Feb 27 2025 15 mins 2
Kiera shares the most common problems dental practices face — scheduling inefficiencies, high overhead costs, and patient retention — and how to fix them.
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Transcript:
Kiera Dent (00:00.93)
Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today, I just wanna come in here. I've been kind of doing a little bit of research out there and I wanted to help you see that every practice is facing challenges. And really the key is knowing how to turn those problems into opportunities. I love just thinking about, we've got to find ways to turn these problems into opportunities because it can be a problem or an opportunity, depending upon how you choose to view it.
And so today I wanted to just kind of dive into the most common problems that dentists face and actionable solutions for you to actually overcome them. Because reality is if you can know what they are, you can game plan with it. You then are gonna be able to help serve more patients, help your practice, help your team, which is what Dental A Team is all about. Dental A Team was founded to help dentists and teams truly bridge the gap to have more fun, less stress, more profitability, serve patients on a higher level.
and to be able to do it with ease and fun. I love to think about it as like popping confetti when we're coming in to help you with systems. We are not your traditional consulting company. So many offices have told me, Kiera, you guys literally have revolutionized how consulting works. My team loves you. My team's excited for you to come in and you don't just help us with dentistry, but you actually help make us better people. And so that's what we're all about. And I believe honestly that while problems are common with the right systems and the right mindsets, you can actually solve them pretty quickly and effectively. You don't actually have to struggle with it. So,
super fast, actionable episode three of the top problems and how to solve them. So problem number one that I see consistently are scheduling inefficiencies. This is, think, one of the biggest bulk, the biggest beast of all of dentistry is that people really truly don't know how to schedule and schedule effectively and scheduling is an art. It's not a science, but why do we wanna have like unicorns out there when we can just schedule it effectively and efficiently? And what we actually found are...
A lot of offices, when we did deep dives, they missed their financial goals. They missed their production goals, not because they actually weren't able to, but because of open time within their schedule. True. So we've started tracking open time and schedules and realize if we would have just filled those effectively, you would have hit your goals with ease. And so how do we actually get our practices to look at the unproductive gaps, last minute cancellations, overbooking, not scheduling strategically. And the simple solution is block scheduling, also confirming appointments 48 hours in advance.
Kiera Dent (02:18.338)
And then also what's our cancellation policy within our practice? A lot of offices we have changed our model to when we call a patient, we want them to confirm their appointment. And if they haven't confirmed within 48 hours, we literally have a voicemail and let them know we will be moving your appointment. Now we actually pull it off the schedule. We can still see them when we come in. Fantastic. If not, we have solutions for that. But literally we start to retrain our patients. And then also our cancellation policy is if they call me to cancel today and it's less than 48 hours, they get moved out six weeks.
and then we move them forward. But everybody following this policy starts to retrain your patients so we stop having these gaps. I want you to think about your practice as are people so committed to coming to your office just like they do their hair appointments, their nail appointments, any of those like their doctor appointments where they know it takes months and months to get into. Do we have that high level of customer service, high level of customer care? Now, of course, if they call us within 48 hours, fantastic, they're an incredible patient.
But otherwise we are going to make sure that we start to train them. And we also do this with our new patients when they call us. So we're training our new patients at the beginning. They have to send their paperwork in 48 hours before their appointment to make sure their appointment's confirmed. These little things will actually fix the problem. Now cancellations, I don't allow cancellations via voicemail. I change voicemails. I also don't allow cancellations via text message. So we train our teams that these are things that we can't have happen. This is how we respond to the patient.
The reason being is if I can get them on the phone, I can usually find a solution to their problem, keep them on the schedule, figure out what the problem is. Maybe they think it's gonna be too much time. Maybe they just need to scooch down 20 or 30 minutes and I have that availability. But getting them on the phone rather than just the simple text for them to cancel can actually fill your schedule. So when I have practices implement, whether it's the new patient policy of having them confirm their appointment by giving paperwork back, whether it's that we...
have patients they have to call you back to confirm their appointment. Otherwise we scooch them off. We utilize the model of not allowing cancellations via voicemail or text message. Practices literally boost their production by at least 15 to 20 % because now we've got all these holes filled and we're actually able to fix the problem. Some other offices implement deposits or different pieces to that. So right now I would recommend review your current scheduling system and figure out where are the gaps.
