Hi, everybody. Looks like we have some people joining.

Well, without further ado, I am going to formally introduce the amazing Jill Nesbitt today. We are excited to have you here. We know teams teams are gonna start rolling in.

But founder of Optimize Dental Consulting, very important company that Jill's gonna share with us today.

She's established herself as a seasoned professional in the dental industry. I'm sure most of you has heard have heard from her.

She's also a tech consultant, and a lot of additional ways that she's gonna walk through supporting organizations and technology, optimizing all of the dental operations that are existing and making them flow better and enhance all of the existing technologies within your practices.

She worked a very long time at Henry Schein And, also, integrating technology and making it seamless is really her specialty, working as a trainer, support, and now being able to take this and move it into her own company. So, Jill, tell us a little bit about kind of your specialty, and I'll turn it back over to you.

Well, thank you. I appreciate all the kind words. I am very excited to jump in today into this presentation.

And as you can see, we're really gonna dig into success metrics and streamlining your technology so that we can frankly get the most out of it. And I I highlight here that this is especially targeted towards multi doctor or even multilocation groups because, frankly, that's been almost my entire career.

I'm also expecting today, like we talked about, we're gonna have a conversation. I'm gonna go through a bunch of content that, frankly, you can use. You can hijack. This is actual implementation.

This has nothing to do with just high level theory. This is how do we actually get results out of the technology that we invest in. So I appreciate the opportunity to really dig into that. So I'm gonna jump in.

Step one. I mean, why am I even here? How did I get into this opportunity tonight in the first place?

I have been, as Sheela mentioned, I have been working with, frankly, primarily practice management software transitions for the better of nine years. And I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds and hundreds of offices that have been going live to standardize their PMS.

And as everyone knows, if you do that kind of project, you touch every single person in the practice, every person in the support center. You change every single system in the organization.

And, frankly, that can strike fear into the hearts of even our greatest leaders. So if I can do that and not lose my mind and think that I should, in fact, start a business doing just this very narrow niche focused work, then that is a fabulous fit for Pearl and the imaging AI that they are working with because this is such an important technology, and implementing it well is absolutely critical.

I also think it's worthwhile to say, you know, this is not easy. We think it should be as easy as we're going to buy the software that we've spent the money. We've got the people. We're gonna buy the software. We're gonna give them this fabulous technology, and they're gonna use it successfully.

And, unfortunately, that is not always the case. I put a couple of graphs up here, you guys. These are horror the top is a horrible statistic. This is actually from I think it's, Boston Consulting Group shows only thirty percent of digital transformations are successful.

Thirty percent? That is horrible, horrible numbers.

And so when you recognize that this is across all of technology, you know, everything that they're, you know, consulting around, this shows us this is not just a challenge that we have in dentistry. This is a challenge of change in across organizations.

The bottom graph that I show, though, is if you really focus on the change management portion of what you're doing, you actually have a seven time better chance of achieving your objectives.

So we're gonna talk a lot about what are your objectives, obviously, from the analytics perspective. And if you really wanna hit those, then taking the time to think through change management is absolutely critical. So that's why I get to have this conversation.

I put my company logo on there because I, that is this is all that I do is specifically implement technology into multi doctor or multilocation practices. I don't do twelve other things, general motivational speaking or any of that. It's really specific to how can we implement successfully.

So first, I wanna sort of set the stage that, you know, our industry has become so much more complex over these last several years, you know, ten ish, fifteen, that it used to be. You can just kind of get started. You open up a practice. You do a little marketing.

All of a sudden, you're full. You accept the right insurance plans. Things seem to work out. It is simply not that way.

Especially in our era of consolidation, It is much more sophisticated. We need to know so many more. The interest rates impact us. The cost of PPE and everything after COVID, all the just all of the management of insurance alone, it's more expensive.

Just the dental industry alone, it's such a different place to work. And for small groups and emerging practices, you recognize this is just not as easy as maybe it seemed to be way back when. And so when we recognize this is the landscape of what's going on and how much more challenging it can be to work in the field, if you're feeling the squeeze, here are some statistics that might really confirm how you're feeling.

So this, of course, like many things, I got from the ADA, Health Policy Institute.

And this is talking about, frankly, you know, because the expenses are rising generally faster than our revenue, we are starting to feel that squeeze. And in fact, there's a just it's a very slight downward trend, but our dentists are are starting to feel a negative impact on our, on our net income. And so recognizing it's becoming more challenging to work in this space and we have sort of the the numbers and the income impact to prove it, how are we feeling?

You know, if you are, you know, listening to this webinar and you're thinking about, you know, implementing AI and implementing software even in general and just how it feels to really run your group practice, this can definitely resonate with you. I know it resonates with the customers that I work with. You know? And you can think about how this feels to you and where you're really feeling this squeeze. Is it because you're struggling with staffing? Is it because you're still battling AI overhead rates? Is it because, you know, twelve things, the insurance, all the pieces?

So one of the things I think is helpful, though, is to think about technology as a strategy. So if we know that the major challenges going on are higher interest you know, higher overhead, challenges of staffing, and generally lower insurance reimbursement, then what can you really do? How can you actually impact change? What strategy will you use?

And I may slightly be biased, but I am a big fan of using technology as a strategy.

