Increase Profitability by Fully Utilizing Your Dental Practice’s Software System

Show Notes and Resources:

• Eide Bailly’s Dental Practice
• Decisions in Dentistry
• Academy of Dental CPAs
• What Business Areas to Focus on in Your Dental Practice
• The Who, What, When and How of Dental Codes
• Novonee

The Transcript

Art Wiederman: And hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of The Art of Dental Finance and Management with Art Wiederman, CPA. I'm your host, Art Wiederman, CPA. Welcome to my podcast. We're in our fifth year of doing this podcast. I'm so excited and I have a wonderful, wonderful guest and a wonderful, very, very important topic for you today. My guest today is going to be Dayna Johnson. Dayna is a certified Detrick trainer and a workflow expert. So in your office, do you have your front office and your back office people saying, you know, I don't know if we're using our software efficiently and I just feel like we're a little unorganized. Well, we're going to help you with that today. And in fact, what we're going to do is we're going to we're going to go through the ten top things that people are not doing with their dental software. And again, you know, we'll be talking about dendrites. But what we're going to talk about today with Dayna is going to be applicable to any dental software because they all, you know, with different caveats. I'm pretty much the same. So we'll get to Dayna in a moment. I want to thank everybody again for listening to the podcast. And I want to again. Thank my wonderful, wonderful marketing partner Decisions in Dentistry magazine. Lorraine Kent and her team are just absolutely awesome. They are coming out with new products. Business of Dentistry website down the road here. They're coming out with a a new a new magazine having to do with front office, just doing a lot of stuff to help dentists. And on the clinical side, they're off the charts. You can get 140 continuing education courses from them at a very, very reasonable cost. Please go to www.decisionsindentistry.com. If you are looking for a dental specific CPA, I am the dental division director at the CPA firm of IDE Bailey. I'm located out of Tustin, California, in Orange County. Our office is about 10 minutes from Disneyland. I haven't been to Disneyland in a while. It's gotten very expensive, but it's wonderful. I remember going there as a kid, and I remember the first time I went to Disneyland. I went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and my heart almost fell out because when you start the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, you take a straight top drop to the bottom. I have no idea why I'm talking about that, but I do like Disneyland. But that's where we are. And if you are looking for a dental specific CPA, if your CPA is not doing things, this podcast is going to get published, I believe in in June and you will have just finished your taxes if you got a big surprise and you're looking for not getting big surprises, give me a call. My number is 657-279-3243. And my email is awiederman@eideBailey.com. All right. Let's get into our topic today. Let me introduce my guest. My guest is Dayna Johnson. She is the founder and CEO of Novonee. She's a speaker. She's an author. She's a work workflow expert, a member of the group that I've become a part of, which is the speaking and consulting network. Dayna loves her work. She's got more than 25 years of experience in the dental industry. Dayna's passion for efficient, consistent and secure systems is grounded in personal understanding and professional expertise with a watchful eye. Dayna helps dental teams create better workflows for daily, weekly and monthly routines for a more productive, stress free work environment. She knows that your entire day revolves around your practice management software and creating efficient, consistent systems and that that's a key to success. When Dayna is not training and I'm sure she'll tell us a little bit about this when she's not training, speaking, podcasting and she is a fellow podcaster or writing an article, she enjoys spending time with her husband, Kevin Henry. And I got to meet Kevin through CCN. And Kevin and I have become fast friends because we are both passionate about baseball. So she spends time with her husband, Kevin, traveling, golfing and hiking in the mountains. She's a total foodie, and when on the road searches out local restaurants to support the local economy. I think you and I are going to be friends forever. Dayna, welcome.

Dayna Johnson: Definitely.

Art Wiederman: So what's the favorite what's your favorite foods? What do you like?

Dayna Johnson: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, probably My favorite genre of food is Greek. I love Mediterranean food. It is my favorite. And I.

Art Wiederman: Like gyros. Maybe.

Dayna Johnson: I love, you know, this. The Greek salad with all the tomatoes and kalamata olives and feta. And I do love euros, and I just love Mediterranean food.

Art Wiederman: Wow. That's amazing. And you live in Colorado, right?

Dayna Johnson: Yes. Kevin and I moved to Colorado in 2014, and I'm originally from Seattle and Kevin is originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma. And so we found Denver. It was right in the middle of the two, two places. And this is where we found our home.

Art Wiederman: Well, tell us to tell us a little bit about your professional journey before we get into this topic. We got a lot of great information for you guys today.

Dayna Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I kind of fell into dentistry. It wasn't my path of choice when I was in college and I was, you know, going to school to be a marketing executive and, you know, kind of the tides turned a little bit, had some things come up in my life, and I ended up going to work for my uncle, who had a computer company, and we installed computers in the medical and dental offices. And that was my first my first journey into dentistry was actually installing computers. So I'm kind of a techie, you know, I'm kind of a one of those geeks that crawls around on the floor of the screwdriver and installs computers and things like that.

Art Wiederman: I might have to hire you. I have two adult children and I had them for the sole purpose of teaching me about technology.

