Recording: Close the Loop: Keep Patients on Track and Schedules Full

Hi, everyone. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today. My name's Aaron. I lead marketing at Yapi and Doctor Logic. Today's session is called close the loop, keep patients on track and schedules full. We'll be focusing on recall and treatment plan follow-up and how high performing dental teams create consistent follow-up that improves patient outcomes, experience, and practice performance. A few housekeeping items before we jump in. First, this webinar is scheduled for about sixty minutes. Feel free to drop questions into the q and a box as we go, and we'll get to your questions at the end of the presentation. Second, we're recording today's session, and we'll send out the recording and resources to everyone who registered. Third, for those attending live, this webinar is eligible for one CE credit. We will send some additional instructions on how to claim that CE credit after the webinar via email. So please look out for that email in your inbox. And now let's kick things off. So why follow-up matters? Before I introduce Amber, I wanted to set context for why we chose this topic. Every practice has patients that fall overdue for recall and patients who leave without treatment that never get scheduled. Most of the time it's because the team It's not because the team doesn't care. It's because follow-up becomes manual, a one off scramble, phones are busy, messages are inconsistent and visibility is limited. And the result is really twofold. Patients delay care and those small issues that the patients have become bigger problems that are more uncomfortable and more costly for the patient. And teams spend hours chasing patients instead of focusing on the patients who are in front of them. So our goal today is to share patient centered, a practical system for follow-up that helps patients stay on track while reducing workload and protecting schedule consistency. A quick word about who we are. Yapi and DoctorLogic support dental practice groups and individual practices with patient engagement and practice growth. Yapi helps teams automate high impact workflows like appointment reminders, recall reminders, treatment follow-up, patient intake and online scheduling, all designed to reduce manual work while improving patient response and practice revenue. DrLogic supports practice growth through websites and online marketing services that help practices attract and convert new patients. But today's webinar is education first. We'll share best practices you can use, whether you have a system in place today or you're still doing this manually. Now I'm excited to introduce our speaker, Amber Auger. Amber is a nationally recognized dental hygiene clinician, speaker, hygiene director, and she's the founder of Thrive in the OP. She also helps dental teams improve periodontal outcomes and case acceptance through evidence based systems driven care. What I really appreciate about Amber is that she leads with patient care and practicality. It's not theory. It's what she's seen work across real teams. Amber, thanks for being here, and I'll hand it over to you. Of course. And thank you, Erin, for the introduction, and, of course, thank all of you for joining us. I'm honored to be here and excited to dive into the content with you. Before we get started, I wanna tell you a little bit about me as well. Erin did a great job with the introduction, but I want you to kind of understand where I'm coming from in regards to the systems that I've created as well as how they can be sustainable in your practice. So I graduated in twenty ten with a bachelor's degree in dental hygiene from the University of New Haven, and I actually waitressed all through high school in order to pay for college. So unfortunately for me, what happened is I ended up getting carpal tunnel before I even went into hygiene school. So I knew clinical hygiene for me wouldn't be a forty year career, but I loved the fact that I could maybe practice part time and really be able to identify disease at its earliest stages with our patients and really kind of provide heart centered care. It's not just about leading that patient to compliance. It's really about how we're doing it, how we're making that connection, how we are maybe transforming the way that they think about soft tissue disease, whether that be with periodontitis or gingivitis or heart tissue disease of tooth decay. Right? Many patients believe that simply because their parents had disease, they will too. I believe, of course, yes, there's genetics and there's, but these diseases are multifactorial. So if we can really partner with our patients to change their habits, we can be really practiced in a much more rewarding kind of environment, but also really impact and be the change that the patient's need. I went on to receive a master's in public health. If any of you are hygienist or a dentist thinking about a master's in public health, I would highly recommend it. I would do ten master's degrees over one dental hygiene degree. And I do practice weekly. So I still practice each and every week, treating anywhere. Sometimes it's two days a week, but at minimum, it's always one. And I do have an adorable little Westie named Margo, who is a dental therapy dog. She comes to work with me. I love all things saliva really because it's a biomarker that we can see into the entire body. And there's so much amazing testing that's available. Everything of course, from pathogen health to looking at the pH of the mouth, but also hormonal health of what we can see, especially with patients who have imbalances, especially in women's health, looking at the overall hormone health is so important for our patients. And oftentimes as dental providers, we are the first line of defense for our patient. So now that you get to know a little bit of my nerdy side, now we're gonna talk about this practical side. And we are going to look at how consistent recall and treatment follow ups really supports better clinical outcomes and strengthen