Hello, and good evening, everybody. We are very excited that you are here tonight.

I'm really excited about this topic, and I think we're gonna learn a lot. Let's get started. So as dentistry continues to evolve, the role of dentists and dentals teams can feel even more ambiguous, raising lots of questions, more than answers. Should we focus on, you know, fluoride and improving different procedures and or do we focus on our team internally or new patients? And what's the biggest question, you know, we have is can we do it all? Right? It's so much we're doing in a day, and systems are really such a crucial part of a dental office.

So adding all of these different features and different ways to go through your day, what is the best approach?

And then what about adding the complexity of technology? Is that taking away time? Is that adding time? What about radiographic AI?

Does that play a meaningful role? And what is the best way to integrate tonight's ideas directly into your practice, starting tomorrow. So we're gonna walk through refining core systems in your practice, creating a foundation that you can have sustainable growth, and we have a lot we're going to learn tonight. We're thrilled to have our expert here to guide us through these challenges and share some actionable strategies and insights.

So I'm excited to learn, and, it's my pleasure today to introduce today's esteemed speaker, doctor Kwiecien. Doctor Kwiecien graduated from Oregon Health State University School of Dentistry in nineteen ninety five and also holds a master's degree in health care administration.

That was very impressive when I learned that.

With over twenty five years of private practice experience and a significant background in academia, doctor Kwiecien has held numerous leaders leadership roles.

These include serving as an assistant professor of restorative dentistry at Oregon Health and Science University, where he directed the faculty dental practice, patient admissions, and urgent care clinic. He was also a course director of preclinical fixed prosthodontics and co course director advanced restorative concepts.

And from two thousand thirteen to two thousand eighteen, was also a resident faculty member at Spear Education.

So he was directing Spear AI, creating and overseeing digital content, and teaching hands on workshops as part of that practice.

He brings over a decade of national international lecturing workshops.

So many different things we can learn tonight from team building, digital dentistry.

He's done sleep medicine. I don't this whole webinar could really be about all the things done, doctor Kwiecien. So, anyway, we are delighted to have him here as a, faculty member also of Pankey Institute, dedicates his time to all kinds of different, ways of educating our dental world. We are so delighted to have you tonight. I will turn this over to you. Take it away.

Nice. Thanks, Sheela. I wanna be as efficient as possible and respect your time. So with no further ado, I'm going to, just share my screen, bring you over, and bam, let's just get to it.

You know, we the title of chaos to clarity, I wish it was that easy, but, certainly, we can make things smoother on a regular basis.

And, you know, with our limited time tonight, there's only so much we can review, but my hope is that this will be helpful for you to literally start thinking about it at your next team meeting, which we'll talk about as one of the systems in a little bit.

As you know, the fatal assumption AI been assuming pretty much everybody on that's listening to this, has experienced this fatal assumption, which is if you understand the technical work of the business, you must understand the business that does the technical work. And we all joke about that in dental school, and I have firsthand knowledge that that's not always the case, and so do you probably.

If you're familiar with Michael Gerber from E Myth, he says you can really only be awesome at one of these things. The technical side of it, well, that's you. The entrepreneur side, that's most of us here as a business. Oh, and you have to manage people as well.

And we actually have to do all three of those. So even though we might be awesome at one, my goal for everybody I work with is to make you as awesome as possible at all three. And when you think about the business side of it, most of us most of us think about the left hand side, the operations, how we deal with new patients, keeping patients there, how we manage the team, how we do good dentistry, and how we schedule and manage our time. But don't forget, to keep that going, you might have internal and or external marketing.

And then a lot of people that I work with, certainly, probably one of our weakest points is the right hand side, which is how do you understand how to set fees, collect money, create a budget, etcetera. And so, you know, there's an unlimited amount of systems, and AI, we're gonna pick just some of them. And the core, what I would say is the core systems. And in fact, when I think about a dental practice and everybody here, we'd love to be at the top where it's just we're successful, and we gotta work our way down to the bottom of the pyramid.

Right? There's a reason we use pyramids. Tonight, we're really gonna focus mostly on the middle of the pyramid, but I would be remiss if I didn't remind you that to get to the middle of the pyramid, we gotta start from the base of the pyramid, which and these this would be, like, three more webinars if you want, some of my favorite, topics. But tonight, we are gonna focus right in the middle.

And when we think about systems in the dental practice, I wanna start with a an overview of systems thinking, meaning AI wish we all wish this was our dental practice. It was just a a wheel just moving moving along. But, really, what we know is that how new patients come in impact the way we schedule. Well, the way new patients come in impact the way we schedule impacts, the way, we interact with our hygienist, which interacts with with the way we, collect money, which interacts with the way we, interact with each other.

Basically, what I want you to see here is that it is actually a closed system. And I think a lot of dentists miss this, that anytime we change, update, or create a new system in the office, it is impacting everything else in the office. And I know to be true that that is an oversight often that we forget that if we change one thing, it impacts everything else. So that's systems thinking.

However, systems, sounds boring as all heck. I know that creating systems. It's AI, if we knew we're gonna do that all day today, it would be boring. Would sound boring, except that when you think about what systems are in your office, which is getting clear on how you want energy and information to flow optimally with intention in your office.

I'm gonna say that one more time. If we can get some clarity on how we want energy and information to flow optimally with intention in your office. That's a system, but it sounds a lot more sexy, doesn't it? It's just it's easier to say the word system.

So when we talk about systems, let's remember, it really is creating optimal because what we know happens for almost all of us in a dental practice and in any job, really, we come into a job and experience an associate at a practice you bought, whatever it is, and you you have an experience there from day one. And then you go, oh, I guess that's the system because it is. And then that is really what you are going to expect tomorrow when you come in. In other words, you have an experience, and then that's what you expect.