For those of you who are already working in multilocation, groups or you've spoke with investment bankers or just really are kind of making sure you have a good handle on what's happening from a, consolidation perspective, I have a friend, Tom, that works with Raymond James, and he shared this comment at a workshop that I ran last year that said, you simply it's not enough to aggregate and buy practices.

You need to, in fact, have a differentiator.

What makes your group special and unique and successful?

And he is really seeing, even from a financial perspective, that that can be technology.

And so depending on, you know, how you are thinking about moving forward with your group and what your goals are, you know, some of the benefits of stay of using technology as a strategy, especially in a multilocation AI, is you can standardize your operations.

That allows you to have consistent quality, which I know is one of the pieces a big piece of the puzzle with implementing Pearl is so that multiple doctors, multiple you know, across the entire organization can generally be on the same page. And from a support perspective, that we can see what those numbers look like to make sure that we're providing the right support.

It absolutely can increase efficiency, which is, of course, leads logically into time savings and cost savings. But, again, just thinking about technology as a strategy, you know, this seems to make sense to a lot of folks, and they're looking at how can I standardize, how can I use technology to accomplish some of the or to overcome, I should say, some of the challenges that we are facing with our practices?

Unfortunately, it's just not that easy. So, you know, I have my treadmill here with all the clothes hanging all over it. If only it was as easy as buying the technology and then it just worked for us, oh my goodness sake, it would be so much easier. Sheela, honestly, I'm sure that would make your life a little easier if that's all we had to do is have somebody simply sign the paperwork and give their credit card number.

So the reason that I'm here tonight is because I have seen it it almost doesn't matter how fabulous the technology is if you don't implement it successfully.

And so I'm gonna share with you all these bullet points. We're gonna talk through what I am seeing as sort of the entire process to successfully implement, Pearl dot ai in particular, but how do you do this successfully? And at the very end, we're gonna take some q and a, and, actually, I'm gonna incorporate Sheela a little bit more into the conversation as well. But, Sheela, any comments, you know, at this point as we kind of get started kicking it off? You know, did some of these resonate with you from what you've seen from some of your customers that have actually done this well?

Yes. I think exactly to your point, Jill, technology being a strategy is something that we're all moving towards and understanding, and this is such a perfect example with this treadmill.

We're all guilty of it. We purchased an intraoral camera and where is it and and is something charged and how and AI. And I think when you help us realize the what's in it for me, for each stakeholder, we'll be able to have better adoption. And that's AI where we've landed with Pearl is finding ways to address those concerns in the in the workspace of time management, patient education, and overall, kind of just satisfaction of your job yourself. So I'm looking forward to hearing your perspective as well on that.

Awesome. So just so everyone kinda has a sense, honestly, I don't care what change you're implementing. These are the steps. You know?

These are the major pieces of the puzzle to go through. However, saying that, I always think it's more valuable if you have a very specific example. And so, obviously, we're gonna go through Imaging AI with Pearl. These next set of slides, you guys, what I wanna what I wanna really drive home in this first section is we're gonna dig in on how would you even start a project like this.

This is before we have already bought it to roll it out in the practices. So I think this first part, it's actually kind of the prequel. You know, if we're Star Wars fans, this is the prequel to the actual implementation of it, but this is how you start. So, the very first thing that I recommend, if you're a if you're a, single practice but multi doctor, pull together your leadership.

If you are a multilocation group, pull together a small core of people that you are going to talk to about this project. Make sure you get your right leaders in the room. The director of hygiene, your clinical director, maybe an office manager. You know, who are the right people in your organization that you know that are your leaders?

You as the, kind of the project sponsor, you're gonna have done some homework already, and I'm gonna show you a handful of slides that you could absolutely hijack to kinda walk through this initial conversation.

But what you would do is so imagine this first, you know, handful of slides. It's not a bunch, but this first handful is simply that you're gonna talk to your leadership. So step one, you're gonna get everyone together, and you're gonna say, hey. I've been doing some research, and I think we need to really look into AI imaging. And I wanna talk to you guys about what I'm thinking.

The very step one, even before we say, oh, I wanna buy Pearl. I'm super excited. I've met them, and they're amazing, and I've looked at all the products. No.

No. No. That's not how we start. We start with the concept of, I think we ought to look at AI at imaging AI, but here's why I think this.

Our compelling reasons are, I think we need to really look at case acceptance AI I don't think we're meeting benchmark.

I think we have a real challenge in having consistency and diagnosis across all of our providers.

And, honestly, I think if we catch disease earlier, I think we could really help and maybe keep our patients healthier.

And the next piece of the puzzle isn't just AI what do you think and what you feel. Bring in some data. Now I am, I am happy to have been able to have Sheela share some, you know, some screenshots and some data with me. But so for example, I'm looking at this image here that shows let's kinda start to the right. Okay. Who have we completed route planning and scaling with? You can see two hundred and sixty nine, you know, patients that we've done.

Who have we planned it for? So those the AI in the middle, we can see out of pretty much all of our practice management software. What do we treatment plan and what's been completed?

What we can't see on that far left is who might be eligible.

So there's a little bit of a two sided, you know, coin here in that. We're talking with our team about what are the reasons I think we need to make this change, but we also have to be aware enough of what the technology can do so that we can start to introduce them. Guys, did you even know that well beyond what we can see in our software today, this can give us some whole new level of visibility that we've not had. They may or may not know that, and they may or may not agree with your initial reasoning.

