426: Trick-or-Treatment Tracker

Podcast listeners, meet Dana; Dana, meet podcast listeners!

Dana is the Dental A-Team’s newest traveling consultant, and she’s here to talk about her favorite systems to implement in offices … specifically treatment tracking! Dana and Kiera chat about the best process for treatment tracking, plus how to get team members excited about it. The takeaways:

1. Get buy-in from the team

2. Track things manually

3. Tie it to the bigger picture

Treatment tracking is a long-game effort that’s totally worth it. Start tracking things today!

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Podcast Transcript:

0:00:05.8 S1: Hey everyone, welcome to the Denali team podcast. I'm your host, Jordan, and I had this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives, I've been in dental is a treatment coordinator, schedule filler, office manager, regional manager practice owner and I have a team of traveling resultant, or we have traveled over 165 different offices, coaching teams. Yep, you don't just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental, and I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams grow VIP experiences, reduce stress and create... 18 will go to the daily team podcast. Hello, dental Team listeners. This is Kara and you guys talk about a fun day today, I actually am bringing you one of our newest Consultants who's joined our team, her name is Dana, she lives in Arizona, our consultants international excluding me, and we're... So Jade, she's got a ton of experience. I'm so happy to welcome her, share with you guys on the podcast, Dana, how are you doing today?

0:01:13.8 S2: Good about. Yeah, it's so good.

0:01:16.9 S1: How is it to be on your first podcast? It's exciting to... We had a morning huddle today and we all do a check-in of what we're working on for the day, and I said... I was podcasting and I said, Dana, what are you doing today? I think it's time for you to get on the podcast, so this is like sprung on you, but Hey, I like your ability to pivot and you're just here, so... I love it.

0:01:39.8 S2: I'm down... So data.

0:01:41.9 S1: A lot of people have yet to meet you, so kind of just walk us through your background, how you got into dentistry, and how you ended up at the dental team. Just kind of your experience and what you've done.

0:01:51.0 S2: Sure, absolutely. So I grew up in dentistry, my uncle was a dentist, my mom was very genes, and so I helped out at a really young age, filing charts as early as middle school, and just really agree to love one community and how they help their surrounding communities. So I then went to hide school, I became a public health Kenai practitioner. I work in the prison system for a while, and then I moved Arizona, unfortunately, 'cause a lot of people find out my life in student transfer, but I wanted to stay in the dental field, so I started taking on office manager positions, I became an assistant regional director for a group of pediatric offices, and now here I am.

0:02:41.6 S1: So I didn't know about this correctional office. Tell me more on that. You can just put us over that and expect me not to wanna know a little bit more, and I feel like I know you're reasonably well, but I'm like, What... Tell me more.

0:02:54.5 S2: Yeah, so after I got in, I do school, I wanted to hear the public health pig practitioner so that I could practice independently. And in the state of Pennsylvania, the only way you can do that is through the prison of summer, through the school system, and a lot of school systems have a phased out penalties from their schools, so I decided to do it in the a correction. So I worked for the State of Pennsylvania at their medium and facility, and it was... Well, every day was exciting. That's for sure.

0:03:30.5 S1: That is crazy. What was the craziest thing that ever happened? I know we're going off the rails on this, but I just love these kind of stories.

0:03:37.2 S2: Yeah, my words. Well, I wouldn't say great. Well, it's crazy, I guess, for most people, but I haven't quite often in there, just to kind of get out of having their routine cleanings a lot of... They didn't like coming often, and so we would get since it really... Yeah, just be like, Yes. And you know, you would think you over your safety or things like that, but they had all that kind of under control, so you just have to be on your guard at all times to get ready to be spit on growers. Well, okay.

0:04:21.5 S1: I've never been spit on intentionally, of course, working at all. We always have a little bit of that back. Splash growth, yes. It's really gross if you actually think about what we do in dentistry, but that's really funding... I actually didn't know you had a hygiene background to you too, so that's always a fun nugget to find out, I'm learning more about you on this podcast then I've poly learned in all your interview, so... Okay, so you helped a lot of group practices, you did pediatrics, you were just recently managing a practice for several years, help grow that kind of give us some of the stats or some things you were able to do, so for some of the practices you worked in

0:04:55.3 S2: Surfer, the last practice, I always travel toward mostly because they didn't have a stable study too, there was a lot of turn around, so when I started, that was initially my goal, so we did that. We have a stable team, we've all been there for about two and a half years, they really like it, a lot of team building, and then aspect... We also grew production, when I first started, it was about a 400 to 500 000 practice, and then 2021 ejected at a million and a half is... We did that, we put all kinds of just system from cases there, a lot of tracking when I first went, it was like, Well, how do you guys do this? Well, you don't really know what are your numbers for this, so we don't really know, so all kinds of just systems and tracking to hold people accountable and to make it easy to cross-train and things like that, so...