What would it look like if we flipped it a little bit and said, what does optimal look like for you? What is your expectation of what optimal would look like and feel like in your office? And then come and create some structure. How do you want energy and information to flow optimally around that knowing what we want to actually what our expectation is and then integrate it, and that's the experience we have.

In other words, if we really put some time into it on the front end, we know what we what optimal looks like for us, what we want to what we expect optimal to look like, and then that is what we experience when we come back in. Now how do we create that? How do we actually get clear on what optimal looks AI, and who is it for? Who who does optimal revolve around?

Well, I'm afraid that I'll probably lose about a lot of people will probably hang up right now or click off a Zoom because here's what it's not.

When in my opinion and what I know to be true is when we create optimal, it is not around the doctor. That is, however, how we were in the fifties and sixties. Right? And that's okay. That's who we were as a society.

It was about doctor, yes doctor, no doctor. But as we evolved as a society and in into the seventies, you see you know, we our focus was really on the business. How do we get more people in for cleanings? We had dental benefits coming in. People were having employers pay for cleanings, and they've never done that before. But what you see in this diagram is that everybody in the practice still had their own needs and objectives and challenges.

It was just based on the business. As we evolved into the eighties, once we got the the updated business model and society evolved, we've we started talking about a patient centered practice, patient centered systems, which sounds good, and that's probably a lot of you right now. But we learned in the late nineties by a guy named Peter Sanjay who said, you know what? We have evolved as human beings as a society.

And instead of everybody having their own needs and objectives and challenges and focusing on the patient, in the mid nineties, he said, there's a different way to do this. If we actually get clear on how we want energy and information to flow optimally with intention for us, the team, it's gonna look something different. Now I know what your needs and objectives and challenges are because we decided what optimal was for us, the team, not the patient. And a term for that is outward mindset.

That term actually was coined by the Arbinger Institute many years ago in the book called the outward mindset.

So if we all know what optimal looks like, then the front office knows what the needs and objectives and challenges are very clearly for the hygienist, for the assistant associate. It's the same for the hygienist. You get the AI. The assistant, we all created optimal together on what we needed, And that system, I would say, is a team centered system.

Who do you not see seeing here on this funny little diagram is the patient. Doesn't mean we don't care about a patient. We'll talk about that in a minute. But we are going to create optimal in our systems, which are gonna go into the top seven in just a second, but it's gonna be focused on us.

And when we have team centered systems, what do you think the patient experiences? The patient experiences this this energy in the office that is has this level of respect that they feel, a sense of humility, that people trust each other. I'm okay using the word on top love. They sense that or a sense of vulnerability.

And what the patients really experience when we have team centered systems is a group of people who get to be their authentic self, and there is a sense of vitality in the office. We've all experienced the opposite of that. And so and this is back in the late nineties we started this. I mean, this is twenty five years old now, but this one is is staying on for a while, team centered systems.

So what are the team centered systems that I would say I'm proposing to you that are the core seven systems that if you just focus on these core seven for this for the rest of twenty twenty five and get some clarity on what optimal looks like for you, I promise you, Mark, you know, record my words right now, you'll be thanking me later or you'll be thanking yourself for putting the work in. So the the first one is what some people refer to as the patient handoff. Now that could be a lot of different things. There are no shortage of of ways we can hand off the patient, or let's talk about handing off energy or information.

Again, that was what we said was the system, was how do we want energy information to be transferred from person to person in the office, and that would be us, what is optimal for us. So how do we want energy and information to be transferred?

Well, there are some right choices, and there are some wrong choices. We've all made the wrong choice, and that doesn't go well. People get irritated. There's confusion.

We feel stupid. I don't want your hygienist to feel stupid. I don't want your admin team to feel stupid. I don't want you to feel stupid.

And then that's how we know things aren't going well. We do a temperature check, and it's not going very well. So when I talk about, a patient handoff, one of the most popular ones that I would say that you could do starting tomorrow because you do it more times a day than anything else would be to pick a point a and a point b.

And the point a for me is the hygienist your hygienist has enough information to send a message to the doctor to say, you can come in now. And a point b would be the patient is now all the way up front with the admin team member, And then we've got to fill in the blanks. And why do these look like little sticky notes? Because this is my hope for you is what you're gonna do in your office is you take that point a.

And as you see here, this is a team that I've I do this with almost everybody. This is a team I worked with. On the top left hand corner, you see the hygienist has gathered the data. And on the bottom right, you see the patient is up front.

Why do we use stickies? Because when we're creating optimal, things change along the way, and we wanna be able to flex a little bit as we're working optimal out. But once you have a vision of what you that for that day, what optimal is, you can transfer it to literally anything. There's tons of software out there.

I tend to just like Word, Microsoft Word. It's got arrows. It's got words. It's got letters.

And you transfer that to this Word document, and now you've got something to come back to and revisit every couple or three months and say, is it still optimal? Why is this one so important to start with? Because if we're seeing eight to sixteen or twenty four patients a day in hygiene, when we know what optimal looks like, how we want energy and information to be transferred, you will see an immediate shift in the practice and how people feel and your confidence and competence will go up. Now think about this.

I am, of course, a big fan of Pearl. I can't help it.

But think about now how you want energy information to be transferred. You've got another component of who or what can transfer energy and information to you as we go through the whole hygiene flow if we're gonna take that point a to point b. And that is we've got somebody else, or I got to call AI, call Pearl somebody, but Pearl now can be part of our flow for the energy information being transferred to and from. And if we use all of that, which you are going to see and, of course, I I'm a big fan of tracking everything, whether you're using dental intel or, or I tend to use a spreadsheet, that's because I still think it's better than anything.

But you will start to see the obvious things change, whether it's your gross production, but more importantly, your gross production per day average because things just start to flow better with everything in your office, including all the systems. And so the second system then would be, how do we set up each day for success? So now that we've got your first sort of major flow of energy information, how do we make sure it's going well and set our days up for success? Well, obviously, it's a morning huddle.

