we tighten the ship a little bit? Those things are kind of, again, have fun with it, gamify it. Get your team involved. Let them be part of the solution.

Kiera Dent (18:37)

Yeah,

and Kristy, I love that because we talk about this olive, the FedEx trucks and then chicken nuggets. And going back to it, the black olive airline cut, it was one olive, saved them $40,000 annually. I just pulled it up to sea and it was on American Airlines. And Tiff and I talk about the chicken nugget, like they used to serve five chicken nuggets, which was the right amount. Well, they dropped it to four. Four is not enough, so now you...

Upsell to 10 and I'm like that's one chicken nugget. This is one olive and I agree with you Kristy for me This is the fun of business like how can I go find that one olive or that one chicken nugget Tim and I get really excited when we find a whole chicken farm. Like that's a good one I'm like, wow, that was that was like a really good idea or a whole salad But again, it's to cut costs but improve patient care. Like what are they? mean even today Kristy, Shelbi, Britt and I were going through our expenses in dental a team

DAT Kristy (19:25)

Mm-hmm.

Kiera Dent (19:30)

and we looked and we have Adobe and we still use Adobe for contracts. But Shelbi looked at it, we're paying 65 and we use Canva and our marketing team doesn't need all the entire suite of Adobe anymore. But that was something we put into place like five years ago. We've been paying 65 bucks every single month when we only need to be paying 19. Not that that matters. And so many people are just like, well, here it's 40 bucks. And I'm like, okay, you want to play a game with me? I'll play a game. It's 65 minus 20.

DAT Kristy (19:57)

me.

Kiera Dent (20:00)

Okay, so 45 times that by 12 times that by five years is 2,700 bucks that I've been overpaying just on a subscription that's doing nothing for our company that I could have cut. And I'm like, I know you might not get out of bed for 2,700 bucks, but I'm like, you find that subscription, you find this subscription, you find that one, all those little, do you think someone really was excited on American Airlines to save $40,000 when it's a multi-billion dollar business? But 40,000 here, 20,000 there.

DAT Kristy (20:26)

Right.

Kiera Dent (20:29)

50 bucks here. also think Kristy, to me, it's the discipline of auditing, of looking. It's more than I think the olive or the Adobe subscription or the chicken nugget. It is the constant innovation to look, to be the most savvy business that we can possibly be. And then we flip to the other side and give the best service that we can as well.

DAT Kristy (20:51)

100 % I agree with you, Kiera. Yeah, it's just those small incremental things. And it's about being intentional versus doing it by default, right? Let's do it intentionally so that when we get to the end, there's no surprises.

Kiera Dent (20:52)

you

love that because I hate surprises in December as a business owner. Oh, I used to dread December's like and it's a great time to travel. It's a great time to hang out with family. But I used to cry like beginning of December, it was tears every single year. And then by the end of the year, I was exhausted. had nothing left for family and it's supposed to be such a fun time that I agree with you, Kristy. It's like no tears. The projections are there we were prepared. I don't know there really is a saying like if you are prepared, you will not fear and I'm like, it really is that case and also

Like CPAs, I'm gonna rag for a second. They rag on consultants. This is a love relationship we have with CPAs and consultants. I get so annoyed that like CPAs don't tell you till December. And I'm like, no, have the meeting in July. Have the meeting in October. Figure it out because you still have time to pivot. And that's what Kristy and I wanted to come on today is there's still time to pivot if you look at these items, you look at the things we're discussing, you look to see what can we do. There's still time. It's like, we're not at the 11th hour.

hoping to try to make up time in such a short amount of time. call your CPAs, find out where you're at on your tax liabilities. Are you on track for saving that? There's so many times that we have our meeting with the CPA and he's like, Kiera, I need to up and increase and start cutting. And I'm just annoyed every time, but I'd rather do that over the course of six months rather than one month, because I still have time to make that correction with it, not hurting as much as it could.

DAT Kristy (22:30)

It's so true, so true. And the efforts to get there are a lot smaller when we can dilute it over five months versus two weeks, because we didn't look till the end of the year.

Kiera Dent (22:42)

especially the two weeks in December where we're not producing so we're not even collecting and we have to pay more. It's just a really like nasty path. So I'm like, no, no, no, just don't plan for December. Have that be your gravy slush time. Get it all done in 11 months. But like even that kind of thinking, Kristy, I don't think is common. I think it's very abnormal to think, well, if my December is only going to be two weeks, why am I banking on that as a full month? Why don't I bank on? And this is back to mine and Kristy, like we love the projections. We love to think of like

DAT Kristy (22:59)

No.

Kiera Dent (23:12)

How could I get this done in 11 months? How can we give you vacations? How can it be done in this many weeks? And that's something, Kristy, I really do feel like it's the Kit Kat Club over here. Like we really do think in such a similar way, but I want you to realize like this is how Kristy and I are able to throw gains. We're able to help practices get to where they want to be, but also with it being easy, happy teams, happy culture, not a lot of stress, ⁓ and just kind of doing the small minutiae things that actually make insane gains.

for a practice. We help find the olives, Kristy. Every so often we might get a tomato, but it's the small olives that actually make the huge impact for a practice.

DAT Kristy (23:42)

Right? Yeah, let's get the olives. Yeah.

100%, 100%. And hopefully we can show it's easy. It's not hard. It truly isn't hard. It's one patient at a time and just capturing a little bit more.

Kiera Dent (24:03)

Yeah. And then Kristy, I think it's really fun what you do for your clients too, is you show them the ROI that you brought to them through AR, through production, through overhead savings. So that way a client, regardless of their bank account saying, can literally see that in the course of working together, this is what we've been able to accomplish together. Because I think as a business owner, it is so easy to forget like what it felt like when I couldn't lift 20 pounds, now that I'm lifting 50 pounds.

Like it's so easy because 50 pounds becomes your new normal, but you're like, no, no, no, no. Remember how we started and you couldn't even lift like five pounds. Then you got up to 20, then you got up to 50. I think it's very easy for clients to forget where they started because their new norm is where we've grown them to.

DAT Kristy (24:48)

Yeah, it's so true. mean, you know me, I love analogies and it's almost like your periopatient that's been coming in every three months and now they're healthy and so they want to push it back out and it's like you forgot it's this effort coming every three months that's gotten you healthy and the minute we change it, things start to slide, you know, so. ⁓

Yeah, mean, hopefully, hopefully we can always show that value in it. They still have to do the boots on the ground hard work, but you know.

even Tiger Woods has a coach, right? And that coach can see around corners to see things a little bit faster maybe when things aren't moving the same. You your swing's off, what's happening, what's going on, you know, and to keep you back on track. it's fun, it's fun partnering with clients and being able to see that and course correct and help them achieve their goals.

Kiera Dent (25:43)

⁓ I love it. Kristy, I agree with you. And I think that that's why we have the passion for consulting. We have the passion for practices. We have the passion for wanting you to strike. It's crazy because like, I don't know, we have a tagline, which marketing told me I need to get rid of because it's more about me than it is about you. And it does not make sense to me. ⁓ where it says like your success as a practice is truly Dental A Team's passion. Like this is what gets me and Kristy up out of bed. This is what makes us want to get on a podcast and share with you is

you being successful, you getting your dreams, you hitting these goals is what we are obsessed and so passionate about. So I think it's so fun. So I'd say, Kristy, if practice is listening right now, what would be kind of like your bow on our podcast today that you'd say like, okay, from everything we've talked about, what do they take away? What can they go implement? ⁓ Because sometimes it can feel like, well, what's my first step to be able to get on this path of slight course corrections to get to my final destination with ease.

DAT Kristy (26:42)

Yeah, well first off, if you haven't figured out your goal, maybe look at what you finished at last year and at least strive for 10 % above that because we know that that's at least keeping up with inflation. Again, I don't know if that's meeting your overhead needs, but at least it's a good point. And then reverse engineer it. See how far you're off track from that for the year.

and ⁓ what's one more day or one more thing every day. Hopefully you're doing some sort of morning huddle and ⁓ inside of the morning huddle, everybody has a part to play, right? So admin, look, is there any balances that need to be collected?

⁓ patient wise in doctor's schedule, is there anybody that could come back in through hygiene? Hygiene, if we have undiagnosed treatment and we know there is, because we see those numbers every day in morning huddle and it's almost like crazy alarming the amount. Usually it's more than what you're even producing for the day. So, gamify it and try to turn those patients into healthy patients by converting their treatment. ⁓

know just those simple things right there is going to make a big difference to your year end.

Kiera Dent (27:55)

I that. I love it, Kristy, so much. And I love that you have the passion and the love. I love that you will also sit down with your clients. And I think that that's the discipline and maybe like the fast track of using a consultant is, Kristy, you prepare these for your clients. You think about it. You're looking down the line of things they're maybe not even considering doing. They're not thinking about midway. How are we doing? What are our projections? Are we on track? Are we off track? Where are we at? And I think having a consultant, like you said, with even Tiger Woods,

looking around the corner, looking down the line. Kristy and I are both like, we're watching the clock. We know we only have so many more months in the year. Where are you at? How can we make sure that we're constantly keeping you on track to get to your goals? Where maybe you're just having a fun summer vacation or you're just coming back. Like we know that that's our job is to be looking down the line for you, watching out for you, projecting for you, course correcting with you. ⁓ Even when you're in the day to day problems. And I think Kristy, that's just a

a shout out to you and a shout out to consultants because this is why we do what we do. So if you, if you are like most business owners, including myself, when I first started and you hate numbers, that's why there are people like Kristy and myself that exist because we love to get into the nitty gritty. We love to look for those olives. We love to help you go do the dentistry and we're going to sit here and help make sure your business and your team and your practice is flourishing. So that way the hard work you put into being a dentist pays off for you in the end. So Kristy love this, love what you do for our clients.

Love being the, the KK Kit Kat, whatever we want to be over here. mean, it might stick. We might be Kit Kats for Halloween. You never know, but Kristy just super appreciate you and all that you do for our clients and for our company and you as a human being, you're just a gem. And I'm so freaking lucky to work with you.

DAT Kristy (29:28)

Yeah.

Thank you. It's my honor and you know what? We're stronger as a team, I have to say. So no matter what consultant you have in our company, you get all of us. So we collaborate, we cheer each other on, just like hopefully you're cheering your team on. So happy to help.

Kiera Dent (29:49)

Bye.

Kristy,

you said that so well and it is true. I see you and all the consultants like have little meetings on your calendars of connecting and chatting and I do agree. We all help each other out. We want all of our clients to succeed no matter who you're working with. So for all of you, if you're struggling or you're like, gosh, I really would love that help or just having someone, I'll just put our arm around you and like, we're here to help you. We're here to support you. We're here to guide you. We're here to look around that corner. Reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, Kristy, thanks for being with me. Thank all of you for listening.

and we'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Revamping your financials is as easy as … Kiera shows off her savvy financial skills by sharing what it takes to know what's being spent in your practice. Her spreadsheet tips will answer such questions as: What can be cut? How can you make sure your overhead is in check? What do you need to produce? And much more.

Want a sample spreadsheet to get started? Email hello@thedentalateam.com. 

Episode resources:

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and I hope you're just having an amazing day. Like a great, great, great, incredible day. ⁓ just, today's topic is one that makes me excited and it's so dry and boring, ⁓ but I love it. And I'm like, that's probably a buzzkill for the podcast, but you know me, one of my core values is fun. And Dana, shout out to Dana, DanyDane over there.