And you wanna then, like I said, not just pull in new information that you may not know already from the imaging company, but you also want to say, very specifically, what are the measures we want to impact?

So I actually got this, I got this data from Dental Intel as a matter of fact. So you can see on here, they're showing some data around same day treatment acceptance and just treatment acceptance, percentages.

These numbers are pretty horrible, actually. Right? Thirty seven percent is an average treatment case acceptance rate and same day at twenty eight percent. But if we look at the top, you know, ten percent, it's sixty eight percent.

So part of what your presentation might be to your team is, I here's what I wanna do. This is why I think we should look at imaging AI because, frankly, I wanna get to the top ten percent, and I think this technology is what's gonna do it for us. And then kind of getting down into, you know, poor, Musk alone here. You know?

He's actually not doing a great job, and, you know, you could pull together. So, again, if you already have an analytics platform in your organization, you can pull data from that platform specifically just to set the table on what why am I thinking about this in the first place?

Next, for anyone who's ever been through any coaching whatsoever, I had the opportunity to do that a couple of years ago, you always wanna jump ahead to some future state and then look backward.

So it's been six months since we implemented, and we're seeing great results. So this is AI of that next step. First, we're bringing in our compelling reasons. We're showing the data to our small leadership team. And now we're saying, here's what we hope if we implement Imaging dot ai. We wanna have super positive patient reactions.

We wanna have a higher production per visit, and we can set specific goals. We can talk about specific numbers. We can also get numbers from our technology company.

These, not surprisingly, actually might have come from my fabulous friends over at Pearl with one of their, like, their KOLs. He's actually experienced these exact numbers, so I didn't just make these up. This is exact results from another Pearl practice, and the perio percentage the same way.

But so you can see. I've only been through, what, three AI?

This is the entire and not once did I show you, here's the name brand. This is how much it costs. This is how easy it's no. No.

No. All I'm gonna do is start to have the conversation among the room. What do you guys think? Should we do this?

Does this feel like the right thing? Are we agreed to move forward?

You may actually get when they say and I won't jump backward in my slides because that's confusing. But somebody might say, wait a minute. So you wanna increase case acceptance, and you think that buying imaging AI is gonna get that done. Well, frankly, we need a better patient financing tool. I think more people would say yes, but they can't afford it. And then you need to work that into, oh, what patient financing options is that part does that become part of this project?

Maybe it's something you do first and this comes second. But you can't even move forward until your leadership team agrees with the problems you're trying to solve and, frankly, buys into the vision of the future. So let me pause there. Sheela, does this resonate with you? How do you how are you feeling about this so far?

Yes. Absolutely. I think that, you know, what we all went into dentistry for was to serve our patients. Right?

And all of the technology that we have allows us to do that. Being able to implement all of these little things throughout your workflow really gets to the bottom line, which you said so well, Jill, which is, are the patients accepting the dentistry you're recommending, and are they accepting it early enough? Right? Wouldn't it be great if we knew that we could show them radiographs in color and they could see those interproximal lesions and they would say, oh, okay.

I wanna make sure I get it before it goes through that dentoenamel junction and you have a bigger, more expensive restoration.

So I think that's the power here is leveraging the technology to enhance your existing workflows.

In this in this example here, we think about the seventy four dollars per visit, which is not that huge in reality, except when you multiply it over multiple days and weeks and months and years. And this doctor was extremely conservative, especially the perio percentage with the hygienist just showing the patients the radiographs they're using with bone level and calculus highlighted allows you to be able to say, I can stop talking because I don't have to present so much, and now I can actually answer questions that patients have for us. So I think that's the beauty of technology.

Other companies that also can help with, you know, additional things to streamline workflows is just a huge value add for your staff to do what we came to dentistry to do, which is take the very best care of our patients.

Agreed.

So as I am the one giving the presentation, when I ask, are we all agreed to move forward? Let's assume that I get a yes. But for those of you watching, like, you could absolutely use these few slides to set the stage. So then I'm gonna jump in.

Remember all my checklist. Now we're actually getting started in stage one. So let's jump in with workflow assessment. So the first step, in my opinion, of how to really implement successfully is evaluate current state and benchmark against the software.

So, you know, you've been through you know, at this point, of course, you've been through a demo of Pearl. You understand how it works. You've seen some examples. You you have access to some good information, but you're gonna go back and look at your system now.

How are morning huddles being run? How are we getting insurance verification? Really understand what's current state, and then you wanna compare. Okay.

What how would this work if we had Pearl right now? Because for example and I'm gonna actually, I think I'll jump ahead because I have an example of that. So once you've done that comparison, that lets you identify where are all the gaps. Okay.

Right now, just like that very first slide that I showed that said, hey. We could never even see all the candidates for route planning and scaling. Now we're gonna be able to see those. How does that work into our morning huddle, routine?

So, again, I actually did grab a copy of this morning huddle from you guys, this practice intelligence. And, again, I love okay. Like many, you know, morning huddle reports, who's coming in today? What treatment are we planning to do?

What's unscheduled so we can talk to those patients? But what I love about this is now we also add what has the what is the AI seen that maybe we have not even diagnosed yet, and it's certainly not in our practice management solution.

But one of the gaps might be, well, wait. I work with dental intel. Okay.