I know everybody I don't not everybody has morning huddles, but a lot of people do. And so for me, when I teach morning huddles, it is really how do we wanna connect and how are we setting up our day for success. It sounds simple, except here are the three main questions that you can use for your morning huddle. Is the information that we're talking about this morning going to be relevant and impact today?

This is not another team meeting. This is for today. And what I see in in morning huddles all the time is they're just like, yeah. Kevin's coming in for a deal on thirteen and, e max crown on fourteen, and it's like, yeah.

I can read that.

So my question is always, are you just regurgitating information that we can all read? We don't need to do that. And more importantly, the third question is, are we starting the day the way we want to? So same thing as we talked about.

Everybody does this different. I facilitate it in different ways to create an optimal morning huddle. You can go through the columns. You're as you see on the bottom left here, you can have your assistant go through the core things that are important for the day, and then AI, and then admin, and then dentist. On the right hand side, you see something a little different, which is just seven, bullet points to go through it. In the end, my hope is you are holding something. Somebody is holding something that looks like this.

That is basically it's a mini agenda for every morning that's consistent. And in this particular one, a team I worked with, as you see here, they did a nice little deep breath. I'm a very big fan of getting a parasympathetic tone and a nice check-in with each other. It takes a couple minutes.

And then the hygienist goes through just those three bullet points you see. And then the restorative team goes through just those three bullet points, nothing else. And then in general, we all talk about today's schedule with just that bullet point. And then we've got a a for this month at our morning huddles, we've got a reminder of something we're working up another system in the practice.

And then as you see on the right hand side, there's some things on Tuesdays, we add something specific, Wednesday, something specific, and Thursday, something specific.

But these morning huddles are very intentional.

Now, again, I have to tell you, and, again, you're gonna hear my bias tonight, that we have another team member and that really is AI and it's Pearl. And we start adding Pearl into our morning huddles, and using AI as as part of our, agenda AI, and things will change for you. We've got another team member right now. But, again, we don't need to regurgitate what's on the schedule. It's really what's important about the schedule. What are we missing? What is undiagnosed?

What is, what is miscoded? What what can we highlight? And so for me, the morning puddle is is, system number two that's critical, and you can create optimal, and it's different for every team. Now this the third one might seem pretty obvious.

You're like, yeah, Kevin. I know we have to collect money. Well, I get it too. But is how you collect money clear or is it fuzzy?

Because what happens if it's clear, it takes away some some people will have it be nice and clear, and some people have, like, fifty different ways you can pay, and it's just confusing, and we don't get our money. So what are clear financial arrangements, and what does that look like to you? Well, honestly, it it doesn't have to be too complicated. We just everybody on the team has to understand what optimal looks like for how we are collecting money.

So is it do we have clearly documented options for the patient? And is it identified and discussed prior to scheduling the treatment so there's no confusion? What happens is we think it's all done in the operatory. They go up front, and they're trying to make financial arrangements, but we're really not even clear on what the treatment was, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

However, with financial arrangements, my hope for everybody is there's something very clear. In other words, if you look on the left, you can say to your patient, we've got three ways that you can pay for your dentistry here. Which one of these is most appropriate for you? On the right hand side, a different practice, they came up with six.

I think that's about the max. It gets a little complicated. Number one, just to be clear because I'm on record here is not I'm not a big fan of it. I don't think we should be giving cash discounts for anybody because you're gonna collect the money anyway.

But that's a different topic for a different time. But regardless, do you have clear financial arrangements? How are they going to pay for it? And then, of course, the fun of getting clear now, especially with things like Pearl, is the money gets collected a lot easier, whether your assignment for benefits, or in network because we are if in fact you AI says that you have, let's just say, decay or calculus, it's easier to verify. It's smarter treatment planning. You're getting way more accurate estimates, and, you're getting auto verification patients scheduled within the next five days. So talk about making financial arrangements easy for you and your team and your patient.

What will you see in the end? Well, it's the obvious. Your your accounts receivable are going to change. In fact, I'm okay having a huge zero to thirty account receivable.

It's just what happens from thirty one to sixty and sixty one to ninety. And you will you will see this start to drop down so that I mean, why would you not have all of your money within six weeks from the time of treatment? That's the idea, and we have to have obvious clear financial arrangements.

And it's not the same for every practice. So what does optimal look like for you? And now you're sitting here thinking to yourself, man, who is this AI, and why should I believe him? And do I even wanna listen to the rest of the systems?

So I'm gonna give you one slide on that. This is me, and, I'm a pretty simple guy. And you may recognize the person, on your left, who just ran her first, ten k last week. And we're pretty health centered, but I wouldn't be here, without Kimberly.

However, as Sheela said, I back in the late nineteen nineties, I started learning up in Seattle from Frank, Spear. And then in the early two thousands, I learned a lot about clinical dentistry and went through the curriculum at Pankey.

And then I I did have some fun in academia. And as Sheela said, I I did a lot at OHSU, including that's where I got my master's degree, and I use that every day, including things like this.

In twenty eighteen, I'm sorry. In twenty thirteen, I got asked to go to to live here in Scottsdale where it's also quite nice right now in the sixties, degrees this time of year. And, and that's why I came down here. And in twenty eighteen, when I left, you should know this is my conflict of interest for tonight is I do have my own business where I do coaching and consulting for people across the country, and I am very passionate still with about Pankey, Institute and teach there, several times a year.

So that was my conflict of interest in me. Now let's get back to the really important things, which is why you're here, which is let's go to number four. When you think about continuing care, what is it that you think about? You just think AI need to get patients into my hygiene chair.

That's what most people think about. Recare, continuing care, call it what it is. For me, I throw on a different term for it. For me, it's not continuing care.

