Good evening, everybody, and thank you so much for joining us tonight. My name is Sheela Roth, and I am the head of clinical education at Pearl. I have been here about four years now, and AI excited to, share with you a little bit tonight about how can how Pearl can really help enhance your patient experience.

In this webinar, we're gonna be talking about consumerism in dentistry, a very interesting topic, and I think it'll be a great way for us to sit back and listen to a completely different perspective from a patient's side. And what I mean by that is Justin's gonna walk us through what we think the patients want, but in reality, what they really want in a basic, you know, a to z, that patient experience. So I'm really excited to hear Justin talk.

Justin is one of my mentors, so I'm really thankful that he is here this evening.

He has an incredible career, been very distinguished in business development, began in, the telecommunications industry as well as working in the past with medical devices.

In two thousand seven, Justin founded seven to seven Dental, and his mission was really to kind of revolutionize the dental care visit experience.

So he is now what is it, three hundred full time employees, Justin, that you have now, and really kind of leading the pathway into this new scalable approach onto almost his twelfth office now. And I think tonight we're gonna learn a lot about best practices, best policies, training, really from a completely different perspective, which is AI the inside out. One thing I will tell you tonight that is really kind of unique is I've known Justin for quite a few years, and what I appreciate most amongst many things is that when he's talking about a system and he's talking about what is actually working for his team, he has tried it, He's developed it, and he's proven it, and he's made it scalable. So, Justin, thank you again for spending your time with us tonight, and, I look forward to hearing from you.

My pleasure. Thanks, Sheela. I appreciate you having me. Well, like like Sheela said, my name is Justin Koch. I'm, founder and CEO of seven to seven Dental. We've got, coming up on twelve practices here in the San Antonio and surrounding area.

Started back in two thousand, two thousand seven, designing and developing the practice, opened our first office in two thousand eight.

AI of a slow growth in the beginning. Wanted to wanted to create systems that were scalable before I just went out there and started going nuts. So, that's what I'm gonna hear that's what I'm here to talk to you about today. You know, I love this quote from, Sydney Harris. It's, we all hate change, but we all want the chain we all want what comes from change, but we just don't wanna do it. And I'm kinda talking about that's really what I'm gonna be talking about today in our industry because I feel like we've been doing the same thing over and over and over again, decade after decade, kind of expecting new things to happen from the same actions and activities. So the the word consumerism is it's kind of a unique thing to talk about in dentistry, and many of you are probably wondering, what that really means to you and what that means to your practice.

So before your patients become your patients, they are consumers.

And and I know that's hard for us in a world of millimeters to sometimes zoom out from our chair and look at that mouth that we're working on as a person. And that person, more importantly, is a consumer or a customer.

And what that person is looking for is and how they can how they find what it is that they're looking for is dramatically different today than it was even five years ago, especially ten years ago or more.

You know, ten years ago, if you wanted to buy something, you would get up, you'd put on your clothes, you'd get in your car, you'd drive to a retail store, and you would buy whatever it is that you needed. When you'd go back home, if you didn't need it, you'd have or you didn't like it, you'd have to take it back to the store and return it. And, you know, and that was the norm. And you can see in just ten years what Amazon has done to that experience to so many retailers. We've lost a lot of retailers over the last decade because Amazon has modified and they have revolutionized the consumer experience.

Or think prior to COVID.

Did you ever think you could get anything that your heart AI delivered to your front door within minutes?

And now today where you probably had never even thought about having somebody bringing your groceries to your front door, about the only thing I recall getting prior to COVID was maybe a pizza.

But now you've got Uber Eats. You've got DoorDash. You've got a million things that'll bring just about anything. And and then you've got Amazon. I'm guessing most of you have probably picked up an Amazon package from your doorstep as as late as as early as today. So if you think about business in general, the most successful businesses in our country are constantly looking at their consumer, not what they're doing right now or or what it is that they're providing to that consumer. They're actually keeping it keeping a close watch on the behaviors of their consumers and how their consumers are are finding them, and then they're doubling down on that.

And so what what I find funny in dentistry is is we we don't look outside of our industry for success stories and what what it is that other businesses businesses are doing, and we tend to copy what they're doing. And and in AI almost twenty years of doing this, I find that, a lot of dental practices tell, you know, very, I would say, fabricated stories about how well they're doing because they don't wanna be viewed as unsuccessful in their industry. And so everybody just kinda does this wash, rinse, repeat, approach to successful dental practices or should I say a dental practice, in many cases, not successful.

I'm sure many of you on this call have very successful practices. I'm not taking that away from anything that you that you've accomplished in your career. But I'm sure that many of you are probably on this call trying to figure out how you can elevate your practice or take it to a level or, in many cases, figure out how you can get it to a point where you're actually making, a reasonable living for all the effort that you're putting into your practice. So what what I'm gonna talk about today is really what it is that most typical dental practices give their patients, what patients are actually looking for in that experience, how you can how you can take these, this knowledge of your patients and create immediate opportunities within your practice.

And I'm really gonna kinda take it from the easiest things first to the more complicated things that may seem out of reach, but if you really think about it, they are not. And then effective financial case presentation, I think this this is an area that's fumbled quite frequently in an average in an average, dental practice. And I'm gonna leave it up. I'm gonna open it up for, question and answer at the end.

So let's get started with, you know, what most dental what most offices typically give patients.

So the the number one thing that I see typical in medicine in general, not just dentistry, is it tends to be a very provider or doctor centric environment.

AI I mean by that is we we tend to focus how the practice runs, hours of operation.

Everything within this this business ecosystem, it revolves around the owner, perhaps the owner doctor, and what that person wants. And like I said, it's hard many times to zoom out from that millimeter work in the mouth and say, well, maybe this is what I want, but is this what's best for my patients? And this what best best for my community? Is this what's best for my practice as a whole?

So they get this very doctor centric thing. And and when when you really think about that doctor centric approach to patient care, then you get what I refer to as banker's hours. And many of you are, old enough to know what that means. Some of you may not have experienced that because banks have really evolved in their how do they how do they get to people where they where they are and where they wanna be. But back in the day, banks were open nine to three, and many dental practices do that today. They're open, you know, nine to three, nine to four, maybe nine to five, Monday through Thursday. If you're lucky, maybe half a day on Friday.