patients' trust. We're also going to identify common breakdowns in follow-up workflows that contribute to delay care and frankly, have those patients drop off. In my opinion, there's nothing worse than telling a patient they need a crown or they need scaling and root planing. And then we don't see them for two or three years. They come back just as Erin said, in greater disease, something that was once restorable now may not be restorable, needing an implant, needing multiple follow ups. So it's really important to also educate the patient on the why behind what we're recommending. We're also going to describe the system driven follow-up that really helps improve the continuity of care and reducing the team manual load. If we look at dental teams across the nation, many of us are in a state where we could hire one or two more providers, and many of us are looking for talent in our business team. So by reducing the load of the manual work and really leveraging technology, not only does it greatly impact our patients, but it also greatly impacts the team, reducing burnout in the team and setting the team up for success. We're also going to apply patient centered engagement strategies to improve scheduling consistency and patient responsiveness. The most important thing here, of course, is that the patient's always leaving with a follow-up appointment in your practice always. It's so much easier to schedule them while they are in person. And we really wanna leverage that. There's nothing worse. For for me, it happens pretty much every every week when I'm practicing chairside where the phone's ringing. I'll walk by the phone, I'll answer, and somebody's even looking to rebook. And that can be a five to ten minute conversation. Just what are mornings or afternoons best? Is there a specific day? And then it's this one off, and now you're getting the whole story of who has to go to soccer, who has to go to basketball, and how they're navigating. And yes, that moment is great to be able to build rapport with the patient, but that can put a really big load on the business team who's trying to check-in, check out, verify insurance. So I'm excited today to show you the solutions to all of that. In a national survey that was conducted, sixty one percent of patients said that they actually skipped care scheduling because it was too much of a hassle. Sixty one percent. Think of that. Think of sixty one percent of your patient population feeling like it's too much of a hassle to book their hygiene visit. Right? And depending on the age bracket, we know there's even studies of, for me, I'm a millennial. I do not like calling. I rather be able to adjust my appointments online. And we see a lot of that in our practice too. We have online scheduling that really helps expedite the process for the patient and reduces that friction. What that means is long term, that patient is more likely to stay with us because they're not having to have friction of calling each and every time or rescheduling and waiting on the phone or waiting for a callback, right? So now it's really showing that we're more easily to work with. We also see that nearly sixty percent of missed calls in dental practices are related to booking requests, as well as sixty five percent coming from potential new patients. So on average, our dental practice misses on average three hundred calls a month. Think about how that impacts revenue. Think about how that impacts the overall health of our community if they can't get in, right? As well as think of that patient who maybe was referred from one of your favorite patients. Right? Of course, don't have a favorite patient, but maybe they're such a great patient to come in. Maybe they need a full mouth rehab. Maybe you know that they are a really well connected in the community and could help drive new revenue to the practice. All of this is not even able to happen if that phone isn't answered. Right? Thirty three percent of calls go unanswered during the business hours. So when we see this, we know online bookings, seventy percent of patients using this channel are new to the practice. So this makes it very easy for us to expand our reach in the overall community. Missed calls, fifty eight percent of interactions involving missed calls are typically from those new patients, and sixty eight percent of website conversions are initiated by new patients as well. So what I'm getting from this, of course, is a, our team is overloaded. And it's not that our team is walking by the phone and saying, let's not answer, but they're most likely helping to check out, rebook, verify insurance, and really focusing on the patient that's in front of them. But while doing this, it creates this funnel of you get excellent service when you're in practice, but then it's really hard to connect and get the answers that the patient needs, right, or the booking that that patient needs. So we look at this as a whole. Another very important thing to look at is how many patients are actually open to online booking. So sixty seven percent of patients actually prefer to use online booking for an appointment. Forty percent of appointments are typically booked after hours when the offices are closed. Why? Well, this is a perfect time for, you know, a mom of the household who's typically making those appointments, who's typically managing the soccer schedule, the basketball schedule, typically easier for them to sit down after hours with the overall full family schedule and book those appointments. Ninety four percent of consumers say that they would be more likely to choose a new server service provider if they offered online booking. I am totally one of those. I will say everything that I do in my life, everything down to my dog's dog grooming to my hairstylist to my dental practice, to my dermatologist, every kind of appointment I need is linked even down to massage therapy, is linked to being able to book online. Businesses also can reclaim ten hours a week with automated patient scheduling. So what this means is instead of having my business