What form am I gonna use? Am I gonna use the dental intel analytics? Am I gonna use this? Which morning huddle? Or I start with one. What it it sounds sometimes it sounds silly, but actually getting all the way deep in the weeds as to you want me to pull this up first, then I'm gonna open this, you know, really talking through what is going to be the right workflow that you want to use in your practice.

That also can inform the decision making. I'm giving I'm leaning in a lot on the morning huddle piece, but okay. Do we normally have the X rays up on in all the computers? Who's responsible to do that?

Hey. Are all the do all the operators have a computer with a, you know, patient facing monitor, all the basic stuff? So you may realize we need to solve some basic IT hardware things before, you know, we can implement this or whatever. So the workflow assessment also informs what do you need to prioritize for decision making.

That also then tells you, alright. What should we expect? If this is where we are now, kinda getting back to, well, we're not really running morning huddles, and now we're going to. We're not really doing this.

But also then being being thoughtful, who is actually providing what services in terms of who can do that assessment for you. And if you say, nope. From now on, we're gonna use the practice intelligence report because we wanna see what the AI is telling us and be prepared to be watching for that and letting our doctors take a look and see. Hey.

Does that look right to you? What do you think?

Someone has to say, yes. We're going to use that form. And so who decides on the workflow changes is another important piece of that puzzle. You can't just assume that everyone's gonna use the thing. They wanna have somebody that says, yes. This is how we're doing it.

Next step. And this is actually, for Pearl, this is pretty easy, but I didn't wanna skip this piece because you do need a project manager. If you're in a multilocation, group, you need someone that's gonna make sure are we who's gonna do all the installs? Are we making sure that training is attended? Did everybody get through their online course? Like, some of the basic things, this role communication skills are absolutely critical because they're also gonna be coordinating back with the Pearl team in my example here.

So a few decisions that you'll need to make, who's going to be your project manager? Does it make sense to pick one of the hygienists, or do you think, no. No. No. I don't wanna interrupt her busy schedule. I'm gonna pull an office manager in for the first office that might do these things. Again, being thoughtful about who's gonna lead this project.

Pick pick the right office for a pilot. If you have three or four offices, which one is positive and enthusiastic, maybe open to technology, maybe one of your hygiene leaders is there. But being thoughtful, don't pick the one that, oh, their server's gonna AI, and so we need to hurry up and do this because our new X-ray system is all, is all digital. And on cloud, like, that is not don't make it a rescue operation. Like, you really wanna pick for who is open from a change management perspective.

And, again, who's going to lead decision making on standards, like I mentioned a couple of examples, morning huddle, if there's any clinical workflow changes about sequencing and who's bringing up the images, etcetera, etcetera. So I think a couple of those are pretty straightforward.

Now let's jump into the really exciting stuff, which is, of course, the change management of this.

So, again, I I couldn't resist putting this slide in one more time around look. If you take the time what change management actually means we were saying change management a lot. I mean, what does it even mean?

All this really means is that you acknowledge that you actually have to deal with each individual person. They have to be aware of the change, understand why are we doing it in the first place, then get their training, then hopefully buy in all these pieces that go along with handling and that why is the office manager in support of this? Because you're changing up her morning huddle. Why are the hygienists involved?

Well, this is gonna change how they are handling most of their appointments when they present this on screen. What about the clinical team? It really impacts pretty much everyone. So everyone needs to understand what is happening and why.

And so that is where you can have a seven times better chance of accomplishing. Remember the success metrics at the beginning? You can actually have a seven AI better chance of improving or impacting those if you take your time and implement this differently.

Let me also pause and say those few slides that I shared at the beginning about just for your leadership, you can actually once you're completed, you can actually use some of those same slides and use that as a rollout to every single location. So, again, why are we doing this? What are the compelling reasons? You can share that same story with all of your teams and help them understand. We're not just doing this because we wanna add one more thing onto your list of responsibilities in that forty five minute to an hour prophy. We really want to support you and impact these results.

AI, Sheela. Get ready because this is where you're gonna come in. Right?

So, I did have opportunity then to talk a little bit more with the team about and I said, look. If we're gonna talk and do a webinar on change management and Pearl dot ai, Well, let's just talk turkey. Okay. What are the major challenges that we have when we wanna implement Pearl or any imaging system, quite frankly, into a practice?

And these are really the top three that, you know, the the Pearl team and I talked about. So, Sheela, I'm gonna love your input on these. So I'll kinda bring them up, and we can kinda go back and forth. And I would love your experience.

You have far more in detail in practice experience with Pearl than I do. But, man, I live this too. I see this on all sorts of fronts. So, you know, just setting expectations.

If the first major challenge is that the doctors are frustrated, wait a minute. This thing recommended that I do treatment that I don't need to do, and they can feel frustrated because the expectations were not set, you know, maybe properly at the beginning.

Why don't we do these kinda one at a time? I think these are worthwhile enough, Sheela, that I wanna give you the opportunity to kinda speak to each one. You know, do you wanna speak to what you've seen here or if there's any other comments, and we'll just do one more one?

Sure. That sounds great.

So it's a great point you bring up. I think the word expectation stands out. And even when I came to Pearl and I heard about AI, I thought, wow.

AI is perfect. Right? And I think that was a a kind of a myth that I didn't understand. As we moved into the first stages of Pearl and working with teams, the doctors were like, really?

Do I do I really need this? Like, am am I better than than the AI? And over time, what they've figured out is they have full autonomy. They are still incredible clinicians.

