So let me share my screen, and we are going to dive in. I would love for you to ask any questions you prefer in the chat. I'm happy to answer them throughout the entire presentation.

So please feel free to, interrupt me at any time. Not a problem.

Alright. Looks like a couple more trickling in here.

And let's share my screen, and we are going to get started.

Okay.

So we found out forty one percent. Such a low number.

Now when we talk about new patients, really looking at so many reviews over the AI, I think I've read over a thousand reviews on Yelp in trying to understand what patients were talking about with the new patient experience, what kept them in the practice, and what really irritated them. And there was interesting statistics that talked a lot about I had to wait, I never got a callback, and they recommended a lot of treatment. Right? And so, of course, we're really mindful of these things.

But what we did see on the positive side with our deep dive here was I loved my experience. The staff was great. I understood what they wanted me to do. I had a great time.

I was in and out in a certain amount of time. Usually, it's typically about fifty minutes, and I can't wait to go back, which was a shocking one. Right? We we would love to hear that.

So every day, all day, we wanna make sure that our patients are having that wonderful experience because that's what's really driving the retention and those organic reviews.

Now I do wanna make one disclaimer here is our existing patients are very valuable and that these all of these statistics and all of these things and tricks we're gonna go through tonight really pertain to both existing and new patients. Right? And how we're going to be able to solidify those relationships, build trust with our patients, and move into making sure that everybody is happy and healthy as a new patient.

So we talk about new patients. Sometimes they come in through hygiene. Right? They always get doctor exams.

And that's where we're really building our practice because we're focusing on those restorative opportunities that are coming out of those new patients. This is where we get to serve our patients. This is typically why we went into dentistry. But we need to be mindful of, on average let's see if we can do another quiz here.

Do you know how many new patients are standard for a dental practice?

So I'm gonna open up the chat again and see what you guys have to say here. So average dental practice is getting how many patients new patients per month. What are your guys' guesses?

Let's see here. Thirty five. Oh, I know that person.

Thirty five is a good goal. Yes, Chandra. Desiree, fifteen to thirty. Excellent.

Erica, fifteen to twenty.

Thirty to forty.

You guys are you guys are actually, like, spot on according to statistics.

So keep the numbers coming in. It looks like on average, we're about twelve to twenty.

Practices that are really moving into growth expansion, about twenty four. And then the practices that are really kind of robust, probably multiple practitioners, we're moving into, seventy plus per month.

Now AI, I wanna make sure that I walk you through some interesting scenarios and topics, and I wanna let you know that this may not be the perfect way to do things, but this is the way that I really helped build my practice. On average, we saw about two hundred and fifty new patients per month. So you can imagine how we had to really focus on streamlining that new patient experience.

And when I first started managing the practice, AI really started listening to our patients, and that's what opened up the doors to more new patients and more retained patients. So when we're looking at whether it's twelve or twenty or two hundred, it's the same recipe.

Now a lot of people think that when we focus on the new patient, it starts when we are presenting dentistry.

But in reality, it's at that first phone call. Right?

And one thing I used to love doing in my practice was AI used to love answering the phone. And then as I moved to management, I didn't enjoy the job of listening to phone calls. But at the same time, it taught us a lot about what the patients are really looking for and what we do in dentistry, a little differently. And so there's this little strange difference between the consumer and the dental practice.

Right? We answer the phone. We have twenty seconds. We need twenty things from the patient, and we gotta get off the phone.

And in reality, that patient's most likely scared. They don't really wanna come to the dentist. No offense. Some of them do, and they want to be heard.

Right? So I think one thing I learned very quickly from answering phone calls was AI had to stop talking, which you can imagine may be hard for me, and I had to start listening.

Because in reality, when I listened to my patients, they told us what we wanted. So they told us, I am a new patient. Welcome to the practice.

We are here from nine to five. What's the best day and time for you? And they'd say, oh, wow. Okay.

Great. And you're open on Saturdays? I'd say, yes. We are. And I said, how soon could you come down?

Right? So it was a very convenience focused call. And I was listening to what they wanted. I wanna whiten my teeth or I have a toothache.

Now I wanna make sure I stop here because when our patients are talking to us, they're giving us the nuggets, the golden nuggets AI call them, to be able to make that patient experience wonderful.

So what do I mean by that? I'm gonna put a note in my patient's little chart and I'm gonna say, Kim's coming in today and I wanna make sure that I let you guys know and I'm talking to everybody else that's reading it. Right? Little patient note. She's interested in whitening her teeth. Right? There's nothing worse than a patient going through the whole office experience and then they come to the front and they say, yeah, it was a great experience.