It is the don't lose me system. In other words, think about if I was coming into your if I was scheduled today to come into your, to see your hygienist, and you like me because I'm health centered, I'm a good patient, I'm not a jerk.

And something really awesome happened today. Something happened with my family.

I had this amazing opportunity, and you're just happy for me. It's a good thing, and I don't do it very often. However, I didn't have time to reschedule. I called and said, I'm sorry.

I can't make it. And you said, can you reschedule right now? And I said, sorry. Gotta go.

It's too awesome.

Well, what is your system now to not lose me? And how do you know if you are losing people or not losing people? So this is all in your continuing care system. How do you know how many you're supposed to have, and how do you make sure you don't lose cool people like me?

Well, first and foremost, we've gotta look at how many patients do we think that we, are supposed to see a month. So for instance, this is a practice I'm working with, and they had, about fourteen hundred active patients. Well, if that's accurate, that would mean we're supposed to see about two hundred and thirty seven a month ish. And then they saw, yes, two hundred and twelve, which was about eighty nine percent.

That is great. About ninety percent is great. But then sometimes you you start to get in a trend where you're like, we're not seeing the people that we think we're supposed to see.

Oh, well, there's a few things to look at. Maybe your active patient count is incorrect, and you don't really have that many patients to see. You can't fill it.

Or what oftentimes happens is if you look at of course, the names have been changed here for these three hygienists.

What happens is they are actually we call it capacity utilization. If you look on the right hand side where it's green, they were busy pretty much maxed out for the month. So they you don't have capacity to see that many patients.

So the things you wanna know is, is your active patient count correct? Do you actually have capacity? How many hygienists do you need for how many hours? And once you know that, you're like, oh, now we know we've got a spot for Kevin, and how do we not lose him?

So here is a and I'm gonna just don't get too worried about this, but this is a system created from a practice I'm working with in Seattle right now. And this is what now it started with stickies.

Obviously, it started with stickies. This looks complex. But once they got through it, this was optimal for them. It is not optimal for you.

But you see on sort of the left hand side, if I scheduled when I left, how are you gonna make sure I come in for my next appointment? Right? That's how many calls, how often, texts, what do the text say, what are the reminders, how do we show the value in it, etcetera. But you get to the bottom, and then that's me in red down there.

I canceled. And then I didn't reschedule. So now the whole right side is how do you not lose me, Or how often are you calling me? Where did you put my appointment?

Did you put it on a list? Did you give it a code so that you can run a report of the people who missed? Who's who's running that report? Who's making the calls?

How are they documenting the call? How long do you try and not lose me? And for some, once you decide, you're like, I'm giving up on Kevin, then you mark me as inactive so that your active patient count is actually accurate so that you know how many people you're supposed to see in a month. I know that sounds like a a whole circular system, and that's exactly what it's supposed to sound like.

If you know how many people you're supposed to see, you know how not to lose me, and then you know when you finally give up on me and turn me to inactive so that my active patient count is accurate. And that is the don't lose me system.

It doesn't have to be complex. It's just working through it with the team so that everybody on the team knows what they need to do to do their job to the best of their ability for that particular system.

Now the, the fifth, what I would say is a critical system no matter what you're doing in your practice, no matter what marketing you're doing internal or external, is actually internal marketing. And why do I say that? Because don't we all want more of the patients that we like seeing, more of the patients that get who we are, and we get that more from internal marketing.

And internal marketing, your system that is optimal for you might be different than everybody else. But here are your key takeaways for internal marketing.

When you think about attracting the people that you want to attract in fact, let's go back to here. I want you to live like the guy on the right in a world of abundance, and I want you to feel at peace that the right people are coming in. We've gotta get the right people. So it starts, as I say, upstream from the time the patient calls.

Do they know who you are or your why? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? What makes you tick so that they can be inspired to come to you? And then what to expect for your first appointment?

Think about expectation versus experience. They're already a fan of you because you have set them up for success, and it's not just we'll see you next week. Now think about these might just be your core four internal marketing, and then you might send a welcome to the practice note card, right, to differentiate yourself. It is a handwritten note card, and then a thank you for referring note card for the person who referred them in.

And then let the patients know that we're always taking new patients and say it verbally. It sounds simple, but that might just be your internal marketing. This would be the simplest version, in my opinion, of the key, for internal marketing. Maybe there's only a few.

However, for your practice, you go back to the stickies again. You think about the life of a patient in your practice from the time they call to the time they are referring somebody in.

What how many touch points do you wanna have with that person so that they're inspired to refer somebody else in? And you might come up with a spray a flowchart that looks something like this. So you've got your touch points with a new patient, your touch points with specialist marketing, and then your touch points with your existing patients. Well, that would be your internal marketing system. Mine looks something like this.

So breaking it up, and I do this on a regular basis, it might be on the top, which is there's two touch points for how do we differentiate ourselves to let people know that we're awesome and that we're different from everybody else. So we're telling them our why and what's different and how we are different on the phone when they call in the first time. And then even when they come in, I just wanna remind you who we are. And then maybe reinforcing new patients.

So telling patients daily with a business card that we're taking patients. And, again, as we mentioned, the welcome to the practice note card, a thank you referring note card. A lot of us are on social media. How are we doing that to in to attract people from people that already know us?

And then I've got that last category down there that's called other, which in in my practice, it was a precare call and a postcare call. And then my favorite is a note card that starts out with just a note to let you know, a handwritten note. Now after you've got your touch points, we've gotta help each other be accountable. So, again, this would be the month of April.

We all agree this is how many we're we're going to do. And then at the bottom, you see the total.

Did we all do it? Well, no. We didn't do it. We had a hundred and you wouldn't you wouldn't think about it, but we had a hundred and seventeen possible touch points for internal marketing in one month.

We got to a hundred and two of them that month, which is eighty seven percent. Now I don't know about you. I'm hanging out with a bunch of dentists right now. You probably all got ninety fives and nine to ninety nines on all your tests.