And then and then there's a lot of red tape for these patients to get into the practice because they're all of these policies and procedures are set in place by the doctor. And then the next thing that that many people experience when they walk into a medical facility is a waiting room. I know that sounds silly because every office has got a has got a place where patients come in. But in my organization, I do not refer to them as waiting rooms.

I refer to them as a lobby because it is not a holding cell for a patient. And and when I think of waiting rooms, I think it just that. That's where they're going to be waiting. But if if we've got if we've got appointment times for our patients, then why are we making them wait?

If if we don't expect to see that patient when they've when they have created their appointment time, then we should have an open just come in a free for all experience for our patients because we expect them to be there on time. And if they're not, many times we turn them away. But if we're not on time, we get infuriated if they leave. So if you've got a if you've got this beautiful beverage bar, coffee station, whatever it is, I'm sure it looks fantastic.

But trust me, that is a red flag to patients because to me, I see a a beverage bar in in any place that I go, and that is a telltale sign that it it's a distraction for me because I'm gonna be waiting there. And then next, you get a lot of dental speak. And by dental speak, I'm talking about vernacular that is not in the in the language set of our patients. So in dental school, I know that that the the universities require you to speak very, very clinical in nature, but that's that's part of dental school. And then when you get out, everyone in our world speaks the same language except for the people that we're caring for. So our dental assistants, our receptionists, our our hygienists, all the people that we work with, they understand all of the terms that we use, but our patients don't have a clue.

Even as even as simple term like radiograph or prophy, prophy is it could be a million things.

They don't understand what recurrent decay or in a proximal decay or insipient lesion or caries. They don't know what any of those terms are, and we continue to use those terms and then ask if they understand everything, and they just sit there and shake their head with absolutely no idea what it is that you're talking about. And then when they leave the practice, you go ask whoever presented that treatment, well, what happened? And they're like, I don't know. They said they had to think about it.

And next, in medicine, because of this horrible thing called insurance, we create this very transactional experience with our patients.

So when when we call to schedule an appointment, typically, one of the very first things that's asked of this patient, many cases, a brand new patient is, what insurance do you have?

And that changes that relationship like that. That patient is no longer somebody that you're gonna care for. They became a transaction. They became an insurance policy that you're trying to extract money from. And it immediately creates tension between your practice and that patient.

And instead of it being a conversation that happens between the patient and their doctor, it becomes a what does my insurance cover because that's what you've made it important with your practice. And then when you make it transactional, you ask very tough questions over the phone that nobody wants to answer, especially somebody that doesn't know you, hasn't met you, and hasn't been to your office. Like, what is your Social Security number?

So we make it very transactional with patients. Next, people think that dentistry is very expensive.

And I don't like the word expensive because expensive to a patient means that they just they're paying more than they wanted to pay for their visit. But when I say huge price tags, I'm not talking about doing cheap dentistry. I'm not talking about doing bargain basement dentistry. I'm talking about creating a way to make dentistry affordable for your patient. And I'm not just talking with CareCredit or or any of these other third party financing. I'm talking about, in many cases, phasing their dentistry in such a way that makes it affordable to them within their budget and their time frames. And then next, this is my least favorite word in business to from patient facing, and that is the word policies.

So we talk about in our industry all the time about policies and procedures.

Those are things that we put together internally in order to run an efficient day. Those are things that we have to answer ninety percent of the things that happen in our day. But one of the worst things that happens, and I I hear this and I see this everywhere, not just in medicine, but any business to consumer environment where a where a consumer wants to do something, and it is outside of the guidelines of that organization.

So the response to that consumer is, I'm sorry. That's our policy.

And dentistry has lots and lots and lots of policies for some reason that make it very put a lot of friction between your practice and the patient.

So if that word gets used in your practice between your your team and the patient, that's something that should easily and immediately be retracted from your vocabulary.

And then limited hours of operation. I spoke about this in the beginning.

We we tend to we tend to force people to make themselves available to us instead of us making ourselves available to our patients. And the reality of it is is it and this isn't the case for everybody, but most of the people on this call probably deal with some insurance or most insurance in some form or fashion, whether it be PPOs or capitations, Medicaid, and some sort. But, primarily, I'm talking about the PPO patient. The PPO patient has that insurance policy most likely because they are employed with somebody that provides that to them and subsidizes that insurance policy.

So the way that we work is, hey. I need you to leave your job to come see me because I'm more important than you. So you need to leave your job to come do what it is that you need to do in my practice. And then finally, there's this level of confusion, and patients walk out of practices on average.

The average case acceptance and I know that many of you on the call are gonna say, that's crazy. My case acceptance is a hundred percent. But if you look at the average case acceptance across all dentists, all general dentists in in the United States, that includes early career dentists, you know, late career dentists, you know, is about twenty five percent and twenty five to thirty percent. So that means that seventy percent of the people that you talk to are walking out of your practice.

And AI be willing to bet that most of them, and you're told in most cases it's because they don't have any money, the reason they left is because they're confused about what was needed. They're confused about urgency. They're confused about payment options. They're confused about how their insurance works.

They're confused about so many things. So instead of saying no or instead of making a decision, they say, let me think about it, and they walk out. And you either don't ever see them again or you see them again in six months for the cleaning because the cleaning doesn't require any effort to understand it. So I'm gonna come in.

I'm gonna get my teeth cleaned. I'm gonna continue to push off the stuff that I don't understand, because I don't necessarily trust them, because it wasn't explained to me in a way that makes sense AI I can make a rational, emotional and rational decision on to move forward or not.

So on the flip side is what patients actually want.

And and I put great providers up there. And the reason I say that is because nobody nobody goes and googles and said, I would like to have a mediocre dentist to to do my work. They assume. So there's an expectation of of level of of provider when they choose you. Now we know that that's not always the case, and not all providers are created equal, but that's an expectation. And and I'm gonna put this into marketing terms a little bit.

It's actually quite humorous when I see marketing pieces that talk about the the clinical the level of clinical expertise or the level of clinical, work that the provider does. Because, basically, you're saying you're you're you're touting what it is the patient already expected you to have, which is a level of this expectation of of you being a good provider.

