Join Casey and Jarrod as they delve into the often-overlooked goldmine of your hygiene department. Discover how optimizing your hygiene processes can unlock potential profits you never knew existed. Don't miss out on this eye-opening episode that could transform your practice's financial health.
Announcer:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Millionaire Dentist Podcast, brought to you by Four Quadrants Advisory. On this podcast, we break down the world of dentistry finances and business practices to help you become the millionaire dentist you deserve to be. Please be advised, we do speak with an honest tongue and may not be safe for work.
Casey Hiers:
Hello and welcome. This is Casey Hiers back at the Millionaire Dentist Podcast in studio with co-host Jarrod Bridgeman.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Hey, good afternoon. How are you?
Casey Hiers:
Great to see you. I'm all hopped up on Mountain Dew.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Oh, boy. I haven't seen you drink a soda pop in a while.
Casey Hiers:
I know. I try to behave, try to be good.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah, same.
Casey Hiers:
This is a dental podcast. I'm drinking Mountain Dew. That's sacrilegious or something, right?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Maybe. But they're also excited that they'll have more business.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Actually, I was looking at my calendar early June. I go to my dentist, dental appointment, which is one of our clients.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Oh, nice.
Casey Hiers:
Great guy. I actually look forward to going. It's a lot of fun.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Nice fella?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. And then my hygienist is a friend of my wife's and we're friends with them.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
You ever just have him come over and come in the garage and take a look at my teeth real quick?
Casey Hiers:
Actually. Well, they are coming over for a garage party for a little after school thing at the end of the week, but I'm not going to give her a sneak peek into my chompers until my scheduled meeting.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Chompers. Oh, my gosh. Casey, let me ask you a question here. Is there an area that you often hear dentists and practice owners out there complaining about that maybe does not usually fall under our purview?
Casey Hiers:
That's a good one. And the fact that I just talked about a hygienist.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah?
Casey Hiers:
Dental hygiene.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
From what I've understood and do understand is there are certain generic base marks, benchmarks, I should say, for how much money the hygienist should be bringing into the practice, correct?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Part of our continuing education is we get into a lot of benchmarks, best practices for healthy practice. And one of those is your hygiene department producing three times what you pay them. That's a general benchmark that our firm goes by and helps our clients hit.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Sure, sure. But there are cases where that is not happening, right? Have you heard any horror stories about that?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Unfortunately, there's a lot of hygiene departments within great practices that are underachieving, that aren't doing great, right? And even as I've gone to different dentists over my life, you can feel it. You can see a happy hygiene team, right? The dental hygienist, in a ways, they're a little bit of the interface of the whole practice because they're spending so much time with the patient. And you can feel, are they in a good mood? Are they in a bad mood? Are they rushed? Do they seem to genuinely care?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's a really good point with your patients have a lot more face time with the hygienists.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. And so if the practice owner is underachieving in a lot of areas in the practice or financially, they can come in grumpy. Well, guess what? "Attitude reflects leadership, captain," I think is a quote from a movie. And so that permeates the whole practice. But from a hygiene department, you've got the exterior, how it feels, how the conversations go. But then you also have, what's the data tell you? Is the hygiene department running optimally? And I think you had said, "Hey, let's..." While this is costing practice owners thousands of dollars and what we provide gets them millions of dollars more, let's dive into a little bit of dental hygiene. What does a good department look like? It's a little more practice management. We're not practice management. We don't get into this stuff. But there's some actionable items that, as a firm, we know can help a hygiene department. So we thought we would share those today.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
For sure. And if you check some of these things off your list, that's just one less thing to worry about, at least for a little bit. So one of the things that I think can cause issues, especially from a patient perspective, would be not getting the time needed for a hygiene visit. As you said, the rush.
Casey Hiers:
It's funny. Bad decisions and bad efficiencies, it just is a domino effect. So if you are a practice that has a lot of insurance and you're on skates and it's a quantity shop and you're just running around trying to get as many people in because you're only getting 57 cents on a dollar, what picture does that paint? Well, you're not going to get as much time.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. Yeah. So not only are your hygienists maybe not necessarily costing you money, but not getting you the earnings that you should be getting just from that alone. And then if you have a lot of insurance, your own work itself could be nearly cut in half.
Casey Hiers:
Well, we've had conversations and we've talked with people. And they've basically said every time, and again, there's factors with everything, but every time a team is coached to increase their hygiene time, production increases as a result, right? Is that a Mr. or Mrs. Obvious statement? Maybe. Maybe. But there's a correlations to everything.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. Well, and if you get people in there, you get them in on time, you spend the quality time that's needed with them, they're more likely to keep returning for their scheduled hygiene visits.
Casey Hiers:
Well, and you can't just say, "Okay, great. Let's add time." There needs to be a plan, right? You need to know exactly what's going to take place during that time. If you're going to increase it, what are you going to add? What is it going to look like? How is it going to be a value of benefit to the patient and to the practice? Because you're not just taking up time in a chair, there needs to be a purpose to it.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
For sure. For sure. And I think that can also tie into something that may be an issue as well as waiting until it's too late to start hygiene. Now, in terms of that, some practices may have had issues with waiting until the patient has some pretty deep pockets in their gumline before they start getting to work on it. And at that point, you're working hard to save what's left instead of getting someone on a proper medical timeline. Because it's scary for a lot of people to walk in and not have their issues fixed where maybe they got bleeding gums, like that saxophonist from The Simpsons. A lot of this so far plays into, in my mind too, patient satisfaction, buyer satisfaction, client satisfaction, whatever you want to call it. The more you feel these people are spending, either they're paying for insurance or they're spending their hard-earned money on this, they want to feel like they're going to a doctor, they're going to someone with a medical profession, and they want that service.