team on the phone while a patient walks in trying to confirm all of these appointments annually, we can send out a simple patient reminder in a text message. That patient can hit confirm. It dates in our software. And now we have much more easy kind of follow-up because we're reducing how many patients we have to manually call. Right? Online scheduling also can increase a patient appointment volume up to twenty six percent, and it reduces labor costs required for booking those appointments up to approximately fifty percent. So it's really a great modality. Work with one of my clients is a hygiene owned practice, and she does not actually have a receptionist. So there's no business team member on-site. Everything is scheduled by that patient and we have somebody off-site helping with billing and follow-up, but the team is cross trained to be able to take payment for the services. And I'm gonna teach you how we do our morning huddle in this practice, and this system works, whether you are a hygiene owned practice or a larger practice. These systems are really sustainable and make it much easier on the business team and the clinical team. We also know that eighty two percent of patients use mobile devices to book appointments, and Google Calendar is more than one point five billion people, and we often integrate in with those scheduling apps. In addition, the US system, healthcare system, loses one hundred and fifty billion dollars annually due to missed appointments. Seventy seven percent of patients think that the ability to book, change, or cancel online is important, and dental practices see a fifteen percent increase in patient volume when we use online scheduling. We also know that text reminders help reduce no show rates, and frankly, I think they're such a great thing to have in the practice because if that patient is not available and is going to cancel now, we know we can rebook this and fill it with a patient who is eager to come in and needs that overall treatment. So let's look at the life cycle of our patients. And many times as clinicians, we think that patient experience starts first the moment they walk through the door. And we have to be thinking differently about that. That patient experience starts pre appointment. So that starts with online scheduling. It starts with website widgets. It starts with what your brand is, and that's where Yappy and Doctor. Logic works so together together. It's so great together to integrate in this information. Right? Where you can have an extension of your brand on a website so the patient can kind of start to feel who you are, feel the services that you practice before you even walk into the door. The other thing that I love about having the availability to have intake forms is now I'm not waiting for my patient to update their medical history or even fill out their medical history if they're a new patient, which frankly can eat away so much valuable time. Right? Sometimes it can take up to ten, fifteen minutes depending on how many overall medications your patient's on, the advancedness of their disease. So by having these fill filled out ahead of time, now I can be more present with that patient. I'm able to also give them an elevated experience because I have all of this data ready to go. So it creates a better foundation for me. In addition to that, when they fill out their overall health history, I can also look at their insurance verification, identify if they've had overall scaling and route planning in the past, which indicates to me that they may be overall a perio maintenance today or let's reevaluate. Do they need another round of scaling? As well as sending provider texts, which we'll talk about, to one another, where if that patient is in the chair, I can go ahead and say, I'm seeing signs and symptoms of disease stock. I'm ready for an exam and business team. Can you start to put together a pretreatment estimate? Based off of our soft tissue management programs, I'm pretty certain this patient's going to need scaling, and I would love your help in being able to identify what the overall copay is going to be for the patient or that patient's responsibility. The other beautiful thing here is we have such diverse patients in our practice. We see a lot of Spanish speaking patients. We see patients from all around the world being in Boston, it's so fun to be able to treat them. And we can, at a click of a button, be able to go ahead and merge to a different language. Maybe it's Spanish that they prefer to have their intake forms in. And then, of course, that patient engagement as a whole. So again, our environment, the experience that that patient is going to have starts pre appointment and starts with how we are able to welcome them into the practice. When we do this, not only is it giving a better patient experience, but it's also helping the team be less burned out. So let's now look at how we plan your day and, as clinicians, what we can do to audit our day. So why don't we look at time management in dentistry? I believe that if you are not a time management ninja, your clinical care, your patient is going to be impacted by your lack of time management. Right? You may find yourself rushing and skipping a periodontal chart. You may find yourself maybe even skipping potentially life saving oral cancer screening if you don't have great time management. Now, again, we talked about how the software can help you with the overall getting the the medical history in ahead of time and things like that. But the other thing we have to do is we have to figure out what our nonnegotiables are for the appointment time. The best way to do this is by auditing our charts. I like to do this the day before the patient comes in. This way I can alert the team and start to be working on maybe if there's no insurance linked, we can start to contact that patient and have the business team take care of all of the details that are needed. For me, what I'm looking at is do they need films? Do they need a full mouth series? Do they need a cone beam? Do they