⁓ She gave me one of the best compliments. We do a thing on Wednesdays called core value shout out in our company. And I will tell you if you do not have this in your company, I would strongly advise you do this. What we do is every single Wednesday, our company goes and our whole team says that this is our favorite. You guys, we have gone from a very small team to a much larger team and we still do this. So just know small teams, big teams, it is doable and it is very

relevant and very essential. And I think it just goes so well. I am okay to take a little bit longer on this morning huddle because of how good it is. so core value shout out is where we just randomly will pick somebody and then it's popcorn after that. So they'll choose the next person. So for example, we would start and I would say, okay, Shelbi starting today and everybody chooses somebody on the team and they highlight them for a core value and it has to be a core value. It has to be something specific. And so Dana gave me one of the greatest compliments.

She said, Kiera, she said she wanted to give me the core value of fun, because fun is really one of our core values. And she said, I want to give it to you for fun, because she said a lot of times topics that are so hard ⁓ or things that people wouldn't necessarily find fun. She said, you just know how to sprinkle the fun and the confetti and the glitter and make things that are hard or something that teens wouldn't want to do or doctors wouldn't want to do.

you make them really fun. And honestly, that has stuck with me. It is a few days later since she gave me that compliment and I'm still remembering it. So not only is core value shout out day amazing, it also helps you just enjoy and to have like, to be happier. ⁓ It also infuses core values into your company. And I'm excited and grateful that I'm able to bring fun things to the podcast, a dry topic. I hope I've teed this up enough to where you're excited about it.

But this is, think, the discipline side of business of owning a dental practice that you need to do. And this is really, think, for office managers or billers and doctors. And this is something that I think will give you so much confidence. it came actually from our doctor mastermind. We have ⁓ a private doctor only mastermind that we run every single month. It's a virtual one. And then we do an in-person one ⁓ that's more for doctor and leadership teams. But our monthly one, call it Think Tank, and it's on the first Tuesday of every month. And a doctor was saying, she's like,

I just don't know where to cut. I said, send me your PNL and tips like, and she's going to want your credit card statement and she's going to want all your stuff. And while yes, I am obsessive on this. have helped family members. I've helped offices. I've helped myself. something that I will like toot my own horn on it. I actually think I'm very talented with money, with saving, with figuring out solutions and helping people understand where you can cut. This podcast also came about because this morning on my, ⁓ Shelbi Britt and I were meeting and we were literally going through.

our finances to see where could we maybe squeeze the tube of toothpaste a little bit more, where could we maybe change a few things. And I think that that's just so relevant and so helpful. And so this is something I do in my day in day out life. It's something that I think for you to go from chaos and lack of financial clarity to confidence is something that I really want to just bring to the table today on the podcast. If you're new to Dental A team, welcome. We are obsessed about helping you have your best life and ⁓ doing it in a fun, easy way through dentistry. And so

helping you with our yes model. So you as a person getting your life, your vision, all of that in place, then moving into earnings. So ⁓ financially, that's the piece today. And then using those financial pieces. So your analytics, your PNL, your overhead to also help us figure out what systems and team development need to go into place to make sure you have this thriving practice. Because honestly, I believe that being successful, being a successful dental practice does not have to be hard and it can actually be easy. So that's what we're here for today. ⁓ With that.

So today it's going to be like, how do you actually like figure out your costs? So I did this a long time ago and then I like met a lot of really smart financial people. I'm not a financial advisor. I will throw that out there. So just make sure you talk to them and you have your, ⁓ like you chat with them of what's best for your state, but I will teach you how I do it. This is annoying. It's a little cumbersome, but people love to hear like, how do you actually do this? I'm always like, how do people get like jacked? Like how do they work out? Like.

me like what time do you work out like what do you do for your nutrition and just so I understand the full landscape and then I'm going to pick and choose of what's going to work well for me that I'll actually implement so hopefully that will be effective for you today as well.

So this is what we do. I have a spreadsheet that I have for monthly costs. We do this with all of our clients too. So if you're like, this feels too hard, don't worry, join the Dental A Team. We'll help you get it put together. So we have a monthly cost. And what I do is on the monthly costs, and this is probably my most visited spreadsheet of my entire company. And I'm super excited because we're bringing in another team member who does financial.

Forecasting and has a whole background in finance. So my method might get revamped to 2.0 and there's always another layer. But what I have is I have on our monthly costs, I have all the salaries and all of the pay. Now for offices, I do include doctor pay. Again, I'm not a CPA and I do believe that doctors should be paid. So I put in either your W-2 salary and or your doctor compensation of 30%. Now I do lose numbers. So our consultants are paid very similar to how doctors are paid.

⁓ And so you can get a general idea. So mine are general ideas. It's not my highest month. It's not my lowest month. It's the average is what I've selected to do for these costs. So again, this spreadsheet will not be absolutely perfect, but I think it's a really great tool to figure out what can I cut? How can I make sure my overheads in check? What do I need to produce? How do I basically figure out my BAM, my bare ACE minimum in a company? And so that's what we're gonna be looking at. So with that, I first list all the salaries and...

I want everything in there. And then what I have is a current. So I'm gonna have a current and then I'm also going to have like a future. So for example, if you're planning to hire somebody, but they're not hired yet, that's something that you're going to wanna know, what is my cost now? And what is going to be the future cost? Because those two things are actually different numbers. And so for me, it's really helpful so that I can look at you guys honestly.

When I started this, had like three team members and now we have tons of team members on there and outsource people and virtual assistants. And ⁓ the list just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I can go back and I can look at things that we've done before. And so mine's on Google Sheets. And again, we've built one of these and I'm even happy to share, reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. But this is something, so I go through all the salaries. And then for me, ⁓ if you do health insurance or you do a health stipend or whatever it is, you add that in.

as well, but then what I do, and again, talk to your CPA, see what your payroll tax are. For me, I just estimate 10%. I always like to air higher. So you will notice in all of my projections and everything I do, I'm going to always air higher than it actually is rather than lower. And so just looking at that, just so you know, that's how I do. So my CPA told me 10%, we have business in four different states. I think we're actually up to five now.

So I estimate high, no matter what state they're in, I just do a 10%. So I'll do my total salaries of the month, an estimated 10 % payroll. And then I've got that in there, my total payroll. Then we have our health stipends or health insurance, our 401k costs in there, how much it costs me per user, what the 4 % is. I actually go grab people's salaries and their bonuses, put it in there. So I have a pretty good idea. Then what I do is I check every single month to see based what I have here, is that close?

to what I'm actually paying or is it not? I know some of you might be like, well, here, I just get it from my CPA, I get a P &L. I agree, but this is a good checks and balance between my CPA and myself. And also when I'm trying to project and forecast, can I add people in? How much is this gonna have? Where can I cut? If I can see it all line itemed out, it's actually for me at least much easier for me to see what are all my costs and where can I squeeze the tube of toothpaste to get a little bit more ⁓ toothpaste out of that tube or a little more juice out of the lemon.

So that's what I have. And then what I have down below is like outsource. So if you've got VAs or you've got ⁓ different people that are contractors or things like that, I have that in there and that one EBS and flows mostly that hangs in my marketing department. That's where I have a lot of those. And then also VAs and EAs that'll be in there that are virtual assistants that are through other companies. So they're not running on my payroll, but they are down there. Like I have some consultants on there. I've got some coaches on there that will be in that section for me. But those again are not up in that payroll section because I'm not paying that.

payroll tax on them and I'm also not 401k on them, but that helps me see how much am I paying in outsourced resources to see should I cut that, should I keep that, how much do I have on the top, is my payroll heavy. You also can break this down by department. So you can see how much am I paying in my hygiene department, are they offsetting, how much am I paying my doctor department, my front office department, all those different departments. If you want to get even more granular, you can. And then below that, I have all of the office expenses and this is something really great.

This year Britt she ⁓ 2.0'd us and she put in their end of year expenses because there's a lot of things that I just pay at the end of the year that are annual subscriptions that will save money on but the reality is I should probably be saving that money throughout the year, right? Because every single month there would be an expense allocated if I didn't pay it annually. So we should be adding that in so we're saving for that. We're preparing for that for the end of the year. We have different things in there. So like all of our subscriptions that we have you might have Netflix, you might have Audible, you might have

Canva for marketing, ⁓ ChatGPT if you're paying for those subscriptions, anything. And I'm constantly updating this like as you hear ChatGPT and how many do we have for that? ⁓ We use our project management software is on there. I also know that every single month I have a budget allotted for employee gifts and anniversaries. And so we have an allotment of how much we spend. I do double check this, but I try to break it down. Also I have in there my merchant fees and how much my merchant fees are on average.

⁓ And I literally list everything out. So whether it's personal, because like Audible and my phone, I do have those on there. Those are personal things for me that do run through the business, but there's still business expenses that will need to be on there. ⁓ And then we've got our bookkeeping and our accounting or CPA, our lawyers, all of that in there. If you have vehicles that your CPA said is okay for you to run through, all of that, your rent, your mortgage, your supplies, your internet, all of that in there.

to where at the bottom of this list, you can get a complete grand total for the month. And what's really awesome about that, you can actually break it apart so you can have doctors where they're not in there. This then tells you basically your BAM, your bear ace minimum. And then what we can do from there is we can figure out what you need to produce to be able to hit. So hopefully all that was like not too much. just rattle, I'm like literally looking at my spreadsheet as I'm telling you this, all of that. Then below that, we're gonna wanna also add in debt services because debt services are also going to hit your cashflow side of it.

So when you have these two tools together, then you can figure out what's bam, my bare ace minimum, what's my overhead and then what can I cut and then what do I need to produce? Then we can figure out what we need to produce with block schedules. There's like a whole other zone, but back to the client's question. She said, I don't even know what to cut. So today me and our leadership team, we were going through this and we literally looked to see, okay, what's on our office expenses? And I know this sounds so dumb and so like trite.

but I think it's the discipline of knowing how to do this because you better believe when I'm looking at my monthly expenses, which are outlandish and they're very high. When I look at this, saving 40 bucks a month is not like, it's truly a literal spit in the bucket. But when I think about it, it's $40 here, it's $20 there. It's just like your credit card statement at the end of the month. I'm always shocked at how much is on there and it's $20 on Amazon here, $30 over here.

$20 there and all those $20, $30 purchases add up to multiple thousands of dollars every single month. So when we look at this, I look at every single office expense and I'm like, okay, is Adobe something that we need? And this was actually a catch that we had. I was like, we're paying $65 a month for Adobe. Do we still need the entire suite? The answer is no, we don't. We only need it for a small thing. And then we started thinking like, softwares are evolving. So we're like, does G Suite ⁓ actually cover that? Or...

does another one of our subscriptions cover it? Because so many times our subscriptions that we're paying are like duplicates of something else. G Suite has expanded and I'm like, do we still need to use boomerang? I use boomerang all the time. I love boomerang so much, but I'm like, has G Suite evolved to where they have something comparable to it that we could cut the boomerang is 120 bucks a month for us. And Shelbi was like, wait, not all of our team members, like our marketing team does not use boomerang. They're not doing client facing emails. They rarely are in their inbox. They're in Slack all the time.

she's like, what if we reduce the number of people on boomerang that would actually cut our costs down. So again, it's this like fine tuning revolving through it looking, do we need this? Could we reduce this? Do we need to, are all the people that were still on there, do we still need to pay for all those people? Could we change it to this? Are we still gonna be here for that? And you go through and you literally ask, is this a want, a need, or is there a better way that we could spend our money on this? And again, I know it sounds so dumb. Like this, this is not fun.

