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 doing nothing most of the time.    Listen in as we discuss the proper systems and protocols to truly confirm an appointment for a better schedule and a productive day.

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 the new patient from walking through your door!   In this episode Sandy tells us ways we can improve and elevate our phone skills to ensure that these new patients are not only scheduling, but walking through your door and accepting treatment.

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 core values.  Create an attendance policy.  Track when people miss work.  Address these no-shows or last minute cancellations immediately! Reward good behavior.  Listen in as we dive deeper into each of these steps and provide a game plan!

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 something that won’t get you instant results at the beginning but it is something that every practice owner should be thinking about because… your treatment acceptance starts with your reputation!   Listen in to hear the rest of the action steps so that you can increase your treatment acceptance this month!

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 a “norm” when it occurs. Anything that kills your productivity is NOT normal!   In this episode Sandy reveals the 5 most common productivity killers that happen in your practice every week. We discuss them and show you the difference between each one and how some play off of each other if you let it slide or handle it the wrong way. Then Sandy lets us know how we can prevent each of these 5 killers and what systems need to be in place today… to ensure that we are keeping the productivity in our office high.

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 happen? How could we prevent this? Sandy gives us a formula so you can have predictability with each of your patients & a formula on how to ensure your employee who handles your money will be trustworthy.

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 today! The sooner you do it the better, and not only will this prevent your production from slowing down but it will also provide you with a “Rocktober” (Rocking October).

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 been using the practice’s Amazon account  to make purchases for her own birthday party, Christmas, etc.  Sandy gives us 3 systems that most employees use to steal or establish fraud and she gives us the systems to prevent this. In our practice and in life, we want certainty, we want predictability, so it’s crucial you know what is going on in your practice and not depend solely on your employees' words.

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 wrong. Patients who are mad or upset won’t pay. And when you initiate the collection procedure against the angry patient it gets them even more upset! So what can you do? Well, Sandy lets us know that when you deal with people it’s important to have really good people skills. Something we need to keep in mind is to communicate and acknowledge the patient and what they are saying.  Sandy goes much further into detail on how we can handle upset patients who don’t want to pay and she gives us a script on what to say to find a patient's problem that will get them to pay!