Tiff and Dana discuss what they’ve seen across hundreds of practices as the best time to hold those weekly meetings. They also touch on the benefits of third-party insight, finding pockets to create consistency, the right cadence for your team, and more.
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Transcript:
The Dental A Team (00:00)
Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are so excited to be here with you today. I snag Dana once again, and I always say that I snag Dana. I say that because I pre-schedule these, you guys. Pretty far out in the calendar, I always have the podcasting scheduled. And then I do a really great job of being like, ? actually, I know that it's on this specific date, but maybe we could squeeze it in here. I am always looking for ways to try to maximize a schedule, but sometimes it.
requires me moving things around. So I do really truly snack, Dana, where I can and push it into our schedules, typically somewhere else other than where it had originally started. So Dana, thank you for always knowing your schedule, always considering it, and always, think, one, we typically are able to just pop it in there, which just reinforces my bad habit, but... ?
I do know without a shadow of a doubt that if it doesn't work, you'll tell me too. So thank you for being the kind of person that can look at something and can confidently say like, oh, great idea, Tiff, but I can't do it that day. What about this day? I appreciate that about you, about your leadership style. And it makes me super confident in you training leaders and practices out there in the world. So Dana, welcome to the show today. Thank you for all that you are. How are you? It's the beginning of our week. How's your Monday so far? And again, thank you for.
just sliding this in here today.
Dana (01:24)
Yeah, of course. Thank you. And you know, like, as a fellow efficiency hacker, I love when you look for ways to just pop it in spaces, especially with how busy our schedules are. I definitely always appreciate the snag and the time with you. And yeah, my Monday starting off pretty good, you know, meetings, catch up, client projects, all the things Monday can be a fun and yet sometimes wild day.
The Dental A Team (01:49)
It's so true. It's so true. My boyfriend's always like, gosh, it's Monday and like, why are you always so exhausted? Isn't this your meeting day? And I'm like, yeah, well, you know, we got lots of meetings and today I decided to snag everyone possible for podcasting. So I've got meeting on meeting and then podcasting and you're totally right, Dana. And I think it's actually really beautiful. Something we did a few years ago. I don't know, Dana, if you remember when we started, probably, probably pretty close to when you onboarded as a consultant, we started shifting.
into Monday meeting day and Friday kind of meeting slash catch up kind of admin work day because we were getting really wild with our schedule. And it's just something I think that has changed and shifted the culture of the company pretty drastically. And it gives us that space to really dial in and work on the company and not just always working on client stuff or our own personal stuff that gives us space. So kudos to the Dental A Team there and Dana that was really
really kind of ties into today's content, honestly, of really structuring a schedule and being able to see where we can best create, you know, which I know like people, gosh, what am I trying to say here? Practices are like, where am I supposed to do a meeting? Where, and then where is it most beneficial? And I know I get asked a lot and Dana, you might too, like, can I do my meeting on a Friday? I'm like, totally, you sure can. But I think from our experience, what we've seen is Mondays tend to be the best because it sets the week up.
in advance. You can set it up on Friday for sure too, but I think it really just starting the day with our Monday meeting that first, you know, level 10 style meeting first thing in the morning on Mondays really gets the whole team energized and aligned on what our week is going to look like. And for me, working from home, like it really like motivates me to get moving. And Dana, do you, do you kind of feel that same way? And do you see that with practices?
Dana (03:41)
Yeah, I do. agree with you. think if Friday is the only time that the entire team can get together for a meeting short have it on Friday, but I do feel like end of the week meetings, whether your last day is Thursday or your last day is Friday. It doesn't allow us to really jump off and get started right away. There's this whole weekend kind of a lag. And sometimes I feel like we come in Monday and it's like, we maybe lost some of the priorities that we talked about, or they get filtered through our weekend a little bit. So if it is the only time that you can, absolutely. And then I think Monday just a little like, guys, don't
forget, right? Bullet points of what we talked about, what we're working on this weekend, again, just to start the week fresh. But I think if you can do them on Mondays, it is a great way to really get everybody focused for the week to be super intentional with the week and with your time and just a jumpstart for everybody.
The Dental A Team (04:27)
I totally agree. I think that's super important. I love how you brought that back together on Monday morning as a refocus moment. So maybe it's not the whole hour to hour and a half, however long meeting, but it's a quick like 15, 20 minutes. Let's just jumpstart this week to get us off on the same foot and make sure we remember the things we committed to. So I love that. I think that's brilliant. And again, it ties into what we're going to talk about today. I
Love stats. love pulling the consulting team's stats. love seeing what you ladies are doing for your clients over there and really just seeing the successes of the clients. And I love sharing those successes and those tools. Something that my team loves to do is just really share all the tools we possibly can. And when you're ready to work with us, we do it side by side with you. But until then, you've got these resources that you can kind of self-implement to the best of your possibilities. And we are always here to help as much as we can.
