Brett Allen (00:19) Hi, Brett Allen here, host of the Marketing32 show where I connect with leading dentists, dental influencers, and industry experts to uncover the latest and greatest, all of their insights and innovations to help you guys with your dental practices to grow and thrive. This episode is brought to you as always by our team here at Marketing32. We are the only dental marketing team that I know of with a performance guarantee that if you’re not growing, you don’t pay us. So we’re truly invested in the growth of your practice and adding value and being ethical with our marketing.
? To learn more, head over to Marketing32 and schedule a quick discovery call. We’ll set you straight if we can work with you or if we can’t and if it would be a good fit. If you need help with your marketing, let us know. Quick shout out to Doug Fedig. He’s a CPA and MBA. We recently had him on the show. He shared a brilliant piece of leadership advice that makes a huge impact and is making a huge impact for dental practices across the country. So check out that episode. Today, I’m excited to introduce a new friend of mine from SCN.
Speakers Consulting Network we met up recently in Rhode Island. Deanna Otz-Witfield, she is a Marine Corps veteran and dental professional with over 16 years of experience in hygiene, infection prevention and compliance. She holds a bachelor’s in dental hygiene, a master’s in healthcare quality and safety and is CDIPC certified. She is a consultant, speaker and published author.
Deanna empowers dental teams with practical strategies to enhance safety and compliance. She actively serves on professional boards and is passionate about elevating patient care across the industry. Deanna, excited to have you on the show today. Thanks for coming.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (02:00) Hey, thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be here and share a little bit of my knowledge and talk about dirty things with you.
Brett Allen (02:07) Yeah, dirty things. That’s
right. Yeah. This is an interesting facet of dentistry that I didn’t even realize was such a big deal. This OSHA compliance and safety, all of this in dentistry is huge. And there’s, it’s a big, there’s a lot of money in it. There’s a lot involved with it. And I just, until recently when we met, I had no clue that this was a big part of the industry.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (02:30) Yes, absolutely. You know, I ? didn’t think so either for the longest time. I practiced clinical hygiene and I was just like everybody else. I just went to work, did what I learned in school, and then went home. And then I started seeing things that were gross and dirty and I just thought, why are people doing it like that? I don’t think that’s the way you’re supposed to do things.
I started doing a little bit of research and realizing that there’s a lot of compliance issues that need to be corrected because we are healthcare providers and our job is to not only make our patients have a beautiful smile, but also to deliver a safe dental care.
Brett Allen (03:13) Yeah, that, I mean, absolutely. You hit it on the head. So before we get into how you transition from hygienist to being involved with compliance, let’s talk about your background in the military. Marines, let’s, how did you transition from Marines to dental hygiene?
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (03:31) Yeah, so I was interested in joining the military when I was a junior in high school. I didn’t really have the grades. I wasn’t a good high school student. I didn’t really have the grades to go to college. And when all my friends were applying for big universities, I decided I was going to join the military. And ? while I was in, September 11th happened and then ? served one tour in Iraq. And I decided that was, I’d done my time. I planned to be career, but after war time, I decided to get out and
Brett Allen (03:36) Okay
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (04:00) I went to a university in North Dallas and I literally went down the list and I was like, hmm, I think I could do dental hygiene. That sounds great. And I got accepted into the program on my first try and I thought, okay, well, this is meant to be my path. And yeah, I went on to practice hygiene across the entire state of Texas and all the major cities and got to see a lot of different.
different things, high income, know, fast paced offices and then really low income areas that accept, you know, state and federal funding. So it was, it was pretty interesting. I’ve seen a whole slew of things.
Brett Allen (04:41) Yeah, I bet. ? Was there anything, when you were in the military, ? was there anything, my brother-in-law, he was a medic in the army and he served a tour in Iraq. ? And that experience made him want to go in after the military to medicine. And so he’s now a dental, or not a dental, he’s a ? nurse anesthetist. So, ? yeah, but.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (05:05) Wow.
Brett Allen (05:08) Was there any time with the Marines that was kind of opening the door to dentistry or maybe nothing? No?
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (05:14) You know,
ironically, there was nothing in my Marine Corps career that led me into the dental industry. ? I was a heavy truck driver in the Marine. And so the Marine Corps doesn’t have any medical or dental services. It falls under the Department of Navy, and that’s all done on the naval side of things for us. So when I got out of the Marine Corps and I was trying to choose a career path,
Brett Allen (05:25) Okay.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (05:41) I had always been told, I went through extensive orthodontic care as a child, and I’d always been told that I have a nice smile and pretty teeth. And that’s kind of what helped me pick the dental hygiene career. So, I mean, it really had no reflection from my Marine Corps history at all, ironically.