I did not. For me, an eighty seven was a pretty spectacular grade. So my team and I were pretty happy with an eighty seven. If you want a ninety five, good luck, but we were happy with an eighty seven.

What things are you gonna see when you have a solid internal marketing system and know what your touch points are and help each other be accountable? Well, obviously, you're going to see not only new patients and the number that is coming in, but more importantly, where are they coming from? And the number that you wanna see go up is obviously direct patient referrals. And if you're doing internal marketing with your specialists, you're gonna see doctor referrals go up.

I'm not a big fan of advertising external marketing, but if you're doing some external marketing, I expect to see some of those as well. But as you redefine and get clear on your touch points for internal marketing, I promise you, you will see these numbers go up. And if you track them, it will just be positive reinforcement for you to do even more of that. Now how do we keep all this going?

Big, big system number six right here, which is a team meeting. You might all be having team meetings. I'm not sure they're optimal. I'm not sure team meetings stay optimal for very long.

I know that all the practices that I work with, we probably update team meetings every three to four months. But that doesn't mean redo the team meeting because we know why we wanna have team meetings. We get clear that it is for us to stay connected, for us to get clear on some things in the practice. So what are the things that I recommend getting clear on or or setting up a team meeting?

Minimally, minimally, it is these four bullet points. It is connect with each other. Connect as human beings so that you get to be your authentic self when you come into work every day. I know that sounds easy.

I think, well, no, it's not. So creating a container for people to be their authentic self. And then as we've talked about through this the last, thirty minutes here or so, which is we've gotta have some time to review our current systems, don't we, and update them. Because it was optimal two months ago, but now we've got to try it on a little bit.

We've realized a couple of things, maybe some small details that we had missed, and now we get to update it. But remember, it doesn't have to be the whole system. We've got it documented on a word document that started with a sticky note so that now we just get to update it, and that's our new optimal. And then the third bullet point you see here is, of course, we've gotta create new systems.

There will never be a shortage of new systems in your office. Think about all the point a's to point b's that you can come up with. Tonight, we're talking about seven. I could probably come up with about a hundred and seven without even thinking twice or things that we can look at in our practice to create what optimal is for us, for the team being team centered.

It never goes away.

So if that's always a part of every team meeting, just what is the one new point a to point b or the or the new system, every team meeting, you will see things change dramatically. And then AI, it's nice just to see how we're doing. Right? What are the critical practice statistics?

How do you how do you create this team meeting? Again, it's different for everybody. It's pretty high-tech. You get a couple of big pieces of paper and a pen.

You talk about what is it your team meeting. Get clear on your why. Why do you have a team meeting? Optimally, who's there?

Is it everybody? Maybe, maybe not. Optimally, when is it? Where is it? And then the how is what you see on the right hand side.

And that's what I want you to think about. And if if you play this back to create a team meeting, just put this up here. And on the how side, we put up a topic. In other words, what are your agenda items?

How long optimally are each of those gonna take? Who is going to actually be the lead for each one of those items? And then you get to say, what is the order of your agenda? Right?

So you get to and you can I do this on stickies a lot as well? This one happens to be written out. We do it a lot with stickies because it moves around as we're trying to get clear on what it looks like, who's doing it, how long, and what order. In the end, my hope is you have something that looks like this.

This is one team that I am working with. It's a their optimal team meeting was one afternoon a month. I have some that are hour and a half, some that are two hours, some that are three. But in the end, what you what I want you to see is you don't have to reinvent it every month.

It's an agenda that just gets updated every month with the specific, differences. What system are you going to update? What's what is the new system? What are the data from the practice from the last month or the last team meeting?

But in general, this is a this is a team meeting with an agenda that we can stick to. And, again, if the times aren't working, you keep running late, well, guess what? You get to update the optimal team meeting a couple months from now. I'm always a fan of three or four months for these because we gotta give it a chance to succeed.

The first time we do anything is probably not awesome, so I wanna give it a chance to succeed. And then we throw my favorite back in. And think about at team meetings, the things that we can look at in the practice with things like Pearl.

Am I pushing Pearl tonight? How could I not? Because I'm a big fan of AI. And think about how this can help in our team meetings, you know, as we see the funnel of patients coming in and where what is happening with these patients.

So, you know, the funnel of three thousand six hundred, restorative candidates, how many do we have planned? How many have we got performed already? Look at how much it's not all about the money. I get it.

But look at how much is sitting there right now and think about how we can integrate AI into our team meetings. And then you get to take a close look at them. So for me, this is a new agenda item in every team meeting.

Is who are those people? What are the things that are the AI?

And how are we sure of that, and how can we help the patient see this and ourselves see this? So for instance, the green boxes are calculus that maybe is hard for us to identify. The pink is decay or recurrent decay or growing decay or changing decay because AI is watching all of this. So we can certainly look at all that and be very clear on what is happening and then be ready to talk to patients about it when they come in.

And for me, a team meeting is all about verbiage as well. How do we change our verbiage with patients? How are we gonna that is a system in the office. Right?

Verbiage is a system in the office.

So I I get really excited about adding Earl to your team meetings. As we finish up the seventh, and this is a a behemoth of a system, and I'm gonna try and simplify it for you. And that really is block scheduling. And when you think of block scheduling, I'm sure most people think about just make a day work smooth.

Let's just put the things we like when we like them and the things we don't when we don't, and it's gonna flow. That might work for you, but if we all did what we liked all the time, and that's all we did, we might not have enough money. We might not have enough patience. It wouldn't flow well.

There'd be some confusion. So for me, when I think about block scheduling, it actually does start off with what we've talked about thirty four minutes ago, which was, what is enough? The business side of it. If you don't know what enough is, what how much is enough money?

