Did you know you’re losing $600,000 to $1 million by having open time in your schedule? Kiera talks about what is likely impacting your schedule and how to fix it (without working overtime). Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Join Dental A-Team Consulting Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00.974) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today is just a great day and I hope you're having a great day. I hope that you remember you are changing people's lives through dentistry. Like what you're doing, know billing, hygiene, hygiene checks, dentistry, doing the exams, doing the numbers, looking at the profitability, running the business doesn't feel like you're changing lives, but you are. You're giving people the confidence of their smiles and their healthy mouths. You're helping them have long-term systemic health. You're saving them from period disease. You're helping them have like preventing the risk of cardiovascular disease. You are doing such a great service in this world and you're also helping more people smile more confidently, changing their lives exponentially. And just remember you're doing so much good. So let's keep it up. And I'm here to give you all the tactical practical tips, infusing your world with positivity and changing this world in the greatest way possible. If you love the podcast, leave us a review, share it with a friend, do something of goodness today. You guys just stay here and listen on your own. Share with someone, send it to a doctor, send it to a team member, send it to a colleague, whomever it is, put it in a Facebook group, tag me. I'd love to see a picture of you where you're at. Tag us. It makes me so happy to get to know you instead of just talking to you. So share, I'd love to hear from you. And thank you for being a part of our family. Make sure that you guys are sharing though. keeps us at the top of the list. And my goal is to bring you massive value that you naturally want to be sharing. And so today my massive value is... how to give you back like 600 to a million dollars to your practice. You on board with that? Does that sound dreamy enough for you to share with someone to listen in to take some notes? I hope so because Tiff and I were actually talking the other day and she was like, Kiera, it's so interesting. I talked to practices and like, I'm not hitting my numbers. I can't afford these things. I can't do this. And the answer is that's true. But there's a simple, simple, simple solution. And then we're going to, I'll give you two. That's actually helping you. miss this money and it's so simple and yet we look at over all the time and it's your schedule being open. I know, I know. I took you to the top and brought you down to the bottom. What, Kiera, you want to tell me that? Yes, your schedule being open because if we take your hourly production and your hygiene's hourly production and we go and look at your open time in your schedule, if you just filled your schedule, it's like we calculated it. It's 600 to a million dollars in most practices by just having open time in their schedule. Kiera Dent (02:24.216) which then you're like, well, I can't afford these things. can't do it. Well, yeah, because your schedule's open. And so I want to give you some tips. Like I said, it seems kind of like, gosh, OK, we're going to do this. We are going to do this because 600 to a million just with an open schedule. So what impacts our schedule being open? Cancellations, not closing treatment, not getting patients to schedule, not reappointing our patients, not having a cancellation policy within our practice. Those things create open schedules. And then also I'm going to lovingly and directly say not having our team focused and obsessed on filling the schedule. Offices who are obsessed with filling the schedule, meaning we have it to 90 to 95 % to goal every single day are the offices that are freaking killing it. The other offices are like, we tried our best. See you later. It's five. No. As a front office team member, the expectation and the agreement we made was I was not allowed to leave for the day. unless my schedule for the next day was full. Now people tell me, Kiera, we fill our schedule, it's full at the end of the day and I come in in the morning and I have voicemails canceling my whole day out. Well, phenomenal, you don't have a cancellation policy. Number one, don't let them leave a voicemail to cancel. It's way too easy to break up with someone on a voicemail. So let's eliminate that. On your voicemail, can say, thank you for calling, if you have an emergency here, this is. Also, we do require. Kiera Dent (03:56.866) Also, we do require a 48 hour notice for any appointment changes and we do not accept those via voicemail. Give us a call back during normal business hours to move your appointment or reappoint your appointment. That was really, really clunky. Call back during business hours to reappoint or reschedule your dental appointment. Also, text messages, I do not accept them via text message. I tell them, hey, thank you for reaching out. We can't take any appointment changes via text. Give me a quick call and I'll help you get this taken care of. Amazing. They text you. So we don't have to worry about that. My dermatologist literally has no voicemail. I kid you not, there is no way for me to leave them a voicemail after hours for cancellation. They don't have it and they have a policy that if we don't have a 48 hour notice that we have a credit card on file and it's a hundred dollar fee, you can choose whatever you want. I'm not here to advocate that you should charge fees. I'm not here to say you should have a credit card on file, but I am saying you need to have a policy that your whole team is behind. I'm very big on you are a specialist, you are a doctor's office and patients should value your time. So whether we're having them leave you on, they put a deposit down, there's a credit card on file, but every specialist, I'm talking IVF, dermatologists, doctors, like everybody in healthcare has a credit card on file. And if you choose not to show for that appointment and you don't give them a 48 hour notice, there is a deposit that's non-refundable that they do take. Now you don't have to do that, but you do have to have a policy. Some offices, if you choose to cancel or reschedule your appointment, I never use the word cancel, they just reschedule because I have no one who cancels on me. They reschedule their appointment. If they choose not to do it within 48 hours, that's okay. We push them out six weeks or 12 weeks, whatever it is, and then we move them forward after they've waited for about four weeks. If they continue to do it, so it's a three strike policy for me, if they choose to continue to do that, then they actually get put on what's called our walk-in. list like, Hey, care, it sounds like you're super, super busy. We're actually not going to reschedule this appointment for you. just give me a call and you'll be on a same day walk in, that we'll be able to get you in if we have availability that day. but either way, there's a set policy and we're going to start to train our patients. So our patients stop canceling off of our schedules because remember 600 to a million, just by having open schedules is something we need to stop. And so looking at this, you can also have them sign that they understand that these things are happening, but really Kiera Dent (06:18.958) getting super clear on what our cancellation policy is, having everybody follow through on it and making sure, and you're not being a jerk. You're just saying like, these are the rules of our game. We want you to play the game with us. These are the rules. Do we agree that we're both going to play by them? Absolutely. Yes. Phenomenal. Come to our practice. We're going to be on time for you. We're going to get you back and we're going to make sure that we see you and we have the adequate time for you. That's how we play the rules of the game. So number one, keeping our schedules full. We don't take those cancellations. We make sure that at the end of the day, our schedules are always filled, filled up to goal. We call, you guys, I used to call all the time and I got so good when patients called to cancel and I'm like, my gosh, Mrs. Jones, tell me what's going on. like, I hope you're doing okay. Tell me what's going on. And I find out what her problem is and then I find the solution. Mrs. Jones, doctor was so excited to see you today. I understand you have a work meeting. Like thank you for letting me know. We do require a 48 hour notice for any appointment changes. Let's see, I could actually like if we could get you in and out by two o'clock today, does that work for you? Yep, that works great. Amazing. Mrs. Jones is in my schedule. I just move her time. We move along. There's so many ways that we can keep patients on the schedule. We can let them know like, hey, like I have people that like I can't make it send an Uber. If they're a big case, send an Uber to the patient. But you've got to have some solutions for them to where patients are staying on our schedule. And I feel like this is where if you own and your friend office owns that the schedule will be full and that's what their agreement with you is. Excellent. Hold them to that level. And people are like, but Kiera, patients are canceling for sure. Let's count for a 10 % cancellation. Like that's normal, but guess what? We've still got to keep 90 % of it full. We still have to go through that open time. Hygienist not hitting their goals. does it do to open time? Anytime we have open time on the schedule or if we like finish with a patient on time or like, let's say it's an hour and we finish at 45 minutes. For every 15 minute increments, let's have people make five phone calls. So we'