Brett Allen (05:55) Okay.
Okay. Okay.
Well, awesome. So you’re a hygienist and what was it as you were, how long were you a hygienist?
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (06:09) So I’ve been practicing hygiene for 16 years.
Brett Allen (06:12) Okay. But from transitioning from hygienist to being more compliance focused, how long were, like, tell us about that. Like how long were you in that position? And then what did you see or what kind of opened you to this part of the industry?
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (06:17) Right. I’ve been in the…
Yeah,
before it was before this BC before COVID, right? But it was 2019 and I kind of hit a wall. I was bored at my job. I was practicing hygiene at a really fast pace office in Houston and I was just bored. I felt like there was something else out there bigger for me. I didn’t know there was a whole world of…
Brett Allen (06:32) BC.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (06:53) things outside of the clinic for dentists, for hygienists, for assistants, for everyone. I didn’t know you could be a writer or a speaker or anything. And I decided to get my master’s to see if that would open any doors for me. And it did. It started slowly opening a few doors in a direction where I found some interest in compliance. ? My master’s college professor had never had a dental hygiene student in his program before.
And so he wasn’t really sure how to guide me in the direction of where I wanted to go in my career. So I had to do a lot of research on my own of what I wanted to do. And I started to attend some conferences and started noticing that hygienists were doing something other than just scraping teeth all day. Now, we’re not just tooth scrapers. I’m not, hygienist out there. We’re not just tooth scrapers, but I felt like there was something else for me beyond the clinic. And so I started exploring some avenues and
Brett Allen (07:40) Yeah.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (07:51) I really liked infection control. I’m a rule follower. This is from my military background. I like my lists. I like my check boxes. And so with infection control, you either do it right or you do it wrong. And it was very, yes. And so I related to that very well. I’m wearing black and white today. I aligned with that really, really well. And I grasped onto a lot of that knowledge and I find it really interesting.
Brett Allen (07:59) Yep.
It’s black and white. Yeah.
Ha ha.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (08:20) So, yeah.
Brett Allen (08:20) Yeah, that’s cool.
Yeah, we have, you’re right. There’s many facets that hygienists, if they want to get out of the op, there’s so many different ways they can do that. In fact, one of our team members, Lindsay, she runs our pipeline team that does all the text marketing to patients for different practices we work with. ? She is a hygienist, pediatric hygienist, and she’s now working with us and that dental background. So if any of you guys are looking for…
opportunities in dental marketing and want to get out of the opp or out of the front desk or whatever it is, reach out to us at Market32. So that’s cool. So let’s talk more about Copper Penny Consulting and your process and yeah, how do you work with practices? What is it that you do? Yeah.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (09:01) Right. Yeah.
So
I am a consultant with small private practices or small group practices and we help them achieve and maintain compliance overall. ? Copperpenny offers OSHA, infection control, medical emergency training, ? workplace violence training, HIPAA compliance. ? We offer CE courses for clients and non-clients.
But I go into offices and I can do a mock inspection to see where they stand. And then I can offer some guidance and ways of compliance to meet OSHA requirements, CDC recommendations. And most of the time, not always all of our clients, but offices that are seeking these type of infection control compliance services are those that have either perhaps had a complaint.
filed against them, they’ve been in trouble, or they know of a colleague who has experienced some sort of disruption from a complaint and they don’t want that to happen in their practice. And then there are just a lot of offices that just want to do the right thing, right? I don’t think anyone intentionally wants to harm patients or harm their staff members or that they’re intentionally doing anything wrong. Most of the time, 99.9 % of the time, you just don’t know what you don’t know.
Brett Allen (10:20) Yeah.
Hmm.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (10:35) And so if it’s not taught in school, if you’re not seeking out certain continuing education, if you’re not doing your own research, where are you getting this information from? And so that’s where we come in as consultants and we can guide them in the right direction so they can achieve their best compliance that they can possibly achieve. And most of time, like I said, they want to be good. They want to be that good office. They want…
certificates and plaques showing that they’re in compliance with sterilization procedures or infection control. And patients see that. Reputation’s a big deal. Offices get their patients through word of mouth a lot of times, Google reviews. And it’s what patients see and what they interact with. that spreads pretty quickly.
Brett Allen (11:16) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. I remember. So I was talking with Lindsay on our team about this this morning actually, cause I told her we were, I was going to be interviewing you and she said she never had any kind of OSHA compliance issues with the practices she worked at, but OSHA can show up just out of the blue unannounced and check and come through and check. And that never happened to her while she was practicing, but it can happen. And if you don’t have all your ducks in a row and you don’t have your processes and your binders and
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (11:36) Mm-hmm.