Dayna Johnson: Yeah, Yeah. And so I had had a technology background to start with, and then I went to work for my first dental practice up in the state of Washington in 1992, I think 92, the year my daughter was born. And so, you know, now I can say I've been in dentistry for over 30 years, which is crazy. Wow. And yeah, and then I became a when my my second dental practice when we converted to the dental work software, I really wanted to learn everything there was about the software. And so in 2005, they were looking for certified trainers. And, and that's when I applied to be a trainer, not really wanting to go out and train, but I just wanted to learn more about the software. And lo and behold, now, you know, 17 years later, I am full time trainer, consultant, speaker, author, all of that. And so it really my path really turned and went a direction that I'm so excited about. I love it.

Art Wiederman: And you're a golfer, too. What what else could be better than that, right?

Dayna Johnson: Oh, I love to golf. Anytime. I'm at a conference and there's golf involved, I'm in I'm in it, you know, So I.

Art Wiederman: Love. But the good news is, if you golf in Colorado, your drives probably go about 40 miles further cause your your your way up there, right?

Dayna Johnson: Yeah. Altitude really plays a part in in how far your driver will hit the ball for sure.

Art Wiederman: I try and I try and play play golf courses where there's a downhill in the fairway so I can say I had a 300 yard drive. That doesn't happen too often. But anyway, so let's start off the conversation. Dayna, talking about kind of an overview. Why is it so important and what are some of the challenges that your dental offices have seen in in in the using the dental software? And why is it important specifically so that the dental software integrates with all parts of the business.

Dayna Johnson: Correct? Yeah, And I love that you called it a business because, you know, I always remind my teams that not only are you in health care, but you are also running a small business. And I was teaching to newbies in dentistry. You know, we have a lot of a lot of new team members in the dental in the dental field that have come from other other industries. And I was teaching to brand new team members at the on the business team, on the admin team. And probably one of the first things I did stress with them is that, you know, we are running a small business and so we have to look at the efficiency of our, our, our day, you know, making sure that we have systems in place that we're booking the goal, that we even know what our production goals are and all those things that we don't even think about on the business side of dentistry. So I'm glad that you brought that up. You know, one of the probably one of my signature phrases that I tell all my clients is, you know, my goal for you is to get you off of those back country roads, you know, taking the scenic route through your software, you know, just taking your sweet old time through the countryside and. You know, my goal is to get you on the expressway. And so when you're in your dental practice, when you are in your software, navigating your software, my goal is to get you on the expressway as fast as possible.

Art Wiederman: I think we want we talked about the fact we want everybody to be, what do you call them, super users of the software?

Dayna Johnson: Yeah, super users.

Art Wiederman: I mean, isn't it true, Dayna, that not only with dead tricks, but with lots of other softwares that most people don't use more than ten or 20% of the capabilities of these softwares?

Dayna Johnson: That is so true. In fact, I do say that we have a we have a live event called Ask the Experts. We do those probably four or five times a month. And I always I had that in the tagline. You know, most offices only use about ten or 15% of what their practice management software is capable of. And I just love all the aha moments that we get. You know, every time we have an event. You know, people that have been using done tricks even for like 20 years, they're like, oh my gosh, I didn't know dendrites could do that. And I'm sure that any trainer with any software, whether it's Egal software or, you know, open download or whatever, they probably hear the same things. They see those light bulb moments, those eyes light up when you learn something new. And I just love that. That's what really keeps me going every day.

Art Wiederman: And what's great is if you have team members who want to learn and they're looking for resources like you and they go on to these calls. And so they're like waiting for the next pearl that Dayna can say, Oh, my God, I can save 10 minutes on this. And those are the types of team members that are golden. So.

Dayna Johnson: Oh, yeah.

Art Wiederman: Oh, yeah. So what's your favorite thing about dendrites?

Dayna Johnson: Oh, probably one of my favorite things about dentricts is the ability to customize it for your unique practice. And I know that sometimes can be a love hate relationship because dendrites are so comprehensive and there are several ways to do things. There's several different ways that you could customize it or navigate it. But that's really the one thing I love about it is that you can make it work for you. And I love getting creative with the software and giving the office what they want out of the software. And I know that if if some if a doctor is looking to change the change, change his software because maybe he thinks that it doesn't do what he really wants it to do, just give me 10 minutes with that person, give me 10 minutes with that doctor. And I know I can I can make the software do what they want it to do. And and so that's the funniest thing I love about it.

Art Wiederman: Do you get the opportunity to get someone who is maybe even either opening a new office or is changing and you get to structure design tricks exactly the way you want it?

Dayna Johnson: Yes, many times I do. In fact, it's so funny. I was just talking with a doctor this morning and she is she has a brand new startup and you don't see startups very often. Typically, we see practices that are being transferred. The ownership might be transferred, but she has a brand new startup. I'm super excited to work with her because we get to we get to have this blank canvas and she can do whatever she wants to. And I'm really excited to help her to grow the practice that she really dreams of. And and most of the time I'm working with practices that have been using dendrites for a while. So to customize it for them is a little bit more challenging just because we have a lot of history to work with, but it's still doable.

Art Wiederman: Do you find sometimes some resistance from the front office like, Well, I know how to use dendrites and I don't really want to change?

Dayna Johnson: Yes, all the time. And those are probably my funnest, my best experiences, you know, because because I'm I used to be there. I was a I was a a know it all or I thought I was a know it all. And I I'm pretty hard hardcore, you know, OCD. I like things my way as Kevin, you know, I like things my.

Art Wiederman: Ah, you and I, brother and sister, I really need to know that because I use the same thing with me. It's like, I know, gosh, I make sure that I blocked the car three times before I go in the house, you know?