I wanted to get my teeth whitened. Was that something I could talk about? And that's happened many times. Right? Because we are so busy and we are trying to focus on streamlining this entire experience.

But at the same time, my question for you is, did we stop? Did we listen? And did we get them in at a convenient time?

A lot of cancellations come from patients that we try to squeeze into holes. We have a ten and a two. Right? And in reality, that's not the case.

Now let's turn to technology for just a moment.

On average, thirty five percent of phone calls go unanswered on a daily basis.

It's typically about three hundred dollars worth of marketing and personnel staff to get the phone to ring per phone call per new patient. Right? So if you do that math, that's a lot of math. And what we wanna be thinking of is, are we answering the phone? Are we getting it getting them in right away, and are we listening to them?

So that's number one. Your first new patient experience and how they're going to accept the dentistry starts on that first phone call.

Greeting the new patient.

So in our practice, we used to always talk about anticipate the new patient. Right? We do a lot of stuff. The front desk, this is AI where they shine.

They're they're calling them. They're emailing them. They're getting the insurance if they do that ahead of time or they're sending them forms. And you guys do such a phenomenal job getting everything ready.

And oftentimes, I've done this where I call a new patient, and I'm like, hey. We were looking forward to seeing you today. Well, guess what? They're in the lobby answering the phone.

Right? So I'm telling you this out of embarrassment, but out of reality. And so what we started doing was we started highlighting the schedule on our new patients to make sure that we could anticipate those. We would stand up and welcome them to the practice.

Right? And make sure that we knew, that they were coming. And I think that's a small gesture. It takes two seconds.

Right? So anticipating the arrival of your new patient and, again, welcoming them. Back in the day when I used to take my kids to the orthodontist, they would say, welcome, AI, or welcome, Adam. And I thought, that took two seconds, and it made my whole day.

Right? There was a little baseball glove or something like that. So believe it or not, guys, convenient appointments, simple things make a big difference. Okay?

So assuming you already have great marketing, great hours, we're really talking tonight about once they get in the door, what are we gonna do to make that experience wonderful?

So this is number one. Even if you're not able to actually get to them right away, it is really important to seat them on time. And the other interesting thing is here is you're kind of creating this, level of respect for future appointments. When you seat them on time, they're more likely to show up as well in the future.

Right? So it's a little bit selfish here. But in reality, this is how we're being judged, guys, from the very beginning. Is this office clean?

Is it efficient? Am I seated on time? Do they know my name? Did they hurt me?

Is it too expensive? Right? Now that's not always the case, but seating the patients on time was one of the most common, repeated positive reviews on Yelp, which is so funny because we know that we roll out the red carpet, and we do all of these things for our new patients, all the way down to, you know, the incredible work that the doctors and the hygienists do, but they will judge us on the things that consumers are being mindful of. Not the crown margin or the profi paste or the fact that we got all that tartar off even though they were three years overdue, but the fact that these little things that, are making them feel important are something that we are taking on our own time to say, okay.

Let's greet the patient. Let's seat them on time. Right?

So I think that's really important. I remember when, I was seeing patients, it was always important for me to sit down, talk to them for just a minute. You know, welcome them. Be a little bit different than everyone else.

Right? I don't know if you guys go to your your doctors lately, but when I walk in with my doctor, I typically see the back of a laptop. Right? I don't I don't actually see my doctor anymore.

Now that's not the dentist, but sit face to face.

And I think the important thing is don't hide behind forms. Right? Maybe you don't put the bib on yet. A lot of times, guys, the bib is like the straight jacket. Right? They're like, wait a minute.

I'm scared, and I'm nervous.

And I think it's important that we listen.

One of my favorite questions that I started asking, again, a little self serving. I'm finding out I'm a little selfish, but was to ask the patient, Chandra, is there anything else you would like me to know to make your appointment more comfortable today?

Now I say that selfish because I learned so much from them on how to make their appointment wonderful.

Yes. I'm in a hurry up to pick up my kids. Last doctor I went to used this water squaring thing.

I wanna make sure you know that I this one tooth over here is really sensitive.

You guys, they're giving you the keys to success right here. You're gonna find out very quickly. Are they scared?

Has it been a long time?

Do they need to get out right away?

And what concerns they have? So that one question can really start setting the stage for the rest of your appointment, and it's really helpful when you move into your, doctor hygiene handoff, and maybe the doctor is seeing the patient first. So same thing. Doctors, is there anything to the patient that we can know to make your appointment more comfortable today?

My team, I had twenty three hygienists when I left.