Brett Allen (11:54) your dot your I’s and T’s, right, cross your T’s, then you could be exposed to potentially a red flag. I don’t know, what does OSHA do if you don’t have, it finds, yeah?
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (11:54) the things. That’s right. Yeah.
Yes,
yeah, they do issue fines and penalties. ? think in in 2023 they issued I think well over a hundred thousand dollars in fines over several different offices across the United States and a lot of times these will come from whistleblowers. They’ll have maybe a staff member that will call in and ? report a complaint, know, unsafe practices and that OSHA takes that very seriously.
Brett Allen (12:18) Ta hawa.
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah. So let’s talk about that a little bit. So with team members or patients, what are some challenges that practices face when it comes to compliance? Like what are some common things that they may overlook or struggle with or potentially be uncompliant they don’t even know?
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (12:34) Yeah.
Exactly. Well, you mentioned it a while ago. Have a written plan and protocol. You know, mean, the ADA makes an Ocean Infection Control Compliance Handbook and also a HIPAA Compliance Handbook. But just having a written plan that will show what your office does and how it keeps its patients and its staff members safe. Other issues are personal protective equipment.
where providers are not wearing the proper PPE and that can lead to occupational exposures, needle sticks, stuff splashing in their eyes, stuff splashing in the patient’s eyes. So ? other things is not following through on the sterilization practices. Sterilization is a really big deal. You’ve got hospitals that have a whole floor dedicated to the sterilization of
Brett Allen (13:19) Mm.
? well.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (13:47) healthcare equipment that’s used for patient care. And in dentistry, we go through it so fast and so many times in a day, yes, and it comes very robotic. And so you forget how important these small processes are that affect the sterilization of instruments. Because if your instruments are not clean before they go into the autoclave, they’re going to come out dirty. It affects the sterilization.
Brett Allen (13:51) Yeah.
The instruments, yeah.
? interesting.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (14:16) So there’s just, I’m not sure that there’s a lot of ? training going on in this area. And we have dental staff that are on our teams that are not college educated. Sometimes they don’t have degrees or formal education, they’re trained on the job. So they’re taught the way someone else has taught them. And that’s not always the right way. And they don’t know what they don’t know. So, you know.
Brett Allen (14:37) Right.
If you don’t have somebody
reviewing that and kind of checking and saying, hey, you forgot to wash it like this, or you forgot to do this with the patient when they were in the chair. I remember before we got into our conversation, you told me about some stories of things you’ve heard or noticed in practices. ? Share with us some of those things where it’s like, my gosh, I can’t believe this was actually happening.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (14:56) Exactly.
You know, there are still dentists that practice without gloves, without exam gloves. And I’ve seen it in small towns, rural communities, where they may have been seeing the same patients since they were children and the patients don’t even know any different. That’s all they know. And the dentist perhaps has not.
Brett Allen (15:24) Yeah, my gosh.
Wow. Yeah.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (15:42) you know, been caught up on their continuing education and just doesn’t see it as a factor. You know, they’ve never been sick. So why would they start wearing gloves now? So in that, mean, doesn’t that just sound really barbaric? And it was, it wasn’t even that long ago when dentistry actually started wearing gloves routinely.
Brett Allen (15:52) Wow.
It sounds, yeah.
Well, and I remember seeing
a study done or something, I forget what it was, a headline or something where, you know, it wasn’t too long ago that doctors just didn’t wear gloves. was just microbiology wasn’t a known thing. like, yeah, and patients were dying and things were happening and they just don’t know because they didn’t have gloves on. It was attributed to that.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (16:14) Yeah.
Right. Right.
Exactly, exactly. Another thing that’s really starting to make the headlines or come forward, I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, is the dental unit waterline maintenance.
Brett Allen (16:40) ? for the little water sprayer for the mouth.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (16:43) Yes,
yes. So, you know, we have water that flows through our dental units that we use during patient care. comes out of our ultrasonic scalers, our air water syringe, our high speed hand pieces, air polishers. And where is that water coming from? Well, it’s maybe coming from the bottle that you filled up on your unit. Some offices are still plumbed to their municipal water and
Brett Allen (17:04) ? yeah.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (17:08) there is they found that there is a microbial contamination in these water lines biofilm a slimy layer of biofilm forms in these water lines and that can become dislodged whenever you’re using your air water syringe and that will be either inhaled or swallowed by the patient or if you’re doing a procedure like a root canal yeah it could go into the bloodstream right then and there and it’s introducing all these different
Brett Allen (17:18) building up.
wow.
into a cut or something.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (17:37) types of microorganisms that’s causing a lot of problems. And there’s been quite a few big cases across the United States. So some states are now requiring that dental offices maintain their water lines and test them regularly. And then of course, documentation. If you don’t write it down, it never happened. So that goes across the board for everything. Document everything. Yeah.