Casey Hiers:
Well, and it comes back to leadership. You got to schedule some time to sit down with your team to outline your specific treatment recommendations, have a mock treatment plan, and then work through what they got right, what they would do differently. It's just like anything, what you're going to put in it, you're going to get out of it. And your hygiene department needs to have clear expectations, a clear path, and to understand big picture, but ultimately to provide some of the best perio treatment that you can provide.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well, Casey, with hygiene and all that, I feel like a lot of dentists may be assuming it's just happening because they haven't heard any complaints about anything. I don't think it's safe to assume that the job is being done. I know you more than likely like your staff and love your staff and a lot of them do work hard, but it's not safe to safely say, "I know it's being done correctly every time."
Casey Hiers:
No, you don't want to assume. One way to find out where you stand is through an audit of your charts. Just randomly pull 15, 20, 25 charts of adults seen in the last 6 to 12 months. How many have a complete perio exam recorded in the last year, right? Chances are very good that if in the last year, and again, that's a great way to see in real time, how's my hygiene department doing?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. So if you pull 15, 20 and half of them are not done correct to completion, then that's a good guesstimate of how the whole year's been.
Casey Hiers:
It's a funny topic that, again, this is outside of our purview a little bit, while we help with efficiencies within a department and some best practices, we don't get into the practice management of mud. I can hear it even with you and I talking about this. This is outside of our purview. These things are important, but it's interesting that practice owners will think that getting one thing right is going to right their ship of income, overhead, retirement. We're also-
Jarrod Bridgeman:
This is just a fraction.
Casey Hiers:
Again, this is thousands and thousands and 10 thousands of dollars. We would call this tripping over pennies to get to dollars. Because for us, the things that we help with, it's millions and millions of dollars over the course of their career.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
But let's say there's a dentist out there listening right now who is not hitting the marks they need to even get to 700 in collections, is something like this where they actually sit down and make a plan and work with their hygiene team could help to boost them in the long run.
Casey Hiers:
Well, that's right. Do a case review meeting, get it on the schedule, talk to your team, set a goal of how much restorative you'd like to see enrolled in hygiene, put protocols in place. That chart audit to look for current charts, that's important, right? Communicate to your team.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's the biggest one, I think, is make sure to stay in communication and be proactive with your team. Be proactive in getting the information. Don't always expect someone to come to you because maybe they didn't do the job to 100% to their own satisfaction. I know I don't run to my boss and tell him myself.
Casey Hiers:
Well, and again, if you do some of these things and you have a clear path and a better outline, you also need to give them enough time, like we said, so they can complete it, so they don't feel like they're on skates. But I think those are all really, really important. Again, this is just one little topic, but it's important.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well, and as you said, we do touch upon hygiene a bit in our CE course. What are some other generic topics you may cover and if someone comes to see you?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. They tell me they feel like they got punched in the stomach and they ask how did I get access to their profit and loss statement, balance sheet and taxes, because the things we cover, so many of you struggle with. Others, you might not be struggling, but you're not getting to the next level. You've hit a level of success. You've plateaued. You're not getting to that next level because you just don't know how, but we cover a wide variety-
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Are some people addicted to pain? Do they come in like, "Casey, you really whoop me on that one. Can you do it again?"
Casey Hiers:
People typically want solutions.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Gotcha, gotcha.
Casey Hiers:
The ego gets in the way.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right. Well, listen, folks, coming up on June 1st, we're going to be at 1933 Lounge by St. Elmo, that's in Fishers, Indiana. We are doing a Bourbon and Real Dental Financial Advice CE course, being hosted by Casey Hiers himself.
Casey Hiers:
So I get to watch people taste bourbon as I present CE on a topic that's going to make them sad.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes, you can't have any though.
Casey Hiers:
But then happy, yes.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Just like booze. And then on June 2nd, also another event in Fishers, we'll be at the Topgolf in Fishers right across from Ikea. That will be avoiding cash flow traps in your practice. If you're in Indiana or you're within the driving radius, the nice thing about Indianapolis is we are just about two hours from every part of the state.
Casey Hiers:
The Crossroads.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
The Crossroads of America. So if you need to sign up and get your free enrollment and earn your CE credits, it is PACE certified, go to fourquadrantsadvisory.com/events. Casey, as usual, you look great and you sounded fantastic. So thank you.
Casey Hiers:
You're sweet.
Announcer:
That's all the time we have today. Thank you to our guests for their insight and for sharing some really great information. And thank you to you, the listener, for tuning in. The Millionaire Dentist Podcast is brought to you by Four Quadrants Advisory. To see if they might be a good fit for you and your practice, go on over to fourquadrantsadvisory.com and see why year after year they retain over 95% of their clients. Thank you again for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
