#943: Office Autopsy: When Cash Flow is Low

Dental A Team Podcast

Kiera summarizes a practice that was struggling with cash flow. She breaks down what the Dental A-Team did to pull back the curtain and find out where cash was hiding, and what was done to fix the flow.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00.814)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I hope today's incredible for you. I hope you are having the best life. I hope you're just enjoying everything and more. I really truly hope that things are just going so well for you. Don't forget guys, we truly live in the best industry, the best time, all the things are here for us. And so let's not forget how great things really are for us. As always, thanks for being a part of our Dental A Team podcast family. I adore you. I appreciate you. I respect you.

I look up to you. I want to be more like you, all the things. And I'm so, so, so, so, so happy that so many of you are a part of our family. If you guys remember, my mission is to positively impact the world in the greatest way possible. And we do that through expert consulting for dentists and teams. And so if you can share this podcast in a Facebook group or on your drive, us, share this with a colleague, share this with a coworker, share this with someone. Today's going to be an office autopsy.

and leave those Google reviews, those five star reviews on whatever streaming platform you're on. That helps us stay top ranked so more offices and more teams and more doctors just like you can be infused with positivity, tactical tips that are going to make your life, your practice extraordinary, easier and happier and more profitable. So I think it's a win-win-win and that's what we're all about at Dental A Team. That's what our consulting's about is how to help you create and achieve that extraordinary life that you've been looking for.

and do it with ease.

Kiera Dent (02:06.531)

If you are new to the Dental Inn Team podcast, my name is Kiera Dent. Dent really is my last name and I do love what I do. I started this consulting company wanting to help the students of Midwestern University's dental college in Arizona. And I took a practice from 500,000 to 2.4 million with one of the doctors. She was incredible. We did incredible work. And I thought, man, if I could help her.

Maybe I can help other doctors too. And that's actually how Dental A Team started. I had never done consulting before. So everything you get within Dental A Team are things that I wish I would have had things that when we were scrambling, when we couldn't get our team bought in, when we couldn't hit goals, when everything seemed so hard, I wish I would have had these items. And so that's actually what the consulting company has been built upon has been created on is all of that. So that's what Dental A Team's about. And so for those of you who are new,

Every so often, I will do what's called an office autopsy, where I take you behind the scenes of one of our consulting clients. Yes, I do keep them anonymous. And sometimes I will mix and mingle so you can't quite figure out exactly who I'm talking about. And that's just to keep the practices anonymous. I do have permission to share. And these are just things that we've done with a practice. So today, and I love to walk you through because

When I was an office manager, when I owned my practices, we were just in our own silo place. And yet if I can share information with you, help the best practices win and thrive, that's what I'm about. Because I believe that we have a moral obligation within dentistry to help practices that are the best, provide the best dentistry for more patients and to help patients have the best experience. I really, really truly do believe that that's our moral mission. And so, and it's our ethical code and that's what we're here for. So with that, there was a practice.

They were an amazing office. And I remember this doctor called me, I was sitting on an airplane. I used to fly a lot more than I do today. We fly to our practices. We also have offices come together and we meet together for business and leadership events that are so fun. And we basically like get naked on our business in front of other people. And I think it's one of the most beautiful things. They're not physically naked. I feel like I need to like have a massive disclaimer on there. But basically, like we stripped down your business to the bare bones of

Kiera Dent (04:13.889)

what is going on in your practice and what are the real things and what are the roadblocks with no nonsense. Like let's actually figure it out and then let's not spend our time fixing the 500 things that we could fix. A business will always have opportunities to fix and that's why it's a business. But the reality is I think as business owners and as leaders, our job is to sift through all the opportunities and pick the one, two or three items.

that are going to exponentially move us forward in the fastest, most effective, efficient way that will be the best for our teams, the best for our patients. And so that's where we strip it down to the bones, what's going on in the practice, and then we're able to help us identify what do we need to do over these next three months to make sure our practice is flourishing and thriving. And we do this in a group of like-minded doctors. We do this where you are really able to exponentially grow and we have your office manager come with you. Because when I attend events, I love them and I get hyped up.

but then I gotta go back and get my team hyped up. So we figured we are dentists and team consulting. We work with both. We don't just work with one or the other. We are comprehensive that way. And so really having this beautiful match made in heaven where the office managers also get to hot seat. They get to go through, they get to have these opportunities and they get to mix and mingle with other office managers to really pull and seep out the best of the best. So.

That's what we do. either go to you or we bring you together or a mixture of both. And it's so magical. And so this doctor called me and I was sitting on a plane and he was telling me how hard his practice was and how the collections were just struggling a lot. And he said, Keira, can you help me? And I said, well, actually, yeah, this is our specialty. My hunch is there's a lot more than just collections, but usually offices will reach out when cash flow is low. Obviously, right?