Pearl's called a second opinion because we're gonna point out pathologies.

So I think when we understand maybe a patient's coming in for a broken chipped tooth and all of a sudden you're also seeing a periapical radiolucency on another image or you're seeing an interproximal lesion that's moving closer to that dentin, it's planting the seed. And it's reminding the dentist too, hey. There's something else going on over here just like a highlight of your radiographs.

So setting clear expectations that it's pearl plus the clinician yielding the best results, I think is the number one step to a successful rollout.

Perfect. And you can do that in the change management conversation, right, early on.

I think the second piece, hygienist overwhelm. Right? I think everyone overwhelmed, but I can totally see this. You know, if our hygienists are feeling like you've got to be kidding and I'll throw in the assistance too even though I kinda cherry picked here since there's so much perio opportunity, I think, with the system as well.

It just can feel really overwhelming. What is one more thing?

You know, my experience with this is that just you know, it's I used to joke, we can't solve world peace. We're when we start thinking in this all the I have to do all these things and it's so big and there's no way to handle it. Bring it back to very small specific steps. Talk to me.

Where is your real concern? Is it well, my my computer is so slow. Okay. Well, let's fix that.

Or, you know, I never whatever the specific problems are, get very, very narrow, and it's good to flip the script. I totally hear you. It can be it can feel really overwhelming.

We're here to help and figure out these you know? And, again, starting back with the original, why are we doing this in the first place? You know what? We know that if you have better case acceptance and better hygiene production, you'll actually end up making more money. We'd love to be able to make sure that we can cover your compensation, especially as we're all paying more for our staff, right, or for our teams.

So I'm I really wanna see how can we help, what would that look like, etcetera.

But really then and then turning that to say, what Let's again, understanding what the specific concerns are and then saying, okay. Now instead of just listing out all the concerns, let's also partner together. What do you think we should do? And take and then you ask a question, then you have to zip and listen because they can also help to be part of the problem solving.

But you probably work this more even seen this more often than I have. Sheela, what have you seen that's been really helpful for when team members just feel like it's overwhelming? There's just one more it's not even specific to Pearl. It's just one more thing they have to add into their into their appointment.

Yeah. I think we all face this, especially we talked earlier about the staff shortage, the decreased compensation, from insurance companies, all of the stresses that are overwhelming throughout the day.

As a hygienist myself, I would go into some of these trainings and think, oh, boy. Are they gonna add ten more minutes to my hour? Because how am I gonna do fill in the blank? And coming to Pearl and seeing a prime example like you showed, which is the morning huddle audit.

Right? And that, if you noticed, was per provider. And the reason I highlight that so much is AI remember going to work thinking I have to get there early. I have to look through all my charts.

I have to find out, you know, how am I gonna serve my patient the best unless I've reviewed what happened last time in the outstanding dentistry and find out where this patient's where this patient's at before the doctor walks in or even sometimes after the doctor recommends treatment. Right? How do we help our patients to understand things? So when we start with that morning huddle, we take away the stress.

We're telling the hygienist which patients need x rays, which patients need probings, which patients have unscheduled dentistry. And for the front desk, that's a great way to add, fill holes for the day and add same day dentistry. So for the overwhelming feeling, I think the the nice road map brings in a setting a settled feeling when you walk into your day because it's already done. When it comes to the radiographs, though, it's so much more fun when you're showing areas of decay or even calculus in color because the patients now say, oh, okay.

That's my right side. I see the little pink one, or I see the calculus.

AI think it's important to think for just a moment how much of a struggle it is for hygienist to explain scaling and route planning. Right? It's something the patient walks in. It's asymptomatic.

They've never heard about it, and you're talking about strange things that are living under their gums. So imagine just bringing a picture to that decreases the overwhelming feeling of having to repeat that concept in those conversations over and over. And seeing the patient's eyes light up is really helpful for job satisfaction.

Right?

Yeah.

I think that's really well said.

And I realized this resistance to change as the third piece, that's for all of us. It doesn't matter who you are, really. It doesn't matter if you're in dentistry or not. You know, we all with one more change, one more technology, one more thing we have to learn, another login, some of these things. Again, my recommendation and what what my experience is is you have to hear them out, and then it really is shifting from all the venting and the frustration.

If that happens, I always pick up a pen and start writing. Okay. So you're frustrated about this and this and this. What else?

Like, tell me all the frustrations because then we're gonna flip it, and now we're gonna go through alright. So the first thing you said is your computer stinks. Alright. Tell me about that.

How are we gonna solve that? Oh, it's too slow? Okay. So then we're gonna work on getting the next thing you said is, you know, whatever.

And it can be as outrageous as each one, but each one of those gets its own line item, and then we pivot over to problem solving.

I don't know. Sheela, any other thoughts on that last piece of the puzzle?

I think the only key factor here is to normalize this. Right? We're all aware of the resistance to change. And so when we go in proactively addressing that, I think it puts everybody on the same playing field.

I think, when you're learning any technology, of course, more specific to Pearl, it's one button. We're already taking X rays. We're already showing X rays. So although the resistance to change is there, it takes the moment with the patient to see their radiograph review differently and them accepting dentistry, And then the change management and the resistance to change and the overwhelming and the frustration AI goes out the door because they're seeing that case acceptance on the dentistry you're already recommending.