need four ByteWings GPAs? Also look to see if they have an updated perio chart. Each year, healthy patients have to be updated at least once a year, and periodontally involved patients is every three months. So I wanna take note of that and be able to see what kind of data do I have to collect as well as outstanding treatment. Is there a crown that we've recommended that we recommended three years ago? Do we need an updated PA on that? Do we need an updated overall patient portion of what they're going to have to, you know, pay in in order to receive that? Previous recommendations. We wanna look at the previous recommendations and reinforce them. And then also look at, do they have a family member that's overdue that we can maybe have in mind if there's a same day cancellation? Right? What about their their spouse, their children? How do we kinda bring that in? So these are the five questions that when I'm auditing my day and the patients that are in my column, I'm going through and ensuring that I have this data. Now when I have these non negotiables of my patient treatment time, I know exactly where to take my workflow. Right? So from here, and each individual team member's doing this on my current team, as well as on the teams that I coach as a fractional hygiene director. And what we do is we take that data and we come together in a morning huddle. Why is this important? This is important because your team will prioritize what you do. So now we can know how to support one another. I can be able to say, oh my gosh, okay. I know that the patient in at eight AM on the doctor's schedule is a talker. Doc, if you need me to come in, shoot me a text. I will make sure that I'm wrapping it up. When I'm asking for an exam, I'll come and ask you so that patient hears that you actually I actually need you and will stop being so chatty. Right? And supporting each other in that way. It may also look like, you know, maybe I have a patient in my hygiene schedule that needs an iTero scan or an overall, you know, scan IO scan. And in that case, maybe I can say to the assistant, do you wanna swap? Because maybe the assistant is much more efficient at that. Right? So now as a team, we know what success looks like and we know, Oh, you might be having a hard time with this technology. I'm going to come over and help, and vice versa, if we have new team members. Our morning huddle is really looking to implement the long term goals of the practice. What this is also doing is helping us understand treatment plans, who has a family member overdue in hygiene, and all of our non negotiables that we did in our pre audits for each individual column of providers. We like to do this where everybody is standing up. By standing up, it means it's gonna be brief. We this is not our social hour. This is not to talk about how great the overall Super Bowl performance was, even though it was. Right? It this is really for to be more of what can we do to make sure our patients have optimal service today. Right? What can we do to make sure that everybody is on the same page? The doctor knows what exams are needed. We the business team knows what treatment plans need to be put together, and the clinical team knows really what the nonnegotiables are of the appointment time. So it needs to be kept brief. I have a larger team. I have a team that I'm coaching now that has eight hygienists and three doctors. So that takes the team a little bit longer to go through because there's so many patients to review. So that takes them about twenty, twenty five minutes. Our average teams, we can get this up and running within ten to twenty minutes. When we look at the review of the patient, again, this is really to identify what that patient is going to need to be able to say yes. Help us pre prepare. That may be as simple as saying this patient last time when they came in was a gingivitis patient. I will alert you after my first twenty minutes where I've conducted that assessment to have that pretreatment done for the soft tissue. We like to really also rotate leadership here. Taking the lead on who is leading is always important for employee engagement. And also review the previous day schedule as well as tomorrow's schedule. This way, we can say to ourselves, okay. If anybody comes in today and can't do same day treatment, we could have them come back in tomorrow if you're at our openings. Or if missus Jones is in today and her husband, mister Jones, is overdue, we can go ahead and offer them three o'clock tomorrow in hygiene. So, again, now it's easier on that whole team and everybody knows what success looks like. We also wanna discuss the patient concerns in the morning huddle. So this may be that the patient, you know, said no last time because of insurance. This may be patient is concerned about not being put back all the way. So reminder, don't put that patient all the way back when you come in to do the exam. Patient is a talker. Right? Patient left a five star review last time. Let's make sure we thank them. So now we're really celebrating the success of our patients as well as what's going well. So what this does is it's also training our brains as a team to look at what's going right, right? And starting the day off in a positive way so that we can continue to train our brains to think positively. Also, setting goals and, of course, ending on a positive note. Our doctor has this little button that you push, and it sounds like you just hit a goal in in the overall hockey league. I'm trying to think of what it is. I can't think of it at the moment. I wanna say NFL, but I know that's on a NHL. So you hit it, and it has an alarm, and he loves end morning huddle that way where everyone pushes it, we make a sound. So really, it's just about figuring out what's gonna work for your team. By auditing the charts, we do see higher team performance. We see better patient outcomes. We also see less stress. And again, we can audit those patient charts. It should take us anywhere from fifteen to twenty minutes to audit all of those charts to look at those