Kiera Dent (04:35.828)
what's happening, what's happening consistently, not what we think, but what we actually know. A practice told me we were getting tons of cancellations and I said, fantastic, I want you to track it for 30 days and I want you to let me know what type of cancellations are coming through. And turns out they actually are only having about six. Now, just so you know, a common thing is you will actually have like one to 2 % of your total practice will cancel and that's okay. Like that's normal. We need to not hope and pray every single person.
actually shows up for it, let's add a one or two percent cancellation per day. That way our goals are not having to be perfect, but we can actually have that that room for life happening. That's actually going to set you up for better success as well. OK, problem number two, high overhead costs, really struggling to get our finances in order. And so like rising costs and payroll supplies, like everything with inflation right now, that's really a struggle. And so offices are having this squeeze of how do I manage the overhead of the practice?
the lower reimbursement rates, being able to produce. And what it is is number one, we've got to look at our P &L and know our numbers. Like that's the number one solution is knowing it and figuring out a plan and having budgets for it. Two, we got to figure out, can we increase our insurance rates with our insurance providers? Or can we actually start to diagnose different procedures that are not dependent within insurance, like implants, full ortho, all on X cases, different things that we could bring to the practice that would actually help us be more productive.
Can we also have budgets in place so that way everybody is able to know what we're actually going for and targeting for these overhead costs? Are we monitoring this consistently? Are we removing things that are unnecessary while also making sure that our schedule is productive? And so something that I found is when offices start to just track and monitor weekly with KPIs and the monthly reviewing their PNL, like literally I have a meeting with my CPA every single month. And when I do that, what happens is I actually am accountable to reviewing my numbers.
My CPA is accountable to making sure it's done on time. So I have timely numbers and metrics so I can use them as a guide. and I have budgets to where we know and we look through it every single month to make sure are we on track? Are we off track and why? We set up budgets for team expenses, team outings, team events, marketing, gifts for clients, all those little things that we forget about. Put that into your budget as you build these budgets out. So we better plan, we better project, we better prepare.
Kiera Dent (06:58.316)
This is going to help with high overhead costs. And a big piece on this is also maintaining your team and keeping team and longer team retention, which leads into amazing team celebrations, amazing team culture. This is going to help. So I would recommend weekly adding some CEO time into your schedule. 30 minutes to one hour is really going to help you to schedule your P and L to be able to look for areas to cut unnecessary expenses. And I always set up quarterly with my CPA that they send me all of my expenses for that quarter.
me and the office manager, Britt, we review them, every single one of them, same with Shelby, making sure nothing's in there that's overpaid, underpaid, and that our budgets are actually correct. All right, problem number three, patient retention and challenges. So like keeping these patients, and so patients not coming for followups, they're leaving for other providers, and so it's really this like game of, I mean, even myself, I went to a practice, I'm a fee for service patient, the office did not let me know that the doctor that I had been seeing,
because I work across the nation. I can go to any dentist. Like I do not need to have a set dentist. But I like the consistency. But knowing that about me, and I've been very honest with this practice is I want the same dentist and I want the same hygienist so I have consistent care. Otherwise, it doesn't matter if I keep coming to the same dentist. So I went into my appointment, fee for service patient, they didn't tell me that the dentist had actually left the practice and they were just going to put me in with a brand new dentist. That irritated me so much because I'm like, you didn't tell me.
I wasted my time, I blocked two hours of my schedule and that was so frustrating. And I'm like, that could have been prevented by them just calling me and saying, hey, this is where we're at. We wanna make sure you're taken care of and caring about me as a person. The reality is I'm not actually going back to that practice. I'm looking for another office. But it's something so simple of that. I'm a fee for service patient. I literally pay cash for every one of my visits. I am the dream patient to come in financially. You might think otherwise of my personality. Maybe you wouldn't want me, that's okay.
But just thinking of, have no insurance, I have minimal effort, I come in consistently, I make my appointments, I pay cash for everything I do, and yet one simple phone call of patient care and love and attention, I'm leaving and I'm going to go put that money to someone else. So for this, the solution is like, let's build really strong patient relationships. Let's have really strong systems. Let's make sure that we're offering payment plans within our practice. Let's make sure that our hygiene team is reappointing their patients. Let's say, make sure every patient is leaving.