I would walk by and I would hear them say, wow. It's been seven years since your last cleaning. What happened?

Right? Now, again, little statistic here. Seventeen percent of patients in the US typically go to the dentist twice a year. Right?

Now all of us on this call are probably, a majority of that statistic and probably go more often. But I think, like, when I would go get my oil changed and back in the day where they would ask you your odometer and I would, like, kinda hide under the steering wheel because I would think, oh my gosh. I'm so embarrassed. I'm overdue.

I'm overdue. I'm completely guilty, and I'm sorry that I'm overdue.

But what I felt there was the same thing our patients feel. So they need to come in and feel like you're happy that they're there. We're not judging them. It's kind of a reset. Right?

And then we're going to tell them, you know, Bob, I'm gonna take some X rays. We're We're gonna bring you back in this room. I'm gonna clean your teeth. Doctor Penrod's gonna come in, and then we'll go ahead and, let you head out. Any questions before we get started. Right? So all of this, guys, no extra money, no extra AI, just a process.

Now the hygienists really kinda play a key point here. And if you're doing assisted hygiene and having assistants start these appointments, they play a key point here too.

It's important that there's some time either before or after that doctor visit, meaning coming into the exam, that they have a little bit of time to ask those questions. Right? The hygienist have some time to see the patient before. That's my favorite because we can gather all that information.

Right? We're gonna look at the X rays. We're gonna look at the teeth. Our whole goal was make sure that, you know, hygienist had a good twenty or thirty minutes in there. We could really AI of prep and warm that doctor up. Right? We took a couple intraorals.

And now back to technology, we have the ability to use AI. So AI in radiographs makes a huge difference for both clinicians as well as for patients seeing radiographs. Right? So we're gonna walk through that in just a moment, but having cavities appear with light pink shades and calculus with green boxes and periapical radiolucencies with blue circles around them, That's automatically infusing trust inside of our patient experience.

Now I'm gonna stop for just a second. Looks like we have quite a few questions here, and I wanna see what the questions may be.

Okay.

Alright. Lots of great comments, so I will keep those going.

So when we are moving into showing patients images, right, and sometimes it's not necessary. You have wonderful teeth. The patient has no concerns.

Maybe you're using an intraoral photo for something, an occlusal area of concern. But when we're talking about kind of asymptomatic things and when we know that only sick that sixty four percent of patients have no idea what we're showing them on an X-ray, which is shocking and terrible for me to hear, we've gotta do something different. Right? Now think about this.

We know that patients are used to coming in and getting X rays, But are patients used to hearing things like scaling and root planing or periapical radiolucencies?

These kinds of things that really create these question marks in the patient's mind. We've heard of cavities and we've maybe heard of tartar, but not calculus.

So when we know that forty percent of Americans are still not trusting their dentists, we know that we have to do something different.

So using AI is a great way to colorize the things that clinicians see. Right? And also important for hygienists is to be that, you know, additional set of eyes for the doctor. If there's a big broken tooth going on, we wanna make sure that we give the doctor a heads up.

And also maybe the front. Right? Hey, guys. Just so you know, Bob in room three, there's a broken tooth.

We may need to do some same day dentistry.

Whatever the case may be here, we can take case presentation from night to day. We can really make sure that our patients can see what we are talking about. Right? I always tell this story, but I used to take my pencil and hold it up on the X-ray to talk about where bone levels should be and where bone levels are and how we need to focus on a deeper cleaning to keep the bone levels stable and happy.

I don't have to do that anymore. Right? So it's a very challenging discussion when you're talking about scaling and root planning. I bring this up not because I'm a hygienist, but because these are a lot of areas that as new patients, we have to cross over this, you know, kind of awkward conversation when they're like, I'm here for my my basic cleaning.

I I'm overdue a little bit, or I'm here for my free cleaning. I just need to get in and out. And we take our first AI wing, and we think, oh, boy. This is gonna be four appointments and a long conversation, and do I start today?

Right?

So I think the important part here is understanding that patients are not truly getting it when we're explaining dentistry in black and white.

So a lot of additional help with technology. Those of you that have tried, voice charting for perio. Right? So, you wear a little microphone, three two three.

Those are fun things to be able to eliminate from somebody that's roaming around the office. They can be doing something else now. So that's been really helpful. There's also new innovations for recording your charting notes.

So imagine you walk into an operatory and you say, hey, Bob. I'm gonna turn on my recording here. It's gonna go ahead and make some notes for us. Bob's a new patient.