things. Right? The best piece of advice that I have for you and your team too is as you're doing this, it's gonna be harder at the front end. It always is. Right? You're going to be doing something new. You're creating new muscle memory. But as you put in that time now, your recare visits three, four, six months out are gonna be so much easier. The other hack here is to always make sure that any service that patient needs is attached to the appointment. Not only will that help you with your production, but it'll streamline your auditing as well. We can easily go in and see a summary as well of who, what patient is in, if they're a new patient, if their forms are done or not done. And this makes a huge impact on the team and reducing the time for morning huddles as well. You can see how easy it is here of the overall patient appointment. Patient asked to come in a few day a few minutes early for the overall x rays, if they're eligible for their insurance. So very easy to audit as a team. And what this does over time is it's making sure the team is aligned, less stress, better time management, and really more patient centric care. So again, not only from the patient experience, but now moving over to the provider. Experience. And this is where I find we've really leveraged systems to allow us to go in and obtain patients' medical history, their intake forms, automate the insurance process to allow me to better understand the medical and dental overall history so I know exactly where what I should recommend, but also exactly what's covered. I find that there's friction with patients, not because they have to have any sort of costs, but because there's surprises around the cost. So the more that we can be confident as a team member to say, we know that this is needed, we'll go through and we will provide you with the estimate, that makes a large difference for our teams. We know up to ninety percent of buying decision behavior is also influenced in what patients hear and see. So visual learners make up a majority of the overall patients. So it's not just about taking the films or doing an overall periodontal assessment. It's about how we review what we found. So I always love to take the full mouth series, extend it to the monitor in front of that patient, and I will show them specifically their bone levels, the floor of their sinuses, the roots of the teeth. Call out vertical bone loss, horizontal bone loss, show them exactly what I'm seeing on the film because so many patients don't have that experience. Now they have engagement. Engagement is going to lead to trust. And now they are saying the entire time that they're sitting in the chair, this is different. No one's ever done this for me before. Wow. And I can say, we do dentistry differently here. We're really comprehensive. And the patient can say, Oh my gosh. Okay, great. Now I know why you asked me for those forms ahead of time. Now I know that you're integrating in all of the data that I gave you and you feel more present. I'm able to look at you. I feel like I have time to ask questions. Thank you. Right? So I'm recommending this because, this matters because, and we're choosing this interval because. So things like based off of your specific risk, I'm concerned about x, y, and z. How do you feel about the alignment of your teeth? Here's why I'm concerned. It's more than just cosmetics. It's also a functional issue. And educating that patient at that level. When we operate this way for me, it makes it so much more fun clinically because now I have that patient buy in, which means I'm getting that patient compliance, which means the next time they're coming in, they're gonna be healthier, which is so rewarding. And we do this by walking them through exactly what we see in their mouth. So taking not only the updated films that they need, but also taking the IO photos, Showing them the stain that's on the occlusal surface, walking them through the process of why we recommend maybe a sealant or a fluoride or a CoV-one treatment. Right? There's so many things that we can do to help reduce that patient's risk for periodontal disease and hard tissue disease. So by operating this way, it really sets that patient up for success, right? In addition, studies show significant improvement and compliance when IO cameras are used. I think about every office now has an IO camera. I just saw a study. It was like eighty six percent of dental practices have at least one IO camera. I think when we look at how affordable the intraoral cameras are, I would recommend that each hygiene room has one, each restorative room has one, because it really does tell a true story for the patient. We're not having to convince them that even though something doesn't hurt, it's there. Now we can show a picture and say, do you see this side of your mouth? This is an area of overall crease lines. This could be an indicator of clenching and grinding. Do you see over here? This is where your tissue has gone down. Do you see the difference? And we can really build that engagement. Patients are more likely to accept treatment to see their own disease versus, again, being told verbally. This is from the Journal of Clinical Diagnostic Research. So I want you to think right now in your practice. How are you educating your patients? How are you showing them the evidence of disease? And not just in a five minute wait till the end of the appointment, try to overload them with information, but what are you doing throughout the appointment that is going to help you? Right? Perfect. Love that. See a message coming in about disclosing the patient. I love disclosing the patients. For me, I disclose every patient every time. I like to use a gel that will highlight how old the plaque is and then show that patient the overall how to use whatever technology we wanna use. Right? If it's a water flosser, m's on the top teeth, w's on the bottom. If it is something like a a overall tray with hydrogen peroxide to be able to show them exactly how to place it. So convenience is compliance. I want you to