Second is accessibility and convenient appointments.

And forever, I've I've heard this at I've heard this at seminars, and I've heard other consultants talk about this. They they talk about creating this level of exclusivity.

And if you create this level of exclusivity, people are gonna wanna be in your practice. And the funny thing about exclusivity is, it will work in some circumstances for certain tiers of people and certain groups of people. But for the masses, exclusivity is not an attribute.

Convenience is an attribute, especially in today's world where everything is so easy. Everything is so at your fingertips.

Exclusivity is not an attribute that you want in your practice. And if a patient calls your practice, they do not expect to be told that it's gonna be weeks or months to get into your practice for the most basic and services.

Next is affordability.

And, again, affordability is not cheap. Affordability is not free. Affordability is doing things in a way that allows your patients to get the care that they need in in the way that they need to do it, whether it be through financing. But how many times have you attempted to use CareCredit or a third party financing entity and the patients AI for that? That doesn't mean that we have to deny this patient care. It just means that we need to take their care a little bit slower or a little bit different. We need to phase their dentistry out in a way that's doable for them, and then knowledgeable.

The funny thing is is they expect everyone in your practice to know everything about your practice. They don't expect us all to be on the same level of dentistry, but they expect everyone in your practice to know about your practice. So if you've got certain things and and and things about your practice, you need to make sure that everyone on your team knows those things. If you're new if you have a membership plan, if you've got a AI for life program, if you do, in office AI, whatever the case may be, whatever it is, what procedures as a provider you provide to your patients, what you do and what you don't do, they expect your team to know those things.

Clear and con clear communication and transparency. When I talk about clear communication, I'm talking about talking in terms that your patients understand. Like I said, removing the dental vernacular. And so if you're talking about caries, we're effectively talking about a cavity.

And not everybody, but most people that are going to the dentist know what a cavity is. They've heard that term many times throughout their life, but they don't know what caries are. They don't know what lesions are. They don't know what current decay is. So talk to them as if they as if you like before you went to dental school, you didn't know any of those things. Talk to your patients that same way. And then transparency about how things work.

For our my organization, we present a very clear and concise treatment plan with payment options ahead of doing any dentistry for patients. I've I've been told on numerous occasions, patients that go in and they're saying, hey. We're gonna do this crown for you today. And they're like, okay.

And then they get finished, and they're like, that's gonna be twelve hundred dollars. That's sticker shock. And, you know, that's a reasonably priced crown for sure. But when you're not expecting that, and that's when patients get frustrated when the transparency is not there in how you communicate to them or what you're gonna be doing for them, how you're going to be doing it.

We gotta be very transparent with them. And then your facility needs to be clean and modern. And by and clean and modern is important. And so cleanliness is godliness, especially in medicine.

And if you're if if your office is not clean, if your floors are not clean, you know, I it it I chuckle when I walk into practice. I AI go into practice quite frequently. And when I when I walk into rooms that are considered the hygienist room, and that room looks like a shrine to their family, and they've got trinkets and pictures and all kinds of stuff all over the, operatory. To me, that is unsanitary.

And first of all, it's not very professional, but it's also very unsanitary.

Just one more thing to capture dirt and dust and, and aerosols. So make your operatories clean. Make your operatories minimalist.

Make make your office clean. And you don't need big fancy offices because, trust me, that doesn't impress your patients. When they walk in and see waterfalls and, you know, marble all over the place, they're just thinking about how expensive this is gonna be. So clean and modern. And by modern, I mean using technology that is gonna elevate their experience. Right?

Technology such as Pearl. These are these are the technologies that help create an experience that your patients are looking for. And then a caring and courteous staff and and and doctor. So if you look at your Google reviews, which I'm sure most of you have hundreds, if not thousands of them, you're never going to find somebody that says, man, they this is the best, this has the this crown has the best margins I've ever seen in my life.

Or, wow, look at the contacts on this crown that I just got from this doctor. No. If you look at your reviews, all of the ones that are in the high star level are everyone was so kind, everyone was so courteous. They've got me back on time.

They're all about how the patient felt, not about the work that you did. Especially if you don't hurt them during that process, it's never gonna be about your work unless they spent tens of thousands of dollars on a new set of veneers. But on restorative dentistry, they're not talking about your work. They're talking about how your practice made them feel.

And then probably one of the most important things is AI. So I spoke about this a little bit. For some reason, medicine seems to think that that our timeline is different than our customers, and they should wait on us because we're that important. That's not even close to being true.

I mean, how many times have you gone to your primary care physician, sat in their lobby for forty five minutes just to be called back to be taken to the next holding cell for another thirty minutes to sit on the super comfortable, bed chair that has a piece of paper on it just for your doctor to come in and speak to you for, you know, three minutes. It's timeliness is very, very important in what we do, and it's what our patients want. They they made an appointment for a reason. They showed up on time for a reason.

They expect us to keep that time frame. I understand there are times where emergencies happen and things, but when you cannot meet the expectation of your patient with their time frames, that's where we come back to the clear communication and transparency.

You need to communicate that to the patients that are waiting as exactly what happened.

And so with these with those things AI being said about what patients want, what patients need versus what they get many times, I'm gonna talk to you guys about creating some immediate opportunities in your practice with some of these things.

And they start basically from the easiest to the most difficult.

And number one is creating an annuity.

Second is minimizing the obstacles to entry.

Do on to your patients as they want done to them, assisted hygiene, and then extended hours and and days of operation. So let's start with creating an annuity.

This one is gonna be the easiest thing you hear me talk about all night long, and that is the word next. It is a word that we use all the time in our organization. It is we we talk about it in between every single person in our organization, and it is does this person have their next appointment?

And I know it sounds like very simple things, and many of you believe that you have a great, high percentage reappointment rate for your patients.

If you think you do, I highly recommend that you track it. And you will find very quickly that your reappointment rate is probably not as high as you think it is because if you're not tracking it, nobody will care about it as much as you do. But if you're tracking it, all of a sudden, it will improve.

And when I say every single patient leaves an appointment, I'm talking about every hygiene patient, every emergency patient, every postoperative patient, every crown seat, every delivery. Because one of the things that we miss so frequently are the people that come in post treatment when they get their delivery done, when they get a post op after a complicated surgery.

