Is Your Hygiene Department Costing You Thousands?

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.

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Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Hello everyone, Welcome to the MillionaireDentist Podcast, brought to you by Four
Quadrants Advisory. On this podcast,we break down the world of dentistry,
finances and business practices to help youbecome the millionaire dentist you deserve to be.
Please be advised we do speak withan honest tongue and may not be
safe for work. Hello and welcome. This is Casey Hires back at the

(00:26):
Millionaire Dentist Podcast in studio with cohost Jared Bridgeman. Hey, good afternoon.
How are you great to see you. I'm all hopped up on mountain
dew. Oh boy, I haven'tseen you drink a soda pop in a
while. I know. I tryto try to behave try to be good.
I mean, this is a dentalpodcast. I'm drinking mountain dew.
That's like sacrilegious or something. Maybe, but they're also excited that they'll have
more business. Yeah, I've actuallyI was looking at my calendar early early

(00:51):
June. I go see go tomy dentist dental appointment right, which is
one of our clients, and himnice, great guy looking at look.
I actually look forward to going.It's a lot of fun. Nice fella.
Yeah, and there. My hygienistis a friend of my wife's and
we're friends with them, So everyjust having to come over and come into
garage and take a look at myteeth real quick. Actually, well,
they are coming over for a garageparty for a little after school thing at

(01:11):
the end of the week. ButI'm not going to give her a sneak
peek into my chompers until my scheduledmeeting choppers. Oh my gosh, Casey,
let me ask you a question here. Is there an area that you
often hear then to some practice ownersout there complaining about that maybe does not
usually fall under our preview. That'sa good one. And the fact that

(01:33):
I just talked about a hygienist,yeah, into hygiene. Oh, from
what I've understood and do understand,is you know, there are certain generic
base marks, benchmarks I should say, for how much money the hygiene should
be bringing into the practice. Correct. Yeah, part of our continuing education

(01:53):
as we get into a lot ofbenchmark's best practices for a healthy practice,
and one of those is is yourhygiene department sing three times what you pay
them? Okay, that's a generalbenchmark that our firm goes by and and
helps our clients hit sure, sureso, but there are cases where that

(02:14):
is not happening, right. Haveyou heard any horror unfortunately? I mean
there's a lot of hygiene departments withingreat practices that are underachieving, that aren't
doing great right. And even asI've gone to different dentists over my life,
you can feel it. You cansee a happy hygiene team right that

(02:36):
the dental hygienist. I mean inways they're a little bit of the interface
of the whole practice because they're spendingso much time with the patient and you
can feel are they in a goodmood, are they in a bad mood?
Are they rushed? Do they seemto be genuinely care I mean,
that's a really good point with yourpatients have a lot more FaceTime higenists.
Yeah. Yeah, And so ifthe practice owner is underachieving in a lot

(03:01):
of areas in the practice or financially, they can come in grumpy. Will
guess what attitude reflects leadership? CaptainI think is a quote a from a
movie, and so that permeates thewhole practice. But from a hygiene department,
you've got the exterior how it feelshow the conversations go. But then
you also have what's the data tellyou is the hygiene department running optimally?

(03:22):
And I think you would said,hey, let's while this is costing practice
owners thousands of dollars and what weprovide gets the millions of dollars more,
let's dive into a little bit ofdental hygiene. What does a good department
look like. It's a little morepractice management. We're not practice management,
we get into this stuff. Butthere's some actionable items that as a firm,
we know can help a hygiene department. So we thought we would share

(03:42):
those today for sure. And youknow, if you check some of these
things off your list, that's justone last thing to kind of worry about,
at least for a little bit.So one of the things that I
think can cause issues, especially froma patient perspective, would be not getting
the time needed for hygiene visits.Like you, as you said, the
rush, it's funny, bad decisionsand bad efficiencies. It just as a

(04:06):
domino effect. So if you area practice that it has a lot of
insurance and you're on skates and it'sa quantity shop and you're just you're just
running around trying to get as manypeople in because you're only getting fifty seven
since on the dollar, what picturedoes that paint? Well, you're not
going to get as much time,right, Yeah, So not only are
your your hygienists maybe not necessarily costingyou money, but not getting you the

(04:28):
earnings that you should be getting justfrom that alone. And then if you
have a lot of insurance or yourown work itself, is could be nearly
cut in half. Well, we'vehad conversations and we've talked with people and
they've basically said, every time andagain, there's factors with everything, but
every time a team is coached toincrease their hygiene time, production increases as
a result. Right Is that amister or missus obvious statement? Maybe?

(04:53):
Maybe, but there's a correlations toeverything, right, Well, and if
you get people in there, youget them in on time, you spend
the quality time that's needed with them, they're more more likely to keep returning
for like their scheduled hygiene visits.Well, and you can't just say okay,
great, let's add time. Thereneeds to be a plan, right
right. You need to know exactlywhat's going to take place during that time.