Dayna Johnson: Yeah. So, you know, I've been there. I've been that person that I am. I'm hard to change, but once I show them, I'm so I get their permission, you know? Do I have your permission to that? I can show you something that maybe you haven't seen before or, you know, is it okay if I show you a different way? You know, I don't want to change you, but I do at least want the opportunity to show you something that maybe you haven't seen. And a lot of times once I show them the the workflow efficiency, how much time it can save them, how much money it can save them, then they're all I got them in my back pocket.

Art Wiederman: Beautiful. I love that. All right, let's get into this. So we're going to talk about the top ten things that you might not even know exist in your software. So let's I'm just going to team up for you. Let's start off with finding a new appointment time. Yeah, I can only come in after 3 p.m.. Or when's your first appointment?

Dayna Johnson: So talk about.

Art Wiederman: That.

Dayna Johnson: Yeah, exactly. And you know, so when you're working at the front desk, probably one of the most common phone calls that you're going to get is, you know, I need to schedule my next appointment, but I can only come in on Fridays or I can only come in on Tuesday afternoons after 4:00. And of course, those are going to be your most popular times. And, you know, dental practices right now are probably the busiest that they have been in years. Yes. And and most practices are booking out months in advance. And so, you know, to save yourself time instead of clicking through each day, day by day by day, you should have a feature in your software where you can search for availability on a certain day or filter it by a certain time of day, maybe even by a by a provider. And so that way then the software will pull up the first available openings in those filtering in those parameters that you're searching for. So it definitely can save you a ton of time if you're looking for a particular day or time. Or searching for the first opening with a particular provider. And so, you know, in the don't work software, it's called find new appointment time. And you know in your software you may just need to Google your resources and see what the feature is called in your software. But that's probably one of the biggest time savers and also one of the biggest aha moments that I see in general practice is, you know, I get out a good up front office team members that have been using done tricks for 20 years and they're like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that icon was there. And so it just makes me so happy that, that I can pull up this little nugget for people.

Art Wiederman: And it makes the patient happy because you're sitting there and the patient says, I can only come in after 3 p.m. and then instantly you hit a couple of buttons and the next thing you know is, okay, well, I've got 4:00 on this day. If I and then you look like you really know what you're doing, right?

Dayna Johnson: Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and you can master this this filter tool. You can pull up the first available openings, you know, with probably just three or four clicks. And so it's super efficient. Saves you a ton of time, makes you look like a superhero. And, you know, I love it. It just people don't want to be on the phone for very long. And so you want to try and get them scheduled as quickly as possible because time is money these days.

Art Wiederman: Absolutely. For both for both you at the front desk and your patient. So. All right. Next one, scared next scheduled meeting scheduled that you start searching for an appointment time for the patient, only to have already forgotten their name or what they're trying to schedule for. How does that one work?

Dayna Johnson: And this is you know, this is something that I always struggle with because names are not my strength. Right. So, you know, if you ever somebody ever asks you, like maybe in a job interview, you know, what is your biggest weakness? Well, my biggest weakness is names. And even when I was in my other my dental practice for 18 years, I would have the patient standing in front of me. I'd go out searching for appointment times. And then by the time I was searching my schedule, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I totally, if already forgotten this person's name. And so what I always teach my teams to do is build the appointment first. And in the Detrick software, there's this super handy button right in the appointment. It's called schedule next and it's abbreviated to C D schedule next, and it lets you actually build the appointment so you can put in all the details, you can put in the time units, you can put in who they're scheduled with, and then you can, you know, just print what we call pin board it. So it puts it in this little holding bucket and then go out and find the appointment time. And that way you're not doing it just the opposite way. You're you're building the appointment first and then finding the appointment time instead of finding the appointment time and then building the appointment. And, you know, by the time you find the appointment time, you've already forgotten what you're scheduling for them. So it just kind of turns the process around a little bit. And in in my experience watching team members use this feature, it has saved them a lot of time in scheduling. So that's why I love this feature and I find that just so many people don't know what's there. And so I love to pointed out because it's one of my favorite kind of little nuggets that in the centric software that most people don't know about. And so, you know, whatever software you're using, just look and see if there is a way that you can actually build the appointment first and then and then go out and seek the appointment time. It just really saves you a ton of time with scheduling.

Art Wiederman: So we kind of find we kind of use the find new appointment time in the schedule next kind of hand in hand, right?

Dayna Johnson: Yeah, for sure. Agreed with that. Yep. They all, they both do work hand hand-to-hand together.

Art Wiederman: All right. Payment are payment agreements. You know, we have lots of, you know, practices. We're allowing patients to make payments often than they think. So talking about the payment agreements function of dangereux.