How many patients are enough? And how much time is enough? If you don't know the answer to those three questions, how much money you need to run the practice? How many new patients really are enough, or how many patients in your practice, and how much time you really need, we're gonna struggle a little bit.

So, yes, to set up something as crazy as block scheduling, I'm gonna refer back to knowing your the numbers of your practice. You're not supposed to see clearly what's on the left, but what that is and I'm happy to do it for anybody literally.

Just AI I get a backup backlog, you just gotta give me a little time. But anybody who sends me a twelve month combined p and l. So where did all the cash go for the past twelve months? And we categorize it. So now it's an understanding of what did it take to keep the practice alive for the past twelve months. And then I have a spreadsheet. I put that in with what you need to make as the doctor, your retirement, your savings, etcetera.

And now we get really clear on what it takes to keep the practice going. And if we know what it takes to keep the practice going, we know what we need to collect because we just put it all together, which means the easy math that a lot of dentists do, which as you'll see in a minute, I'm not a big fan of, but it's better than a lot, which is now I know what I need to collect. At least I've got a reason for a goal, my monthly goal. But don't forget, we actually have some write offs.

We've got adjustments and write offs and what's your history, so you need to add that. So, really, you know, you need to produce one point eight million so that you can collect one point six million, which means you really actually have to produce about a hundred and fifty thousand a month so you can collect about a hundred and thirty six thousand a month. And if we stick to the simple math, which is just divide everything by twelve and look at how many days you work, which is, again, better than most dentists, it's a way to at least start looking at your goals, which is how much does your hygiene need to do per month and per day, same as your doctor department, per month and per day.

But what you see at the bottom down there is how much do we really need per day, and you see this thing that I call and some of it call it green rock high production. Whatever it is, it's your main production time.

How much do you need to do in your high production time to help you pay the bills? Well, that's gonna help set up your block scheduling. Even better, if you know is if you go back up to the gray box that says one eighty five, if you know how many days you're gonna work in the next twelve months, then that's really specific on your goals because you know it's really eighty eight hundred dollars a day. And that changes your goal per month, doesn't it?

So the months that you have the holidays are different from the nonholiday months. And so now we know what everybody needs to make per day, including your rock time. And so when I say rock time, what am I talking about rock time? All of this information over here is critical for what we need per day and how we're gonna set up a block schedule.

So when we really set up a block schedule, for me, the simplest is this. Don't forget AI are you setting up a block schedule. That's what you see on the left, what is optimal. But on the right, the first thing you this is this is, again, real for a team, so I'm just writing it down because it needs to be sloppy to start.

The first thing you put on your block schedule when you have a blank month is a team meeting. But the second thing is your new patients.

How many, how long, and where do they go? The third thing is if you're not seeing them in hygiene that day, do you have spots in AI, and when do you want those? Because now they don't need an exam, right, if that's the way you're running your practice. If you're running all your new patients through hygiene, great.

How many, where, how long? And the fourth thing you see down there is your rock time or high production time, which means in this particular practice, that had to be forty three hundred dollars because that's about eighty percent of the doctors needed production. And then you get to the sand, water, and emergencies, etcetera. That is how you set up a block schedule.

Now you know where you want how long it's gonna take for your high production time. You know where you want your new patients to be, and you literally it takes a little bit of work. You can write it out on a blank month. And then you can always put that into a schedule and start to follow it, and it becomes golden.

And for me, a big part of this today is exactly it goes back to AI, which is Pearl. I what I know to be true is we are we are missing a lot of things in our block schedule and how we can utilize them and where the production comes from. And using AI to help us clarify on our block schedule is critical. The things you are going to see is the obvious.

It is your production per day is going to be exactly what you need it to be, if not above, and you're not gonna feel exhausted.

And when you start to see the capacity utilization, this is for the doctor, going up to a hundred percent, you'll see the production per patient go up, and you'll see the production per hour go up. And you'll know it's working, and that's positive feedback.

And it's interesting. I my hope for tonight is that everybody knows that there is a better way to do it. And if all you do is integrate these seven systems, and it's gonna take many months to do it one at a time, There will be a better way. And if you're dental geeks, which I know you are, you would not be sitting here on a Wednesday evening.

You know, a guy that really helped create systems that is impactful, it was impactful in my life, Pete Dawson. If you read this book a better way, you're gonna go, oh my gosh. It's about clarity. It's about systems.

It's about what optimal looks like. It's about optimal dentistry. And then you're gonna come in and be inspired to create optimal. So this was mine from two thousand eight.

It's not yours. This was my first shot at it with my team. Right? What does Optimal new patient flow look like for us?

It's not about the patient. It's about us. I did a lot of appliances, splints. So we had to come up with a system.

What does Optima look like for us from the time I diagnose the need for appliance therapy to the time all of the appointments, the first four appointments are done, and how's making the appliance, and when's it coming in, and am I equilibrating it? Practice I work with in Philadelphia, integrating airway, and what does optimal look like for how the patient comes in and what they're going to do. But it was not about the patient. It is about the team.

It's a team centered system. So you can do it for so many things in your practice. But for me, these are the core seven, and everybody needs a mnemonic. And I created one that you're never gonna forget for the core seven systems.

It is.

And you'll never forget it because it's.

And you'll remember that forever because those are the core systems. And I wanna make sure there is enough time to talk about it.

So first and foremost, you're gonna get a verification code. And then, Sheela, if I'm not mistaken, I've got this up for the QR code. And then, obviously, if you're taking a picture of this, once your camera captures the QR code, feel free to capture my email address, or website because, you know, I wake I the reason I get out of bed every day is to be a positive impact on dentists and dental teams, and I am always here for anybody. You wanna send me a twelve month p and l?

I'd love to help you see where your cash goes. You wanna take a look at your practice, you just let me know. And and, but, but what I'm here tonight for is to just help you do it without me and, work on your team meetings, create some systems and those core seven. And I think I think life's gonna be good for you.