This is not something that I'm excited to share with you on a podcast, but I'm so excited because the discipline of doing this, the doctor, the reason it came up is because she wants to sign up for AI, ⁓ Pearl or Overjet. Back and forth, we talked about it at length of which one's better. This is why I love our Dr. Mastermind. And it's about $130 a month. And she just like, I'm so sick of these subscriptions. And I'm like, well, go get rid of Netflix or go get rid of one of these things or don't have all the beverages in the

in the refrigerator, maybe just choose one of them. Like there's so many things like, but this is where you look at your list because you have your entire list in front of you. And my office expenses right now, and this is where I look at my credit card. I look at every single thing on there. Right now we have 39 different things that we pay for of monthly subscriptions or annual subscriptions, different things. It's got our insurance policies on there. And then what I can do is I can come in and assess and say, okay, of all these high expenses, like if I need to cut expenses very quickly,

I could look to see, all right, my highest hitters are XYZ. This one's $500, this one's $1,000. Do I still need these? Are we still using them? Is there a cheaper competitor that I could switch to? Where am I at? And all these things. What I love about this is it helps you just look to see where your money's going because at the bottom it has a grand total. And then what's nice is I then can look to see, is this grand total what my CPA is telling me I'm spending every single month? Do they line up?

And if not, where's the discrepancy and where is it? I also can look at future things. if I'm going to be increasing or I'm going to be adding team members or we're going to be looking to add say another subscription or another piece, what is that going to change my monthly amount? And am I okay on my production and collection side to be able to afford it? So many people are like, I talked to my CPA to see if I can afford it. And I want to just say that yes, it's great to have a CPA there. It's also better to know instead of being like a parent child.

if you can spend it. I want my CPA to give me my books, my reconciliation. I want them to talk to me about my tax strategy, but I don't want them to be the ones telling me, can I afford something or can I not? I wanna go to them and say, I know I can afford this. This is what I think. Do you think it's a good idea? Then I'm counseling with them rather than being told. And this goes for all of my executive board. I want to know as much as I possibly can. So that way when I show up, like even financial advisors, even my...

My lawyers, like I do a lot of research before I go into those because I don't want to just blindly follow. I want to actively participate. So we're making the best decisions. I believe they're all in the best interest. I don't believe my CPA telling me to do something or not to do something is the end all be all. I feel like we are great at counseling together. They give me their opinion. I know the numbers. They know the numbers. We know where the business is going. And then my job is to make the best decision for the business and for myself.

So this is where I just really obsessed because right now I'm looking and I'm like, wow, what I'm currently paying based on bringing in some new hires, we're gonna do a $30,000 increase. And I look at that I wonder, is that wise? Is that what I wanna do? Is that what we as a business wanna do? Is that smart for the business? Or is it something like, then I get to sit here and I get to innovate and we get to think of like, what other ideas could we do? That's why I went down the list, because I wanna hire some more people. It's a little premature for these hires.

So I was like, okay, let's go back to the list. Let's look at the list. Like where could I like cut some costs to see, could I free up any cash in other areas or do we need to make different decisions? Or is it like, I need to put a pause on hiring that person for a little while until the business gets to X amount and then we can bring on those different hires. So when you look at this, that's how I do it. I use this spreadsheet. I'm not kidding. I I hold, I can tell you exactly because what's great on Google Sheets is they can literally tell you all the different versions. Okay.

So let's just go back to, I'm going to go, this is embarrassing. I'm going to go to June. Okay, so I'll just go back a few months for you guys. I logged into this spreadsheet of the monthly costs. June 5th, June 10th, June 16th, June 19th, June 24th, June 24th, again, June 25th, July 2nd, multiple times, July 7th, July 8th, July 9th, July 10th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 24.

The only reason it stopped there is because I went out of town August 3rd, August 6th, August 7th. As you can see, I'm in this spreadsheet almost daily. If not every other day. That's insane. I mean, I can go back to April. I can go back to March, February, January, December, December. I'm in here all the time. November, October of last year. I'm just going down. October. I was in there 10 because that's when I started to do projections. So you better believe I was in there a lot more during that time. October. There's about 20 entries September. So when I tell you this is a tool,

that I have found that works so insanely well. Clients love it. Cause then we're like, our overhead's high. We can go over to our costs and say, why is it high? What is causing this? I'm looking at people's loans that they have and I'm like, do you really use the Seric? Do we need to continue to use this? Are we using all these different like plan Mecca and all these other loans that we have on the practice? Are we still using that? And if so, that's fine. But let's at least know where our money's going.

so then we can make better decisions of do we wanna continue that? And so hopefully, like I said, it's not a fun topic. Like it is, this one, if you can't tell, the passion, the fun, like it's really fun for me to look to say like, okay, where is it? This is where I decided it was time for us to close our headquarters down in Reno. We used to have one, but I was looking for how can I cut costs? Where can I, because for me, I'd rather not spend it on a physical location. I'd rather buy, like spend that money on different softwares that are gonna make us more efficient, being able to hire better employees.

Like I'd rather reallocate those dollars to something that's gonna benefit the company more. And so for you, just feel like this is such a great tool to help you truly know where your money's going, know where you can cut. And like I said, I do this for personal. I'm like, all right, give me all your costs. Give me your credit card. We're gonna look at every single thing. And then like, what could we do differently? I mean, my cell phone, let alone, I used to pay almost a hundred bucks a month for my cell phone. It's now, hold please. I'll tell you the exact amount. Cause I can tell you it's literally right here.

Um, it is a telephone right here, $35 a month. And I used to pay 95, but that was once again, like Verizon got a competitor. have a sister company called visible. I could even get it down to 20, but I didn't want to like drop that far. But we went from 90 to 35 and there was no change or disruption. I watched it for several years. I had people do it, then made the change. Is there a better company out there for X, Y, or Z? Is there a better processing company? And I know again, this seems annoying.

But annually around September, October is when I start to do projections and I start to look at everything. Cause I'm looking at costs. What could I cut? But monthly, daily, I'm looking to see who can I hire? Where can I do things? Change it, adjust it. And what's amazing is when doctors and OMS have this tool available, now you're like, can we afford to hire this person? You can answer with confidence rather than hoping and praying you're going to be able to make it. Just like what I used to do. was like, let's just hope and pray we're going to hire them and hope it works out.

now I can have way more confident decisions. And like, think as a business owner, being able to have confident, like one of the strongest things you need to do as a business owner is be able to make decisions. And I think the second piece to that is being able to make more confident decisions, utilizing tools like this one that I'm sharing with you. So if you want help, reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Like I said, I love to put this together for clients. I love to give them the tools and resources to where they can actually be here and know. And also I say if you're here,

Like go get your credit card, list everything out that you're spending money on. Look at your P &L, see if it matches up, see if you can figure it out. And this was something that's been evolved over the course of honestly, probably eight years. I started it when I was really new into the business. I made this myself because I'm like, I don't even know where my money's going. How am I supposed to be able to make decisions? And I could not figure out why my overhead was so high. Now I can tell you exactly this is what we're spending every month. This is why we're spending it. This is what we want to do. This is where we're going. These are the numbers that we need to do.

It just gives you so much confidence, clarity. And so that's why I just love to share it and to help you. ⁓ I believe, like we said in the yes model, you as a person need to know where your vision is. Then we need to have your earnings and your profit where it needs to be. And then we need to figure out the systems and team development to support all of those pieces. And that's what we love. It's what I'm obsessed with. So reach out, ⁓ even if you're like, I don't know. I don't know if I'm a good fit. Let's just have a call. It's literally no commitment, no stress.

just clarity and confidence to get you the momentum that you deserve. So reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Go fall in love with numbers and spreadsheets. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Tiff and Dana discuss what they've seen across hundreds of practices as the best time to hold those weekly meetings. They also touch on the benefits of third-party insight, finding pockets to create consistency, the right cadence for your team, and more.

Episode resources:

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Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are so excited to be here with you today. I snag Dana once again, and I always say that I snag Dana. I say that because I pre-schedule these, you guys. Pretty far out in the calendar, I always have the podcasting scheduled. And then I do a really great job of being like, ⁓ actually, I know that it's on this specific date, but maybe we could squeeze it in here. I am always looking for ways to try to maximize a schedule, but sometimes it.

requires me moving things around. So I do really truly snack, Dana, where I can and push it into our schedules, typically somewhere else other than where it had originally started. So Dana, thank you for always knowing your schedule, always considering it, and always, think, one, we typically are able to just pop it in there, which just reinforces my bad habit, but... ⁓

I do know without a shadow of a doubt that if it doesn't work, you'll tell me too. So thank you for being the kind of person that can look at something and can confidently say like, oh, great idea, Tiff, but I can't do it that day. What about this day? I appreciate that about you, about your leadership style. And it makes me super confident in you training leaders and practices out there in the world. So Dana, welcome to the show today. Thank you for all that you are. How are you? It's the beginning of our week. How's your Monday so far? And again, thank you for.

just sliding this in here today.

Dana (01:24)

Yeah, of course. Thank you. And you know, like, as a fellow efficiency hacker, I love when you look for ways to just pop it in spaces, especially with how busy our schedules are. I definitely always appreciate the snag and the time with you. And yeah, my Monday starting off pretty good, you know, meetings, catch up, client projects, all the things Monday can be a fun and yet sometimes wild day.

The Dental A Team (01:49)

It's so true. It's so true. My boyfriend's always like, gosh, it's Monday and like, why are you always so exhausted? Isn't this your meeting day? And I'm like, yeah, well, you know, we got lots of meetings and today I decided to snag everyone possible for podcasting. So I've got meeting on meeting and then podcasting and you're totally right, Dana. And I think it's actually really beautiful. Something we did a few years ago. I don't know, Dana, if you remember when we started, probably, probably pretty close to when you onboarded as a consultant, we started shifting.

into Monday meeting day and Friday kind of meeting slash catch up kind of admin work day because we were getting really wild with our schedule. And it's just something I think that has changed and shifted the culture of the company pretty drastically. And it gives us that space to really dial in and work on the company and not just always working on client stuff or our own personal stuff that gives us space. So kudos to the Dental A Team there and Dana that was really

really kind of ties into today's content, honestly, of really structuring a schedule and being able to see where we can best create, you know, which I know like people, gosh, what am I trying to say here? Practices are like, where am I supposed to do a meeting? Where, and then where is it most beneficial? And I know I get asked a lot and Dana, you might too, like, can I do my meeting on a Friday? I'm like, totally, you sure can. But I think from our experience, what we've seen is Mondays tend to be the best because it sets the week up.

in advance. You can set it up on Friday for sure too, but I think it really just starting the day with our Monday meeting that first, you know, level 10 style meeting first thing in the morning on Mondays really gets the whole team energized and aligned on what our week is going to look like. And for me, working from home, like it really like motivates me to get moving. And Dana, do you, do you kind of feel that same way? And do you see that with practices?

Dana (03:41)

Yeah, I do. agree with you. think if Friday is the only time that the entire team can get together for a meeting short have it on Friday, but I do feel like end of the week meetings, whether your last day is Thursday or your last day is Friday. It doesn't allow us to really jump off and get started right away. There's this whole weekend kind of a lag. And sometimes I feel like we come in Monday and it's like, we maybe lost some of the priorities that we talked about, or they get filtered through our weekend a little bit. So if it is the only time that you can, absolutely. And then I think Monday just a little like, guys, don't

forget, right? Bullet points of what we talked about, what we're working on this weekend, again, just to start the week fresh. But I think if you can do them on Mondays, it is a great way to really get everybody focused for the week to be super intentional with the week and with your time and just a jumpstart for everybody.