Dayna Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's funny. I'll go into work with I'll go into an office and, you know, one of the things that we talk about a lot when I go out and train is accounts receivable. And, you know, with you being a CPA, I'm sure that you work a lot with your clients on on their accounts receivable and things like that. And what I find with accounts receivable is that offices are allowing patients to make payment agreements more than they think they are. And and because all of Oster going through the. Accounts receivable report, which I like the collection manager. It's called the Collection manager and will be going through the collection manager report and it will be, I'll be pointing out this open account balance. You know, that might be over 90 days past due. And I'm like, okay, tell me about that. And, you know, and then the office manager will say, Oh, that patient's making payments. And, you know, so I look at it and I'm like, Well, I thought you said you don't allow patients to make payments. So I do find that offices are allowing patients to make more payments than they really realize they are. So I love for I love to teach my offices to actually enter the payment agreement into the software and in the system. It's called payment agreements. And there's several reasons why I love to use this feature. I don't I don't love payment agreements because carrying that balance is risky. But if you're going to allow your patients to do payment agreements, it may be they're in ortho and they're going to be in ortho for a year or so. So you're going to allow them to make a payment agreement, make sure it's in the software so the entire team knows that it's there and they can see it in the software. They can see the patient is in a payment agreement. They can see what their monthly payment, the agreed amount is per month. It shows up on the billing statement. Also in the dental software, you can attach a credit card on file for your payment agreements. So then the payment agreement system will actually auto post the patient's payment, auto pull it from the credit card, and then post it to the patient ledger automatically. So it's very efficient. It's it's secure because it's using a secure system for the payment, the credit card on file. So it really makes the process just gets everybody on the same page so that the payment agreement isn't in somebody's head, you know, and that then nobody knows that the patient's in a payment agreement. So it gets it into the computer where everybody can see it.

Art Wiederman: And remember, folks, again, we're talking about dental X, but just, you know, you can listen to this podcast over and over again. And, you know, if you're using a different software, many of these softwares have the same features. Now, what do we do about a situation now, I'm sure you've never run into this, Dayna, where the $3,000 treatment plan has been accepted. The patient goes up and the front office says, Mrs. Smith, that's 3000. Would you like to take care of that by cash check or credit card? And and she says, Oh, no. Doctor told me I could pay that over six months. You've never seen that, right?

Dayna Johnson: Well, I don't because I teach my office. In fact.

Art Wiederman: That's right. Your pet, your clients don't. But I've heard that more of I mean, I.

Dayna Johnson: Get so often.

Art Wiederman: People call me up about this.

Dayna Johnson: I do hear that.

Art Wiederman: You've got to talk to him, you know.

Dayna Johnson: I know. I know. But, you know, my rule when I work with offices is patients don't get on the schedule without a financial arrangement. And so we know before the patient even walks in the door what the arrangement is so that they can the patient, there's no surprises. And if the so is. But if the doctor does override the the admin team, which that does happen, then I would I would highly recommend making sure that the payment arrangement is in the software so that everybody is on the same page. And then when the doctor and the office manager go, we are going over the over 90 day past due account, then the office manager can remind the doctor that you okayed this payment arrangement.

Art Wiederman: Now you okayed it, you made it and you know you're not supposed. Well, she she lost her job. Yeah, I know. Okay. Tracking gratuities and referrals. We like gratuities and referrals, You know, knowing where your new patients are coming from. Talk about that feature.

Dayna Johnson: Exactly. Exactly. Such an important tool and really critical when you are wanting to know how your patients are finding you. You know, and we do we do rely a lot on new patients to grow our practice. We know that every practice has some form of attrition. So you are losing patients for one reason or another. And then so new patients, it's really important for us to know how are they finding us? And, you know, depending on where your referrals are coming from, will depend on where your marketing dollars are going to be spent. And yeah, and how much of a marketing budget do you have? Where should you be spending those marketing dollars, whether it's social media, whether it's a a val tack ad in your local community or you know, you're supporting your. Local baseball team. You know, wherever you're getting your referrals, it's really important that you're tracking those in your software. So one thing I love about tricks is there are several reports for getting analytics about your referral sources and also in the generic software. So you may want to also check your software is we can also make the referral source a a required field. And so when your new patients are scheduling, you can force your team, your schedulers, to ask for a referral. Then they can even create the appointment without asking for the referral. And so we can make that a required field, which I think is really important. And, and that way we can get analytics, we can get statistical information about our referral sources, you know, how much money our patients are spending on production from different referral sources. So we can kind of rate our referral sources by, you know, ABC or, you know, our top five referral sources. So that's really good that we can get reports. And I'm sure every practice management software can get a referral report, an analytics report about their referral sources, and then tracking gratuities as a way that we can say, okay, you know, Susie Smith, she referred this patient in, you know, this is her her third referral. We're going to send her a gift card to one of the local restaurants in our community, and we're going to put that gratuity in her account so that we can see so we can keep track of our gratuities and what we've given our referral sources for, you know, thank you gifts.

Art Wiederman: Does this function, the tracking gratuities, referrals also generate a thank you letter. How do you work with that? Do you write a thank you? You recommend that doctors send a thank you letter or a thank you email for every referral? I mean, how does how do you do that?

Dayna Johnson: I do. I really think it's important to thank every referral, especially if it's a patient of record. So if you have a patient that has referred their friends or family, I think it's really important that you either send a letter which you can generate a, you know, a templated letter, and the doctor could just sign the name, his name or her name, or you could just fill out maybe a thank you card or something. I think it is important that we personally thank our referrals, especially if they're if it's coming from a patient.