So I think that's kinda the only key point is to normalize the resistance to change, and then how do we work through Joe, something you said earlier today was, you know, when we're working on a rollout plan for any type of change management, we need to align in the very beginning with the philosophies of the practice and understand their goals and their objections and and previous things they've implemented and the challenges they face. And I think when we bring all of that to light, then we have an easy way to move through all of these concerns and these challenges.

Agree.

Agree.

Alright. I'm gonna zip through a couple more things.

Success metrics. Well, frankly, yes, this is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle. But, frankly, we've already set if you've if you're doing this right, you already showed this in the very initial conversations on change management. People know these are the reports. This is what we're gonna be measuring. Here's how we will know that this is successful.

And, again, I do think that actually helps with the change management piece. How do we know this is gonna work? Why are we even we are we're gonna making sure people know AI are we even doing this in the first place.

And so really getting back into okay. And some of the some of the structural. Who's going to pull the report? What report are they going to pull?

When are we going to review it? You know, kind of the journalist. Who, what, when? And then based on, you know, what we're seeing, do we need more training?

And in fact, I'm gonna jump to my next slide because I think it's super critical to get utilization reporting. So, you know, this is actually showing a multi office report. So green, you know, green is an office, blue is an office, pink is an office as I understand this report because I, of course, hit this up from Pearl to get this. Because what you wanna know is how are we doing?

Who's using it? Who's not using it? Or who's using it successfully?

So when you have okay. You have this piece of the puzzle along with the page before, right, where I'm showing you, we're doing this so we can impact case presentation I'm sorry, case acceptance and production numbers because our production isn't gonna go over overnight. We wanna start to see, are we actually logging in? Are we using this?

What does that look like? And then how does that back into the actual success metrics? That can help us when someone's resistant to change and you say, Brend, I know and you can also know who's doing well. Like, you know, this first week, I can tell my green office is killing it.

So I'm gonna match my green office maybe up with my, you know, blue because in the second week, my blue office is not doing so good. So I think those are some of the things too that you can see from the data. How do I pair up? If someone's being successful, find out what's working really well for you as opposed to what's not working well over here.

And it might have nothing to do with anything other than AI don't like my computer or so and so is out sick the other week. She didn't log in because she was on vacation for heaven's sake. So, I think the reporting end on these success metrics really can reinforce the why and help us continue to make adjustments to get to where we wanna go.

Software setup for Pearl. This is actually pretty straightforward.

I think I'm this page, I just kind of wanna speak about this kind of in general. I'm a big believer in set up the software the way that works best for you, not necessarily following the status quo. So what I see a lot is, hey. We've got this new software, and maybe the messaging got out. Maybe everybody didn't attend the training or they attend the training, but they were really on their cell phone and didn't exactly pay attention. So people end up we just are naturally we default to the way we've always done it or the way we our last software worked.

So take a pause, and that's why early on, if you can start with the workflow assessment and say, this is how we've done it, but this is how the software lets us do it moving forward.

Now based on the way you really want it done, change the way you set it up to set yourself up for the new, the new plan.

And these are big changes, you AI, when people have had other software and you wanna really take advantage of the new system, you have to come to an agreement. Who are your decision makers that are gonna say, we are going to use the new system in this way, and now we're gonna set standards to that point.

Past, like, general ideas on software setup, there's not a bunch at from my understanding. And, Sheela, I'm gonna ask you to comment on this too. There's really only you know, you can set the colors from my understanding on the measurement.

That's probably one of the major setups. So there's not much setup in this system, which makes it a lot easier than the world I've lived in with setting up an entire practice management software sometimes.

But it's really more around who's gonna guide the workflow and the decision making on what is the talk track, how do we wanna explain this, you know, how do we use this, and how do we achieve that clinical consistency.

Sheela, will you kinda share a couple of your best practices on what you've seen work well here?

Yeah. And I think to your point, Jill, again, another great point. There's not a setup with Pearl. So if you wanna customize the colors, that's great.

Putting the username and password in, that's probably the biggest pain point. I love when you talked about kind of having those ambassadors, those team members that are gonna help with that change management.

But as far as moving through any type of setup, very simple. We're all very, detail oriented dental professionals. And so clicking on buttons, you're gonna know exactly how to use Pearl in the first thirty seconds.

Love it.

We're getting towards the end. So one of the last, couple pieces here is really AI big believer in SOPs, so standard operating procedures.

And I think everybody knows this, but I think, it's helped I mean, the purpose of it. Right? That we wanna be consistent when we hire new team members, that we don't want it to just be, you know, kind of the telephone game. But I pulled this, this data from, again, that ADA Health Policy Institute.

This is this was, not that long ago, actually, but it's saying more than a third of dentists are actively recruiting clinical team. So if you figure, if we're actively recruiting, then pretty quickly AI after we implement and do all the training and get all this going and all the project focus. Two weeks later, we just hire a new hygienist. Four weeks later, we hire a new assistant. How are they supposed to use the system?

Not that it's hard or difficult, but actually to write it down. I'm also a big believer in I don't wanna recreate the wheel. Pearl does a great job, and I could not resist. I love this game that you gamify.

Like, it's so genius on how to make this fun and how to really engage for training. But, frankly, it's the stuff that is more accustomed to the organization that is near and dear to my heart. Okay. Who is going to take the X-ray?

Is it gonna be the assistant or the hygienist? What happens when running assisted hygiene? Who's responsible for that? In the morning huddle, who's print out to make sure we have the practice intelligence report?

