Dental Drills Bits

If you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall in Sandy's Scheduling Academy, this is it!

Should you add 3-4% on the dental bill if people are going to use credit cards? The quick answer is "NO"! This can easily make your patient lose trust in you. Remember people don't carry cash or checks as much anymore. More and more people are using credit cards. When you add the 3-4% on the patients bill, this is working against your internal marketing!   In this episode Sandy breaks down for us...

Did you know if your team is less than 10 employees, you more than likely should NOT have an office manager! Some practice owners put someone who has some dental experience in the front and name them an office manager. That is not the right thing to do.    In this episode Sandy breaks down the real responsibilities of an Office Manager and when is it time to bring one on. We also discuss how promo...

There's a shocking statistic that Sandy mentions in this episode which is: 1.6 million people are changing dentists and 25%-50% patients are lost over a 5 year period. This means we MUST work on our attrition, retaining these patients!    In this episode Sandy tells us the 3 main reasons why we lose patients and how we can stop making these major mistakes. She also gives us a system on what our te...

You know what? You shouldn't even call them "performance reviews" anymore! In this episode Sandy lets us know exactly what we should do with the "one on one" meetings we have with our team members. Meeting one on one with team members is always a good thing.   Sandy tells us how we should call them a "one on one" and bring the employee's: Attendance record Statistics Ask them "how do you think it'...

If you haven't heard "How to Handle "Inter-Office wars" which was the episode before this one, please go do so! It got so much feedback! Because of all the questions we received, Sandy decided to answer those questions and do a part two! The 2 most popular things that people contacted Sandy after the previous episode was: What to do if you are new to the office and you witness "inter-office wars"/...

Are you experiencing gossip, negativity, conflicts between your team, dishonesty, and employees always shifting the blame to other employees? This episode will help!    20% of all workers are unhappy with their jobs! This means that 80% are trying to get along with their workers and the other 20% are sabotaging that relationship! A lot of this dissatisfaction doesn't have to do with the job itself...

Nowadays there are lots of consultants out there. Specific consultants and consultants who try to cover everything under the sun. However, what is the ultimate goal of a consultant? In this episode Sandy gives us insight on this and what we MUST look out for, when it comes to bringing on a consultant.   Sandy tells us what questions we should ask before hiring the consultant, what their goal shoul...

"Quiet quitting" is nothing new, it just has a name now. According to a recent study: "Quiet Quitters" make up 50% of the US workforce! 32% are disengaged employees and 18% are the type of employees that go on social media and trash talk or display how they hate their employer. Why does "quiet quitting'' happen?   In this episode Sandy lets us know how we can identify these "quiet quitters" and wh...

Confirming appointments is one of the most important things that a scheduler does every single day. Confirming, when done the right way, assures the schedule will stay intact.    In this episode Sandy breaks down the mistakes we tend to make when we "think" we have confirmed an appointment but in reality, we have not. A lot of the time we tend to send a text or reminder, but the reality is this is...

Sandy was doing a mystery call for a practice and noticed a major issue… the practice didn't answer her phone call… that's how this episode came up!   There's two main things we need to do if we want more new patients in our office.   Make sure there are absolutely NO barriers blocking the new patient from reaching you over the phone. Make sure you take away every single barrier that's stopping th...

You know that one person who's always missing days, calling in, or maybe they save up time off and leave for a long time. Welp, there's procedures and systems to prevent that and actually improve all of your employees' attendance!    In this episode Sandy gives us 5 major steps that will improve attendance and help motivate employees to not miss a day! Sit down with your team and talk about your c...

Treatment planning starts much earlier than you expect. If you want your treatment acceptance percentage to increase you first have to know what to look for and then implement these specific actions to see results.   Sandy gives us the 10 bulletproof actions steps that will increase your treatment acceptance. One of the first steps is making sure you're on top of your "Public Relations". This is s...

There's nothing worse than seeing the schedule full the day before, or even the week before, then… once the productive day arrives… the schedule starts falling apart. Why is this happening?! Could it have been prevented?! What is killing this productive day!? A lot of us are unaware of how much productivity is being killed in the practice. Some of us are so used to these killers that we see it as...

When you're listening to this episode we want you to think about your accounts receivable balance. We want you to think about how many patients have accepted treatment, have received treatment, maybe only paid a portion of the whole treatment cost or not even a penny... and never came back. This means the patient has committed premeditated fraud. How did this happen? Why does this continue to happ...

September has been widely known in dentistry as "Sucktember". Everything seems to slow down, no shows are high, production is low, and the schedule seems to fall apart insanely fast. In fact, some of you even decide to take September off! DON'T! In this episode Sandy breaks down the reason why we had a horrible September and how we can prevent "Sucktember '' from happening by doing these 5 steps t...

Key takeaways from this episode: 1. What do patients that "no-show" have in common. 2. Every practice needs an "appointment wrap up" process. 3. What to ask a patient in regards to following up with them. 4. What's the best script for confirmation calls. 5. What to do when presenting treatment plans to ensure a second visit.  

We know how convenient it is to have your employee order supplies for you, deal with credit checks, and even order things on Amazon for you and handle any returns… but you need to be more aware of it. Why?  Well, Sandy received a call about a situation the other day. And this isn't the first instance an office has called her to see how they should handle it. This is common. The Office Manager had...

When it comes down to it, there's basically two reasons why patients don't pay: the first is dishonest patients, and Sandy gives us a breakdown on how to stop these type of patients to save us any headaches. The second, and probably most important reason is: patients can get mad or upset with a situation. Your team can make patients mad or the patients can misunderstand and perceive something wron...

Overall, when it comes to excelling at customer service, we need to build more and better relationships with our patients. Remember that our patients have a choice, they can either choose to continue to come to you, or move on at any moment. They can get their teeth cleaned and get turned off so fast or be highly impressed to the point they want to bring everyone they know to you. That's the diffe...

If you've followed a recipe before, then you've followed a system. In this episode Sandy gives you the recipes to make sure you have a successful practice BEFORE you open your doors to the public. There are about 42 systems every single practice needs to have in place and Sandy discusses and dives deeper into each of them. Now just having these systems is not enough, Sandy discusses how being cons...

When does a day need to be saved? When you're not meeting your daily goals (which you should set daily goals). You can determine if you're reaching your goal or not by mid-day. If you notice around the middle of the day, that you are behind or REAL far behind with your daily goals, then this episode will help you to apply strategies to reach those goals! Sandy lets us know how there are so many mi...

In this episode we take on questions that you (our listeners) have for us!  We answer these specific questions: "Is anyone doing (or done in the past) patient surveys? We would love to see what we are doing right that our patients enjoy and what recommendations they have or concerns, if any. Any suggestions or sample questions would be greatly appreciated!"   "I have a couple questions about 'The...

Is your A/R out of order?! Have you ever overcharged a patient for treatment, perhaps their insurance company covered for more than what was initially stated, so now your patient has credit? What do you do with that credit? Some practices let that credit accumulate. Some may even feel like they can keep it. You can't and Sandy let's us know why. This is a hidden topic that not many practice owners...

Confirming patients for their appointment is one of the most important things your front office can do. It's not an afterthought and it's definitely not something you just call and wing. You need a recipe for this. Systems are a recipe. When it comes to patient confirmations, it's all about having good control. You need to decide how protocols should be approached and then analyze and see that you...