So Dana, I know we've chatted about this client ? ourselves and we're not going to get into the specifics of the client, but the specifics of the results itself. And kudos to your diligence, ? to your accountability and really staying on top of what a client needs. And I think what we've seen a lot is that mostly a client needs someone doing it side by side with them as in,
sharing the emotional load and being willing to have the hard conversations when they need to be had and answer the text when they need to be answered and get on those calls every single month for an hour and a half and really bust through the struggles that the numbers are showing us and really implement the right tools and put the accountability lines into it. So when I say we do it with them, Dana, that's like a very hard line that we've learned to take.
And we do it with them by ? actions of training and support. We're not doing it for you. not calling your patients. Dana's not calling on unpaid balances. But she is someone who has been able to support many clients, but specifically these results. She has been able to support practices in achieving this specific one is tripling their collections within two months of working with Dana.
That sounds magical. It sounds beautiful and it is. And the clients who do experience these kinds of results, which all of our clients experience some tremendous results. But something I do want to put a caveat on is that our clients experience results in varying degrees. And there are just so there's so many results to be had and so many results to be shared. And I think something that has to be taken into consideration is where you come into the game.
Where are you starting and where are you going? Right. So this practice had some room to grow coming into it and as do many practices. so generally speaking, Dana, I think my first question is tripling collections. Number one freaking fantastic way to go. You offered some incredible support, some incredible training and awesome, awesome tools that they will be able to use for the rest of their careers.
What did you, when you see practices come in like this and you're like, holy, holy cow, there's room here to triple your production or your collections. Like, let's do this. What kind of demographics are they coming in with? What are you seeing their stats as when they onboard?
Dana (07:52)
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah, and I will say a client like this is really exciting to onboard because when you can kind of instantly see where you can help, right, you can instantly bring some relief, you can instantly reduce stress because, you know, collections is an area that can cause a ton of just.
emotions, stress, because that's money in the bank, right? And, and that is the money that we use to pay our team and pay for expenses and keep the doors open. And so to be able to have a client come in, I can just like instantly pinpoint where I can be super helpful and massively impact just their life and their practice. It is really, really exciting. Now to get results like triple the collections, this office came in with collections sitting at around 40 % as well
as needing some growth in their production, right? So ideally what they were needing to collect, there was a fairly decent gap ? there that allowed for these results, but it definitely was hugely impacted in their just willingness to jump in and get to work too.
The Dental A Team (09:04)
Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think that that space is super fun when clients come in and I'm like, heck yeah, here's a target. And most clients, whether it's the collections or overhead or production, most clients will come in with something that we can just narrow in on right away within the first 30 days and get momentum and get movement. And I think once we get that movement going, whether it's small or drastic, that's when the momentum catches with the team.
and the doctors and the leaders, and they're like, ? this isn't as hard as we thought it was. We can do this one strategic piece at a time. And so when you're looking at a whole practice, it can be super overwhelming. And when you're working in the practice, hence the reason we do Monday meeting days, right? It's really hard to work on and in something at the same time. And when you're doing that, everything that quote unquote needs to be fixed or needs to be worked on or needs to progress,
is a hot fire and is a stress. And you're like, how do I do it all? How do I do everything? So what we end up doing, I think most often in practices, Dana, I know that I did this as a leader, is we try to fix a piece of multiple things. And so we get nowhere really fast. And we get like a 3 % movement on 10 different things instead of really being able to narrow down the focus into that one thing.
that can be done now that will progress you, that can spiral and domino effect into the next thing. And Dana, I think that's something that you were able to do with these, the results that you got here with this client, but specifically with any client, that third party kind of bird's eye view perspective of massive issues, it's easier for us to come in and say, well, why don't we work on this is the biggest thing, or this is the thing we can fix right now.
those other pieces might have things tied to them that we can't resolve. So we're gonna start here and finding that starting point seems to be the magic sauce of like one thing, one focus. And Dana, you do really well keeping them in line with that and being like, ? yeah, those are great questions. What about this? Yep, those were great options. What about this? So bringing them back in alignment to that. And for these results to triple their collections,
What did you see right off the bat that you were like, is our focus. This is where we're gonna keep coming back. And how did you continue to pull them back into focus for that? Because I know they squirreled, everyone does.
Dana (11:38)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. They do.
And everybody squirrels, and I think, too, like...