Hey, Bob. How have you been and and how'd you hear about us? You may edit some of that stuff out. But when you go through the entire mouth and you have an entire, conversation and then AI will actually streamline that for you with next steps, that gives you time back in your day.

That way, you know when you walk out of the operatory, you don't have to go back into your office and write your notes. And I'm sure the hygienist right now are jumping for joy because we've all stayed late, and we've all had to write up notes. Right? So it's not perfect yet, but this is the future where we're going to rely on technology to do these automated tasks so that we can focus on our patients.

We can focus on those relationships, that case presentation, and how is your kids and how is Hawaii. Right? Those are the fun parts that have slipped away a little bit as our staff concerns, lack of staff concerns are still creeping up in our dental space.

So when we talk about using technology, we're looking at AI case presentation, automated probing.

Most of you have, wonderful reminder systems, phone call answering, not services, but chatbots, as well as sending out those new patient forms automatically.

There's a lot of ways to streamline this new patient experience.

So these were the different way different pathologies that you're going to see with AI. And I want you to just think for a minute about this patient on the lower right here.

How many times have you seen a radiograph, whether it is a new or a returning patient, where you see so many areas of interproximal decay and you're thinking, Okay. How do I have this conversation? We're gonna watch three of them. We're gonna fill two of them. And if you don't floss, you're gonna be back in the same situation in a year. Right? And we need to uncover the cause of that concern.

So this really brings, again, I cannot stress it enough, case presentation to the next level.

And it really buys you back time because you're not focusing on shades of gray anymore. You're not trying to say, do you see this white enamel? Do you see this little gray triangle?

I'm so guilty of this. I did this for twenty years, and I I pretended that they took a radiology class. In reality, they were just like, can I have my free toothbrush? Right?

And so I think this to me is so exciting because patients that accept dentistry earlier have less invasive dentistry, less expensive dentistry, less painful, and those are the best patients that will bring their entire family and tell all of their friends. So in our practice, we never asked for new patient referrals. That doesn't mean that that's how you should do it, but we felt like if we mastered our new patient experience and our existing patient experiences, we should automatically get a lot of new patients. Right?

So, again, this second opinion inside of Pearl does operate in real time. Same imaging systems, same software. You click a button, and by the time you finish that fourth bitewing, your X rays are already analyzed. So you see bone level measurements here, excellent for submitting claims for SRPs for insurance, notable margin areas, periapical radiolucency, calculus, and it goes on and on. I think the most important thing here is knowing that there's two different colors of caries. And as you hover over these lesions, you're going to see that caries breakdown.

Not something you're gonna share all the time with the patients, maybe those engineer types, but definitely when your hygienist and assistants have this image on the lower right up and ready for your doctors to come in for exams, this is a very valuable case presentation tool.

So you can see that the doctors may be, reviewing the images right in their office, or they may actually be listening. We used to wear earpieces. That is a huge game changer for us. And we would say, excuse me, doctor Penrod, this is Sheela. I'm in room three with Bob, our new patient.

Everything feels great. If you could take a quick peek at the X rays, looks like there's a concern on number thirty, and we're about ten minutes out from finishing our cleaning. Now we would use earpieces to do this because it made it easier for us.

Regardless if you're the doctor that's gonna pop up from this prep and run back to hygiene and have the review of the images there, or if you're gonna go to your own office and review images, it's the same process.

It's wherever is best for you, but you now have a shortcut, kinda like spell check. Right? It's going to highlight areas for you to look at. You will make the diagnosis Pearl highlights pathologies.

The other thing that we did, especially in our new patient exams, was we AI to have our team get the doctor in as soon as possible. And this might be contradictory to some people. They might think, I want the cleaning done, and the doctor's gonna slide in at the end because there's a lot to do. But in reality, guys, and if there's any office managers here, front office team members, we're kind of not setting them up for success.

Right? And what I mean by that is if we know that there's gonna be a complex treatment plan or even a treatment plan we consider complex, which is more than a crown, we wanna get our doctors in early because we want the front desk to be able to have time to put their treatment plan together.

Our goal was to make sure that every patient had the amount that the treatment that we recommended delivered before they walk out the door. Now there are exceptions to the rule. Right? Ten thousand dollar cases or you have to go to a a specialist.

Those are the outliers. Those are not the norm. But what we found was when we move the doctor exam up a little bit earlier, we were able to focus on setting up the front desk for success.

So that's what we found helpful in our practice.

The other thing that we found helpful was whether the, again, the doctor sees the patient first or the hygienist, we did kind of a handoff there and we were all on the same page. Right? Patients like to hear things a couple different times.