We're in panic. We need cash. How do we get this? Let's contact a consultant who's an expert consultant who's been there, done that, done that successfully multiple hundreds of times over and let's hire them. So cashflow, team turnover, culture, lack of vision, wanting to go to the next level. Sometimes there aren't really a lot of problems. I just want to go to the next level and what can we do for that? So those are usually the typical reasons why someone's going to actually reach out for consulting. And so this doctor, it was the cashflow, the cashflow issue.

Kiera Dent (06:25.187)

Other times offices will also reach out for systems. I think that that's a very, very interesting thing too, to see, what are the systems we could be doing? So depending upon where they are in a practice, if they're like zero to a million, usually it's more about systems and foundations and leadership. If they're like a million to about that 5 million mark, it's usually optimization, leadership, cashflow sometimes in that area. And then if they're 5 million plus, usually it's like, let's take to the next level or like, let's get our systems dialed in or where can we do those small refinements?

And then when I'm hitting the offices that are like 10, 20 million, those ones are more like we're mass scaling. We're trying to get all the practices operating in the same direction. So, depending upon where you are, you may or may not fit. Maybe you're above, maybe you're below. Either way, that's really what they're looking for. So, this office, they're in that middle tier, the 1 million to 5 million range, but cash flow. Cash flow is hurting. They're struggling and they don't know why. So, going into the practice, first thing we did was we looked at immediately where can cash be hiding and cash can oftentimes be hiding.

in your AR accounts receivable and doctors I always feel so bad for you because you did the dentistry and yet we didn't collect and I always tell people I'm like how would you like to go to work and you go do the work and then you don't even get paid for the work and so that's where with teams I'm very adamant of you have to be collecting the money you have to be helping your doctor like we did the work we did great dentistry and we can expect patients to pay for that and so we immediately went to the AR and their AR was sky-high

and the money was right there. All the cash was there. Another practice we saw that there's $350,000 of AR sitting there. Well, no wonder our collections fell low because we've got AR there. So you need to put a system into this practice to actually start collecting the AR. So we started sending out statements. We had a process of when do we send the statements? How often do we send the statements? Who's working on these statements? What day are they working on the statements? Are we calling first, then texting, and then sending a paper statement? The answers are yes, we're doing those items.

but they didn't have it. And within a couple of months, this practice was able to collect over $200,000. You better believe that doctor saw the ROI of our consulting immediately. And now they also feel like they've got cashflow. But how did we get here and how do we stay out of there? So a lot of times in consulting, we go in and administer CPR immediately. I guarantee you when you get into consulting, there's usually a burning fire. And so we love to go in, we perform the CPR, we bring it back to life.

Kiera Dent (08:47.481)

And then we're gonna check to see how can we prevent this from happening or what other areas can we optimize? And so with that, we came up with the follow-up, the collections procedure and how to get your collections and make sure we're watching that and have it as a whole team effort. So when patients are checking in, we're collecting, can we get credit cards on file so we're not having to call and chase these patients for statements? We are changing our verbiage of we collect at time of service rather than sending them a statement with insurance. We got better with our insurance verification so we could be more confident when we're presenting treatment plans and collecting balances.

I would much rather collect rather than have to go chase money. And I would rather give refunds rather than having to chase and get payments. And I think all of us would feel that way, right? We'd rather get our paychecks upfront rather than having to wait and hope that someone's willing to pay us. So this practice now is watching, keeping the collections at 98 % immediately fix the cashflow area for them. Other things that they were able to do was from there was helping the culture and fixing the culture because when cashflow is tight, doctors are stressed.

Like truly it just, and then it trickles down to the whole team, morale's low. Then we feel like we've got this desperation. We're constantly trying to get these patients to pay. And so helping them there. so then from there, what we did is we were able to help this practice focus on treatment that they actually love doing. And then brought on an associate to be able to do the treatment that the doctor didn't want to do, keeping the collections high, working on perfect handoffs, helping the hygiene team tee up treatment for this doctor.

and then be able to thrive and allow the office manager to truly manage the practice. So the doctor then is able to focus on doing dentistry. And we say like, you know, have you ever heard that like running a dental practice is hard? Well, that only team comes in and takes that stress away from you. So you can focus on being a dentist and doing what you love again. And that's where we shifted over and help your office manager do what they love. And that's the practice stats, the HR, the business management, training and coaching that office manager up to truly be almost like a COO.

of a practice to do the operations, to do the financials, to do the statistics, and managers love to do this if they've got the right DNA for it. So doctors love to do the dentistry piece, and office managers love to do the management piece. And so teaching both of them how to yin and yang together, so that way it could be this dynamic duo. It could be this incredible practice that's working, and then be able to let go of a lot of the admin pieces. So now this doctor is able to delegate to check in.