remember that. Convenience is compliance. Whether that comes from chair side of what we're recommending to the patient of what toothpaste, or whether that comes from the patient confirming that the overall insurance has been filled out correctly and forms have been filled out correctly. If it is convenient for them, they will be compliant. When patients see the inflammation, bone loss, or decay themselves, they're more likely to move forward with the overall diagnostics or diagnosis rather. And owning their diagnosis, they're able to have the opportunity to say, oh my gosh, I realize that I'm in disease. What can I do about that? Right? And the interesting thing here is when we look at as a whole, when I'm lecturing across the country, I always ask hygienists, how often is it taking the your doctor to be able to provide an exam? How many times are you asking for an exam? And it's really interesting, right? Dentists are not intentionally saying, I wonder how we could make our hygienists upset today. But instead, dentists are most likely doing restorative dentistry or they're trying to do an exam at the same time for three hygienists. So what I teach is how to create a system where in your first twenty minutes of the appointment, you do all of your assessments. So you're doing your radiographs, your periodontal charting, your medical history, your blood pressure review, your oral cancer screening, and your overall gingival assessment to determine what gingival track that patient's gonna go down. Are they healthy? Are they gingivitis? Are they periodontally involved? After that first twenty minutes, I can then send a text message directly to the doctor. That doctor can then know, okay, I'm ready for an exam in op one. Fantastic. I never have to get up. I can now just go through, and now I'm disclosing, doing my education with the disclosing, using my ear polisher, all while that doctor has been alerted and they can choose when to come in. I think this is an amazing technology that is really underestimated with the workflow and reduce of stress. So when we look at reframing and how do we kind of pull all this together where now I've educated that patient on why I think they need sealants. I've educated that patient on the fact that they do have xerostomia, that they're on multiple medications, that I do believe that the overall sealants would be the best thing for them due to their specific risk of these deep grooves and retained plaque in the deep grooves and their diet of frankly loving Sour Patch Kids, Skittles, Starburst. They're in grad school, drink a lot of coffee. There's a lot of pH issues here. There's different ways we can say this. Right? We could say, well, let's see if your insurance covers it. But we don't wanna do that because if we're doing that, we're waiting for insurance to select and dictate our care Versus, we'll use your benefits to help, but we'll base recommend we base our recommendation on what we're seeing, right, on what your mouth needs. Your dental benefits are designed to help offset some costs, but they don't determine what's healthiest for you. My role is to recommend care based off of your current condition. And this is where I really focus on patient prioritized profit. And this is a overall phrase that I've trademarked. This is kind of what we teach in our soft tissue management courses. But this is really where we're showing the patient evidence of disease. We are leading them to make the best decisions for their mouth. We're giving them the choice. Right? It's not, oh, we would love to do this, but your insurance doesn't cover it. Instead, we believe that this will really help you reduce that risk of oral disease, whether it's hard or soft tissue. And we will we have collected all of the data that we need to optimize your insurance. We'll go ahead and we'll determine what your benefits cover. Right? And then we'll go from there. But now that patient is really understands the why behind the treatment and what that looks like. It's just a little video. I wanna make sure the audio isn't on here for you. But this is exactly how we do our overall handoffs. So we like to do what we call a trust triangle, where now what we have is we have the patient on overall, the middle of the room. We have the doctor, we have myself. You could also see we're all at eye level. And now the doctor and I can really support each other and what was recommended and have that synergy that that patient needs to say yes. We're showing the patient that they're the priority. And again, we're showing them that we have made evidence based decisions based specifically on what their mouth needs. So we're going through. You can see the handoff here really seamless. And now the doctor's in the mouth. They're going in and dictating what restorative treatment is needed. And I can go ahead and place that in to make a really efficient exam and to allow the entire team to know exactly what's next. Right? Because if that doctor is coming in in that first twenty minutes, now I can then have an idea of what gingival track they're they're going down, connect with my business team member to help me with the overall treatment planning. Then I can have that patient's two appointments booked for their scaling on their right side and their left side, but before they even leave the office. So this creates an optimal patient experience where now they're they know it's important. We're not calling them back. We can fit them in to our overall schedule. And we can fit them into our schedule because we have an amazing confirmation system that allows us to see what patients continue to cancel last minute. We can then say, you know, we're so sorry, but we can't book you. You've you've canceled the last eight appointments. Right? And we can't book you other than same day. So we'll call you if we have a same day opening. However, based off of how many you've canceled, we we can't reserve a time for you ahead of time. Right? Or that patient can then say, so sorry. I can't make it. And we can call that patient that was just in