Does each hygienist have to print it for herself? Like, it sounds ticky tacky annoying.

It really isn't because if you decide who's doing what and when and that gets written out daily, weekly, monthly, that also is gonna incorporate some of your reporting. How do we know that this is working? We're gonna look at our morning huddle and see our case acceptance. We're gonna cheerlead when we get towards the end of the the end of the month, and we're starting to see like, again, all the basic stuff that really contributes to your success.

So when we talk about change management and people are like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. We we bought the software.

It's really obvious. Like we just said, there's not even any setup. I'm sure they're gonna figure it out.

Taking the time to think one by one by one, what do my assistants need to know? Where are we gonna keep the SOP? And how do we make sure that once we document it, how do we make sure that all of our new hires get access to it? Or when we add a new office, where are we gonna keep this information?

So I think those are a couple of the ideas that, again, it isn't none of this is rocket science. Right? But it does take being thoughtful about the time and what are the actual steps.

I wanna pause again, Sheela, and give you you know, if there's any other comments you have seen about what works really works well or how this game is being played. Again, I couldn't resist. I think it's such a good idea.

That's a great game. It's fun to be interactive and see, you know, what is this like. A lot of dentists are always wondering how am I versus the AI. And, again, I can't state enough that we are better together. But I really like your point, Jill, as well about the new hires.

Right? It's something that you're one of the first speakers that have really addressed this, and I think it's really valuable for the investment that you make in any technology is to think about, okay. We've launched, and we've rolled this out, but we lost our ambassador, or we lost our office manager, we lost our main dentist who's calibrating.

Well, the good thing is inside of, Second Opinion, you have everything in there for training and rehiring, but also taking the ideas into how your practice works and creating additional videos or SOPs that are gonna work for your team, including that pearl, hello pearl game is great for a new hire. Right? How do you get them excited about new things when they fill out three hours worth of paperwork? But I think we should be really mindful that as we move into a more strategic technology focused world, it's really buying back time that we can spend with humans.

So in the new hires, you can take all of these things, all of these different technologies, go through and streamline them in a way that is customizable for your practice with someone like Jill who can help implement this even if it's in the very beginning, and then you're ready to go forever. Every new hire has that same cookie cutter approach, and you don't have to worry about that zero to thirty days where they have to retrain everybody in that downtime and that loss of production.

And that actually kinda gets me really to the end of these are all the things that we covered tonight. Everything from how do we get started. And I didn't include the change management intro. Right? But that obviously sets the stage and the foundation for all of it. But these are all the topics, and this is this is from my experience what it really takes to successfully adopt and implement software successfully, in your dental group practice.

So thank you so much. I'm excited now. Let's see if that you have some fun q and a or if there's some conversation going on. Let's see what you've got on your end.

Excellent.

Jill, this has been so incredibly helpful, and I hope that a lot of the teams have, really kinda sat back and assessed their current implementation tactics and how they can make it simpler.

We wanna open this up for questions.

Any questions you may have about, you know, just implementation in general, workflows, I think that important one is, like, the resistance to change management.

There is one question in here about, Pearl and kind of the type of imaging that we're working with.

So we are moving into CBCTs in the very near future.

We are using two d images now, and panoramics are coming very soon in the US. They are in effect globally.

So the types of pathologies that we have clearance for, because you asked, are, calculus caries both incipient one hundred percent into the enamel, progressed caries, which is they've moved past the, DEJ. We have notable margins, and there's also the bone level measurements that are CEJ to bone crest that, Jill was talking about that we could customize those. Very helpful for your hygiene team to be mindful of those lines moving from a yellow I mean, a white to a yellow. And I think that gives the team awareness that how is my patient doing, you know, from a periodontal perspective?

So I think it's important to again, my favorite part of coming to Pearl was, wow. This is really the highlighter we all have been looking for to show the patients exactly what the dentist has been saying all along. And as a hygienist, I was always waiting for my patient to come in six months ago and look at the outstanding treatment. I'm thinking, why did we not schedule these fillings? Now we take the X rays, and they're even larger.

But, unfortunately, there are sixty four percent of patients who don't understand the radiograph that the dentist is sharing with them. And so if Pearl can cut that in half, then, again, patients are gonna get the dentistry that you're recommending earlier and more often.

So workflow, wise, that's an easy way to click one button, have those decay areas, calculus areas appear in color.

So I hope that answered your question. Are there any other questions that anybody has?

Again, important process here is how do we really ensure and I say that as an insurance word. How are we using adoption, technology, workflow, change resistance? How are you getting that into your practice so that you are ensuring that everything you've invested in is really allowing that ROI? And I think that we have to be mindful of having somebody like Jill that can walk you through all of the the troubles that she's gone through with teams and all the challenges and all the the exciting parts too. Right? All of our teams teach us over time how to successfully implement these things.

So any other questions that you guys have about Pearl or, any questions for Jill, we're happy to answer that. I do have a little QR code here. If anybody's interested in a demo for Pearl, happy to walk you through that with our team, show you a little bit more about that.

Please let us know. We'd we'd love to stick around and, again, answer any questions you guys may have in the chat. Feel free to put that in the q and a. That's really helpful.

Does insurance accept Pearl?

Great question. So we do have a, patient printout.