But what we found very valuable was when we had an extensive treatment plan that we would bring the coordinator into that exam room. And it was an interesting shift because after the dentist presented everything, we would bring the coordinator in to start listening probably halfway through so she could under she or he could understand exactly what the doctor recommended, and presenting dentistry was completely different.

So one thing I wanna talk about before we move into the ideal treatment presentation is a way to remove the burden of insurance verification.

So there's a lot of buzz around insurance verification on the market right now, And I wanna let you know that, somebody needs to help the front desk verify insurance.

In Pearl's PreCheck, what we have done is we had done a lot of interviews with office managers, and we AI to understand what is the one thing you would love AI to do for you. And after a lot of surveys, the answer was consistently fix the verification of insurance. Right? So Pearl launched a very office manager friendly and insurance coordinator friendly product called PreCheck. And what this does is it will go through it'll take the information from your practice management systems, and it will go to the insurance websites for you, and it will verify your patient's dental treatments I'm sorry, your patient's dental insurance on all your patients over the next ten days.

Now there's a couple things that are unique about this. First of all, it will not replace your insurance person. Right? There's many people that, still need to call insurances because not every insurance is accessible.

And, also, every office has different, types of treatments. Right? So maybe you need to check on custom abutments or whatever the case may be. But for the most part, about sixty to sixty five percent of your standard patients are going to be verified automatically by you showing up in the morning, and guess what? It's already done. Not only are you gonna know the remaining benefits, if there's a deductible to be met, this is all on the home screen, but you're also going to click in and know in the upper right hand corner of each patient sorry, left hand corner.

Do we have downgrades?

Do we have coordination of benefits?

Do we have, ortho coverage, and if so, up to what age? How about fluoride and sealants?

You're also gonna see something very specific, which is going to be tooth specific history. Right? So, again, building in trust to your patient, you don't have to worry about well, this is on our an existing patient. Bob, we did number three a little while ago. I'm not sure if your insurance company is gonna pay for it or not, but it's either gonna be covered or three hundred dollars. Right? And that's that's an interesting thing that is happening in dentistry, and, unfortunately, that's continuously creating that mistrust.

So by having two specific history on those existing patients, it just gives your team another set of data point to AI, great. Bob's here today. We're gonna do a crown on him, or three patients out of hygiene need treatment. We're gonna make sure that I look and make sure that insurance is verified. There's remaining benefits. Now I'll do my treatment plan.

Finding ways, guys, for technology to give you back time so that you can spend it on your patients.

One interesting thing that really helped our case acceptance and our scheduling rate was that the treatment coordinator came into the exam.

And the the most important part about this was the treatment coordinator or your insurance coordinator or whatever the case whatever you term this very important person, they think completely differently than us as clinicians.

And they're thinking, okay. Well, can we do half of this this year or next year? Or there's a certain amount of benefits for the flipper. I need to take the impression today.

Like, they just think completely different, from a perspective that makes that front desk person an ally. So when we brought the coordinator in on those extensive exams, it really helped the patient meet the coordinator and move through when they saw them at the front desk. The coordinator understood what needed to be done and why. They could ask any questions to the doctor during that exam.

They don't have to go chase them down when they get to the front desk, and that coordinator became that ally.

We also felt that the rule in our office was to not have a patient sitting in the lobby waiting for a treatment plan. Now, obviously, we had a very big practice, so we had a lot of people to help out here. So I don't wanna make it sound simple. But by being able to make the front desk a little more involved and a little more aware, really helped fill our schedule, and we had less patients we had to track down. So that was very important for us. We did use some of our operatories for those larger treatment plans. We just kept the patient in the chair there, and we were able to present the dentistry.

Now I showed you some of Pearl's, images here, but also we have a really incredible patient printout. And it's great when you're presenting dentistry to a patient. Maybe they don't accept the treatment, and they're gonna go home with what we used to send them home with, which is that beautiful treatment plan with that two surface comp fill strange thing that used to be printed out, and we're like, okay. Great.

Yeah. Just read this at home and, call us when you're ready. Right? And I'm I don't think that ever happened till we saw them again for hygiene.

And that it has changed. So you're able to now I I also wanna say I don't think every patient wants a picture of X rays and not every patient's X rays are relevant to the treatment plan. But when you have caries as one of your main culprits and you have images that are going to help explain that, why not have this printout right on top of your patient printouts? Or why not include your coordinator to be able to use these as case presentations?

And then lastly, of course, these images go straight to insurance.

One more set of data for them to hopefully not deny, any additional claims.

Treatment planning, the old way versus the new way.