And what's their next visit?

Well, if nobody knows what their next visit is supposed to be, it's gonna be very hard to schedule that patient. So every single person that walks through the door needs to leave with the next appointment, whether it be a next clinical appointment, whether it be with their next, yeah, their next treatment, whether it be hygiene, whether it be with a post op, a crown seat, a delivery. Because every single time you reappoint them, they will make their way back into your practice. And every time they show up, it shows they trust you a little bit more than they did last AI. And then they will be a part of your practice. And I don't consider patients a part of my practice until they're in my hygiene department because now they're just passing through otherwise.

So every single patient gets their next appointment, and you need to start tracking that if you don't.

Number two is minimize every obstacle to entry. This is what we're really bad at at this. We we create so many friction points to get into our practice. It's unreal.

And so the first point of friction in so many practices is answer the phones every single time. And I hear a lot of times, well, I don't have enough staff. Get more staff. Because every single time you do not answer a phone, you you have the opportunity of missing a new patient appointment. Because in today's world, they will go to the next one. Google has fifteen dental practices sitting right in front of them that are dental practice near me, and the expectation is they're all the same.

So they're gonna call the next one who does answer their phone. So if you look at the average lifetime value of a patient, it's in the tens of thousands of dollars. Every phone call that you miss is a potential ten thousand dollar lifetime value of a patient or very likely thousand dollar first visit. So if you do not have enough people to answer every phone call, you do not have enough phones, you do not have whatever it is, fix it. Answer every single phone call.

No insurance questions on that first phone call. I know your team's gonna reach out and say, absolutely not, doc. We can't do that. We have to verify their insurance before they get there because what if we have to do a treatment plan?

Who cares?

Insurance does not take that long to get basic insurance verification with all the insurance portals. You don't have to know every in and out of this insurance policy from the very beginning.

To be able to schedule them for their first visit, which is typically gonna be a cleaning and examine some x rays, all you need to know is, are they eligible for insurance benefits?

And that's it. And are they eligible? And and does this insurance work in our office? That's it.

And that's it's a very simple thing. So don't ask those insurance questions. And mostly because it creates them as a transaction instead of a patient. It makes us ask very uncomfortable questions over the phone, which people do not wanna give us.

If I ask you for your Social Security number and date of birth right now over the phone and ask you all to just message it to me through the chat, I'm guessing I would probably get that zero AI, but we expect our patients to do it regularly.

And then exclusivity, like I said, is out. That is not a thing in our world. So any appointment within a day. And I know you're probably shaking your heads going, that's absolutely impossible.

I can't do that. Trust me. It is. There's more room in your schedule than you think.

And if you it's you need to re if you can't get them in within a day, you need to reevaluate your staffing. You need to reevaluate your operatory configuration, or you need to reevaluate how do I actually schedule these patients. Am I overbooking time? Am I am I u utilizing my operatories effectively?

Or if you can't get somebody in with a day, that means you are a critical mass, and it is a good time to look at expanding your practice. And I promise you, you probably have room in your practice to add an operatory too because most practices are not created very efficiently to maximize space for operatories. And remember, operatories are the only place you make any money. You don't make money in in waiting rooms.

You don't make money in doctor's offices. You don't make money in managers' offices. You make money in operatories. So if you've got this extra space and you can't get an appointment within a day, turn one of those rooms into an operatorie.

And then talk to your patients like you actually want them there. I get infuriated when I walk into my doctor's office, and the receptionist won't even look me in the eyes. And And when I finally get up to the front desk, all I wanna do is ding the bell, which isn't there because they won't even look at me. And then when they do, they look up at me as though I'm an interruption to their day as opposed to the reason for it.

Just remember, our patients aren't lucky to have us. We're lucky to have our patients, and we need to treat them that way every single time they come in from from the very first phone call through the clinical treatment, through the insurance portion, through the accepting of their money. If we if we promise them we're gonna make them a give them a phone call back, we've gotta make sure we give them a phone call. Otherwise, we're just lying to our patients.

So we gotta talk to them like we actually want them there.

And then do on the patients as they want done to them. So let's start with what patients want when they come into the practice. Many AI, you'll ask them what brings you in today, and they'll say, well, I'm just here for a free cleaning or I'm just here for cleaning or whatever the case may be. Probably the the worst words you can ever hear as a as a practicing dentist is I'm just here for cleaning. But the reality of it is that's what they came in for.

That is not necessarily all they need. But if they come in and they ask you for something very specifically that is outside what you would say that wouldn't be my first priority, if you can give that to them and it's clinically acceptable to do the thing that they want first, do the thing first.

Because if you ignore their request and go straight to what it is that you wanna do to them, they're not going to trust you enough to do any of that. Not only did you miss what they wanted, but you're gonna miss what it is that you think they need. But if you give them what they want, they'll trust you with what they need, and then that cycle goes on. That's where the referrals come from. Start with what they want. If you're clinically able to, then address their immediate needs second.

Communicate like a human being. Talk to them like a human being, not a not a clinical professional.

And then if you work in an organization with multiple doctors, you need to have, you need to make sure that you guys are calibrated on your diagnosis of patients. And I'm not saying you have to be exactly the same, but if you're in different chapters of different books, this can be very, very, very confusing for patients. And it can really create a lot of trust barriers if one doctor sees them one time, another doctor sees them the next, and completely re revamps the treatment plan. And the patient's like, well, last guy didn't say I needed any of that. You're telling me I need all this. So it's important that your providers, that that includes your hygienist and your doctors, are are very similar in their methodology on how they diagnose and how they treat implant patients.

And then we need to be good stewards of their money and their insurance. Look. I know we all hate insurance. There's nobody on this call that says, man, I really love my patient's insurance. It is an absolute scam. We all hate it. It's the worst thing ever.

But guess what? Our patients have a weird love of this really crappy dental coupon.

And if you do not treat their insurance as something that is useful to them and you tell them that it's ugly, like, you would never tell your friend that their baby's ugly even if it's the most horrific thing you've ever seen because it's your friend's baby. So you say, oh, no. It's gorgeous. I love your baby.

It's beautiful. You say the same thing about their insurance. You say, hey. You're you're we love Delta Dental.