Art Wiederman: Absolutely. I want to take before we get to the rest of these and we will get to all of them today. Dayna, take a second and tell us a little bit about what you do, how you do it. And I want you to give out your contact information because doctors I talked to front office people in dental offices all the time. And I do hear the frustrations of being overwhelmed and I've got too much to do. I got to I've got to, you know, Bill, insurance companies, I've got to collect insurance money. I have to collect payments. I've got to make appointments. I've got to do this. I got to do that. And it never always gets done. And through working with someone like Dayna, you have the opportunity to save your front office person time so they have the time to make those collection calls or they have the time to make those appointments for you. You know, maybe get those patients that have not, you know, who are active patients, who are not who haven't been in in the last 12 months. So, Dayna, talk a little bit about what you do. You work all over the country, right?

Dayna Johnson: Yes, I do.

Art Wiederman: Wherever there's a golf course right now.

Dayna Johnson: Wherever there's a golf course or a good restaurant, you know?

Art Wiederman: Well, that's that's pretty much all over the country. So tell us a little bit about what you do and then I'd like you to give out your not only your phone number, but what website, whatever you've got, and it'll also be in the show notes.

Dayna Johnson: Perfect. Yes. So there's a couple of different ways that I work with with practices. The one of the ways that I work with practices is super easy to jump into. You could jump into it right now is kind of a DIY process with a little bit of help from me, and that's our membership. So, you know, if you go to Novonee.com and it's energy and ecom and you go to Novonee.com, there's a green joint now button in the upper right corner, you can get a little bit more about our membership right away. You could jump into the membership right now, and it's full of a library of courses. We do a lot of live sessions throughout the month, so that's a good kind of DIY with a little bit of help from me and my team. Now if you are want something more comprehensive, something more personalized to your practice, then I am one of the few trainers that is traveling the country. I'm in several different offices each month. And I usually come in for about anywhere from 2 to 4 days with the practice and spend some quality time with the team and, you know, intense learning, lots of hands on, lots of workflow enhancements. You know, I get to get the implementation started like right away. So I'm there looking over your shoulder, making sure that you're getting getting it done while I'm there. And then we create kind of a 30, 60, 90 day plan to make sure that the implementation keeps going even after I leave. And so those are kind of the ways that I that I work with with dental teams right now.

Art Wiederman: That's great. So how does how do folks get a hold of you? You have a website phone number? Yeah.

Dayna Johnson: Yeah, there's several ways. If you go to my website, I have live chat. You can chat with my team. You can call a phone number. You can call you can email me directly, which is Dayna Dayna@Novonee.com That's probably the easiest way. I'll go to the website and just live chat with our team.

Art Wiederman: Okay. Is there a phone number if they want to give you a call.

Dayna Johnson: Yeah. I mean, my my cell, you can call my cell, which is 425-238-3699. If you get the voicemail, then I would just dive right over to the website and live chat because I get the live chat pretty easily.

Art Wiederman: And that spelled out again. Novonee spelled the the website again for everybody.

Dayna Johnson: Yeah. Novonee.com.

Art Wiederman: Sounds great. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I would encourage you if you guys are having challenges with your software, with your dentist, give Dayna call. She's as good as it gets at this stuff. All right, let's go to the next one. Sending to the dead Tricks document center, which is we're trying to save unnecessary scanning, wasted paper, hard drive storage space. So talk about that feature.

Dayna Johnson: Yeah, exactly. You know, in the world of going paperless, we are still getting paper for we get paper from the outside world. We get paper in the mail, we get, we get things emailed from our specialists emailed. And so what I see a lot of times is that the team, the admin team that is checking the email will print the letter that's attached to the email, they'll print it, scan it into the document center. When we can avoid that whole extra step by every done tricks software install comes with a printer driver called Send to Denver X Document Center. And what it does is it avoids the process of printing and scanning and it does a virtual print to the document center. So it saves disk space, saves the office a ton of time, and it's probably one of the most unused features and probably one of the most important. We can send a treatment plan to the document center virtually with that printer driver, and then you can always email out of the document center. So sending to the document center will save you a lot of paper, a lot of time, and it's just one of those, you know, hidden treasures inside of your software.

Art Wiederman: Well, that's what we're talking about today, is the top ten things you might not know exist and then tracks.

Dayna Johnson: Exactly.

Art Wiederman: Okay. Now now they don't have a good day scheduling program. Not a really good day. It's perfect day schedule. Yeah, right. Yeah. I remember when I was part of the Pride Institute, the Pacific Institute, Jim Pride, Phil Whitener and Deborah Englehart. Nash, our both our good friend who's who was part of it back in the eighties. We used to talk about, you know, 65 to 80% of your production should be done in the morning when you're fresh and, you know, have energy and stuff. So talk about how the perfect day scheduling module in districts works.

Dayna Johnson: Absolutely. But first, I'm just going to go back to Pride because the dental practice that I worked at for about eight years up in the state of Washington was a pride office. And also the interesting thing about my doctor was my doctor was a client of Deborah's up in Washington. So such a small world I know.

Art Wiederman: Well, Deborah's originally from Washington State. I know that. And now she's with her wonderful, incredibly talented husband, Dr. Ross Nash, and they run the Institute in North Carolina. So, yeah, she was originally from Seattle. I know you're from the Washington area.

Dayna Johnson: So small. I know. Small world.

Art Wiederman: Small world Perfect day. Scheduling.