The Dental A Team (04:27)

I totally agree. I think that's super important. I love how you brought that back together on Monday morning as a refocus moment. So maybe it's not the whole hour to hour and a half, however long meeting, but it's a quick like 15, 20 minutes. Let's just jumpstart this week to get us off on the same foot and make sure we remember the things we committed to. So I love that. I think that's brilliant. And again, it ties into what we're going to talk about today. I

Love stats. love pulling the consulting team's stats. love seeing what you ladies are doing for your clients over there and really just seeing the successes of the clients. And I love sharing those successes and those tools. Something that my team loves to do is just really share all the tools we possibly can. And when you're ready to work with us, we do it side by side with you. But until then, you've got these resources that you can kind of self-implement to the best of your possibilities. And we are always here to help as much as we can.

So Dana, I know we've chatted about this client ⁓ ourselves and we're not going to get into the specifics of the client, but the specifics of the results itself. And kudos to your diligence, ⁓ to your accountability and really staying on top of what a client needs. And I think what we've seen a lot is that mostly a client needs someone doing it side by side with them as in,

sharing the emotional load and being willing to have the hard conversations when they need to be had and answer the text when they need to be answered and get on those calls every single month for an hour and a half and really bust through the struggles that the numbers are showing us and really implement the right tools and put the accountability lines into it. So when I say we do it with them, Dana, that's like a very hard line that we've learned to take.

And we do it with them by ⁓ actions of training and support. We're not doing it for you. not calling your patients. Dana's not calling on unpaid balances. But she is someone who has been able to support many clients, but specifically these results. She has been able to support practices in achieving this specific one is tripling their collections within two months of working with Dana.

That sounds magical. It sounds beautiful and it is. And the clients who do experience these kinds of results, which all of our clients experience some tremendous results. But something I do want to put a caveat on is that our clients experience results in varying degrees. And there are just so there's so many results to be had and so many results to be shared. And I think something that has to be taken into consideration is where you come into the game.

Where are you starting and where are you going? Right. So this practice had some room to grow coming into it and as do many practices. so generally speaking, Dana, I think my first question is tripling collections. Number one freaking fantastic way to go. You offered some incredible support, some incredible training and awesome, awesome tools that they will be able to use for the rest of their careers.

What did you, when you see practices come in like this and you're like, holy, holy cow, there's room here to triple your production or your collections. Like, let's do this. What kind of demographics are they coming in with? What are you seeing their stats as when they onboard?

Dana (07:52)

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, and I will say a client like this is really exciting to onboard because when you can kind of instantly see where you can help, right, you can instantly bring some relief, you can instantly reduce stress because, you know, collections is an area that can cause a ton of just.

emotions, stress, because that's money in the bank, right? And, and that is the money that we use to pay our team and pay for expenses and keep the doors open. And so to be able to have a client come in, I can just like instantly pinpoint where I can be super helpful and massively impact just their life and their practice. It is really, really exciting. Now to get results like triple the collections, this office came in with collections sitting at around 40 % as well

as needing some growth in their production, right? So ideally what they were needing to collect, there was a fairly decent gap ⁓ there that allowed for these results, but it definitely was hugely impacted in their just willingness to jump in and get to work too.

The Dental A Team (09:04)

Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think that that space is super fun when clients come in and I'm like, heck yeah, here's a target. And most clients, whether it's the collections or overhead or production, most clients will come in with something that we can just narrow in on right away within the first 30 days and get momentum and get movement. And I think once we get that movement going, whether it's small or drastic, that's when the momentum catches with the team.

and the doctors and the leaders, and they're like, ⁓ this isn't as hard as we thought it was. We can do this one strategic piece at a time. And so when you're looking at a whole practice, it can be super overwhelming. And when you're working in the practice, hence the reason we do Monday meeting days, right? It's really hard to work on and in something at the same time. And when you're doing that, everything that quote unquote needs to be fixed or needs to be worked on or needs to progress,

is a hot fire and is a stress. And you're like, how do I do it all? How do I do everything? So what we end up doing, I think most often in practices, Dana, I know that I did this as a leader, is we try to fix a piece of multiple things. And so we get nowhere really fast. And we get like a 3 % movement on 10 different things instead of really being able to narrow down the focus into that one thing.

that can be done now that will progress you, that can spiral and domino effect into the next thing. And Dana, I think that's something that you were able to do with these, the results that you got here with this client, but specifically with any client, that third party kind of bird's eye view perspective of massive issues, it's easier for us to come in and say, well, why don't we work on this is the biggest thing, or this is the thing we can fix right now.

those other pieces might have things tied to them that we can't resolve. So we're gonna start here and finding that starting point seems to be the magic sauce of like one thing, one focus. And Dana, you do really well keeping them in line with that and being like, ⁓ yeah, those are great questions. What about this? Yep, those were great options. What about this? So bringing them back in alignment to that. And for these results to triple their collections,

What did you see right off the bat that you were like, is our focus. This is where we're gonna keep coming back. And how did you continue to pull them back into focus for that? Because I know they squirreled, everyone does.

Dana (11:38)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. They do.

And everybody squirrels, and I think, too, like...

Doctors come in with I need to change this thing because it's the thing I can control, right? So a lot of times when it is a collections issues, doctors will come in and say, just need to produce more, right? I got to get in there and I got to produce more. And while that will help collections, right, it isn't going to fix whatever the root causes that's really thrown it off. And I will say for this practice, like there was quite a bit of opportunity in there, meaning that both sides of collections were just

not kept super consistent, not really great systems in place. You know, a lot of the parts and pieces in the background were a little bit off kilter or broken, if you will. And so instantly what I could see was, because I will say,

front office turnover, there's only one person that works in the front and it turned over quite frequently during the period of time where they saw a huge drop. knowing that, I could see that insurance AR really hadn't been kept super consistent. And honestly and truly the first thing that I did was recommend that he outsource it to somebody that could keep it steady. First and foremost, I can see we don't have hands on deck. Our clinical team doesn't know insurance well enough to pivot and jump in in those areas. And we really need somebody that is strong.

The Dental A Team (12:46)

sense.

Dana (12:56)

and can get in there and can get you results very quickly because honestly and truly at that point there was not a front office person on the scene. So it was I've got a great resource for you to outsource your insurance billing and get that started right away and honestly and truly that made a huge jump just having somebody consistent work on it.

The Dental A Team (13:18)

Yeah, and I think that's a huge point. So whether you have somebody in the office or you have to outsource, ⁓ the thing that you said there was consistently working on it. So if you do have somebody, which a lot of practices do, you've got somebody in the practice, but I think that like squirreling on trying to figure out or decide what's the most important thing to work on right now, I...

think my assumption is, what I've seen is that those insurance follow-ups, those claims follow-ups, even claims processing, like sending the claims and prepping the claims, those get pushed to the wayside because they can be theoretically done at any time, right? It doesn't require me answering the phone and talking to a patient right now. It doesn't require me checking in a patient right now or answering the 15 questions that the doctor's coming with me.

to me with today because he doesn't have a patient, right? It doesn't require my immediate attention. So I can kind of push it to the back of my pile and handle other quote unquote hot fires. So that consistency gets lost. And back to our Monday meetings, would you have, if they had someone in this practice, and I know you've done this with other practices too, or I assume you have, would you have them structure so that they had specific times for that consistency?

Dana (14:31)

Okay.

The Dental A Team (14:32)

how do we help a billing team? Because I've had it too, where they've got somebody there and they're just like, Tiff, I don't know what you want me to do, I've got all these other things. And it's like, well, we need a structure built in. So what does that look like,

Dana (14:44)

Yeah, and we did build a structure with the patient side with them. And so I think that there's a structure for both sides and you have to figure out about how much we can set aside every week. Right. And I like just a very simple cadence. Week one and three is patient AR. Week two and four is insurance AR. Week one is sending statements. Week three is your follow up calls and texts.

for your patient AR, for your insurance AR, usually I say week two, I'm working oldest forward, right? So I'll do my 90 day, my 60 day week two, week four, then I'm hitting my like 30 to 60 and whatever I can work in the current. ⁓

And so I think when you break it up into chunks like that, and whether it is, hey, you spend an hour every day each week, or you pick Tuesdays as your AR day, and you lock yourself in whatever space you can that you're uninterrupted, or you just let the team know, hey, come to me as little as possible for the next four hours, it's my AR time, and you mark it on your schedule. But I think developing, because AR is the one thing that the second you let off the gas, right, it will spiral on you.

It

will continue to grow. It will take off the second that you look away from it. And so, so often that's really just what it is, is you're doing the things. You're doing follow-up calls. You are...

Reaching out to patients you're sending statements, but we're doing it sporadically versus consistently We're doing it when we have pockets of time versus making the time to keep it consistent And when we're looking for pockets of time in a busy dental practice as you know Tiff like things always will come up

There's always a way to fill your time and there's always things that feel really pressing. And so AR is one of those things because it's just follow up that gets pushed to the side or is like, I'll tackle that next week or Hey, I'll tackle that at the end of the month. And by the time we get to the end of the month, it's grown to where we actually can't manage it now because there's so much in there.

The Dental A Team (16:44)

Yeah, well you made me think of the reference that people can kind of look at this as, especially for our doctors or our managers who maybe don't do this part of the job. It makes me think of gym workouts. And when you're going even three times a week, so you've got three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, every week you're gonna go to the gym and you go to the gym and two, three, four weeks go by and you're starting to increase the weight.

on the exercises that you're doing. So maybe your bicep curls by week four, you're able to do a five pound heavier dumbbell. You start at 10, now week four you're at 15. And then life happens and you're like, shoot, we've got Christmas, we've got New Year's, we've got family in town, and we don't prioritize getting to the gym or getting those workouts in. So we lose the reps, right?

your reps aren't just like the single exercise reps. Your reps are the repetitions of actually going to the gym. So what happens then, you lose the reps of the gym and you were going three days a week and you were just killing it for like four months and you're like, I see these great results and this is working. And then you're like, shoot, it's holidays. And you just don't make the time for it. And you say, I'll get there when I can. And it starts as two days.

Fridays are out, there's too much family stuff going on. I can't do a Friday, that's crazy. So Monday, Wednesday, and then all of a sudden it's like, shoot, by Monday, I'm really tired by the end of the day, so I'll go at least Wednesday, but Wednesday's hump day. So then by the end of January, you're like, now I need a resolution created to get myself back in the gym because I'm starting over. And so I think that's what happens with AR or re-care calls or unscheduled treatment calls. We do them and we do them and we do them and then we're like,

Gosh, Dana, I've got to do this thing or I'm exhausted of this. I can't make any more calls. So we stop and then we're starting at the beginning again, even for re-care calls. If you've called a patient four times to schedule and you're like, Tiff, they're just not coming. You don't know that until they tell you they're not coming. So then in two months, you're starting again at ground zero. That's your first call. It's not your fifth call. You haven't called them five times. Now you call them once and you're starting all over again. So Dana, I think when you talked about the consistency in AR, that's what it made me think of.

Brody does great, my kid does great, and he'll start seeing results and then he falls off and then he's like, my squats are, I can't do as much on my squats again. And I'm like, well, you know, your legs are the first to go, buddy. Like your biggest muscle, those are the first to go. And he's constantly restarting. And I see people do that all the time in the health industry, but I don't think we relate it necessarily to our tasks in our daily job.