Brett Allen (17:43) Interesting.
Wow. So
yeah, are there any other kind of interesting stories? I think I shared this on a previous episode, but I had a friend who got a needle poke from an HIV positive patient when he was working, he was a wisdom teeth removal. But what other kind of interesting things that are, you you just, you come across or yeah.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (18:14) ? Yeah.
Yeah, I’ve
been ? gosh, so I’ve been in practices and this is kind of a common one Not every dental practice is designed the way you would want it to be so they can be small and some rooms and spaces are used for multiple areas a lot of times I will see ? Refrigerators or kitchen stuff in labs. So wherever you’re
Brett Allen (18:45) your break room or something?
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (18:45) ? Like I’ve
seen denture materials right next to their lunch, know, they’re ? adjusting dentures or crowns and you don’t know what’s on these dentures or crowns and then it’s flying into your lunch that you just heat it up. I see a lot of cross-contamination. I see a lot of staff members that have open drinks coffees in the sterilization area.
Brett Allen (19:02) The particulate matter kind of floating over. ? man.
?
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (19:14) You know, this
is where your dirty bloody instruments go, right? And you put them in the ultrasonic and that ultrasonic is agitating. It’s also releasing all these microorganisms into the air and it’s floating around onto your fancy Starbucks cup that you just got at lunchtime that’s sitting on the countertop next to the ultrasonic. But that tends to be the gathering space, right? In the middle of the dental office is the sterilization area.
Brett Allen (19:34) man.
Wow.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (19:39) So,
and then you go and you watch someone take a drink out of their Stanley cup on that straw and you’re like, what is on the end of that straw? But you know, they don’t think about that. And you know, it’s just they’ve done it like that forever and I bring it up to their attention. They’re like, I’ve never thought about it. So.
Brett Allen (19:46) What’s on the straw? ? yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. So many of those.
I imagine that’s like a big part of when you work with the practice, that’s a big thing. You just uncover things that either they didn’t think about, they don’t know what they don’t know, like you said. Yeah.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (20:07) Exactly, exactly. So, you know, like
I said, no one is intentionally wanting to do harm. You know, no one wants to make an unsafe visit for, you know, their patients or even an unsafe environment for themselves. That’s just the way they’ve always done things. So I don’t place any blame, but that’s why I’m here.
Brett Allen (20:23) Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah.
And it happens in marketing too. We work with practices all the time that are working with another marketing company that, you know, they just trust that it’s being done right or it’s being done or, that the right things are being tracked. And we come in and we’re like, well, where’s this money going? How much is it costing you to acquire a patient? What’s the booking rate at the front desk from the patients they are generating?
And a lot of times, practices don’t know what questions to ask marketers. And then, you know, they’re just on the hook every month for that marketing bill. And not saying all marketers are bad or unethical, but there are a lot that just provide a minimum amount of service just so they can keep billing the client. And their monthly reports are filled with reporting on data that’s not necessarily moving the needle for the practice. Maybe it’s like, you got this many clicks this month or…
You know, your Google ranking went up or, you know, your Facebook ad, you know, got this many impressions and you got this many likes. It’s like, well, how does that translate into growth for the practice? a lot, you know, business owners don’t, they’re not experts in every facet of dentistry in the industry. And so they have to rely on either team members or somebody they’ve hired. And I guess.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (21:36) Yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
Brett Allen (21:49) That’s where you come in, right? You have a great way to work with practices. So let’s talk a little bit more about that. are some of the things that you help with initially when you start working with them? And yeah.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (22:01) Right,
so I look at what they have already. Do they have a written protocol? When was the last time that the staff has had any kind of required annual OSHA training, any infection control training? ? I look to make sure that everyone’s licenses are up to date. And then of course I have clients in several different states. So different states require different types of training and recommendations based on their state board.
And so, you know, after seeing what they have, then I do a walkthrough assessment. I look at everything. I have a multi-page assessment that addresses all of OSHA’s requirements and then all of CDC’s recommendations. And many, many of the states now are, the state boards are requiring CDC recommendations to become a requirement. So now we’re looking into all these requirements.