Dayna Johnson: Perfect day scheduling. I love perfect day scheduling, especially now. And I talked a lot about this in like first quarter of this year about onboarding new team members, having a good cross training program. Because perfect day scheduling gives you that roadmap for making sure that your schedule is productive, making sure that you're you know, you're not booking your doctors so that they don't have to wear roller skates every day. And, you know, making sure that your team is getting out on time, you're seeing patients on time. So perfect day scheduling gives you that roadmap so that you your team knows exactly where to put the appropriate appointment. And this really helps to make sure that you are booking to your goal that you are you have a good mix of procedures in your hygiene schedule so that you have available reservations for three and four month parallel maintenance patients that you have reservation open times for new patients that you're not triple booking your doctor. And so perfect day scheduling gives you that roadmap and it's really, really critical for especially those new new team members that are just now getting into scheduling and they might not know where to put things. And so in your software, if you're not using done tricks, see if you have a way of mapping out your schedule, a way that you can like make blocks for certain types of appointments so that your team knows exactly where to schedule the appropriate appointments.

Art Wiederman: I mean, I talked to lots of coaches and consultants over the years and they say, well, you should maybe have two hour blocks or two hour and a half blocks in the morning. And I talked to lots of doctors, and I'm sure you hear this, too. Maybe the biggest frustration they have is, oh my God, Dayna, we're busy, but we're not productive.

Dayna Johnson: Exactly.

Art Wiederman: Yes. So that's a that's a big deal. Okay. And then as you talked about goal tracking, that's the next one. Talk about that function and dendrites.

Dayna Johnson: Yeah, it kind of goes hand in hand because every office should have production goals. And, you know, so a lot of times my offices will say, okay, well, we're just going to increase our our production numbers from last year. We're just going to increase them by ten or 20%. I'm like, that's not how goals work. Okay. No. And I always point my doctors back to their CPA, their financial planner, whoever is working with the practice, we're working with the doctor on their financial goals, which is what you do, you know, every day for your doctors. Yes. And I'm like, goals, production goals are built from the practice overhead, you know, what do you want your practice overhead to be? What do you want your profit margin to be? Then? That's what we book to. And you know, because once you know what you want your overhead to be or you want your profit margin to be, then we know what we need to collect in order to make that happen. Once we know what we need to collect now we know what we need to produce. And so that's just kind of the the idea behind creating your goals. Once you know what your goal is, let's say your production goal is, you know, $6,000 a day. And, you know, part of that goal is hygiene. Part of that goal is doctor. And so depending on what your hygiene goal is, which in in, you know, my consulting and a lot of consultants will agree that hygienist should be producing three times their total compensation and so that's pretty easy to define. Your hygiene goal is pretty easy to define. So you determine what your hygiene goal is. Then you can put in your hygiene producers their goals into the software so that they can now track their production versus their goal. See, are they on track or are they at goal for the month? Are they at goal for the day? And then you can see the same thing for your doctors. Are your doctors on track for goal for today? And there's several reports and screenshots that we can see in the software to get a really kind of an at a glance idea of are we at goal for today? Are we at goal for the month? And that way you know you know you can forecast if you need to step it up or if you can, you know, kind of sit back and have a cool rest of the month because you're already at goal here.

Art Wiederman: Here's the cool thing about being able to have goals and be able to get that next production block in. There is in a in a dental practice, if you do an additional crown, let's say that's, you know, 1500 dollars. You don't have to add any additional team members. You don't pay any additional rent, you don't have any additional insurance. Your your marginal overhead. Your additional overhead for that crowd is lab and supplies, which is usually about, you know, 15%. If you have a CAD cam machine, it's a lot less. So if I can add $10,000 in production by using this gold tracking mechanism in dead tracks, I can make an additional $8,000 a month. I mean, that's the cool thing about this.

Dayna Johnson: So definitely.

Art Wiederman: Yeah. So I more information, but we all want more information, right?

Dayna Johnson: We do. Yeah.

Art Wiederman: We're on the phone with mom. She wants to know when her three kids and husbands are scheduled and what are they doing. We don't even talk to each other. So what? How does that work?

Dayna Johnson: Yeah, I know. I guess I get this question a lot, Dayna. What is the fastest way for me to find a family's appointments? And so this is the fastest way. You know, if you just double click on your appointment book anywhere in an open slot and you find the family and click on the more information button, you're going to pop up your family's appointments. And this is this is definitely one of those lightbulb moments where it's such an easy thing and and people are like, Oh my gosh, I had no idea that that button was even there. And it just really streamlines the process of finding the next appointments. Winner When is everyone in this family due for their next re care visit? It's very helpful for the offices where you might have family members that have different last names because it puts everybody from the whole family into one screen. So you can see everybody in the family, no matter what their last name is.

Art Wiederman: And one of the things and I know going back to the gold tracking that we have a practice advisor report in daily huddle. I mean, yes, any time a doctor says we don't do a morning huddle, I just make my head start to explode. It's just like.

Dayna Johnson: I agree.

Art Wiederman: You know, And it's like and as part of the the huddle and part of this more information, you know, when you're on the phone with or when Mrs. I'm sorry where Mrs. Smith is and say you know we're will consider we haven't seen Johnny and Stevie and your husband and they haven't been in in a while. Is everybody okay. We're real concerned. Yeah. I mean this is all part of production and incremental production and all this stuff linking alternate cases. When we're giving the patient options for treatment, they can only choose one. How does that work?