the chair and say, we know that you're booked in three weeks from now. We just wanna let you know that we do have an opening tomorrow. It just opened. Would you like to move up? Right? And often patients say yes. So when we set appointment details, we have the opportunity to go in on the back end and see is this what provider does is that patient looking for? What services are they looking for as well? And it makes it so much easier for the team. So much less friction on the team, so much such a better patient experience. The other thing here is when we look at our practice liability. In twenty twenty five, one of the top reasons for lawsuits and liability issues in dental practices was a lack of informed consent agreements for services, whether that's soft tissue services, whether that's restorative appointments, whether that's something like an aligner treatment. And if we don't have that, that can really put us at, again, liability. So we can automate these forms where the patient is signing and something so simple. We have ours on an iPad that we then show the patient, we're going to conduct the scaling, we wanna remind you, here's our informed consent. They can go ahead and sign and complete that effortlessly. Or we can even send it to them while they're in the chair and they can use their own phone to do it. So it's a really helpful way to ensure that we're protecting also the provider time. So not only are we looking to make sure it's an elevated experience for the patient, but also how are we protecting our providers? And are we allowing patients to come in fifteen, twenty minutes late, then fill out paperwork, and then still get a seat in the chair? So this helps keep every single patient accountable to the data ahead of time of what they need, as well as helping the team work as a team. Or we can say, hey. I need you over here, doc. We're still waiting on an exam, all through a simple text message. Right? So I wanna thank you. I wanna thank you for joining. This is how you can reach me. Any questions at all, you can feel free to reach out to me on Instagram. It's at amber auger, r d h, on Instagram. And same handle, amber auger dot com or amber auger r d h in Gmail if you wanna email me. Best way to get me though is Instagram. You can send me a voice mail on any questions that you have regarding soft tissue, your how to say it to patients, as well as optimization with technologies. I'm happy to support you. So, Erin, I'm sure we have some questions. I saw that chat lighting up throughout throughout the overall lecture. So I would love to turn it over to you and make sure that I can answer any questions that the audience may have. Yeah. Thank you, Amber. That was incredibly informative. We we have some good questions that came up during the presentation. I've chosen a few good ones, and please feel free to ask any additional questions that you may have now. The first question is, how do we strike the right balance so follow-up feels supportive and not spammy or transactional? Oh, I love this. So how do we have follow-up where it feels supportive versus not scammy or transactional? I think it's always putting a special flare on our patients. Right? So one of the things that we do in our practice is because my doc comes to work with me, we'll actually send out a picture of her for patients that are overdue and just say, Hey, Margo, schedule is open. You're overdue for your hygiene visit. It's like below the schedule. So we'll do things like that, that it's more patient kind of relationship driven. We'll also take a picture of sometimes the doctor, and we'll send that out as well where we will say, you know, the doctor is really sad that we haven't seen you, or we'll even say the provider name and copy and paste and send this out. So, you know, hi there. This is Amber from Smile Dental. I'm so excited to connect with you because we have some openings. Here are our list of openings that we have. Click below to go ahead and book. The other thing that we have to note is we have to train our patients on the fact that we are using an autonomy, not because we don't like chatting to them. And we have to train our patients to like it. So how we can do that is by humanizing it with these special kind of text messages that go out. And frankly, we also have the ability to create the sensitivity on it. So if we have a patient that's in their twenties, they might want to have multiple text messages coming in. Versus if we have a patient who's in their sixties or seventies, they may feel like the automations are too sensitive. So we can toggle that up and down depending on the patient. Great. Thanks, Amber. One more that came in was our phones are nonstop. What's the fastest way to reduce call volume while still getting patients scheduled? The best way is of course with online scheduling and training the patients that online scheduling is an option to cancel, to modify, to rebook. That is going to be the best thing for you and your team. Because again, we want we we never want a patient to be greeted at the door with a business team member on the phone and they go like this to the patient that's there. Right? But we also don't want the patient who's maybe waited for a callback to then have the business team that says, sorry so much. I I've got to go. Can I put you on hold? Right? Can I put you on hold? We don't want that either. So by really training our patients that we have a system at their convenience, they can book, they can rebook, they can modify, that that is really going to help streamline to allow our team to be more present while the patients are in the office. Great. Thank you. And this one's more about cancellations. Do you have any thought on how to prevent last minute cancellations and schedule drops without adding more confirmation calls? Absolutely. So when we look at how we prevent same day cancellations, last minute cancellations in general, the best way to do that is with the automation system that we can simply go in and have that patient confirm. And we can set this out forty eight