Kiera Dent (11:05.337)

to verify to know these things are being taken care of. And they're able to figure out the top KPIs that this practice needs to be watching with collections is number one, because they know that that's their danger spot that they can get into hot water pretty quickly. But they have the process, they have the protocols, they have the system in place to where it's not team dependent, but it's system dependent. And now they're all able to watch their collections, manage the practice and the doctor is thriving. And it's interesting to watch this doctor from when they called me and I was sitting on the airplane and the stress and the

The true like despair, which this happens when I talk to offices and I truly like my heart and passion. say life is my passion, dentistry is my platform. I am obsessed with helping people have their lives that they want to live. I'm obsessed with giving people that freedom back. I'm obsessed with like unshackling the chains of practice ownership that can come.

Like I'm obsessed with helping doctors be free and still be so profitable and love doing dentistry. And all it is is right person, right seat that's accountable to their tasks and they actually know what they're doing. And so being able to give this doctor their life back, being able to give this office manager the skills and the tips and the tools to be able to be so successful and drive this practice forward is literally why Dental A Team was created. Your success as a practice is our freaking passion. We want you to be successful in life, in business, in team, in patient care.

And that's our passion and that's what we're dang good at. And so for this office, now what they're able to do is everyone's been able to rise to the occasion. They're able to attract and have great team members and patients come to their practice. It's less stressful, greater morale. They're not having to do as much busy work because we've got true, true, true, true engagement and interactions. We're collecting so cashflow is no longer an issue. We know what we need to produce. We've set up the block schedules. We set up the dollar per hour production. So now this practice knows what they need to produce.

And now the whole team knows this is what I'm responsible for. This is how I can help grow the practice. Every person's right person, right seat, doing what they love, their zone of genius. Of course there's zones that we don't like within our zone of genius, but most of their day is on stuff that they absolutely love. You could just imagine from where they were to where they are today and how much stress is gone. How much happiness has been brought in. How much better patient care is brought in. How much better the team is all working together.

Kiera Dent (13:22.665)

This is what we do. This is where I love to like take the knife and cut back the curtain and show you this is what we do within a practice and how this took about a year to do. We immediately like I said, bring in that 200,000 cash. Sometimes we can turn a practice around that quickly. Other times it takes a little while to get there. Both are okay. It's okay. Because every practice is not on the same path and every practice doesn't need the same thing, which is why it's completely 100 % personalized to your practice, to your needs and to your vision.

I am not here with a cookie cutter model. We don't do that. We come in and we say, where do we need to administer CPR? What's the next layer? The next layer, where do you need to be in six months, 12 months, 24 months to be living the life you want, to have the practice of your dreams that's your reality and to be thriving, not just surviving. And so welcome to Dental A Team Consulting. Welcome to this practice. This is what we did. This is how we have it. Of course, there going to be other fires that come up. Of course, there are other things like case acceptance and handoffs and hygiene production per hour and...

Making sure that our morning huddles are effective and efficient But we're never gonna come in and do those items unless your practice actually needs them Why there's no reason to create busy work when you are already thriving in certain areas. So that's why teams love us That's why doctors love us because there's no busyness and people wonder like how long did that take care? Like I said, it was about an hour and or excuse me a year and then every month It's about an hour and a half of coaching time and then in between follow-up

working on it, but that's team training, that's doctor training, that's getting us focused and aligned, that's focusing on the most important things, that's doable and efficient. We're not here for inefficiencies. We're here to make your life easier, more effective, more productive, more fun. Like I said, you know how running a practice can be hard? Well, Dental A Team takes care of that so you can love being a dentist again and doing what you love. And that's what we're here for. And I would love you to be our next office autopsy practice. I would love to see where you are.

We have practices that are going from 1.5 million to 4.5 million in a year. We have offices adding $13 million of production. I have other offices that are getting their systems in place and they're actually able to decrease their overhead by five or 10%. I know those numbers don't feel as sexy as the 5 million or the 2 million, but guess what? Sometimes you don't need to be adding all those millions of dollars. You just need to be reducing the stress and getting your life back too. And so all of that.

Kiera Dent (15:38.869)

Is what we love to do. It's all personalized It's all completely built around you your practice and what we see and we're gonna guide you through that And so I would love you to be a part of that Be our next office autopsy reach out. [e-mail] We give you a complimentary call and we're going to give you massive value for your practice whether you work with us or not I hope you choose to I think Dental A Team's incredible come strip your practice to the bones be uncomfortable But that's where the uncomfort like in the uncomfortable is where the success lies

getting uncomfortable, recognizing like, hey, there's a better way to do this and I'm going to be brave enough to take that risk, to take that step and to do it with people that I trust, that I know, that I love, that are going to make sure I don't fall. And that's exactly what we do. So reach out [e-mail] And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team Podcast.