0:05:52.2 S1: Awesome, that's really fun. What was your favorite system to implement? Let's talk about... I like to deep dive on the... So what was left of the systems that you felt really grew the practice the most...

0:06:03.3 S2: Probably their crime plan tracking. When I went in, I didn't really know how many patients they were treatment tanning for, how many were accepting the treatment, how they were following up on it, so that was really awesome to see, and I think really what helped grow their production was just not letting those numbers kind of walk out the door and then just here. So that was probably the most fun link and peace for the team, 'cause once they figured out that they were letting dollars in people's health fall to the wayside because we weren't tracking it, watching them implement those things and seeing all the little pieces click was really fun.

0:06:54.9 S1: That's awesome. So I know I have my process that I've helped with a lot of practices, and this is totally going off, Robina, we went in a different direction and I love it. We're kind of onboarding, but hey, why not? Talk about treatment trackers. So I feel... I agree with you. I love treating mortars. I think they're gold mine, I just did a podcast on treatment tracking and yeah, I feel like it's a hard thing to execute in a practice because a lot of people don't necessarily want to do it because they feel it's tracking and it takes time, and we don't have time. So kinda what's your process on tracking treatment... That's question one, and then I'm gonna do a follow-up question of How do you get people excited to do it, so how was your process of tracking those treatment plans, like you said, not letting them fall by the wayside, not letting them... Not letting their health go, identically feel as treatment coordinator, our job is to help patients get scheduled for their treatment and improve their oral health, I genuinely killed. That's my moral obligation. So for you, what was your process of tracking those treatment plans, he gently Team listeners, we decided Get a little unconventional and come to all of you guys, because guess what, the general a team is hiring the best of the best for traveling consultants.

0:08:04.0 S1: So if you know of somebody that you work with, that you've worked with in the past, that you think would make an incredible dental team consultant, please email us... Hello, pedal team dot com. We do not hire people working at offices that we work with, so we're just putting that out there, but we do want you guys, if any of you know of anybody who you think would be an incredible consultant that would love to positively impact the world of dentistry, that they've worked with the front office as an office manager, a treatment coordinator, a scheduler of pillar, and they have back office experience sender. Hello, at the dental team dot com. And guys like you, we're looking to hire our unicorn, and thank you all for helping us out, here's an cheers to hiring all of our unicorns and making this year are here to build our most incredible teams.

0:08:53.2 S2: The first thing actually was explaining what you just explained, and it's that if our patients are... If we're not following up with the treatment that was recommended, were not following up with their health and kind of making that linked in showing the importance of if we let them go and we are following up or they're not scheduling their treatment and what the doctor has recommended for their health, then also falls to the wayside, so it was kind of explaining that to begin with, and then it wasn't... When I first started a very savvy office, so I found it probably the easiest way for them was to actually track it, I had... But we initially started tracking it by him, so every patient that had chime presented went into a book, and it was their name, the dollar amount of a treatment, what the treatment was, whether they said yes or no, and then what their reasoning was for seeing no... And then there was a column for, we would call them a few days later and touch base with them, and then two weeks, and then we did three months down the road, so it was a series of...

0:10:00.9 S2: And if they... After they said a final answer, we would see them a lot, 'cause oftentimes it's... Well, I'm still considering it. Well, I have questions. Well, so we could follow it all the way through, and then when we got a hard, No, I'm just not interested in the treatment, we left to me, and so then we change that from paper once they kind of got used to it. And I always tell people tracking things well, initially makes their job harder in the long game makes their job easier. I agree, we eventually switched to a spreadsheet and we basically did the same thing, it was just in a spreadsheet that everybody had access to because that was the practice room, we hired more people do need in a notebook wasn't really the way... So they have a spreadsheet and then everybody had access to it on the computer, so whether things are being presented in the back or different, everybody had the same tracker that updated all at once. I like it.