hours or twenty four hours in advance just depending on the patient. We have a couple patients that we actually have streamlined our automation system to alert forty eight hours in advance. They need a reminder because they're most likely to cancel. So we want forty eight hours in advance so that we have time to rebook that appointment if needed. Great. I think this one's more on interoffice kind of operations. How do you build accountability without creating more work? Who owns what? What does escalation look like? So when we look at how we create accountability without extra work and what does escalation look like, all of that is really the culture of the practice and determine is determined by the leadership of the practice. Where I serve as a hygiene director in my current office that I also do hygiene for. I also serve as a hygiene director in that I'm not in every day. However, I'm on the leadership team at all practices. So each practice looks a little bit different. When they have a clinical question, when they have a clinical concern, they're coming to me. If it's a business question or time management question, it may go to me or the office manager. But we work as a team to make sure that everyone feels safe to be able to provide feedback so that we can work together to optimize systems that support patient prioritized profit as well as both the clinician and the overall patient. Because we don't wanna we we need that balance. Right? We don't wanna exhaust our clinicians and really prioritize our patients no matter what happens, even if they're fifteen or twenty minutes late. And we also wanna have that balance where we're training the the the patients on how to be good patients. Great. Thank you. And then this one is more around kind of when things go wrong. What are the most common workflow breakdowns that create revenue leakage, and how do we diagnose them quickly? Great question. So what are the most common? I think the most common thing that has leakage for revenue is going to be, of course, a, patients that are booked for treatment that cancel last minute. So we have to figure out why did they cancel last minute. Right? It may be they're sick and maybe a schedule change with work. Or is it some sort of fear based? Is it their fear of cost? Maybe they didn't sign an overall estimate ahead of time. Is it that they change their minds, that they don't think that they really want veneers anymore and it's an elective treatment? So just really having that conversation with the patient and when they go to cancel an appointment, if they're calling to cancel or if they've canceled via text, we up. And I always like to call them if they've canceled. I think this is where it's easier to have a conversation with the patient and it's more of a personalized touch of, is everything okay? I saw that you canceled the appointment. I wanna make sure you're feeling okay. Right? Same thing when the patient's late. When we call our patients, we're not saying, hey, missus Jones. You're fifteen minutes late. Where are you? We're saying, oh my gosh. Is everything okay? And they're like, yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Why? And we're like, well, it's not likely to be late, and you're fifteen minutes late. So we just we're checking to see if, a, if you're on your way, b, you know, we're happy to reschedule you because we don't want you speeding through traffic. We prioritize your safety. So now it's kind of an elevated experience as well. Additional leakage, of course, is going to come from I always think of your hygiene department. And looking at the statistics on perio, we know up to eighty percent of the patient population is in some sort of periodontal inflammation. Whether that's gingivitis, whether that's periodontitis, these patients are more inflamed. So we shouldn't be treating them as prophyse. So looking at your hygiene department and looking what percentage of your patients is in a soft tissue management program. Are the numbers that you are seeing as far as soft tissue matching the statistics? So if we're seeing that eighty percent of your practice is billed as a prophy, there's room for growth there. Great. I love that patient centric approach and having a bit more empathy with the patient with your outreach. I I see we're at time, but don't worry. If you did submit a question that was not answered, we'll be responding to all questions via email over the next few days, so you will get a response. And, Amber, I wanted to thank you again. Just a reminder for everyone who joined today, you will receive a follow-up email with the recording if you'd like to share that with any of your team members, as well as some supplemental material on how to make incremental changes within your practice and the instructions on how to claim the CE credit. So stay tuned for that. And once again, at Yapi and Doctor. Logic, we're here to support your dental practices and groups to drive practice growth that helps practices attract and convert new patients, as well as with end to end patient engagement workflows that help reduce manual work while improving patient response and practice revenue. So if you'd like to talk to our team and have a quick consult about what a system driven workflow can look like in your practice or group, we're happy to do a quick call and do a consult with you and share some examples. You can book via the QR code here or reply and follow-up to the email that we send and we can write you to the right person. And a final thank you. So thanks for joining us. Amber, any final takeaways you want everyone to remember? I think the most important thing to remember is you are a team and working with patients is a privilege. And figuring out how to optimize your work flow for both the health of you and your patients is really a goal that I have for you in twenty twenty six. So I hope you take the challenge too instead of repeating the same systems that no longer serve you. Thank you. Great. Thanks, everyone. We will be sending recording and next steps shortly, and have a great day.