Doctors come in with I need to change this thing because it's the thing I can control, right? So a lot of times when it is a collections issues, doctors will come in and say, just need to produce more, right? I got to get in there and I got to produce more. And while that will help collections, right, it isn't going to fix whatever the root causes that's really thrown it off. And I will say for this practice, like there was quite a bit of opportunity in there, meaning that both sides of collections were just
not kept super consistent, not really great systems in place. You know, a lot of the parts and pieces in the background were a little bit off kilter or broken, if you will. And so instantly what I could see was, because I will say,
front office turnover, there's only one person that works in the front and it turned over quite frequently during the period of time where they saw a huge drop. knowing that, I could see that insurance AR really hadn't been kept super consistent. And honestly and truly the first thing that I did was recommend that he outsource it to somebody that could keep it steady. First and foremost, I can see we don't have hands on deck. Our clinical team doesn't know insurance well enough to pivot and jump in in those areas. And we really need somebody that is strong.
The Dental A Team (12:46)
sense.
Dana (12:56)
and can get in there and can get you results very quickly because honestly and truly at that point there was not a front office person on the scene. So it was I've got a great resource for you to outsource your insurance billing and get that started right away and honestly and truly that made a huge jump just having somebody consistent work on it.
The Dental A Team (13:18)
Yeah, and I think that's a huge point. So whether you have somebody in the office or you have to outsource, ? the thing that you said there was consistently working on it. So if you do have somebody, which a lot of practices do, you've got somebody in the practice, but I think that like squirreling on trying to figure out or decide what's the most important thing to work on right now, I...
think my assumption is, what I've seen is that those insurance follow-ups, those claims follow-ups, even claims processing, like sending the claims and prepping the claims, those get pushed to the wayside because they can be theoretically done at any time, right? It doesn't require me answering the phone and talking to a patient right now. It doesn't require me checking in a patient right now or answering the 15 questions that the doctor's coming with me.
to me with today because he doesn't have a patient, right? It doesn't require my immediate attention. So I can kind of push it to the back of my pile and handle other quote unquote hot fires. So that consistency gets lost. And back to our Monday meetings, would you have, if they had someone in this practice, and I know you've done this with other practices too, or I assume you have, would you have them structure so that they had specific times for that consistency?
Dana (14:31)
Okay.
The Dental A Team (14:32)
how do we help a billing team? Because I've had it too, where they've got somebody there and they're just like, Tiff, I don't know what you want me to do, I've got all these other things. And it's like, well, we need a structure built in. So what does that look like,
Dana (14:44)
Yeah, and we did build a structure with the patient side with them. And so I think that there's a structure for both sides and you have to figure out about how much we can set aside every week. Right. And I like just a very simple cadence. Week one and three is patient AR. Week two and four is insurance AR. Week one is sending statements. Week three is your follow up calls and texts.
for your patient AR, for your insurance AR, usually I say week two, I'm working oldest forward, right? So I'll do my 90 day, my 60 day week two, week four, then I'm hitting my like 30 to 60 and whatever I can work in the current. ?
And so I think when you break it up into chunks like that, and whether it is, hey, you spend an hour every day each week, or you pick Tuesdays as your AR day, and you lock yourself in whatever space you can that you're uninterrupted, or you just let the team know, hey, come to me as little as possible for the next four hours, it's my AR time, and you mark it on your schedule. But I think developing, because AR is the one thing that the second you let off the gas, right, it will spiral on you.
It
will continue to grow. It will take off the second that you look away from it. And so, so often that's really just what it is, is you're doing the things. You're doing follow-up calls. You are...
Reaching out to patients you're sending statements, but we're doing it sporadically versus consistently We're doing it when we have pockets of time versus making the time to keep it consistent And when we're looking for pockets of time in a busy dental practice as you know Tiff like things always will come up
There's always a way to fill your time and there's always things that feel really pressing. And so AR is one of those things because it's just follow up that gets pushed to the side or is like, I'll tackle that next week or Hey, I'll tackle that at the end of the month. And by the time we get to the end of the month, it's grown to where we actually can't manage it now because there's so much in there.
The Dental A Team (16:44)
Yeah, well you made me think of the reference that people can kind of look at this as, especially for our doctors or our managers who maybe don't do this part of the job. It makes me think of gym workouts. And when you're going even three times a week, so you've got three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, every week you're gonna go to the gym and you go to the gym and two, three, four weeks go by and you're starting to increase the weight.
on the exercises that you're doing. So maybe your bicep curls by week four, you're able to do a five pound heavier dumbbell. You start at 10, now week four you're at 15. And then life happens and you're like, shoot, we've got Christmas, we've got New Year's, we've got family in town, and we don't prioritize getting to the gym or getting those workouts in. So we lose the reps, right?
your reps aren't just like the single exercise reps. Your reps are the repetitions of actually going to the gym. So what happens then, you lose the reps of the gym and you were going three days a week and you were just killing it for like four months and you're like, I see these great results and this is working. And then you're like, shoot, it's holidays. And you just don't make the time for it. And you say, I'll get there when I can. And it starts as two days.