We don't love Delta Dental. We hate Delta Dental. But But we tell them we love Delta Dental. Works great in our practice.

And the reality of it is you need to make sure that it works as good as it possibly can for the patient because any dollars that they don't have to put out of pocket to get their dentistry done is more dollars they're gonna spend with you.

And then we need to make sure that we are utilizing their insurance to the fullest so that their out of pocket expense is as little as possible. So being good stewards of their money. And then patient care, not a transaction. And I've talked about this a few times tonight.

When you transactionalize this, that's when they we stop making it about patient care, and we start making about insurance policies, about fee schedules, about all of this kind of stuff. So focus on the patient care. All of the other stuff is part of the process, but it is not the reason for it. And then a moderate financial financial presentation.

This is breaking down extensive treatment plans into digestible chunks for your patients. Because I see this so often where a doctor will go in with a new patient, and they'll just call out a bunch of letters and numbers. It looks like alphabet soup, you know, MOD, crown on this tooth, this tooth number that, blah blah blah, recurrent decay, redo crown on this tooth, blah blah blah. And then and then the and then your assistant or your OM or your treatment coordinator goes back and puts the treatment plan together because there was no urgency or there was no, actual, AI set for this patient or even talking to them about how they wanted to begin or where they wanted to go first.

And and this person goes and presents a treatment plan of seven thousand dollars to a patient who just came in for their cleaning. And I promise you that patient ain't coming back because they get overwhelmed, and they don't understand that this can be broken down because it wasn't shown to them in that way. So modern financial presentation, address patient oh, I've already talked about that. So, now let this is the this is the third one on the list.

This is assisted hygiene. And when you say we don't have room to get patients in in a day, this is the easiest way to increase your volume of hygiene. And I know hygienists on this call are probably going, absolutely not. I can't care for patients this way.

It's awful. It is not awful. It is one of the greatest things that you can do for your patients, for your practice, and for your community because assisted hygiene is not about seeing more patients faster. It's about seeing more patients more efficiently by using an assistant to help in that process.

You would never see a dentist working independently from an assistant, and that's what allows doctors to be so effective.

However, hygienists are very resistant to working with an assistant.

You don't need a full hour to see a patient if you're not bringing the patient back, if you're not taking their X rays, if you're not initially going through their health history, if you're not turning your room, you're not, you're not sharpening instruments, you're not, you're not sterilizing instruments. Your focus as a hygienist is to do what your license allows you to do. And then you have an assistant whose license allows them to do these other things, which allows you to care for more patients, which allows you to open your schedule, schedule more patients without having to make the initial investment in hiring another hygienist that perhaps might just be sitting around all you.

So my goal is to see for my hygienist to see on average two patients per hour, but they're doing it only doing the patient portion. That's the education and the profi, and my assistants do everything else. This is the quickest way to increase your access to care and win for every hygiene patient that you bring in versus what you're doing right now.

If you're if you look at your average dollars divided by your hygiene patients, you'll see that it's probably somewhere between about seven hundred and about twelve hundred dollars per hygiene patient seen. So every hygiene patient that you grow, you practice, you can assume that if your average is eight to twelve hundred bucks, that that's gonna be an additional eight to twelve hundred dollars. And I'm not talking about in hygiene production. I'm talking about an overall production per hygiene patient. This is a phenomenal way to be better for your community, get your patients in, and give them what they want, which is access to care, quick turnaround time, and it allows your hygienist to work more efficiently, which gets your patients in and out of your practice in about an hour, which I promise you, they don't wanna be there any longer than that. They don't like our offices to begin with, and they certainly don't wanna sit spend a bunch of time in there that they don't have to.

And then right here, this restaurant is closed during the middle of the day and when patients are during the times when people wanna be there. And I feel like that's what we do with our practices is we we pay rent on a building or a building that we own twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty five days a year, and we operate out of it thirty to thirty two hours a week.

And not just not just the mind blowing expense that comes with that.

Because as you as you utilize that space more, your fixed cost for that rent continues to go down and down and down, which means your profit goes up and up and up. And and then you're only able to care for your community in in the thirty two hours in which you're there, which, as I said earlier, most of those people are at work or their children are at school. And so the idea that people are gonna come to you because you're the best dentist in town is it's a fallacy, because they don't know you yet. They have no idea that you might be the best dentist in town.

And who's to say you are the best dentist in town? You? I don't know.

But give them access to your practice, and I promise they will flood it.

And but the one thing is is is don't expect your existing team to take on this additional workload. Because if you say, hey, guys. Great idea. We're gonna open up Fridays and Saturdays, and all of you just need to suck it up and work more.

You're gonna lose your entire team. You have to hire people to to to take up this load. And as a practicing dentist, me saying work more days, I'm not talking about you. I'm not saying work harder, work more, do better.

I'm saying utilize your space more effectively. Hire a hire a dentist as an associate. There are there are some bad dentists in everywhere. Practice owners, associate dentists, you name it.

There's bad dentists. But guess what? There's a ton of good ones too. And then if you hire an associate, you could train them to be the doctor that you want them to be in your practice.

And then guess what? You double the access to your practice. And don't work side by side with this dentist after they're trained. Open up your schedule and let more people in, and then utilize your space better.

It's a phenomenal way to grow your practice without having to open another office. Just use the hours that you have there.

And then I'm gonna go through effective some some ideas on effective case presentation.

And this is this is gonna be counterintuitive to some of you guys. I know a lot of you guys have probably been to some of these, you know, Spear and Hanky and all these kind of stuff where they talk about how to present forty thousand dollar treatment plans. Okay. That's great.

But let's talk about who's actually the person presenting this after you leave the room. Is it the least busy person in the practice? Is it the one that's scared to death to present money? And I will tell you most people in your office that are not you, many times even the doctor are fearful of of larger treatment plans.

But if they if they're nervous about presenting money to patients, they are also going to project that onto the patient, and the patient's then gonna get suspicious of this. So I talk about treatment coordinators all the time. If you don't have treatment coordinators in your office and when I say treatment coordinator, I'm not talking about somebody that is also works the front desk, also verifies insurance benefits, also does all of the other administrative tasks. I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about a dedicated and realistically sales professional. And I know people don't like that word in medicine, but it is literally a dedicated sales professional. Somebody that can sell this pen. If you've seen Wolf of Wall Street, you know what this is from.