Dayna Johnson: Yeah, I mean, we we're always giving patients options. Of course, that's our one thing that we do in treatment planning every day, you know, whether we're giving them an option between a bridge and implant in our PD, or maybe we're giving them a option between amalgam and composite. You know, it's important that we do have those options listed in our software so that we do have that kind of that trail of treatment plan, treatment, treatment planning options. So it's really nice in the generic software that we can link those alternate cases together, those save that you're giving the patient three options to replace that missing tooth. And you can link those three cases together. It just gives the software, gives your team a really quick visual that those are not three separate treatment plans. Those are three treatment plans where the patient has has to choose one of them. And and then once the patient chooses what they want to schedule, then you can just quickly accept the one that they're choosing and then at the software will automatically reject the other two. But it keeps it in the software, it keeps it in the history. So you can always look at it. You can always let the patient know, we did give you those other two options. You decided to go with the bridge and just, you know, keeps the integrity of your documentation intact so that you do have kind of I say that paper trail, but it's not paper, but it's a digital trail of what you offered the patient.

Art Wiederman: No, that's great. And then the last one we've got here is patient friendly descriptions. Now, this is something I've heard doctors and I've actually had arguments with doctors like, yeah, so so you're you're you're telling a patient they need a crown, porcelain fuzed, a noble metal and the margin is going to be five millimeters. You know, nobody cares.

Dayna Johnson: I know.

Art Wiederman: Is it going to make me feel better? Am I going to look better? So, yeah, when we're talking about presenting a case, whether it's the doctor or the or the front office, I mean, so you're saying districts has something that can give me a description that doesn't sound like I'm. I went to Caltech and I'm speaking, you know, like from the Big Bang Theory, right?

Dayna Johnson: Right, Right. You know, you don't have to you don't have to read through the ADA book to understand what it's talking about, you know, because most patients don't know what a reason to surf post is. You know, they have no idea what that is. But if you said it's a two colored feeling. You know, made out of porcelain material. They understand that. And another thing, that perfect day or I mean patient friendly descriptions is good for are your Spanish speaking patients or your you know, they speak a different language. And if you can help to give the patient something that they can understand a little bit more clearly, then it helps build the patient relationships. It helps you to increase patient loyalty, all those kinds of things. So patient friendly descriptions is really nice. With treatment planning. It's really helpful for being able to give the patient something that they can clearly understand in layman's language, and it's just really helpful, especially with treatment planning.

Art Wiederman: So now we've gone through these ten items. What are the biggest before we wrap this up, and I'd love to talk to you for hours and hours about, you know, what club do you use for hundred and 50? You know, that's golf. I'm sorry we can't talk about that. But anyway, what's the biggest mistakes that you see people make with with Dan Drake's dental software?

Dayna Johnson: Yeah, I think probably one of the biggest mistakes that I see is that. But I mean, that goes for several of them. But one of the biggest is that we're we're not treating our practice like a business. And we are we don't have a really good system for our daily, weekly, monthly workflow so that we are, you know, we're kind of running around like chickens with their heads cut off or, you know, we're running by the seat of our pants because we don't have a good system in place. And, you know, when we when we practice like that, when we don't have good systems, then it is costing our practice a lot of money in inefficiencies in, you know, team turnover. Because if you don't have a good onboarding process, get your team members into a good system, then you will have higher turnover and higher turnover is costing your practice a lot of money and.

Art Wiederman: Thousands of dollars. Yes.

Dayna Johnson: Oh, it's incredible. And so I think that's probably the biggest mistake I see is not having really good systems for onboarding and just a good daily workflow. And and then, you know, then I could go down the list, you know, documentation and all different places. You know, your can't find information and the list goes on and on.

Art Wiederman: But, but at the end of the day, Dayna, this software was designed by some really smart people, I'm assuming, and if you learn to use it, that's the whole point of today's conversation, is if you learn to use this software correctly and efficiently, it's going to save your practice time and it's going to save you money and you're going to have a more enjoyable experience of your job and your patients are going to be happier. Other than that, there's no big deal about using software correctly, right?

Dayna Johnson: Well, and the thing about software art that, you know, is it's constantly evolving and there's constant updates. And, you know, I just did an update this morning, my software updated this morning. The software is being updated about every 6 to 8 weeks. And and so, you know, there's always something new to learn. And so it's not a a learn it and forget it type of process. It is a learn it and then learn it again and then continue learning it. And it's just a constant evolution of of process.

Art Wiederman: So the last thing I want to ask you is so we have a front office person who's kind of listening to this and their brain is about ready to explode. Yeah, but they want to learn more. And so once you teach somebody or once they go to some training and I'm assuming if you buy dendrites, dendrites and tricks has training that comes with it, right? I mean, it cannot be you. It but maybe somebody like you. And how often what do you recommend to the front office people that the doctors can talk to the front office people and say, all right, so now I've gone through this training with Dayna. How often do we revisit this or how often do it? I mean, because there's always things you forget. I mean, how do we always update?