In fact, I know it is.

So Excellent.

Wow. Thank you so much, doctor Kwiecien. That was so informative.

I would love to have some questions and answers.

What I'm gonna do is I'll go ahead and have you stop sharing, and then I'm gonna share two different QR codes for the team here.

I wanna dive into some questions here.

If you wanted me to take away one part of tonight's webinar and what you shared, what do you think would be the most impactful thing that teams could take home today and start tomorrow?

Yeah. Well, start tomorrow different. The the most impactful thing if I had to pick, one system, it is get a very clear optimal team meeting because that's where it happens. You gotta land the plane to fly it. And what I know to be true is sadly some not I mean, I'm not being disrespectful.

Sadly, so many dental practices have, quote, unquote, team meetings, which which is just sitting down for lunch, not having an agenda, not really knowing where they're going, and that's not optimal. So for for me, it is a what what is a clear with your team, getting clear on whether what is the reason you wanna have a team meeting? What is it that everybody wants to get out of it and create it?

I really like how you talked about you know, we all go to those team meetings, and it is AI, what's the unscheduled dentistry? What's happening today? But I think the the real takeaway was you leaned into the fact that, okay. What does today look like?

Where do we need help? Where do we have extra help? And how are we going to, as a team, like, navigate through this? Because Mhmm.

We all know that dentistry, the days change every hour.

They do.

Yeah. And I think that awareness in the morning kind of helps decrease that stress level. I know that that's very important for teams and having kind of a road map for their day is really important.

It is. And that combined with you can imagine if you have a good team meeting to get clear on what your optimal morning huddle looks like and you just start to integrate block scheduling between the block scheduling and the morning huddle, you will have far less of those days.

Excellent.

Yes.

I do wanna mention that we are very delighted to have doctor Kwiecien with us, as well as, our Patterson team that was also hosting this webinar tonight with Pearl. So we're very thankful that they are part of this webinar.

There were a couple other questions that came in, Sheela. Sorry. I was monitoring the chat here. Great.

Thank you. Doctor Bennett had one about how do you get the team on board for something wonderful like this? And I'm guessing the systems as well as the new technology in in using it that some are set in their ways and resistant to change. So, if you could speak to that, that'd be great.

How do you get the team involved with everything we talked about tonight and Pearl?

Yeah. Because doctor Bennett also asked about the accuracy of Pearl. So I think Right. I'm trying to understand how to fit those two things together.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, for me, what changes it is it it is getting clear that we're creating team centered systems. It's hard to believe. Everybody's used to having it revolve around the dentist or around the patient and really saying we're gonna create optimal around what we need to do our job to the best of our ability. How do you want energy information to flow optimally for us in the office? And then that's why that is why AI would say that's why I say the easiest one to show that it works is the hand off from hygiene to the front desk because you do that so many times and you get clear on that, and they will see that it's a team centered system.

And, that's maybe not the answer that you really wanted except AI think that's the best answer, which is you you get them involved and believing it because you start to create team centered systems and put some effort into it and stick to it.

Love that. That's excellent.

And then, Sheela, did you want to speak to the accuracy and the specificity and sensitivity of Pearl itself? I thought that would probably be a better question for you.

Yeah.

Sure. Absolutely. So, I think the important part to be really mindful of with AI is, it's Pearl, which is AI, plus the clinician, yielding the best results. So we've even done a lot of studies with our FDA AI that, you know, what does it look like with just the dentist looks at the X rays or just the AI, and what happens when we look at it together? And that was a really kind of interesting perspective that we found.

Currently, we're AI we're right about that eighty eight to ninety, ninety two percent. There was a recent FDA not FDA. Sorry. UCLA study done, and they went all the way up to the ninety four percent range.

So UCLA is now using Pearl for helping their students diagnose and learn all about those wonderful things that take so long to do. So that is where we're at with accuracy. And I think the important thing is, understanding that Pearl is not here to diagnose or to take a dentist job. Right?

It's here to assist and also facilitate that interaction with the patient so that they can see calculus in boxes. I remember explaining calculus as a hygienist myself to patients, and they're, like, looking at the images AI, what are you talking about? I just wanna do my regular cleaning. Right?

Or, you know, identifying pink cavities that are light pink if they're incipient or dark pink if they're decay has, excuse me, crossed that DEJ. That's a great way for all of your team members to talk about areas you're gonna watch or areas you're gonna remineralize. And I think, to me, what I've really learned a lot from our clients is they really enjoy the interactive part that the patient is now more a part of that treatment plan. Because they're understanding it, they can make more informed decisions.

And as clinicians, we all want our patients to accept the dentistry earlier and more often because it's less invasive and for the patients less expensive, which is really a key point in making sure, you're having patient retention.

So If I may chime in there, Sheela, I would, I would I know we don't wanna go too over, but, you know, for me, it's all about confidence and competence.

And I'll compare it to something clinical in dentistry when you know, how oftentimes dentists we the patient still feels like it's a high filling, and we can't see it. And we're trying to put in the AccuFilm or Madame Butterfly AI whatever it is, and we can't really see it. It's it was back, like, if some of us probably have done that, you then you start to use T scan.

And and the and then you start to read the tape better, and then it increases your confidence and competence. I think that's what Pearl does is it just helps increase your confidence and competence and then the conversation with the patient. So, just just imagine everybody just feeling less stressed, less anxious, more confident, competent, and the conversations go easier with the patient.

Totally. And we'd be remiss that when you are a Pearl customer, our customer success team works with you, and they have great analogies and terminology and verbiage that they can help coach you and your team while they're setting you up. So that's always part of it. Sheela, did you see the question there about if we have, demos specifically for Eaglesoft users? And I'll let you handle that question.