We need somebody that can take your guidance from the diagnosis and the original treatment plan and finish it. Taking the patient from from in the chair to on your schedule and paid for. So you need somebody like this. But the reality of it is, how do you present this dentistry?

You stole a bunch of shit at the wall, a bunch of stuff at the wall, and hope something sticks. And I I find that a lot. Especially in early career dentists, they just throw, throw, throw. They just say a bunch of things, start at the wall, and see if anything sticks.

They don't really have a plan of action for all their dentistry that they AI.

And this is where patients get confused. They get frustrated. They don't know where to start. And if they don't know where to start, they typically leave, and they say, well, I'm trying to buy a house, or I'm buying a car, or I'm about to get married, or my kids are doing this, or it's almost Christmas. They'll come up with a million reasons not to do the thing that's actually most important, which is their dental work because it's not because of any of the things they said. It's because they don't understand anything that you told them. And so it's putting a a logical, reasonable treatment plan together that makes sense for them, creating urgency, not not made up urgency, but creating urgency on the most important things.

And I always tell patients when I'm talking to them on the treatment planning side is is, look.

This didn't happen overnight, and we don't have to fix it all overnight. But the one thing we have to do is we're gonna go on a journey together and every journey starts somewhere.

And based on what you and doctor Jones talked about, the best place to start is right here because this is the most critical thing that's happening right now, and this is where we need to start. So you gotta start them off somewhere. And, really, the greatest thing about dentistry is if you do the first thing and it went really well, they're gonna be way more apt to do the next thing and then the next thing after that and then the next thing after that. But in order for them to continue doing the next thing after the next thing is you gotta make sure that you schedule them every single time.

And then I like to compare kind of not treatment plans, but I you kinda look at a patient. I look at it kind of like an iPhone. And I know that sounds silly to compare your patients to an iPhone, but I'm I'm not interacting with you guys right now. But I would be willing to bet that most of the audience members tonight have either an iPhone, and I would say probably ninety percent iPhone, and maybe five percent Android, Samsung, something like that. But these are relatively expensive units.

And the let's call it eight hundred to a thousand bucks, which I still have a problem with that. But however, I paid it but if and I am one of those Samsung users. I'm the guy with the green bubble, so I'm sorry to all of you Apple users. But if I went to buy a Samsung phone or an Apple phone and they told me it was gonna be ten thousand dollars, I would still be on a Razer, a Nokia Razer, or maybe my sixty two ten brick phone from Nokia. But I certainly wouldn't buy a ten thousand dollar Apple phone. But what I can almost guarantee everybody in the audience tonight has done is spent tens of thousands of dollars on Apple, Apple watches, Apple phones, iMac or Mac computers, Apple accessories for yourself and your family.

And there and you've done that over the course of years. So if you if you kind of look at your patients the same way, it's like if I I I could throw a ten thousand dollar price tag at them, and once in a while, I'm gonna catch that wave.

But ninety percent of the time, ninety five, ninety seven, whatever, they're gonna walk out of here going, you must be out of your ever loving mind. That's crazy.

But that person, that consumer, at the end of, you know, five years, six years, seven years could have spent tens of thousands of dollars in your office and referred even more to your practice if you treatment plan conservatively.

And when I say conservatively, I'm not saying overlook dentistry. Never saying overlook dentistry. I'm just saying that everything does not have to be presented to the patient financially on day one. We take it in chunks, digestible chunks that the patient can and is willing to listen to and is willing to move forward.

And then have a really good person who understands dentistry inside and out, Be the person to follow-up with that, not the least busy person. And if you're and if you have your dental assistants presenting dentistry to patients, that is the worst use of their time because if they're presenting dentistry, that means you're not doing any dentistry with them. Have somebody that's in that role doing that job. Have your dental assistants doing dentistry, and I promise you, you're gonna have a much more efficient and effective practice.

And then how do you present this treatment after you've diagnosed it? How's it presented to the patient? So I call this the the click and print, the hand and help. So if you've got the if you've got the least busy, least effective person presenting dentistry, they're gonna present this treatment plan, and they're gonna hand it off to the patient. And it's gonna say things like crown porcelain ceramic substrate.

Okay.

I have absolutely no idea what that is. Or what about a resin composite three s posterior?

Everyone on this call knows that that's a three surface, tube colored filling, and everyone knows at the top, that twenty seven forty, that's a tube colored crown or a zirconian crown, porcelain crown, whatever that may be. But our patients don't know. And they take this home, and they're like, I don't know what any of this stuff is. I don't even know what I need.

They can't explain it to a financial partner as to what I need or how I'm gonna pay for this. And, realistically, there was no conversation about it. So this is printed, handed to them, and most importantly, it has no financial options on it. How's the patient supposed to pay for this?

Or you can use something smarter like this that says tooth buildup, tooth colored crown, and then tooth colored fillings on the teeth that we're doing it on. And you can see that it has treatment option or payment options down at the bottom, signature for the patient.

It's patient friendly. It removes unnecessary obstacles.

It has patient options, convenient ways to pay. And then most importantly, it was presented by a treatment coordinator who's highly skilled in having these conversations with patients.

And then let's talk about technology that sells. I told you about modern practices, clean modern practices. AI wanna start with Pearl. So, obviously, I'm I'm gonna do the the Pearl plug because they're the ones hosting this tonight.

I use Pearl's second opinion in every one of my offices, and my associates absolutely love it. My hygienists love it. They use it every single day on every single patient that comes through. And the reason that they use it is because it doesn't change their diagnosis.

It helps them in many cases where they're like, do I see something? Do I not see something? It takes their eyes and directions, especially when they're super busy and they and they're running into an exam. It helps them kind of it pulls their eyes in areas that they may not have looked to make a decision on what do I need to do.

And then and then second, you know, if you wanna use this as patient education, if you show a patient an x-ray, it is a sea of black and white. I literally heard a patient tell a doctor, they put an X-ray up in front of the patient and they said, wow. It looks like toes. What is that?