And I think Dana, you keyed in on that. And so building that consistency for them, the consistency with the offsite billing company obviously helped this practice alone, but building that consistency on the patient AR and having those two, if it's in office, if you're using an offsite company, matter what, consistent follow-up on offsite company is a thing as well. So no matter what you built, you helped them see where they could build that structure into their schedule, build the systems that needed to be followed.

and stay consistent on it no matter what happened. And Dana, I would have to assume and surmise here that that's where the results really started to trickle in. Because had they done that really well in month one, they may have only had 10 % increase. But because they stuck with it, they were able to triple their results in two months by utilizing those structures. Dana, do you agree? Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, you've

Dana (20:12)

Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

The Dental A Team (20:18)

killed it and you guys again like this comes from you have to start where you are and if you don't have you guys if you're calling us and you're like hey I have ten thousand dollars in my over 90 AR okay great when order to increase collections we're gonna have increased production like great AR I want that but when you call and you say hey Dana I have two hundred fifty thousand dollars in my AR that's an easy space to be like awesome we need to get this collections ramped up there's a lot to be collected here

So start where you are, know there's always consistency to be found. There's always something we're doing inconsistently and I always say anything you do consistently, even if you're consistently inconsistent, okay, if you are consistently inconsistent, you are going to produce a result. Anything you do consistently will produce a result. It's just looking to see is this producing the results I want or not. And if it's an or not, look at your real consistency.

Are you actually doing what you think you're doing? Or are you a little lopsided and topsy-turvy and maybe only making insurance calls once a month? Because that would suck.

Dana (21:23)

Yeah, and it's one of

those spaces to like you said hard conversations, right? And I think that numbers make those conversations a little bit easier because I can say it may feel as if it is consistent, but there's something happening because the result

isn't there. And if we kept it consistent, we can certainly look at what you're doing and is that effective. But so often when we work with teams, it's the consistency piece that we're missing. Offices come in and like they want systems and they want help. And it turns out that a lot of them have systems, right? It's the consistency piece that they haven't quite figured out or, or how to even see that or build it in, like you said, creating that cadence. ⁓ And sometimes it's like you can

makes such massive movement with just one small tweak in consistency.

The Dental A Team (22:13)

Yeah,

beautiful. I think that is wonderful. And Dana, if I were to force you to wrap this into some action items, with that said, what would it be?

Dana (22:23)

Yeah, I would say just pull your AR, right? Know what your AR looks like. Know what your collections percentage is for every month. Remember, we're targeting less than one month's production for AR, 98 % for collections. But the biggest piece is if those numbers aren't where you want them to be.

Build your cadence. Make sure that those pieces are consistent. Talk to your billing coordinators. If you are the billing coordinator, look, where can I make it consistent in my schedule? Map it out, put it on the schedule, tell the team, ⁓ and get to work because it'll make massive change.

The Dental A Team (22:57)

Awesome, I love it. Thank you, Dana. I think that was a beautiful wrap. ⁓ And guys, I just, I love our clients and you guys work so hard for the results that you get and the space to allow us to come in and support you on that is just really, really fun for us. So thank you to all of our clients. Massive thank you to all of our listeners, whether you're a client or not. You are here, you show up with us and hopefully you get some really fantastic.

actionable items and pieces that you can take away to your teams or individually implement within your own position in your company. So you guys, that's a wrap for today. I hope you enjoy. Drop us a five star review. Let us know what you think. And if you have any tips or tricks that you've implemented that have helped increase your collections, we'd love to hear about them. You can leave them in your review. People do read those. tell you that all the time. Or let us know Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. If you have any questions or you want to give Dana some massive kudos or

just pick our brains, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com works as well. So thank you guys and until next time, we'll see you later.

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.

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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.

Lauren Edvalson, CEO of Edvalson Marketing, shares a ~ton~ of marketing goodness in this episode. Her number one tip? Communication! That's communication between the doctor...Continue Reading...

This episode is all about money! It's time to face the truth when it comes to your finances, but Ryan Isaac, senior financial with the Dentist Advisors...Continue Reading...

Dental marketing pro Ashley Keith returns to the podcast to chat with Kiera about … bragging! The ladies discuss the benefits of marketing and a three-pronged approach your practice...Continue Reading...

In today's episode, Kiera welcomes back fan favorite, Ashley Keith- office manager of a 20 op practice including 4 doctors, 10 hygienists and all the support team....Continue Reading...

Digging through our archives, we found this gem of an episode! Travel back with Kiera and Mark in this older car riff as they relive the events from their recent conferences and discuss the importance of job ads...Continue Reading...

Kiera rocks out this episode in preparation for your Monday Meeting Mashup! She encourages offices to set up individual meetings where different departments teach and lead the meetings each week.

Join Kiera as she interviews Jackie Martinez, a native Texan who serves as the business guru and OM for her family of dentists. She has learned and navigated a way of leadership that implements business goals that labor results.

Dental A Team-- is your operations manual completed?  Or is it like 99% of office where it's a great idea and you just can't seem to find the time to complete it?  Or do you even know where to start?

Hey hygienists, are you passionate about Fluoride? If not, why? In this episode, Kiera dives into the importance of suggesting fluoride to your patients.

In today's episode, Kiera is joined by a unique office manager, Ashley Keith. Ashley's husband is a dentist who owns a 20 op practice that has four dentists, 10 hygienists and a huge support team.

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.

Episode resources:

Sign up for Dental A-Team's Virtual Summit 2025!

Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast

Schedule a Practice Assessment

Leave us a review

Transcript

kiera Dent (00:02.36)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today, I just really wanted to dive into, are you truly tired of missing production goals? Because if you are, block scheduling is honestly the secret to hitting them consistently with ease. And I know this is something that's talked about so often. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to break this down into three easy steps to make sure that you're able to do this with your team in a fun, effective, and just like overall amazing way for you.

Block scheduling can truly transform your productivity into profitability. And it's something as simple as doing a quick puzzle in your practice where we're able to add the pieces, have an incredible patient experience, incredible team experience, incredible doctor experience. And to me, that's a win-win-win. So for that, these three steps are going to really make it easy for you and your team to...

chunk this down into a tactical practical way. You guys, I'm Kiera Dent, owner and CEO of the Dental A Team, a consulting company where we are committed to not just understanding you, but actually being you. All of our consultants have worked in every position in the practice where we're able to understand what it's like to not be able to hit productivity goals, to schedule with no frustration, to have cancellations that are dropping off on us, to where we know what it's like to lose team members. All of those things are something that our Dental A Team

consultants are experts at and something that I'm really really proud of as a company because I know that when we understand you we're not just coming to you with theories and ideas but actual tips that have been proven, tried, consistent across hundreds of offices in all the states in multiple different countries to make sure that we're giving you guys efficiency that helps your team stay focused. So this is gonna be able to help you guys out and today it's gonna be short and actionable because I want you guys to able to take what we talk about and implement it today.

So step one is going to be identify your practices production goals. Now that what we got to do is we've got to look to see what did our practice produce last year and a healthy standard benchmark is that we want to actually be increasing a minimum of 10 % year over year. We also want to make sure that we've increased our fee schedules every single year and most practices go up about 5%. Now, if you're concerned about that with your fee for service patients or your out of pocket patients, I want to just remind you that this is standard across the board with most businesses to increase 5%.

Kiera Dent (02:14.402)

And if you wanna keep those preventative ones out, by all means go for it. I just wanna be able to remind you that by doing so, when we actually send our statements out to insurance and we bill out to insurance, it actually helps the insurance companies determine what the fee should be within our area. So I wanna make sure that we're not missing opportunities and possibly a membership plan could actually help our patients when we're concerned about those preventative services. So make sure that we know what we need to do for that 10 % growth.

make sure we understand how many days we're off in the practice. So I like to go through every single month. What are the vacations? What are the holidays? What are the times off? What are our high and low months across the board? I know for some pediatric practices, our certain months in the year are actually not great, but our summer months are incredible. I know for other areas based on where they are, they get a lot of snowfall in February. So February actually becomes a terrible month for them. There's also other offices where there's a notorious, suck timber or slam dunk September.

where we actually have a dip right after school gets back in session. So knowing those trends are actually gonna be able to know your practice's production goals to be able to hit them successfully. And while yes, this might take a little time for us to go through, map these things out, what it What it it does is it actually helps us go through and see what does our production need to be? How can we realistically hit it based on the days that we're working? What does each day need to be? What does each provider goal need to be for our doctors and our hygienists? And then we're able to actually bring all that information together.

and make a perfect puzzle for us. And then we start to place it into place. So when an office does this, usually I'm seeing a minimum of a 10 % increase, but oftentimes I'm seeing a 10, 20, 30, 40 % increase year over year. I've added multiple millions to practices and our consultants have done as well just by effective block scheduling where we're not increasing the new patients. We're not changing the hours that they're working. We're not adding more days for them to work. We're just being very consistent with how they actually schedule. And it's like I said, it's a puzzle.

I can put in five puzzle pieces of one type, or I can do five different puzzle pieces. Again, I put five puzzle pieces in same amount of time in a day, but I'm actually able to make a thousand dollars versus a $5,000 a day. It was crazy. had an office that I went into and I remember they had never been scheduled to 10, $10,000 in a day. And so when I went in and I showed them, here's how we can actually do 10,000, I scheduled them to 10,000 the next day. What was wild was the day I was there, they were producing 4,000.

Kiera Dent (04:35.778)

The next day I scheduled them to 10,000 showing them how to do this. And at the end of the $10,000 day, they looked at me high-fiving. We were out the door on time and they said, Kiera, that was actually easier than our day was yesterday when we only produced 4,000. And I said, it was just with blocks. It was just with us being strategic of where we put people as being intentional. And from there, we were actually able to be productive. So just helping you guys see, we've got to figure out what our specific production goals are before we restructure the schedule. That's step number one.

Step number two is design your ideal block schedule. Some doctors like to start early in the day with a crown. Some like to start later in the day with their crowns. Whatever it is, we need to design it of where do we actually want these to be? And I like high value, follow ups, zero dollar appointments. And instead of just saying a crown, I actually like to build a block schedule based on dollar amounts. Like I said, it's puzzle pieces. So that way if a crown or a quad of fills comes through, I know there are 1500 or a thousand, whatever it is, they're going into this block.

Blocks are held for us for 24 to 48 hours, pending upon your practice to make sure we're able to put the puzzle piece in that we want. We're able to actually map it out and we're able to then tell patients when they're coming up, hey, Dr. Smith likes to do crowns in the morning. I have an eight o'clock or a nine o'clock on Monday or Wednesday, which do you prefer? Now I'm not asking the patient, where do you wanna go? I'm literally asking the patient, this is what we do. This is where I can put you. This is how we do it. What works best for you?

We actually eliminate a lot of the excuses. We eliminate a lot of the frustration and we're directing and guiding the patient rather than trying to come back after they've told us they want a four o'clock when our doctor really doesn't do crowns at four o'clock. This is going to help you exponentially build the blocks. Also, I'm not putting implants and fillings next door to each other because that can get tricky. I'm not doing two crowns back to back where I can't see it. We're literally building a puzzle that our doctors can actually do. All of us get our lunches. All of us get out on time.

Doctors can get over to their hygiene exams. So I'm also then playing Sudoku across the board where I've got my doctor procedures, my new patients and my SRPs. Square up your SRPs and your implants. So that way the doctor can literally get the implant done and not have to go do the hygiene checks. It's a way for us to truly make a puzzle that's 80 to 90 % effective and efficient. So when we do that, that's step two of design our ideal block schedule and build that out. Now, the way I do this is I draft block schedules in Google Sheets.

Kiera Dent (06:58.242)

So in Excel, map it out of what the perfect amount is, put the dollar amounts there of what this is actually going to equate to for the day, and then figure out where my hygiene blocks need to be. I need to also figure out the number of new patients that we're seeing, the number of SRP and the number of perio maintenance blocks that I also need to add into my schedule to make sure I have enough hygiene hours to accommodate the patients that we have in there. So that's in how we're gonna draft this up. So that's gonna be what you'll need to do next is draft a block schedule template for your practice that will actually be effective.