Dayna Johnson: Well, you know, I think it kind of depends on the practice budget. And, you know, if they are if they have a customer support plan with their generic software, they have access to the Dendrites Resource Center. They have access to what are called the Dendrites Mastery tracks, which is kind of a how to process with dendrites. They give you like a certification, not a certification, but a certificate that you completed the course, you know. So I would say that if you are only wanting to use the districts resources, then I would make sure that you're tapping into any new videos that are coming out on a regular basis. Make sure that you're tapping into the district's newsletter and the magazine and constantly reading like every single month. Now, if you feel like you're you're wanting more, you know, you really want to deep dive into more customization, more of the why, Why would I do it this way? Or I, I really feel like I need some more uniqueness to my for my practice and you're willing to spend a little bit extra money then my membership is also like a regular monthly recurring learning process. We are constantly doing live events every month. We are constantly adding new courses, updating our courses when a new Detrick software comes out. And so I feel learning is a definitely an ongoing process. It's not something that you do today and then you learn it and forget and like you'd never have to do it again. It's it's a constant learning process. And and that's what keeps our brain young. You know, I listen to a podcast the other day about cognitive decline and, you know, if we want to continually keep our brain healthy and reduce the cognitive decline in our brains, we have to constantly keep teaching ourselves things. And what better way to just keep learning more about your software?

Art Wiederman: Oh, well, exactly. And the thing is, doctors and we'll kind of put a bow on this here is if you bring someone like Dayna in and I can assure you that if you bring someone like Dayna in or if you bring Dayna in, she's going to improve your practice. It's not like, well, it's she can't she's going to do that. But you're going to find out about your team if you bring someone in like Dayna, who knows these ten things that you're not using that can save you time and money and your front office person just kind of puts their hand up and says, No, no, I like the way we're doing things now. I don't think we need to. Then you may need a new team member, and that might be a great entree to letting you know that your team member is not the right team member. And you've seen that, too, right, Dayna?

Dayna Johnson: Oh, definitely. Definitely. You've seen, you know, the the a good a good team member just in the wrong seat, you know, and we might just have to put her in a different job description and she might be a really great human and you want to keep her on team but she just might be in the wrong seat. So it's also about having butts in the right seats and. Right. And but then if if the person is toxic, then we know we need to get that person out of the office.

Art Wiederman: And that's called the ejector seat. That's the one.

Dayna Johnson: That.

Art Wiederman: Launches them in outer space. Yeah. Dayna Johnson, Certified Metrics trainer and workflow expert, thank you so much for this great information. One more time. How do people get a hold of you? Your website, phone number or things like that?

Dayna Johnson: Yeah. Then please.

Art Wiederman: Stay. Please stay with me as I take the podcast out.

Dayna Johnson: Sounds good. Thank you. Ah, this was a pleasure meeting you. Talking with you. I can't wait to play golf with you. It's good.

Art Wiederman: Oh, my God. You're going to have so much fun. And by the way, we have we have in golf, just so you understand, my last name is Lederman. So we have Lederman Golf Association rules that we play by the rulebook that I keep in my head. So, like, I'll pull out rule 72 A6 be small. I that says I can wedge that from behind the tree and remember that all scores are quoted APR.

Dayna Johnson: Oh, got it. Okay, there you go.

Art Wiederman: So I mean, yeah, but you know, golf is my passion. I've told my audience knows that.

Dayna Johnson: Yes. So the best way to get a hold of me is to go to my website, Novonee.com, and I have live chat. I get the live chat instantly when you get on the live chat and then and that we will get back in touch with you or email me. That's also a quick way to get to me is Dayna@novonee.com

Art Wiederman: Go ahead and that and that's a white and a folks.

Dayna Johnson: Yes. Yes. And and then you can always reach me on my cell phone. If I'm in an office, though, I won't answer my phone, of course, because I'm I'm one on one with a client. And so phone calls are probably the the slowest way to get to me. But it's my cell phone is 4252383699.

Art Wiederman: Interesting. Dayna, stay with me as I take this out. But thank you so much for your time and your expertise today and helping our audience.

Dayna Johnson: Thank you for having me. It is a pleasure.

Art Wiederman: You're welcome. And folks, thank you again for the honor and the privilege of your time. I am I'm so passionate about this podcast. It's just something where we're approaching five years at the end of this year, and I know we've helped a lot of people. I get emails from you, I get calls from you about the fact that the information is good. You know, if you're a new listener to the podcast, you go onto your podcast app and all of them are there. It's a library, it's a practice management and financial management library. We have covered every topic that I can think of. We haven't covered this topic. This is a new one, the one we did today. But please go on and look at it and if it's of help to your practice, spend time working on your practice, not just in your practice. You'll make more money, you'll have more joy in your life. I'm just telling you, it's, you know, we go back to the definition of insanity is doing the same. Over and over again and expecting a different result, and that just doesn't happen. So. Thank you again to our wonderful marketing partner, Decisions and Dentistry magazine. You know, 140 wonderful continuing education courses that are you can buy for a very reasonable price get you see the best clinical content, the best clinical articles that you're ever going to see. I'm going to have some articles coming up in the magazine on the website, I believe here in 2023. That's w w w that decisionsindentistry.com if you are looking for a dental CPA and our firm we have we're I believe it's the 19th largest CPA firm in the country but we handle dental practices like yours, lots and lots of them. We have about a thousand dentists clients in our offices in the western United States. If you need help on understanding your numbers, tax and financial planning. If you have a cybersecurity issue, we have a cybersecurity group. It took me several times to pronounce the word cybersecurity, but it's a big deal if someone tries to hack and take over your computer, give me a call 657-279-3243. Or email me at awiederman@eidebailey.com. And with that folks, that will do it for this edition of The Art of Dental Finance and Management with Art Wiederman, CPA. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time. Bye bye.