It was their teeth, but, apparently, their teeth and their toes looked the same when looking at x rays. It's a great tool, especially when you have somebody that says, well, I was going to my last dentist for twenty years, and they never told me anything about any of this stuff you're saying. Well, you bring this up and say, hey.

Look. This is this has got this is a large language model that is is getting input by millions of X rays every single day, and it is showing areas that are of real concern. And whether it was ever presented to you before or not, I'm showing you what this unbelievable technology is showing, and I wanna and I wanna make you aware of it. And so it kinda helps make you not the guy who's telling them a story.

You're not the, you know, you're not the shady, mechanic that's telling things that they don't understand. You're showing them through technology. It is a phenomenal tool. I have a lot of early career dentists that work in our organization, and they rely on this all day long every single day to make better decisions to help not not diagnose for them, but can't tell the difference between a cervical burnout, an interproximal lesion, bone loss versus the black in the back.

They don't know what any of that is. So use Pearl to shed some light on these x rays. It's a great tool, especially when you have somebody that says, well, I was going to my last dentist for twenty years, and they're not gonna let you get rid of it. I promise.

And then how about this? And it doesn't have to be an iTero. That's just what we use. But we do we do iTero wellness scans or just wellness scans on every single patient that comes through the door.

And in dentistry, you have to be a great storyteller.

And I'm not talking about fairy tales. I'm talking about you have to be able to you have to be able to look at a patient's look at X rays, look at a patient's mouth, tell a patient what you see, make them believe that what you see is real, and then help them understand how you can pick something that they don't even see. So how do you do that? And the best way that I found is doing wellness scans with patients.

It's literally like picture books for dental storytelling. If you're not a great storyteller, which not all dentists are, there's some phenomenal storytellers. But if that's not your thing, if you're more clinical in nature and you and you don't really love that that telling of stories to patients, this is exactly what you need. Because what better way than to take their face, rip their mouth out of it in a digital model, put the screen in front of them, and then you show them exactly what you see. And their ability to make a rational decision to move forward increases dramatically to the use of scans.

And then most importantly, follow-up, follow-up, follow-up.

Like I mentioned earlier, there is sixty, seventy percent of the patients that walk through your door. The dentistry that you've presented to patients is never getting completed.

If you've got treatment coordinators, they should be following up with these patients that walked out without scheduling their treatment. But if they walk out without scheduling their treatment, they should always be scheduled for their next appointment anyway, and that would at least be their next cleaning.

Never leave without the cleaning. But if you're letting this low hanging fruit go by just waiting for the next new patient or the next patient exam to capitalize on, you're missing out on tons and tons and tons of opportunity. And at the end of the day, you're just not taking as good of care of your patient base as you could. And trust me, they're not ignoring you. They just have to trust your practice. They have to trust you, and they have to trust you are looking out for their in their best interest, and then you follow-up with those patients.

AI tell my treatment coordinators, call, call, call, and call again. Because until they tell you to stop calling or they answer the call and schedule that treatment, they didn't get your call or they didn't get your text message. Alright, guys. Thank you so much.

That's all I have tonight. I'm gonna open it up for questions if you have any.

Excellent presentation, Justin. We are so thankful for all this information.

I'm really thankful that this specific, webinar is recorded because it's a full, dissertation on how to make our practices better, and I'm thankful that you were able to share that with us.

I'd like you to take a minute and just look at this X-ray.

And imagine yourself going through your very busy day. You know, you prep someone. You put a rubber dam on. Whatever the case may be, you gotta jump up and do the hygiene exam. And if you have a minute, I'd love you to put the number of caries that you find in this ents. What I'd like you to do is just see that there's quite a few different areas of decay here.

And reviewing radiographs much faster in color is excellent for the clinician. So the click of one button provides your eyes an additional set of data, a great way to talk about incipient lesions, a great way to talk about areas of concern. And, really, when we turn around to the patient, hopefully, when we're using our, you know, case presentation tool, these patients understand why they might need this cavity sooner, filled sooner rather than later so we don't have to have a root canal. Or maybe they do have to have a root canal, and we need to explain to them why or why we're gonna maybe watch these teeth, and, we need to fill this one.

So I just kinda wanted to make sure that, you understood how we have the new technology to be able to bring an entire different patient perspective to the audience. And I think that's the most important thing that we have for Pearl. Now I do wanna make sure we're answering questions. So let's see here.

I wanna tell you AI biggest takeaway when I heard Justin speak before was the, next visit conversation. So, I went back to my practice when I was managing, and we put in place next visit. Because, you know, in dentistry right now, we have less staff, and we had patients walking to the front desk saying, do when are we gonna do the implant?

Or I think they were talking about the bridge, and I thought, wow.

That was such a very, epic fail on our side because we weren't even thinking about next visit. Right? So, Justin, what is your what do you think from everything you went through today? Your number one key takeaway point that really kinda took your practice to the next level. What would you say if you could implement one thing today?

So I I kind of put these up there in order of the easiest things for practice to implement that are gonna make that are gonna be packed. Well, there's a million things I could have put up there. But in terms of impact, making sure that everyone gets their next appointment is because if you if you miss ten percent of your if you miss ten percent of your hygiene patients six months from now, you just lost ten percent of your patient base.

And so and if you and if you're looking at it saying, well, we saw the same of our patients, so we didn't have any attrition. That's not true, assuming that you had new patients. So you've immediately started on the wrong foot, by not scheduling every single patient.

And then, realistically, the most difficult thing that would be for most practices is to transition their practice from a Monday through Thursday, Monday through Friday to a six to seven day a week practice operating extended hours and extended days. We're open seven days a week. We're open to full seventy six hours a week.

And I know a doctor like, well, I tried weekends once. I did. It didn't work. Well, the reason it didn't work is because you got your regular weekday staff to do to just start working on the weekends, and and weekends are were not in your DNA. You have to make a commitment to being that practice, and you will find in very short order that Saturdays, become by far your most productive per hour day. And I will say that will make the biggest impact in any single practices trajectory, especially if you can't get somebody in today, open up more days.

Because you just you don't need to go open another office. Just utilize the space you have better. And that comes with adding additional team members, adding additional associates or doctors. I mean, it it's it doesn't it's not easy, and that's why I put it as number five. But I will say, nothing that's nothing that's worthwhile is easy, and and this is AI far gonna be the most impactful to any practice.