Now, again, when we look back at all of the things that we did in our practice to focus on growth, they weren't about better bonding agent and faster scans and, sharper instruments and all the things that we read about and focus on and how to bond and how to, you know, get the CDT codes and all of these things are very important, but these are expected. Right? Patients expect that you have the best treatment, the best everything.

I'll tell you, when I was reading those reviews, nobody in there said, I love my dentist. I had the best crown margin. I couldn't believe it. Right?

And the reality is, do you know how long it takes to perfect a great crown margin? And if they only knew that they had a wonderful crown margin, and, yeah, we're sorry we we sat you late, but did you know that that crown margin is gonna be so much better for you? And no. Because, unfortunately, the consumer thinks that all crowns are the same.

And so that's unfortunate for us. But what we do know is the basic patient experience is really important, and too much information will usually make a patient not schedule dentistry. So when I was training coordinators, it was really hard bringing in new staff because they felt like the more information they were giving the patient, the better.

So, missus Jones, it looks like after your Aetna PPO, annual maximum of fifteen hundred dollars minus your seventy five dollar deductible with the eighty percent basic coverage and insurance downgrading on the posterior teeth, looks like they may pay four hundred dollars towards your PFM, and the portion remaining is eight hundred dollars, which may change if we need to do a buildup.

Now we have preps at eight and one. Which do you wanna schedule?

Now, hopefully, if I could see you all, you would be laughing, but this is still sometimes the reality. And when I was consulting for a while, it was a lot about cleaning up this one little part of case presentation.

Now remember, I'm not saying that you shouldn't know all of this because anybody who's listening to me would probably say, but, Sheela, they ask you. I thought it covered eighty percent. And then you have to say, yes. It covers eighty percent of a silver filling or whatever you're going to do in your conversation.

So, yes, you need to know this in and out. You need to be really aware of how to best serve your patient so that you can get them on the schedule. Right? Do you have financing?

You have to know all of that. And that's something else that's important is that you streamline that across your practice, that everybody has the same, tools to work with your patients. You know? Do we break it up into two?

Do we take deposits?

That's something that we really had to work hard on calibrating everybody, in our team. In fact, one of the things that was interesting was when we asked, guys, how do we do our financing? I got five different answers, which one of my questions was, at what amount do we no longer finance in house? Because we did a lot of in house financing in the in the past.

And that question wasn't be able to be answered either. So that's important. All of your patients have to feel that everything is the same. Right?

And your front staff and your entire staff would like to be set up for success as well. So we move into the new way, which remember, I'm still looking at all that information because just like a hygienist wants to be successful, a doctor, an assistant, the front, this is where they are mastering this. Right? They've looked at everything.

But the way they've presented to a new and a returning patient makes a big difference.

Mister Jones, how was your appointment? Excellent.

Any questions about the treatment the doctor was recommending?

Great. Okay. So after your estimated insurance coverage, the portion's only eight hundred dollars to fix the broken tooth.

Now we're here, whatever your hours are, what day and time are gonna work best for you? Now AI you guys might say we don't do preps like that. This is just an example, but we call these one number treatment plans.

And what we found was patients still ask questions sometimes, but they were accepting the dentistry more often because it was simple and it was in patient terms just like the radiographs.

We have to simplify these experiences.

And, really, when we know that we're only retaining forty one percent of our patients, right, That means six out of ten new patients.

It's almost half. Right? Well, it is almost half, more than half, close to half, are walking out the door and they're never coming back. Wouldn't it be great if we could send a survey and say, why aren't you coming back? Right? And, typically, we're there's a lot of surveys, and we can't make every patient happy.

But, typically, we know it's money, cost, and fear. But Ora Pharma did a study, and they talked a lot about they didn't understand the treatment that doctors were recommending.

Now that's hard for us to hear in the back because we spend a lot of time explaining stuff. But are we talking in patient verbiage? When we answer the phone, are we saying, what is your date of birth and your insurance company? Or are we welcoming them in the practice?

Right? When we're presenting dentistry, are we saying it to SURF comp? Right? I know we're not.

But we can get really into dental lingo from the phone call to the case presentation to the actual insurance portion very easy because that's what we know. But that's not what our patients know. I think it was three percent of patients actually understood what a crown was.

Now that that's because not every patient gets crowns all the time. Right?

So the key to the new patient is to figure out what they want and give it to them.

Now that's within reason, but if they wanna whiten their teeth, right, we need to make sure we address that. Did we look at the front teeth? Are there a bunch of composites there? Right?