And then step three is to implement it, train our team and track our progress. So what we do is we then go put it into place. I understand that hygiene is usually blocked out six months. And so that does take a little bit longer to get into place, but our doctors can get their blocks put in right away. And we need to train our team, put those blocks in, educate them of what do we do when a patient wants a four o'clock, but we only do crowns at two o'clock. And I want to just remind you that an ideal schedule for our doctor is an amazing schedule for our patients.

us being on time, us being happy as a team, us having our doctor fresh and prepped and ready to go is so much better for these patients than us like trying to shove them in because the reality is patients can adapt the schedule as long as we're using our words, which are free to be able to put our patients where we want them to go. So how do we do this? So we host a team meeting, we explain the block schedules, we assign a point person who's going to oversee and implement, and then we actually help them make sure of...

What happens when we put this in a block when we're not supposed to? What's the follow-up? And I really get offices to work on this for six weeks to two months where we are rock solid on this. And then we come back and we adjust it after that. So when I've done this, there was an office and they were producing about 2 million a year. We put in block schedule, like I said, no extra days, no extra time. So we went from 2 million up to 3.5 million simply by being effective with our time with block schedules. To me, that's a wild growth. We have gone

Exponentially, we've gone from 2 million to 3.5 just by putting these blocks in. were like, Kiera, patients are happier. Our team is happier. We're having our lunches on time. Our doctors are getting out on time. And to me, I just feel if those are the wins, then amazing, this is worth it. So for you getting your team excited about it, helping them see like, understand teams don't like change. Why do you think I love being the Dental A Team where we do this in a fun and effective way? I love to do this because I help teams see what's possible when it feels impossible.

Kiera Dent (09:18.488)

helping them see where we can create ease when there's chaos, helping them see how we can be more efficient rather than cumbersome. So the reality is block scheduling is going to change your life. It's going to help you be effectively productive. It's going to help you hit your goals with ease. One of my favorite quotes is by Walt Disney where he says that he was able to create predictable magic because of the systems behind the scenes. And so for you to be able to create predictable production with the systems behind the scenes of block scheduling to me is a gift that you can give yourself and your team this year.

So what I want you guys to know is this is going to honestly simplify your productivity and give you guys goals to be able to hit them with ease. You don't have to be perfect. We have those snow days. We have the slow summer days. We have the December that's only two weeks. We have all these different things put in so we know exactly what we need our blocks to be. And then we're able to hit our goals with ease and more consistency. I really don't love having success be happenstance where I'm like, will I get it or will I not? I like your success to be inevitable. And I believe that block scheduling is one of the greatest ways to do that.

So if you're interested, DMS or email us for a free block scheduling template, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com And as always, you guys, this is how we're able to help you run a successful dental practice with ease. I don't believe that running a practice should be hard. I believe that this could be easy. And I want you just to ask yourself, what if it could be easy? How would you feel? How would your team feel? How would your patients feel? Because that can be a reality. This is what the Dental A Team does. And if that's helpful for you, reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

Kiera Dent hosts an awesome episode with Trish Primeau, an office manager that has created a "love to work" environment. Trish and Kiera discuss how genuine appreciation for others hard work will craft a bond between the office staff that is so important in maintaining morale

People need time to get their work accomplished, but sometimes it is so hard to focus on the important when the urgent is looming! Kiera reminds us that you don't have to do a lot to get results...

Fluoride is the KEY and KING to prevent decay-- and a great way to increase hygiene profitability. Solid wins for everyone! So why not implement its power with your patients?

Ever have days when defeat is more a part of your life than success? Kiera discusses a time in her life when she felt the same way. There are days when you will feel like you don't have potential...

New patient calls don't have to be a hassle. Kiera welcomes back favorite guest, Donna Dinette, one of the Kiera's Dental Consulting Travel Consultants who is a wizard at getting new patients into your schedule within 5 minutes.

Kiera welcomes Paige Benjamin back to discuss perio patients and appointments. Paige emphasizes the need for probing every appointment as well as updating the perio chart.

Managing multiple practices doesn't have to be overwhelming. Kiera lays out simple tips to follow in order to map your way to building several successful practices.

In this short, but juicy episode, Kiera gives practical advice about finances, treatment planning, and scheduling. She poses the question, "If dentistry was free, what would you recommend for treatment?"

Kiera is back with Dr. Summer Kassamel to discuss the implementation of KPIs. Dr. Summer encourages practice owners to not be afraid to change KPIs after 3 months in order to really focus on KPIs that will make a difference in the practice.

Kiera is joined by Paige Benjamin, a rock star hygienist who can do it all! On this episode, Kiera and Paige dig deep into successful ways to make your practice successful by increasing hygiene productivity. So to all the dental hygienists out this, this one's for you!

Kiera touches base with doctors on how the first quarter of 2025 has gone. Ask yourself:

1. Are we tracking key performance indicators?

2. How's the team efficiency and morale looking?

3. Do we need to adjust and refocus our annual goals?

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 (00:00.908)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera, and I hope you're having just an incredible day. I hope life is incredible for you. And today, I just wanna highlight that Q1 is almost over. Can you believe it? We're almost a fourth of the way through 2025. And today, I wanted to ask you, are you on track for your best year yet? Because I wanna make sure that we break this down to ensure that you are thriving in 2025 and that success is predictable for you rather than just happenstance. So today, you guys, if we go through...

that reviewing our Q1 of what we did well, what we missed, how we can improve, are we on track, are we off track? This is gonna really be able to help you find the opportunities for growth to make sure that you are thriving in 2025. Today, I'm gonna break it down into three simple steps for you, tactical, practical, as always. You guys know I'm Kiera Dent, owner and CEO of Dental A Team, where we are a consulting company founded upon making your life easy, more fun, and more fulfilled.

We do that through you as a person. We also do that through making sure you're profitable. Let's cut the stress. Let's make sure you're profitable. Aiming for at least 20 to 30 % true profit, post everything else. And then we also do it with system and team engagement and top to bottom systems for your team to thrive. Truly, it's what we're about. We love working with teams. We love working with dentists. Our consultants are experts in the field. They have been in every single position in the practice, making sure that your life is easy.

fun and that you feel like you have someone in your court with you that has the answers for you, has the solutions for you, and ensure that you are successful and profitable. So today, you guys, we are going to go through this. is going to be a concise action packed episode. cannot wait. So let's dive in. Step number one to make sure you are on track through Q1 is I want you to actually go back through and assess how do we do based on our metrics this year. If you are not tracking KPIs, key performance indicators, today is a great day to start that.

Your team should be tracking. We should be able to look at Q1 and see where were we on track, where were we off track, why were we off track and what's going forward. I love to be doing this every single week and then really assessing every single month. If you haven't gone to do that, rock on. It's the time to do it. You still have three quarters left. Let's make sure that you're super successful for that. So things that I like to look at are production, collections, new patients, case acceptance. We wanna make sure we've got our hygiene reappointment. What's our hygiene percentage?

Kiera Dent (02:16.354)

We wanna make sure we're looking, those are like the main key things. And then I really always dig into profitability. I, like I said, we aim for our offices to be at a 20 to 30 % profit margin, post paying their doctors. I like you to have free cashflow in there. And so really looking at that, but also if we can dig into the nitty gritties of how's our AR, how are our cases coming across? What are we presenting? What are we closing? How is our hygiene team producing? How are we doing with our new patient count? Are we getting those raving fan referrals?

And if not, what's the one area that we're gonna highlight or two or three in Q2 to make sure that we actually get on track. Also, we look at our annual goal, which I hope that you have said, because it gives us kind of the benchmarks. To me, these are like the mile markers. Q1 is a mile marker, Q2 is a mile marker, Q3 is a mile marker. To make sure in Q4, we actually hit where we were trying to go, we are at mile marker one of the year. Where are we at? What needs to be adjusted to make sure by Q4, we actually crush our goals and we do it with ease.

Did we maybe get hit with some snow? Did we maybe get hit with some sick days? What was it? Let's not make excuses. Let's learn from it and project and move forward. So right now I want you all to block out 30 minutes this week to go look through Q1 metrics and compare them to where we wanna be by the end of the year. I recommend doctors and office managers do this. Go and look at it separately and then come together collectively. You can also do this with your leadership team. It's a really great time for you to block that time out right now and make sure you're on track. All right, step number two.

evaluate our team's efficiency and morale. Why? Why? because if we don't have a team that's synergistic, we actually are not able to have long-term success. Think about when we watch sports. mean, hello, March Madness. Hello, football season. Hello, all of them. You can tell teams that are synergistic and working well together, and you can tell teams that aren't. And something that's really paramount in team synergy is can we tell each other when we're off track and not have it be eggshells? I really love the book, Five Dysfunctions by Patrick Lenziani.

It's really a great way for you to see your team health. There's also difficult conversations don't have to be hard. There's ways that we can, crucial conversations if we're struggling with this, but really how do we actually do this? And are we checking in one-on-one monthly with each of our team members and getting honest feedback? Are we celebrating the wins and acknowledging the shortcomings? Are we looking for support and training that we need to have? Where are we at? But this is something that's so important to have really truly team efficiency and morale, because if we're not operating as a strong team,

Kiera Dent (04:40.942)

we're not gonna make it to the finish line. And so having that like true focus right now on it is going to honestly be able to help you all truly flourish and thrive in 2025. All right, step three, I want you to adjust and refocus our annual goals. Looking at where we are, where we need to go, what do we need to be changing or adjusting to make sure that we're there? We might need to adjust right now. We might need to say like, we gotta be a little more flexible here.

This is something we didn't plan for. Maybe we lost an associate. Maybe we lost a hygienist. Maybe we lost an office manager. Some of those things, if they're out of our control and they truly will impact us, we do need to adjust. If we lost a provider, we've got to adjust those goals. Otherwise, we're chasing a dream that we can't quite get. And so I don't like to create excuses, but I also want to make sure that we have flexibility within the rigidity. So we've got the strong goals that we've set. We also have the flexibility of if life happens, we're not making excuses.

but we're actually coming to the table. So what do we actually need to do? Where are we at? What are the top priorities that we did really well in Q1? And what do we need to be setting up for Q2? I love the model of traction by Gina Wickman. This is something we work with a lot of our offices on. It's what we were building within our in-person community where we really are helping you assess your business every single quarter, just these simple three points. We have a deeper dive that we do within our teams to make sure that we're...

quickly adjusting, but not adjusting too quickly that we're able to give them the momentum and the traction that our teams need. So for this, like I said, we need to assess where we are, take 30 minutes and look to see where we are, what did we do well in Q1, where are we off track that we need to get back on track? Two, look at our team efficiency. How are we working together as a team and what do we need to change? And then three, adjust and refocus our goals to make sure moving into Q2 that we are actually set up for success.

I love this, so I want you to revisit your annual goals, break them into Q2 action steps. Like I said, I love to do it in traction. I love to do this with our offices. It's something very fun and fulfilling for me. We do it as a team. We have a coach that comes and meets our leadership team. We break it down to our departments and make it really easy. So three steps, you've got them. You know where we need to set the time aside now. Wherever you are on the journey, high five. This is where we are. We got here. And this is also, if there was a hard quarter, Tony Robbins is one of my favorites.