Excellent. I love that. I couldn't agree more. There are a couple questions coming in. Here's one of them that says, give us another narrative instead of that's our policy.

Like late appointments, we ask them to reschedule if they'll be more than fifteen minutes late or cancellation policies. What are your thoughts there?

So I don't have I I really don't have a cancellation policy. I know a lot of folks have, you know, cancellation fees and things like that. I find that that's a sure I only put cancellation fees on patients that I don't want anymore because it's kind of a surefire way to get them to leave, AI they're not gonna come back because they don't wanna pay it, but for for late. So if you have somebody and I wouldn't put a policy on time because if you say if a patient's fifteen minutes late, we're we are not going to see them.

What if the next hour's patient reschedule, then you have nothing in that hour, but your but your hour's patient is fifteen minutes AI. Are you gonna kick them out too? So now you just lost two hours. So I wouldn't put a strict policy on that.

I would have it in terms of, can we see you still or can we not?

And that's not that that is more of a it's more of open ended. It lets smart people make smart decisions in your practice when the time is right. And if they come in and the next hour has failed, then it's like, absolutely. We're gonna be able to see you this time.

I can't make a guarantee next time, but we're gonna be able to see you this time because, we had to make you know, our our next patient wasn't able to come in. But if they are fifteen minutes late and you can see them, then I would say do it because that they're already in your practice. They did something that some other people didn't do today, which is just not show up at all. At least they got there.

And, you know, it's not my favorite thing when patients are late. I'm a very timely person. I like everything the way that it is. But the reality of it is we don't live in that world.

Everybody's kind of on AI time, I guess. And so if you can make it work, make it work. If you can't, then you tell them.

We would love to see you today. Not it's our policy to cancel you after fifteen minutes because what if they say, well, my appointment was what's your policy when you're fifteen minutes late? You know, is my appointment free? I mean, because they're gonna turn it back and pound on you. Just say, we would love to be able to see you today.

However, this has happened and this has happened and this happened, and I would love to get you rescheduled in another time that works for you. And just so you you don't make it about that's my policy. You just come up with a reasonable human being conversation with them. It's just about conversations. Because that policy, that is an immediate shutdown.

And AI call it a professional f u because you don't have anything more intelligent to say.

So so you it's reframing is what it is, and and it these are great exercises to do in your office on any scenario that you have is how do I reframe this to be more effective and to actually get a better result and say that's our policy or no. I can't do that. No. No is a terrible word also because there are many things that we can't do, but no is not a really great word to use.

There are a couple more questions.

One of them I wanted to address, which was, how do people really kind of respond to technology based on different demographics? And I'm gonna give you one statistic that we have found at Pearl, but I also, would love, Justin, if you have any insights.

According to some studies we've done is which were surprising to me, but eighty seven percent of patients prefer that you have the latest technology.

I always thought like, wow. We need to wait for technology to evolve and improve, but I remember going from getting a, you know, impression for a night guard to getting a scan, and I thought, wow. I really want all the technology overnight. So I don't think, we're seeing with AI in radiology.

We're not seeing any concerns with that. I think when doctors frame it in the in the perspective that it's a second set of eyes, then they're thankful that there's more data there. And, really, when it becomes the patient facing education, then they really understand AI, oh, okay. I understand now.

And, really, I think the whole point of this is what if patients actually accepted more dentistry earlier and not more diagnosed, but more that you're actually recommending? So if they just accepted all of the treatment plans that you're recommending, then they're gonna be in a healthier position. Right? They're gonna have the dentistry that you're recommending less invasive, less expensive, which is usually contributes to a higher retained patient, and we know that cost is over time.

I'll let you comment on that, Justin, but one more comment was about our Saturdays fell apart, and kinda what are your thoughts about your opinion on Saturdays falling apart?

Yeah. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna comment on the technology first. Okay.

Wherever you wherever you live, wherever you work, you're you're in a you're in a developed country, and so there are different socioeconomic areas in which you practice in. But I would be willing to bet that majority of the patients that you service have a smartphone. They have an iPhone. They know how to use technology. They understand technology. Just because their socioeconomics are different doesn't mean that they don't understand those things. And they may not have as much education in, oral health care or taking care of all those AI of things, maybe how they were brought up, but they understand technology.

And when when I use the word technology, I'm not talking about poise in your practice. I'm not talking about, you know, the the things that make doctors happy, like the the newest thing. Like, I think CEREC is kind of a it it's cool if you can make it work, but that's not a thing for patients. That's not technology that I think is important to patients. I think technology that's important to them is what helps them become more educated without becoming a dentist in their field so that they can make smart decisions on their dentistry. That's why I love Pearl, and that's why I love Wellness Scans. I think those are the two most impactful pieces of technology that happened in our industry in quite some time.

Saturdays Saturdays can be just like any day. Any day can be a day that just fell apart. We've all experienced those days.

We just we love to focus on Saturday because it's Saturday. And and for some reason, you know, in the United States, we covet Saturday and Sunday. It's just to me, it's just a day. And and the reality of it is is the reason that it's so tough with so many practices because it is your regular it's the regular team, and then they work weekends.

My teams, because we are open seventy six hours, have very flexible schedules. They actually get less time in my offices. Not not hours, less days in my office.

So they get to get their hours. They get to make their they get to make their money, and they do it in fewer days. So they don't have to commute to my office five days a week. They commute three.

They get they get to come to my and so Saturday is just a day to them because they have four other days off. And so it's it's a nice trade off that they have. It's like, look. I can get Saturday and Sunday off, or I can get satter I I can get Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Friday of them.

I mean, it's like, what what do you want in your life? And so, and if and if you have that, then the team's commitment to Saturday is the same commitment that they have every other day because that's part of their job. That's part of their work, and that's just what they've become accustomed to because they get so much time off outside of Saturday.

So it's great to have everyone here again. Thank you for staying, and we really look forward to seeing you in the future. If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out, and I can also connect you with Justin if you have follow-up questions. So thank you again for spending your evening with us. Justin, thank you so much for taking the AI, sharing all of your wisdom, and I hope everyone has a wonderful evening.

Thanks, Sheela. Thank you. Bye.

‍

‍