And what this will do is it will actually allow your teams to move into a PDF or JPEG or however you're gonna do it and share those images that you are sending to the insurance companies so that you are allowed to get less denials in a consistent basis. So, a DSO that I had worked with back in Texas a couple years ago said, hey, Sheela. So we've been taking screenshots of, the AI images with the bone levels, and we don't have scaling and root planning denials anymore. And I I thought, that's so incredible.

We never really thought of that and actually built that tool because of the teams that were using, our AI images to submit with claims. So prime example, teams that sign up with Pearl will look into their denials. They'll resubmit the scaling and route planning, claims, Of course, the periodontal charting, the radiographs. But with the pearl radiographs, it highlights that area from that CEJ to the bone crest, and they're seeing less denial.

So the more patients get paid the more we get paid, the better. Right?

Sheela, I have a say I have a story on that almost exactly, similar. I worked with a really nice multilocation group, and what they found and I was working with their revenue cycle team. And they're one of their insurance team members. She spent one week a month focused on all the denials.

And that that dealt with whether it was crowns or whether it was whatever, but a lot of it was on exactly what you said on, hey. Do we have the right bone loss to to justify a four three four one? So what this woman was doing, she because she was an insurance person, she's not clinical, she would kick it back to the hygiene coordinator. This hygiene coordinator had multiple offices that she was responsible for.

So now she's got this laundry list of emails that she has to save and go through. She would have to go in, look at the X-ray, do her own, because I don't think they had any imaging, imaging AI, which I, by the way, recommended to them. But they're like, so she actually and then she would come back and say, no. It doesn't actually justify it.

So she had to go back, tell her hygienist, hey, guys. We're not doing this right. We need to keep making sure you guys are educated on what does it take with the insurance.

So think about how much time was wasted. The insurance manager was wasting her time. The hygienist didn't have enough information and didn't have the tools to successfully use it. Now we've got a hygiene coordinator spending all of this time. It was it it's just a lot. So that was definitely one of the pieces where I was like, oh my gosh. This could be super incredibly helpful just for one tiny piece of the puzzle, much less all the other great things we talked about.

Yes. I I agree. I think having any kind of technology, even this simple thing for both, insurance claim submission. Right? Any more data you can give them. Just proactively just send it. That's my method.

But think about maybe the treatment plans that walk out the door. Right? Why not staple this image directly on top of the treatment plans? Why not send these types of images that have the patient friendly information, the tartar, progressed cavity, little tiny cavity? Why not use these visual aids to be able to help the patients understand that dentistry, understand the have help the insurance companies understand this is a need for scaling and root planing. So, again, anything we can do to help teams, that is the goal with technology.

Somebody would like to have the recording. We'd be happy to send that to you. If you'd like to send in your email in the chat, I'd be happy to send you the recording as well.

You know, I don't wanna get over my skis, but I I would also say if anybody wanted like, I talked a lot about this change management and how you could totally hijack the deck. It's not this deck exactly, but it's very, very close focused on change management. I have I have that. If somebody wants to go to my website, it's free on there too, just the whole change management template deck.

So, anyway, we could I mean, I don't know, Sheela, if we wanna put that in there, but that's something else. I'm such a big believer. If you can get the why, all the great things that you talked about, then you get here's how it can be done. So, anyway, that's all.

Can you share your screen, Jill, and just put your website up one more time for us?

I would be happy to. In fact, wish I had my let me see if I can get out of this and actually go there.

That would be great.

Super helpful, all of the resources you shared today. And, again, any type of change management, if there is a road map that we can help you with and align with your team's philosophy, you're gonna be in it's just such a better way to be more successful with that rollout plan.

So thanks for giving me the opportunity to do this if I can find my mouse. It's just here. Want a free change management slide deck. So if you click here, then it's simply gonna say it's all free if you give me your information.

And then it comes in fact, I'm kind of excited. You get not only the deck, but I've recorded a little video of me, like, walking through. And it's, like, twenty minutes of, like, okay. Here's what I have here. You could totally switch this out. That is a different example than Pearl. But, again, it's the concept of what establishing the why so that you can actually get the real benefit of Pearl, you know, from using it.

Excellent.

And any other questions you guys have? Again, happy to say and answer anything you guys have available for us question wise. We wanna make sure we're answering all those questions. There was a lot covered today. I feel like I wanna go to an eight hour seminar, Jill, and have you break down each slide actually because I could take twenty pages of notes.

Oh, we could get so deep. Right? Well, I thought you were super helpful. I appreciate your expert knowledge. I think you and I are a good fit from my maybe more on the business, you know, AI. And you, deep clinical, I think we're a very good pair.

Sounds good. I wouldn't I agree completely.

Well, I will I guess, we'll give it a few more minutes, but I think probably most of you have asked the majority of the questions. Very thankful that you came today.

And, we hope to hear from all of you at some point and look forward to seeing you on future webinars or have Jill help you out as well. Looks like that that free change management slide deck would be a huge win for any practice.

And, again, any interest in Pearl, we'd love to just walk you through a quick demo, see see if it's a good match for your practice.

I think it's a great match for every practice, again, from a clinical perspective.

If we can serve our patients, the production will always follow.

Have a great night, everybody. We look forward to seeing you sometime soon. Thank you again, Jill. We appreciate you.

Thanks, Sheela. This was fun.

Okay. Take care. Bye bye.

Bye, y'all.

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