When we did free whitening, we got a lot of new patients in there. We did a lot of specials on, whiten your teeth, you know, for Valentine's Day. Buy a gift certificate. You get free exam and X rays.

Well, the main reason they got free exam and X rays was because we needed to make sure there wasn't false expectations to that whitening. Right? If they bring their husband or wife in or or their significant other, guess what happens? They come in, they wanna whiten their teeth, and they've got five interproximal, you know, first generation composites.

That's not gonna be a great outcome.

Or what if they have a bunch of decay?

So believe it or not, those fifteen minute appointments that my doctor was not happy about me suggesting this idea generated a lot of new patients.

In fact, it generated our existing patients asking twice a year, when are you doing that whitening special? I wanna get my mom in. I wanna get my dad in. I wanna get my friend in. I wanna buy this for my husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend.

So small little things, but they're always patient centric. Right?

I think you could think about other ways, and you guys could probably share with me wonderful ideas that you have and the way you have created, that new patient intake.

So what do patients really want?

The same thing we all want when we go anywhere. Right? When we get our oil changed, when we go to the grocery store, when we go to a restaurant, we wanna be treated with care and respect. We want a competent mechanic or server or dentist or hygienist or assistant or front office treatment coordinator.

They would love, believe it or not, convenient appointments. So, our practice was open seven to seven, and statistically, patients prefer to go to the dentist after work or after school. Now that's not always possible, and I know everybody that's on the call is like, wait a minute, Sheela. We worked till five, and that's completely fine. But I would tell you, Saturdays and even more importantly, some Sundays have been very successful in a lot of markets. So that is an incredible way to get new patients.

The other thing about keeping appointments is thinking about using technology for online scheduling. Right? So when I first started using technology, I was worried about using online scheduling because confidently, I thought I'm gonna put a column in, and there's gonna be so many patients. I'm not gonna know what to do.

Unfortunately, that was not the reality. We would see them trickle in, like, one, two, three a month. And then we started getting smarter, and we thought, okay. We're gonna put one column in for new patients for hygiene and one column in for emergency exams.

And what that means was that we knew at that at that day that day and that time that we could serve those patients if they popped onto our schedule.

What we didn't know was that we had about seventy percent of our new patients scheduling online.

So that was a staggering statistic for us to be little more mindful of making sure that we had even more capacity for those appointments.

In fact, patients that were new typically get on our schedule once a day for broken teeth. And this is from AI.

They pop up in orange, and we sing the celebration song, not literally, but it's a great gift. We're thankful they chose us, and those typically turn into, production appointments. But they get an amazing experience, and those are the patients I would not move their appointments. Right?

Not a good idea when they schedule a specific day and time. You can block that out, just so you know. So I think about using technology as another source, and what we did was we embedded those inside of all of our reminders. So we would say, hey, Bob.

We missed you last month. We'd love to see you. We're here seven to seven in Saturdays. Also, you can click here and schedule online if that's more convenient for you.

So that was a huge win for us, and it cost us, I think it was three hundred dollars a month, the cost of one new patient acquisition.

So having convenient appointments online, easy to schedule, makes a big difference. I used to look at them as AI little Christmas presents. These little new patients popping up everywhere.

Reasonable cost, we won't get into that too much, but there is a lot of research when you look at the case presentation levels, whether you go from zero to fifteen hundred, fifteen to three, and then above three, and how the new patient perceives that. So that's something that you should research. I am not telling you not to diagnose dentistry, but I think it's important for patients to understand when there are ways to solve things for a reasonable cost, that's another big indicator for them. And we wanna stay honest and fair.

So the five touch points to review. The new patient phone call, answering the phone is first.

Making sure we're listening.

Try it tomorrow. Try it the next day. Making sure you're stop talking and start listening.

Greeting the new patient when they come in. Just standing up and saying, welcome, Bob. Welcome to our office.

That doesn't cost you anything, and guess what? That's completely different than another dental office they've been in.

The hygiene visit.

I won't go too much into the weeds here, but it is really important that you have great hygienists and that they are mindful and caring and thoughtful because hygienists that are not that way, that are lecturing or painful are not gonna be great for retention, whether that's new or existing. In fact, in our practice, we used to say three patient complaints, the patients fire you. And that's because this day and age with so many topical ways to make cleaning so simple, we really don't need to have pain. Right? And we don't need to have lectures. We're just thankful that they chose us. That hygiene appointment sets the standard for the ideal exam and ultimately the hero in all of this, which is the treatment presentation.

So as you've walked through this today, I hope you picked up a few little nuggets to be able to think about ways you can change your new patient visit or enhance your existing patient visit.