Kiera Dent (06:59.574)

And he says, if it's a hard quarter, something that's just really beaten us down, we just look at that and say, well, hello, we finally have a worthy opponent. If we're riding high, we're doing everything, we're on such a good roll. Amazing, ride that high, ride that wave because a worthy opponent will show up at some point. We do not fall apart, we do not break down. We look at it, we face it, we figure it out, and we rise again with a true plan.

You guys, it's truly so important for you to assess where we at. We have three more quarters. Let's make them the best quarters. Let's make sure you're thriving in 2025. I am happy to share with you a Q1 checklist, whatever we can do for you. DM us, email us, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com You guys, please subscribe. We have newsletters every single week that come out to you. So if you want, head on over to our website, TheDentalATeam.com for more dental leadership insights.

Dental A Team is truly committed to you thriving in 2025. And if you're like, Hey, I could really benefit from one-on-one of having someone there with me benefiting from a community that started to support you having a structure that, that air quotes forces, but we really do. hold you accountable to it to make sure you're deep diving on your business. Reach out. This is what we do. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com as always. Thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

Kiera provides a simple role-play activity for your Monday Huddle! This week she discusses: "Presenting the Treatment Plan to your Patients." She states that the doctor should quickly go through the plan with the patient giving a SPECIFIC DATE...

Kiera welcomes Donna Dinette who emphasizes the simplicity of getting a 97-98% return rate on your insurance claims! It is all about knowing what the insurance companies want as well as being sincere and confident when speaking with your patient.

Kiera is joined by Sarah O'brien as the two dive right into simple steps that better organize insurance and billing.  Sarah explains that you can eliminate kickback error reports by first making sure you have correctly entered the subscriber information...

Kiera welcomes back Tiffanie Trader as they discuss the topic of "addressing the numbers" with the entire dental team. Sometimes it's hard to be "vulnerable" and share what your practice is producing without it feeling as if we are pushing production...

Kiera is joined by Dr. George Hariri and Dr. Richard Low from the Shared Practices Podcast as they pick Kiera's brain about Route Slips. What are route slips, why are they needed, and how necessary are they?

Kiera and Dr. Summer Kassamel are back together in a short, fact-filled episode discussing team calibration specifically dealing with treatment planning. They deep dive on what you say, how you say it, and when you say something to a patient can make...

Kiera is back with Tiffanie Trader as they discuss the topic of hiring. Although it can be tempting to hire out of desperation, it is much easier to set the non-negotiable at the beginning of the interview.

Kiera welcomes Brenda Miller to the podcast for an episode surrounding office managers, business leadership, and consulting. Kiera was in Brenda's three offices and decided it would be fun to take the listeners "behind the scenes" of in-office consulting.

Dr. Mark Costes and Kiera Dent are back together again in this quick episode discussing the importance of mentorship. Mentorship has been and continues to be an impactful role in both their personal and business lives.

THE SECRET IS OUT AND YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS THIS! In this week's episode, Kiera and Mark are joined by Mark's partner, performance coach and the black belt coach of DSI, Alastair Macdonald.

Tiff and Britt discuss how a practice that was upside down financially picked through their systems with a fine-toothed comb to find success — and how you and your team can avoid this scenario.

Episode resources:

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Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:02.146)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are back again. I kept Britt today. If you've listened to the other one, that it was a beautiful Friday morning. It's still a beautiful Friday morning. I made her stick around so I could do even more with her today on this podcasting adventure. I know you guys love hearing from Britt and I love chatting with her. So Britt, welcome. Welcome. How was your day? We're rolling into the weekend.

How much fun are you excited to have? You're feeling better, you were sick, you caught what everybody else has had, and I think you get a true weekend, right?

Britt (00:29.812)

everyone.

This weekend should be better than last weekend. Let's just say that. And it is gorgeous out here. So I mean, I might have been slightly annoyed at the birds chirping and I'm like, really? Like waking me up? That's what you're going to be annoyed about. Get over it. It's a nice day outside.

The Dental A Team (00:47.151)

Oh my gosh, okay, Cinderella. I love that. I love that. It is like, it's a week. I keep thinking, gosh, it's like unseasonably warm and like it's not, it's supposed to be 85 degrees next week, FYI, but this time of year, last year was cold. That was the abnormality. This is actually normal for Phoenix. So I keep having to remind myself of that because it is warm, but the birds are chirping. The dogs are barking across the street.

Britt (00:49.486)

I know.

The Dental A Team (01:14.987)

There's people walking by and they they get angry. It's all here and we're here for it. And so if you hear the birds, you hear the cats, you hear the dogs, just know we are a company that fully encompasses the animals. We love them and they're here with us today. So I love it. Well, today's content I'm actually really excited about. wanted to I wanted to take like an excerpt from

Britt (01:28.136)

you

The Dental A Team (01:41.68)

practice that I've worked a ton with over the last few years. are near and dear to my heart. Some of my favorite human beings in the whole world. Trish was on a call with me with them, consultant Trish, and she just, she texts me on the side. She's like, he is the sweetest man. I'm like, he really, really is. They are just such a sweet, sweet human and individuals, but I've taken some journeys with them financially. And with a lot of their, their team members and doctors and stuff. And I wanted to kind of

highlight a piece that we found that I don't think I even like always thought about. And I think those are the spaces that I actually love about consulting is one, a challenge. I always love a challenge and decided like we're doing a steps challenge. I'm like, I'm to win. Like I was already doing it, but now I'm like, I'm for sure doing it. So you challenge me and it's going to work.

Britt (02:28.029)

We're going to

Britt (02:34.419)

Game on.

The Dental A Team (02:35.088)

It is, it is. It works every time. Ask Kira, she says it, she screams it from the mountaintops. It really does work, I don't know why. So I love a challenge, I love learning, and I really love when it's like, oh my gosh, that was so obscure from the normal, and it's so cool to see what we were able to create and figure out. And we all know at this point in the game that we need 98 % collections across the board.

And we all know it's not always that way. And doctors, I really wanted to bring you this information and this story, right? Storytelling time. This story from something that I've witnessed, experienced and worked through because I want you guys to be able to take some tools back to your own practices and implement some things that are actually really easy that not everyone is always doing. So, Britt, you're here with me for this journey and I'm excited because it brings in some of those business pieces.

that I know we love chatting about. So we're gonna chat through some of it and then I wanna bring in your brain on like, how can we implement these things in every single practice? So biggest space walking in to this practice was their overhead. Like their overhead was out of control and they were making massive production for a single doctor to hygiene. They're at like 140 to 160 consistently. And their hygiene department, let's do through some like,

digging, right? I find their hygiene department is like 11 to 15 percent of their production. So this doctor is exhausted. He is just like not able to sleep at night because he's stressed. He's working really hard and their overhead is really high, like almost 80 percent when we started working together, almost 80 percent overhead. You guys, that's before paying him. That's before paying loans. And so they actually had to take loans out.

Britt (04:07.923)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (04:30.884)

to pay bills and pay loans, like this giant cycle, right? This just upside down, stressed mess. And he could not figure it out because production wise, right? He should be okay. But his overhead's almost 80 % and his doing calculations, right? And then like collections is like all over the place. One month, it's like 103%, one month it's 87%.

Then it's like 92 and it's just like jumping all over the place. Like what the heck is going on in this practice? Like the production is fairly consistent, right? But the collections is inconsistent and the overhead is consistently high. So from, I think from many people's standpoint, the number one thing you do, right? I had a doctor yesterday that I was talking to and he's like not as profitable as he wants to be and

I get it and we can make him more profitable working on it, but he's like, okay, so I need to produce more. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't always outproduce the problem, right? And this practice is like that to a T because they are producing really well, but their overhead is still really high. And their collections, again, like they're collecting something, but it's just all over the place. So we had to like really do some...

weird tricks in my opinion. was just like, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna just dig in. We're gonna dive in. We're gonna figure some stuff out. So Brett, what we found one pre collections, right? love pre collects you guys. love pre collects, but what pre collects will do is inflate your collections. And so doctors implement pre collections, a hundred percent implement pre collections. But if you're going to implement when you implement pre collections,

Britt (06:19.931)

Laughter

The Dental A Team (06:21.144)

you have to pre-collect every time, right? So what they were doing is they were pre-collecting on large cases. They were doing full-mouth, like, large cases inconsistently. So they'd have two $50,000 cases in a month pre-collect that's, it's scheduled for next month, right? So they pre-collect for those two cases in January.

They do the cases in February and they don't schedule any cases for March. So then, Britt, what happened to February? Then we've got 103 % collections over here in January and then February is 87 % because we did the production and we didn't pre-collect for new surgeries.

Britt (07:05.713)

your collections are ahead of your production because you're ahead of time, a month ahead of time even.

The Dental A Team (07:08.795)

Yes.

a month ahead of time. And they were so upside down financially that the pre-collects were being used to pay bills. And so they'd pay down, they'd even pay down their loan that they got to pay bills. And then they'd have a low collections month and they'd have to use the loan, which I think personally, all of us have probably been in that situation in our personal lives at one point or another.

Britt (07:22.851)

Mmm.

The Dental A Team (07:39.046)

And it's always interesting to me the parallels there, because we like to think of business and personal finances so differently, but they are parallel. guys, money is money, business is business, life is life. But anyways, so then we figured out, okay, let's start pulling this money. So you pre-collect, you pull it, and you put it in a different bank account. So we started building their buckets, right? Their profit first style buckets without doing real profit first, because we couldn't. So we're...

Britt (07:41.651)

you

Britt (08:05.099)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (08:07.868)

pulling this money, planning for it, right? We're prepping for profit first. So we've got these buckets and I've got them starting to pull for lab because they were getting heat up, like, honestly, sometimes it was like 20 % lab bills. So we had to pull aside all this stuff and it was so fantastic to see the money moving in the right directions because it cleared things out of the way. And then we would like add it back in.

Britt (08:08.101)

of

The Dental A Team (08:35.6)

the month that we needed it, blah, blah, blah. So we were doing this like money moving, but the biggest piece of all that was like, okay, you guys level out your pre collects. You're going to be fine. Make sure you move the money. Make sure you've got the lab bills, lab expenses covered in a different account. The biggest piece of all Britt that blew my mind and the team found it. The team found it on their own as we're moving this money around. They're like separating it on my KPI sheet. have for them. So I'm like, okay, this is your collections.

This was your pre-collect. So this is your true collections. Your pre-collect were, that's gone. That's for next month. That's next month's money. This is your true collections. Their true collections tanked. And they're like, well, Tiff, we're actually, I'm seeing we're not actually collecting a lot over the counter. Like, well, that doesn't make any sense. What do mean you're not collecting? Like, so then collect, like get the money. And they said, well, everyone has credits on their accounts.

Britt (09:09.552)

Thank

The Dental A Team (09:34.066)

They found it. So the previous billing manager and treatment coordinator and front office total wasn't putting information into the system correctly or at all, right? They didn't have the insurance fee schedules in there. So we had already worked through a lot of that, right? The fee schedules, making sure all the insurance, making sure what goes out was correct because it was incorrect. That was already been, we've been solving that. But what

happened is she was guesstimating off of UCR, taking like 20 % ish off of UCR for treatment plans and collect over collecting for patients. then when insurance, which is great, I'd rather over collect than under collect. If you're going to pay attention to your credits and give credits back. We were not paying attention to the credits. And so Britt, all of these patients just like

Britt (10:17.875)

huh.

Britt (10:22.393)

Yes.