Kiera Dent (09:22.878)
as a raving fan and also with an appointment. And so really looking at that experience, and this doesn't mean we have to go and do more. It just means we need to be really intentional of right now patients are free agents. Right now a lot of patients are shopping, but the answer is they're not just necessarily shopping for lower prices. I think patients are shopping for love. And I was coaching in office the other day and I told them, said, one way for you to set yourself apart right now is just to be kind.
If you remember and you've been listening since COVID, welcome and thank you. If you're new to this show, welcome. I'm so happy you're here. But in COVID, I called it the COVID crank. I said, think here we are five years later, we're still some people, like we forgot about customer service. We forgot about caring about people. We forgot about making these relationships intentional. And what I found is when we're not intentional with people, people leave, but just even being like an ounce of kind, an ounce of intentionality, an ounce of thought.
You actually can turn a ton of patients into raving fans with minimal effort. So I would say right now is an opportunity for you to be kind, for you to do things a little bit differently, not more, just differently, be kind, be intentional, look for that. What are follow-up calls that we could do and different things. And what I found is offices, I have offices that are raving bands. Like literally there was an office and they were doing like a new patient giveaway. And I kid you not, they had a patient.
So they had a good giveaway. So kudos to this office. They had a patient at their daughter's like birthday party telling everybody you need to join my dentist. They're the best dentist. Everybody loves them. Yes, she had a little bit of ulterior motives because she wanted to win the giveaway. It was a KitchenAid. Just so you know, I'm sure everybody was wondering what it was. But the radical thing about this is this woman at a birthday party was advocating for this practice. And my thoughts are, do you have patients like that that are raving about you that are telling the community that are being a part of it?
And if not, what are some of the things that we can do? And a good way for you to look at this or what are your top 10 patients that you absolutely love? You get so excited to see them on the schedule. Who are they? What are they? Why do we love them? Are there certain patterns and trends of those top 10 patients? And then let's maybe look at 10 patients who haven't returned and can we actually call them and reach out to them personally and offer that kindness find out why my like just try and get them scheduled assume that they're coming there. If they tell us that they've left, be honest and ask for the feedback of, you help me understand just for future?
Kiera Dent (11:44.792)
just true honest feedback and you become a human of why did you leave our practice? That way it doesn't happen to future patients. And when you come in as a human, you'll be shocked at how much your patients respond to you. So here's a couple, like the quick top three things that I've noticed are scheduling and efficiencies, high overhead costs and patient retention, making sure we're retaining those patients. And those are some of the common three problems that I really see. Yes, there's other things. Yes, there's team turnover. Yes, there's hiring hygienists.
Yes, there's all these things, but these are quick things that are within our control. Hiring and hygienist goes into that being kind, amazing practice. Do you also have a team of raving people on your team as a bonus piece for hiring? Do you have an incredible reputation where people want to work for you? It has taken me years and years and years, but it is the most magical thing when I interview people, when people say, Kiera, I've been following for you for years and I've been waiting to work with the Dental A Team.
I hope that your practice has a similar sentiment that people are dying to work with you, that they're waiting to work with you, that they're so excited that there's an opening within your practice because that means you've got raving fan team members. So for that, I just want you to know that every single practice faces challenges, every single one of us do, but being proactive on our solutions, finding true solutions and fixing it forever. We don't just fix it once and one and done. Like we want to fix this forever, not just band-aids, but actual true solutions. So if these sound...
similar to you, if you're like, my gosh, like Kiera you're talking right to me, DM me or visit our website. [email protected] I'm happy to go through a free complimentary practice assessment with you where we like look at your practice with you and we will give you a ton of value, whether you work with us or don't. But just to really kind of give you some of those blind spots. And if you're looking for a consultant, you're like, gosh, it would really just help to have someone with me. I'd love to work with you. I'd love to help you reach out. [email protected] This is the time.
Subscribe to our newsletters for more dental practice tips. You can share this episode with colleagues. This just helps us all rise and to truly impact and inspire. And the reality is dentistry can be hard, but if we do it together, we're all in this together. And I challenge you to be kind, to realize that these problems are just opportunities if we choose to see it that way. And to remember we are truly in the best, best, best industry we could ever be in. We change lives, we get to benefit and impact. And I want you to remember that this is magic that we're creating.
Kiera Dent (14:04.364)
We won't get to do this forever. So let's optimize the time that we have. Let's maximize and let's enjoy. And as always reach out if I can help you. [email protected] As always, thanks for listening. Catch you next time on The Dental A Team podcast.