I do wanna let you know that those of you that are on this call, I invite you to schedule a demo if you're interested in Pearl's second opinion.

Happy to have some time with you and your team.

If there's something that you felt valuable that would help your patients today, we would love to talk to you about our, diagnostic tool as well as our insurance tool. And then one thing I really didn't go into a whole lot is our, entire opportunity schedule that we focus on using AI to go through all of your charts every time your patient schedules an appointment. So you'll take all your existing schedule, and we'll move it into a very patient friendly schedule where your front desk will know automatically.

This dot means everyone here is actually due for bitewings. This one is everyone's due for an FMX.

All these patients in this color have unscheduled or undiagnosed opportunities that we found on the radiographs. And there's a few people over here that also have overdue AI, and they're on our schedule today. We found that color coded color coordinating, say that ten times, your schedule really allowed teams to fill cancellations faster.

And, also, when your front office team comes to the morning huddle, if you have one or not, each provider will have their own handout. So hygienist won't have to come to work twenty minutes early and find out who's due for X rays, who's due for probing, who has, you know, outstanding treatment needs. It really streamlines your entire morning and identifies opportunities throughout your day. So that was one day that we that was one way we really focused on patient convenience and enhancing same day dentistry. We had a lot of patients on Saturday, and their main goal was they couldn't come during the week and they were so thankful that we were open on Saturday.

The Saturday obstacle wasn't about, money, it was about time for them. So for example, we'd have patients come in for a cleaning, and they would say, I have a broken tooth, and this is not made up. Can we get this done today while I'm here?

And so, again, another great way to think about Saturday attracting a different level of AI, and you might be the only practice that's open on Saturdays. Right? So it's something I would encourage your team to look into for opening up the flow for new patients.

Okay. I think there may be some questions here.

Volume is fading. Uh-oh. That's probably good for you guys. You probably don't need to hear everything I'm saying.

Let's see.

There is a code that Kimberly has put in. I'd love to, open this up for questions, see if anybody has any questions or any thoughts or anything they'd like to share. I'd be happy to, hear what you guys might wanna share.

And, also, some people ask a lot about how the radiographs, come into second opinion, and the reality is they come in automatically. You don't upload anything, and they come in within thirty seconds. So I wanted to make sure you guys were aware of that.

Alright.

Any other questions you guys might have?

We would love to, like I said, invite you for a demonstration with your team. It's great to have your hygienist, your doctors, office managers, see if this is a good fit for you. Using Pearl's toothparts, which is one of our features here on the right hand side, has really been a game changer for practices for case presentation.

And, ultimately, using AI on your patients that have radiographic concerns, we're seeing a thirty percent increase in case acceptance.

So thank you so much for joining us tonight. We're really thankful that you took the time to be here, and we look forward to having you on our upcoming webinars.

There's a question about what is the best way to present this to the doctor.

It's a great question. I appreciate that. So I think what's important is to possibly click into this demo and have the doctor be able to look at a different way of sharing images with their patient, another way of getting that second set of eyes on their radiographs within seconds.

This second opinion feature right here is less than two fillings a month. Right? And so if a patient accepts the dentistry earlier because you recommended it and they saw it in color, that's a huge win. So what we'd love to do is you can always go on to our website, at pearl, hello pearl dot com. But, ultimately, I think what's best is to have each team set up a demo because there's different needs for each practice. Right? And you guys might say, oh, we love the insurance verification, and we wanna do second opinion, and we wanna do practice intelligence, and you also all have additional questions.

It is very important to have the doctor on the call because they're gonna wanna look at this and understand there's periapical releasancies, there's calculus, there's bone levels.

But a lot of times, we're still questioning AI. Right? Do I need it? And my answer is always, you're gonna make that decision very quickly, but your patients really need this. This is a long overdue tool and a great gift to dentistry.

So if there are no other questions, I'm happy to stick around as long as you guys would like, but I'd love for you to click into this demo. I believe it does have an offer. So definitely look there.

And also AI keep in mind that we have a lot of incredible presenters that come on, doctors, and hygienists, and office managers coming into Pearl. Look at our website. There's a lot of webinars coming up. A lot of them offer CE.

So those are really beneficial. And again, we are always here to help if you have any questions, and we'd love to see you on a demo. My name is Sheela, and again, thank you to, special thank you to Kimberly who was on the call today, saving my day. So we all have heroes, and I just want to point that out.

So thank you guys for attending. We look forward to seeing you on a demo, and feel free to let us know if there's any questions you have. We're happy to help. Thanks so much for joining us, and have a great night.

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