Yes. So, let me take a peek at the question. But we have, it was just if we have a specific demo for Eaglesoft users. Yep. So that was it. So the the nice thing about Eaglesoft is, if you are using Eaglesoft imaging, Pearl is actually embedded directly into the Eaglesoft imaging. So that is the, like, most fun for me to have Pearl inside of an imaging system.

Second opinion that if you're not using Eaglesoft Imaging or one of our other native integrations is extremely simple as well. We are not disrupting a workflow, right, because you're already taking X rays, reviewing X rays, and sharing X rays. And at this point now, we're just having you click open one button inside a second opinion, and that allows your team to see all of those radiographic insights and historical imagery with all the same, you know, comparison and zoom and all the things you're used to using when you're viewing radiography.

But you're welcome to have a demo for any type of, you know, imaging system you're working with. I think the bonus is native integration because you take X rays, you view them, and it's right there. You actually have to turn the AI off, so I like that.

But I do think that, one of my favorite, again, takeaways was teams feeling AI, how do we save time in our day? Right? And, really, as we've seen dentistry kind of, move into a place where we have staffing shortage, we're trying to steal minutes. Like, in those morning huddles, I think that's a great place to gain back some time by proactively reviewing your day, but also in having those interactions with patients and saving time with recommending treatments.

So I definitely think that not only is the radiographic side of things super important, but some of the other things like the morning huddles, we have to find ways as clinicians and also as, office managers and such to be able to lean on technology to help us throughout our day. And if it's there, I mean, I can't imagine not using ChatGPT when I have to write something. Right? I might write it well, but, wow, when I put it in ChatGPT, it is so much faster and so much better.

So it's not replacing me, but it is assisting me. And I think we need to think about that kind of moving forward with integrating technology into these systems. So hopefully that answered your question. There was another question about, reaching out to doctor Kwiecien, so I think that's important too is definitely make sure that if you're looking for more systems and ways to get in touch with him, that's a great idea.

Lots lots of things he shared tonight are very beneficial to practices. Practices.

Perfect. Sheela, there was just, there was one great comment of someone who just started using Pearl and is excited to share this presentation with the team to help them understand what potential there is better. So thank you for that comment. We love that. Is there time for one other question? There was just one about how to handle something. Is may I ask, doctor?

Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah.

Okay. Perfect.

That when AI can diagnose a lot, but if it's a new patient that's come to an office that perhaps the previous dentist hasn't surfaced the same, detections. And, I mean, that can happen with or without AI. But Mhmm. How how do you address that? How do you work through that?

Yeah. It's the same as when you switch dentists and and the dentist is looking at the chewing system different or looking at something differently.

That is a question. Why did my other dentist tell me that? And my answer is always, I am certain that that dentist was doing everything they could to help you. I wasn't there.

What I know is this is the way I am looking at it now, and I think this is in your best interest. So for me, it's always I always make an assumption that they were doing the best they could with what they had and always had your best interest in mind. And this is the way I do it here, and this is why I get out of bed, and we are proud of the way we do it. It's just it's it's very yeah.

Yeah. That's pretty much it for me.

Thank you. I appreciate that. There was thumbs up, so I think that answered the question. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Take the high road always.

That's good.

And and the other thing I would ask for that, because we talk about that all the AI, is, you know, this I one of the things I know AI my reaction my comment is always, well, one of the things we pride ourselves in here is always evolving being being different or better than we were last year, and this is something we're looking at now that maybe is newer, you know, especially with something like Earl. So just just claim that you're different. Claim that you're always growing, and don't throw the other person under the bus.

I love that. Yep. I think that's important. Good karma out there. Right? We're all doing our best.

Yep. Yeah. So Excellent.

Nice. Nice.

Well, we are really thankful that everybody stayed. We're still here answering questions. This is a very interesting topic, so we're happy to, stay as long as you'd like.

Well, I wouldn't say that. I'll be here as long as you'd like. But, also, I do wanna throw out an interesting statistic I learned at Pearl.

When I first came on a couple years ago, I thought, okay. Well, yeah, it's hard to share patients share images with patients, and they don't really understand it. But when we looked at the studies, there were sixty four percent of patients that didn't accept dentistry, walked out the of the office without scheduling, and the number one reason was because they did not understand what was explained to them and using the radiograph. So that was a really high statistic. And so that was interesting. And then to see teams that have implemented, you know, AI just chairside.

This is an interesting stat, so I want you to listen to this. That teams that are using second opinion with their patients to present dentistry, and those interproximal lesions, you know, radiographs aren't gonna show everything, or whatever radiographic areas you're showing, there's a thirty percent increase in case acceptance within the first thirty to sixty days. Now what I want you to know is that's not more diagnosis.

It's patients accepting the dentistry that you are recommending, and I think that was really powerful to see those studies as well. So, again, as much as we'd love you to really, set that demo, this shouldn't be a hard sales pitch for you because it really is a way to, bridge that gap with the patient and make your day a lot more seamless. And I know Chandra is one of our customer success reps here on the meeting today, but it really is incredible to have your teams, be supported by the CS team at Pearl.

And, again, I just wanna thank everybody for being here this evening, and looks like there's even more questions, Kimberly.

Oh, that was just me chatting. Lots of awesome thanks recorded.

AI been handling them.

AI nothing judging. A question from doctor Bennett about the studies we can share. The answer is yes. They can be shared. Also, when you go to hello pearl dot com, you're able to be able to see a lot of that information, which can be helpful for you.

Mhmm. Great. Well, thank you again, doctor Kwiecien, for joining us tonight.

Thank you to the Patterson team. We're really thankful you're here as well to support Pearl and our partnership.

Kimberly, thank you for always being the most wonderful host here. And, again, a special thank you to all of you that joined this evening. We are always here to help you and look forward to seeing you, in the near future. So have a great AI, and follow us on some upcoming webinars. I'm sure we'll have doctor Kwiecien back again. Take care, everybody, and have a great evening.