Fridays are out, there's too much family stuff going on. I can't do a Friday, that's crazy. So Monday, Wednesday, and then all of a sudden it's like, shoot, by Monday, I'm really tired by the end of the day, so I'll go at least Wednesday, but Wednesday's hump day. So then by the end of January, you're like, now I need a resolution created to get myself back in the gym because I'm starting over. And so I think that's what happens with AR or re-care calls or unscheduled treatment calls. We do them and we do them and we do them and then we're like,
Gosh, Dana, I've got to do this thing or I'm exhausted of this. I can't make any more calls. So we stop and then we're starting at the beginning again, even for re-care calls. If you've called a patient four times to schedule and you're like, Tiff, they're just not coming. You don't know that until they tell you they're not coming. So then in two months, you're starting again at ground zero. That's your first call. It's not your fifth call. You haven't called them five times. Now you call them once and you're starting all over again. So Dana, I think when you talked about the consistency in AR, that's what it made me think of.
Brody does great, my kid does great, and he'll start seeing results and then he falls off and then he's like, my squats are, I can't do as much on my squats again. And I'm like, well, you know, your legs are the first to go, buddy. Like your biggest muscle, those are the first to go. And he's constantly restarting. And I see people do that all the time in the health industry, but I don't think we relate it necessarily to our tasks in our daily job.
And I think Dana, you keyed in on that. And so building that consistency for them, the consistency with the offsite billing company obviously helped this practice alone, but building that consistency on the patient AR and having those two, if it's in office, if you're using an offsite company, matter what, consistent follow-up on offsite company is a thing as well. So no matter what you built, you helped them see where they could build that structure into their schedule, build the systems that needed to be followed.
and stay consistent on it no matter what happened. And Dana, I would have to assume and surmise here that that's where the results really started to trickle in. Because had they done that really well in month one, they may have only had 10 % increase. But because they stuck with it, they were able to triple their results in two months by utilizing those structures. Dana, do you agree? Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, you've
Dana (20:12)
Yeah, absolutely. Yep.
The Dental A Team (20:18)
killed it and you guys again like this comes from you have to start where you are and if you don't have you guys if you're calling us and you're like hey I have ten thousand dollars in my over 90 AR okay great when order to increase collections we're gonna have increased production like great AR I want that but when you call and you say hey Dana I have two hundred fifty thousand dollars in my AR that's an easy space to be like awesome we need to get this collections ramped up there's a lot to be collected here
So start where you are, know there's always consistency to be found. There's always something we're doing inconsistently and I always say anything you do consistently, even if you're consistently inconsistent, okay, if you are consistently inconsistent, you are going to produce a result. Anything you do consistently will produce a result. It's just looking to see is this producing the results I want or not. And if it's an or not, look at your real consistency.
Are you actually doing what you think you're doing? Or are you a little lopsided and topsy-turvy and maybe only making insurance calls once a month? Because that would suck.
Dana (21:23)
Yeah, and it's one of
those spaces to like you said hard conversations, right? And I think that numbers make those conversations a little bit easier because I can say it may feel as if it is consistent, but there's something happening because the result
isn't there. And if we kept it consistent, we can certainly look at what you're doing and is that effective. But so often when we work with teams, it's the consistency piece that we're missing. Offices come in and like they want systems and they want help. And it turns out that a lot of them have systems, right? It's the consistency piece that they haven't quite figured out or, or how to even see that or build it in, like you said, creating that cadence. ? And sometimes it's like you can
makes such massive movement with just one small tweak in consistency.
The Dental A Team (22:13)
Yeah,
beautiful. I think that is wonderful. And Dana, if I were to force you to wrap this into some action items, with that said, what would it be?
Dana (22:23)
Yeah, I would say just pull your AR, right? Know what your AR looks like. Know what your collections percentage is for every month. Remember, we're targeting less than one month's production for AR, 98 % for collections. But the biggest piece is if those numbers aren't where you want them to be.
Build your cadence. Make sure that those pieces are consistent. Talk to your billing coordinators. If you are the billing coordinator, look, where can I make it consistent in my schedule? Map it out, put it on the schedule, tell the team, ? and get to work because it'll make massive change.
The Dental A Team (22:57)
Awesome, I love it. Thank you, Dana. I think that was a beautiful wrap. ? And guys, I just, I love our clients and you guys work so hard for the results that you get and the space to allow us to come in and support you on that is just really, really fun for us. So thank you to all of our clients. Massive thank you to all of our listeners, whether you're a client or not. You are here, you show up with us and hopefully you get some really fantastic.
actionable items and pieces that you can take away to your teams or individually implement within your own position in your company. So you guys, that's a wrap for today. I hope you enjoy. Drop us a five star review. Let us know what you think. And if you have any tips or tricks that you've implemented that have helped increase your collections, we'd love to hear about them. You can leave them in your review. People do read those. tell you that all the time. Or let us know Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. If you have any questions or you want to give Dana some massive kudos or
just pick our brains, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com works as well. So thank you guys and until next time, we'll see you later.