(05:15):
If you're going to if you're goingto increase it, what are you
going to add, What is itgoing to look like? How is it
going to be a value of benefitto the patient and to the practice,
because you're not just taking up timeand a chair. There needs to be
a purpose to it, for sure, for sure. And I think that
can also tie into something that maybe an issue as well as waiting until
it's too late to start hygiene now. And in terms of that, I

(05:38):
mean some practices may have had issueswith waiting until the patient has some pretty
deep pockets, uh, you know, in their gumline, before they start
getting to work on it um.And at that point it's it's you're you're
working hard to save what's left insteadof getting someone on a you know,
on a proper medical timeline. BecauseI mean it's it's a scary. It's

(06:00):
scary for a lot of people towalk in and not have their issues fixed
where maybe there's you know, they'vegot bleeding gums, you know, like
that Saxophonis from the Simpsons. It'sit's a lot of this so far kind
of plays into in my mind too, patient satisfaction, buyer satisfaction, client
satisfaction, whatever, you want tocall it. The more you feel these

(06:21):
people are spending either they're paying forinsurance or they're spending their harder money on
this. They want to feel likethey're going to a doctor, they're going
to someone with a medical profession,and they want that service well. And
again it comes back to leadership.You got to schedule some time to sit
down with your team to outline yourspecific treatment recommendations right, have a mock
treatment plan, and then work throughwhat they got right, what they would

(06:44):
do differently. It's just like anything, what you're gonna put in it,
you're gonna get out of it.And your hygiene department needs to have clear
expectations, a clear path, andto understand big picture, but ultimately to
provide you know, some of thebest perio treatment that you can provide well
casey with with hygiene and all that. I feel like than just may be

(07:08):
assuming it's just happening because they haven'theard any complaints about anything. UM,
I don't think it's safe to assumethat the job is being done. I
know you more than likely like yourstaff and love your staff, and I'm
do work hard, but it's notsafe to be to safely say I know
it's being done correctly every time.No, you don't want to assume.

(07:29):
I mean, one way to findout where you stand is doing an audit
of your charts. Just randomly pullfifteen twenty twenty five charts of adults seen
in the last six to twelve months. How many you have a complete perio
exam recorded in the last year,right, Chances are it's very good that
if in the last year, andagain, that's a great way to see
in real time how's my hygiene departmentdoing. Right, So if you pull

(07:53):
like fifteen twenty and half of themare not done, you know, to
completion, then that's a kind ofa good guest that made of how the
whole year has been. It's kindof a funny topic that, again,
this is outside of our purview alittle bit. While we help with efficiencies
within a department and some best practices, we don't get into the practice management
an It's I can kind of hearit even with you and I talking about

(08:15):
this. This is outside of ourpurview. These things are important, but
it's interesting that practice owners will thinkthat getting one thing right is going to
write their ship of income overhead retirement, where also just action. Again,
this is thousands and thousands and tenthousands of dollars. We would call this
tripping over pennies to get to dollarsbecause for us, the things that we
help with, it's millions and millionsof dollars over the course of their career.

(08:37):
But let's say there's a dentist outthere listening right now who is not
hitting the marks they need to evenget to in collections. Is something like
this where they actually sit down andmake a plan and work with their hygiene
team could help to boost them inthe long run. Well, that's right.
I mean, do a case reviewmeeting, you know, get it
on the schedule. Talk to yourteam, set a goal of how much

(09:00):
restorative you'd like to see enrolled inhygiene um, you know, put protocols
in place, that chart audit tolook for current charts. That's that's an
important right. Communicate to your team. That's the biggest one I think is
make sure to stay in communication andbe proactive with your team. Be proactive
in getting the information. Don't alwaysexpect someone to come to you because maybe
they didn't do the job to theirown satisfaction. I know, I don't

(09:24):
run to my boss and telling myselfyou know well, and and again if
you have if you do some ofthese things and you you have a clear
path and a better outline. Youalso need to give them enough time,
like we said, so they cancomplete it, so they don't feel like
they're on skates. But I thinkthose are all really really important. Again,
this is just one little topic,but it's important. Um well,

(09:48):
as you said, we do touchupon hygienea bit in our our CE course.
What are some other you know,generic topicsy, you may cover and
if someone comes to see you,yeah, I mean they tell me they
feel like they punched in the stomachand 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 youstruggle with others. You might not be

(10:09):
struggling, but you're not getting tothe next level. Right, 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 of some people addicted the
pain, you know, do theycome in like Casey, you really whote
me on that one. Can youdo it again? People typically want solutions.

(10:31):
The ego gets in the way,that's right. Well, listen,
folks. Coming up on June first, we're gonna be at nineteen thirty three
Lounge by Saint Elmo that's in Fishers, Indiana. We are doing a Bourbon
and real Dental Financial Advice CE coursebeing hosted by Casey Hires himself. So
I got to watch people taste bourbonas I present CE on a topic that
NA it's been happy, yes,just like booze. And then on June

(10:56):
second, we will also another eventand Fishers. We will be at the
top Golf and Fishers right across frommy Kia. That will be avoiding cash
flow traps in your practice. Ifyou're in Indiana or you're within a driving
rates with a nice thing about Indianapolisas we are just about two hours from
every part of the state, acrossroads acrossroads of America. So if you
need to sign up and get yourfree enrollment and get your earn your CE

(11:18):
credits is PACE certified, go tofour Quadrants Advisor, dot com, slash
events. Casey's usually look great andyou sounded fantastic, So thank you,
You're sweet. That's all the timewe have today. Thank you to our
guests for their insight and for sharingsome really great information. And thank you
to you the listener for tuning in. The Millionaire Dentist podcast is brought to

(11:39):
you by Four Quadrants Advisory to seeif they might be a good fit for
you and your practice. Going overto four Quadrants Advisory dot com and see
why year after year they retain overninety five percent of their clients. Thank
you again for joining us and we'llsee you next time.