Brett Allen (22:27) Mm-hmm.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (22:54) And so once I have done a full assessment, I’ll meet with the team leadership, whether that’s an office manager, the dentist, whatever the case may be. And then I’ll discuss the findings with them. You know, this is what we need to work on and this is why. And every time I will make a recommendation on changing something, I always back myself up and I cite it because OSHA says so in 1910.1030 bloodborne pathogens or
CDC from 2016 summary of infection control guideline, like I always cite it so they know I’m not just making this fluff up So, you know then once we have had their assessment I give them a month or two to see what they can fix as soon as possible and then we go into our training You know, like I said some states require one to two to three hours of infection control training I’ll meet with the staff members and we do a comprehensive training
Brett Allen (23:27) Mm-hmm.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (23:49) And we just discuss why you need to do these things. Right, everybody, the entire team, even the front desk. Yeah.
Brett Allen (23:49) The whole team, or just the doc and the OM, everybody?
Yeah. Do
you, do you, are you able to do all this virtually or do you have to go to the practice? Do you have them kind of walk you through and show you on video? Here’s what we do. Yeah. Okay.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (24:07) I do. Exactly.
Yeah, yeah. have them, I do it virtually most of the time and I have them log into either an iPad, a tablet, a phone, and I walk through every part of the office. ? From the back door to the front door, sterilization. I want to see an operatory that’s set up for a patient. I want to look at their nitrous closet if they have one. I want to look at their electrical panel, their front desk area. I mean, everything.
Brett Allen (24:34) How about?
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (24:36) mean, OSHA goes through long… Yeah, the breaker box. Is it free if it’s properly closed? Is it free and unobstructed? Does it have any hazards of getting wet? Is it properly labeled? know, there’s… OSHA goes beyond just bug-worn pathogens. I’m checking their exit signs, their fire extinguishers. Yeah, their medical emergency equipment.
Brett Allen (24:36) What’s on the electrical panel? it just like breaker box? the… Oh, to see if it’s properly closed or…
Hmm.
yeah. So many. Yeah. Yeah. ?
? yeah, yeah, that’s not just patient
health, but just emergency. Yeah.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (25:03) emergency preparedness. That’s a big deal. Yeah.
Brett Allen (25:06) Wow. Well,
that’s awesome. We’ve covered so much and I know people are going to be asking questions and want to work with you and reach out to find out what it’s like to work with you. Before we jump into how they can contact you, I always ask everybody what’s one piece of advice, what’s that epiphany we could help dentists or the industry have that would have a ripple effect across multiple areas of their practice or what’s that one thing you can share?
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (25:15) Yeah.
Yeah, like so I know we said that we don’t know what we don’t know but I do feel like ethics plays a huge role in infection control keeping yourself healthy keeping your employees healthy and safe and then also your patients so as healthcare providers and I use that because we are truly healthcare providers I think we have an ethical responsibility ? to be a leader
in your practice to set the standard of care and the standard of safety. Let your employees see that you’re washing your hands on a regular basis. Let your employees see that you are acting safe. You’re disposing of your sharps the way you’re supposed to and you’re sterilizing your equipment the way it’s supposed to be done. Have safety meetings, involve everybody. It’s responsibility. So if you don’t know and you think you want to learn more,
Brett Allen (26:24) Hmm
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (26:31) There’s tons of information out there, but I would always say rely on your ethics. Be want to be a good clinician, but also want to be a good leader as well, because if you’re doing something wrong, your staff’s going to see what you’re doing and they will likely do it wrong as well because they may not know any better.
Brett Allen (26:51) Yeah, make it a part of the process. That’s a great advice. Make it something that’s regular and not just in the background. Well, that was so awesome, Deanna. Thank you so much for your time today. If people want to work with you, what’s the best way to reach you and get in touch with you?
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (26:55) Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, you can go to copperpennyconsulting.com or my email is compliance at copperpennyconsulting.com. Yeah.
Brett Allen (27:14) Okay, great.
Well, you guys, have that in the show notes. We’ll have everything in there. So if you want to go back and check out some of the resources we mentioned or ? get in touch with Deanna, ? head over to marking32.com and find the episode. But thank you again, Deanna, for your time today. was fun having this conversation.
Deanna Otts-Whitfield (27:25) Mm-hmm.
Thank you, Brett. It was a blast. I love talking about dirty things. So anytime you want to have me on, we can talk more about dirty things.
Brett Allen (27:37) Awesome,
awesome. Alright everybody, until next time on the Market32 show, y’all have a great week and a blessed day. Take care.