0:11:03.7 S1: I like it a lot. And we're very, very similar on that, which is why we love you, Dana, on the dental a team, you're very much like us, and something that I think I found from it was that manual tracking... Yes, like you said, it is a pain at the beginning, but then it becomes very easy and then you get a lot of information, then you start closing more cases, you start to see your data... It's all right there for you. So I'm curious, and we do a two-day, two-week, two months, because at the end of the day, that was easier for me to remember. I wanna remember... And then, like you said, our goal is to keep calling them to help them be healthy and until they tell us, No, that's really what we're doing. I had an office in activating a bunch of patients just because they hadn't heard back from them, and I'm like, No, no, no, we don't inactivate until we actually heard back from them to say to inactivate us or that they're not interested in treatment because we're just calling to get a response in? To update Holly.

0:11:55.7 S1: The responses? Yes, so I'm curious, Dana, how did you get your team on board to start tracking treatment, because I do feel this is one of those things, people get it, they understand it, they think it'd be a great idea, but it sometimes hard to motivate a team, so how did you do it in your practice?

0:12:10.4 S2: I think the way I say, I just ask them just to try it, try and see what you think, and I said, Let's just do it for two weeks, if you don't see the end goal of it, let's talk it out. We'll work on it. And I think eventually, when I showed them, you know what, if you don't check it this way, then you have to run this report, you have to find these patients, you could go back through the schedule, you have to... Asif we're not letting these people just walk off and you're not tracking it, then this is what you have to resort to, when you have openings in your schedule, you don't just have a nice list that's all laid out, and once you put all those links together, so I tracking... It wasn't necessarily just for dollar amounts, is everybody kind of alludes to when you're tracking things that you're just looking at the money, it's... We're looking at patient care, we're looking at a way to fill our schedule, it's easy, and you know... Yeah, tracking the numbers is super important, but what's most important is that we're not letting patients walk out the door that you need something done for their help...

0:13:18.2 S2: I really do one, they saw that it actually made several aspects of their day-to-day tasks easier, it just kind of became a... Oh my gosh. No, mentally, yeah.

0:13:33.8 S1: I love it. So I think if I was breaking this down for an office wanting to implement this, wanting to get their team onboard, I think with the falls for any system you're trying to implement is number one... Just get the buy-in from the team. Number two, Dana, I love that you showed how hard it is to pull all that data... Yes, they're analytic softwares out there, yes, or other ways, but at the end of the day, that is only as good as if we're actually using the data, so that hand tracking, manual tracking, and then I really think, like you said, tying it to the bigger picture of why are we here, what are we doing this for? And I think this ties into AR, this ties in to recall, this ties into reactivation, this ties into scheduling in the back, this ties into pre-collecting, this ties into any system that you want to implement of getting them to just try it and then track it for a while and then see how much easier... I mean, I will tell you offices that actually take me up on the treatment tracker offices that start tracking this, they will tell you how excited there because it's almost like their score card of how great that they're doing on so many different areas versus it feeling like it's a punishment or it's taking too much time, but I really love that it's like, Hey guys, our moral obligation, our response was, is to not let patients walk out the door without getting the best treatment, that's your job again, so let's have a way to track this to see...

0:14:46.9 S1: And then they give you support and resources to ensure this is going even better, so Dana, that was a solid... I liked it, I like you being able to one pivot, that means you're an awesome consultant to amazing way to get a team on board and three, I just love having on our team, so thanks for just going down this whole path with me today...

0:15:02.8 S2: Absolutely, I had fun to... I love it.

0:15:06.0 S1: So guys, I'd recommend getting systems in play, having your team try it out, you can use the treatment track or idea, there's also a thousand other systems that you can implement into a practice, but kind of going down these steps of Dana and I just chatted about to get systems into play. Getting your team bought in, I think it's a great way. And then team members take this to your leaders as well, you don't have it for your leader to bring it to you, you can implement these things as well, so data, love having on our team is so excited for offices to get to meet you, to work with you, I'm excited to continue to learn from you, so thank you. Thanks for being a part of our team and being on the podcast today.

0:15:38.0 S2: Thanks for having me on. It was great, of course.

0:15:40.5 S1: Alright, guys, as always. Thank you for listening and we'll catch you next time on the dental team podcast. And that wraps it up for another episode of The Dental team podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.