The Dental A Team (10:30.932)

thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in credits of patients who were coming in. We had the treatment, we had the production, but we had already had the collection. So this is where it's like, truth be told, you cannot out-produce your overhead. Because if you produce and you've got $100,000 in collection or in credits, right? All of these patients are coming in for fillings and it's like a $56 copay, they've got $300 credit.

working away on on their account. So the money's already been there. The money's already paid the bills. They had to then on our KPI, I'm like, okay, well, we're going to do another column. Next column is like, how many patients, what was the amount of credits that you use today so that if we had collected it, I need to see from a financial standpoint, I need to be able to see if we had collected it, could, would our overhead be okay? Is the overhead issue because we can't collect that money or is it because we

Britt (11:10.318)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (11:29.616)

need to produce and collect more. So it was so hard to like see all of the pieces because there was so much chaos in the accounts that was so like hard to find. did an incredible job keying into tip. think it's the credits and I was like, my gosh, you just blew my mind, right? Like I didn't even think of this. I thought for sure the pre collects, like let's level those out. Let's always pre collect on everything. We changed that model.

Britt (11:44.945)

Yeah. Yeah.

The Dental A Team (11:56.072)

but that was only adding now to the credits. So it was like, holy cow, but it was really cool, Brett, to be able to see that's one layer that I think a lot of practices and a lot of practice owners forget to look at, right? We look at our AR, we look at our production, our collections, our new patients. We never really truly look at our credits. And these credits had our overhead at like 80 % and our collections was literally like,

Britt (11:58.928)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (12:24.18)

87 to 95 on a really like good month of no surgeries pre-scheduled. So it was wild to see, but then once we started accounting for that, it took about a year to really truly get through all of those credits or most of those credits that were coming in. So it took about a year, but being able to visually see on the overhead spreadsheets, on the KPIs, all of the money and where it was going, what it was allocated to helped them to be able to see

where they needed to move money to, pull money to, what needed to be done. He could project like, how long do I have to work this hard? Because he's got to produce as much as he can to get through the credits, plus get some collections in. So he truly had to just work his tail off for this year to really dial back some of those issues. But it was really fun to see, okay, these are all of the spaces that you've got to make sure you're paying attention to.

especially because, I think we've all experienced this. I mean, I did in practice too. I'm like, the billing rep has got it, right? So many owner doctors, that's, you want to be able to, and I'm not saying you can't trust, right? But human error is a thing and we don't always know what we don't know. And I think that this gal just didn't know how to do it any other way. So she was doing it the best she could and honestly, like more money, the better. So if you're going to, I want you to collect more.

if that's an opportunity, but we have to be able to give it back. Like we have to be able to watch those. So I'd rather over collect than have to track somebody down for a bill. Right. I totally agree with that theory, but if we're not watching it though, like it's wild. So Britt from business standpoint, right. We've got all of these moving pieces, like from a business standpoint, if this doctor or a doctor who might be in a similar situation, right. They're like nearing

Britt (14:03.431)

Agreed.

The Dental A Team (14:20.792)

what they thought was going to be retirement, right? They thought they were getting there. Now their business is like spiraling. I mean, I did, you know, I did my digging. We did it. We got through it. It took a while. The next year, like we decreased their overhead by 10 % in that year. The next year, we decreased it again, almost another 10%. Like they're down to like 55 to 60 % overhead. At this point, they're freaking

Swim and they're doing fantastic. Their team is doing great. They're able to do great things with their team and with their family. So we did it. But from a business standpoint, we had to get a lot of help in there, a lot of CPA and financial advisors and things. But from your perspective, just on the outside hearing that, what would you tackle or what would you tell a doctor? Implement this right now so that you know if these things are happening. Like how would a doctor

from your standpoint, and if you were, I'm the doctor and you're the consultant, what would you tell me to be watching and be prepped for so that I don't fall into a situation like that?

Britt (15:20.657)

laughter

Britt (15:28.113)

Yeah, and number one, think this is like one of great scenario tips. Like these are the things that consultants love puzzles. So like this is one of those that it's like, there's something, I know it is, we're gonna find it, but we gotta figure out what exactly is happening in a scenario. And this is, think, one example of sometimes situations that doctors can find themselves in where it's like, okay, shoot, we figured something out and yeah, that's

The Dental A Team (15:37.048)

Mm-hmm.

Britt (15:58.128)

sucks. It's crappy, right? And we lived the high life for a while, but we spent money that really wasn't our stuff for a little while. So now we've got to work through this in between period and get it filled a squeeze because it's like, all right, we are now collecting the more accurate amount and we're using up these credits. So that is why our cash flow is struggling big time right now. And so I think what I would tell doctors from that end is

The Dental A Team (15:59.362)

Yeah. Yeah.

The Dental A Team (16:06.604)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (16:19.801)

Listen.

Britt (16:25.683)

I think you've got to watch all the pieces and the real numbers. think a lot of times, right, especially with credits, like, it's like the, the like thing we don't talk about. It's like the terrible awful that it's like, man, we're just going to be like, we know it's over there, but we're just going to kind of ignore that it exists unless someone asks about it. then we'll look at it. And the better way to do it to avoid

The Dental A Team (16:45.069)

Yup.

Britt (16:50.887)

pitfalls like this is of course watch it like there's always going to be some over there yes and have a process for handling your credits to where One credit should always be audited before we're refunding make sure it's actually due to that patient before we refund it because that's also a scenario I've seen where it hits us on the cash flow side if we just refund and Sometimes there's an arrow error and it's not actually theirs. So I think watching your credits

Having a process for how we handle credits for a couple of reasons, cashflow reasons, and also know the laws of your state, like fun surprise if you don't know already. Each state treasury has laws on credits and how those should be handled. So make yourself aware of those and then create your system to meet your clients with it. And with that, it's usually great by x.

date, like if it's a credit higher than X amount, you have to like do your part to try to notify that patient. And then sometimes once it gets old enough, you've got to pay that to treasury like fun fact, also go look up your name to see if you've got any credits sitting out there that I do back to you. And like that's the proper way to go through it. So have a system for it. And I think don't be afraid of refunds. Yes, we always want to try to schedule appointments, get treatment time.

The Dental A Team (17:57.498)

So.

Britt (18:11.367)

Get them to use it. Like that is my ultimate goal is get them to use it in the office. But if not, make sure you've got a process because then it's more digestible amounts to refund instead of like big amounts that hit you when they're surprises. Surprises aren't fun. So as much as we can avoid surprises, let's do it and have a process for it. Now, if you're in a scenario like this doctor was where there's a lot of sitting out there, strategize how we can handle that. Cause we can't just go refund a hundred thousand dollars all at once.

The Dental A Team (18:12.942)

Go.

The Dental A Team (18:21.336)

Mm-hmm.

Britt (18:40.933)

So come up with a plan that's manageable that you can handle with your cashflow that you have to be able to work on getting that into a good place. And that's a lot of times with these things. takes, usually things take at least six months in a dental office, right? Big things like this, it's usually at least six months to put an FX into play, if not a year. So know that sometimes when you find these things are right, we start to put the fixes into play and then we start to clean up what's been there and it can take a little bit of time.

The Dental A Team (18:41.046)

Okay.

The Dental A Team (18:55.864)

Mm-hmm.

The Dental A Team (19:10.16)

Yeah, I agree. love all that. think I love the tertiary comments. I totally go figure it out guys. And most practices I think on that note will give like, well, I know for me when I was office manager of my practice, I had like a certain amount that was allocated every month for refunds. So I'd have 3000 or 5000 or whatever it was that was like, okay, this is what I have allocated that I can give back as refunds this month and the next.

Britt (19:16.411)

No.

The Dental A Team (19:36.078)

If another one came in, was like, cool, I'm gonna hit it next week, because it's next month or whatever that was, like that'll go into next month. So make sure you do have that solid plan. And I love all of that and make sure you're looking at it. I think that's the biggest piece here that Britt's highlighted. Just make sure you're pulling those. I think production collections, new patients, like those are making sure we're thriving. Your active patient count, we talk about those all the time. Those are the ones that like, yes, let's make sure we're thriving. Our AR, our insurance AR and our patient AR, so it's outstanding money.

But that AR can get super skewed, you guys, if you've got money sitting over in credits, because your AR total, usually, unless you click the little button that says not including credits, will deduct the credits from the total. So your AR might say, like, our total AR is $68,000, and you're like, I'm freaking killing it, right? And you could be, and that's totally fair. But make sure it's not deducting $50,000 of credits sitting over there.

Britt (20:27.059)

You

The Dental A Team (20:32.847)

that need to be addressed as well. I want you to...

Britt (20:35.155)

which is a good point if I think on knowing how your system does things. And that's why sometimes it's not as easy to see. I've even seen some where it's allocation issues, right? And skew things a little bit as well. So yeah, good point on knowing how your system accounts for things.

The Dental A Team (20:38.629)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (20:45.125)

Mm-hmm.

The Dental A Team (20:51.453)

Yeah, yeah, I've done it myself, like not clicked that little button and been like, oh, we're good this month. And then I'm like, wait, where are all these credits coming in from? As an as a manager, these are all things that I had to learn. Because again, you guys, unless you have a professional by your side, there's not a really great like go to school to be a dental, you know, professional like dentistry dentist, hygienist, dental assisting schools. I'll add those in there.

Britt (21:18.122)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (21:19.405)

haphazardly adding those in there, right? There's not a place for the front office, really, unless you have a coach or a consultant or someone who is able to train them on the things that we've learned across the board, across learning all of the things. There's business classes that a lot of us have taken. Britt's got freaking so much, so many beautiful degrees behind her name. Like, there's so much that can come from that, but there's so much that can be missed because we're literally just learning from the person who was in front of us and we're teaching ourselves. So just make sure.

Britt (21:37.572)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (21:49.37)

You know your stuff, you know how your system works, you know what your numbers mean. And if you have any doubts or suspicions or you're just like, gosh, I just want to make sure we're doing the best that we can reach out. You guys were here for it, whether you're a future client or you're like, I just need free information. Like you guys, we built this company on serving the dental community in the best ways we possibly can. And we will stay true to that. So reach out any questions you have. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com

I'm gonna put this caveat in there. We're not super pros at your dental software, but we can help you find the information and we can tell you what you should be looking for and what the stats should be. So reach out, you guys. Number one piece of information today, your number one to do, go figure out what your actual numbers are and figure out how your system is reporting them. Add them into your conversations with your office manager, your KPI reports, making sure that you're looking at those monthly, okay? Britt.

Thank you so much for taking this journey with me today. I love this. I told you like every time I'm like, okay, I'm gearing up. We're gonna figure this out. And it's just so much fun. I have so much fun with all with all of Dental A Teams clients in general. We have some of the most amazing people who partner up with us and team up with us. But I am partial to my clients. You know, I do. I have some incredible people that I get to talk to every single day. So.

Britt (22:47.027)

There's a fun one.

The Dental A Team (23:10.995)

Thank you for taking the journey with me. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com you guys for any information. TheDentalATeam.com there's all kinds of stuff on there. There's all kinds of free resources and you guys we do these fun practice assessments where we really help dial in on areas that you should be focused in on. These are free free information. It's a free what I think hour with our team. So I don't know why you wouldn't sign up for that. If you're a client you guys just text your consultant. I promise you they'll hop on a call so.

That's that. Leave us a five star review. can't wait to hear how much value you took from today's conversation. Britt, thank you so much for giving me your time today. It means a lot to me. And everyone will catch you next time.

In today's episode, Kiera is joined by Grady, a first year dental student at Creighton University. Kiera and Grady each discuss useful tips that dental students, dentists and team members alike can implement NOW in their training that will be extremely beneficial.

Kiera and Mark are back together again for an episode dedicated to DENTAL ASSISTANTS! Do you ever wonder what you can do as a dental assistant to improve in meeting your dentist's expectations?