Investing in technology is a big decision for any practice owner. Almost every practice has had the experience of investing in technology that doesn’t get used (we’ve seen a lot of “technology garages” in offices with equipment that sits idle). In other cases, when practice owners are more hesitant to make tech investments, the practice can miss out on important opportunities for growth, efficiency, and improvement in patient care.

So, how do you decide?

In today’s episode of The Double Your Production Podcast, Dr. John Meis and Wendy Briggs are talking through their process for evaluating tech purchases in a dental practice.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How different technologies impact case acceptance and a patient’s understanding of their health
• Why it’s not always best to be an early adopter, and how long to wait to know that a technology is viable and lasting
• How to use the “3 hats” concept to make better decisions when it comes to investing in tech for your practice
• A simple mental filter to use to avoid buying technology that is new and exciting, but won’t actually move your practice forward

They also talk about 3 products specifically: cone beams, AI software, and digital scans. They discuss these products and how to determine whether it’s time to invest (so if you’re considering any of these technologies, don’t miss this episode).

In this episode, Dr. John and Wendy talk about our upcoming 2023 Strategic Planning Session. It’s happening Thursday, Dec. 29th at 8pm Eastern. Click here to register for the free webinar. https://www.theteamtraininginstitute.com/webinar

Today on the Double Your Production Podcast, Dr. John Meis and Wendy Briggs are sitting down with Angie Bachman of Design Ergonomics to about how she helps practices become some of the top-producing offices in the nation.

Design Ergonomics has revolutionized dentistry by applying lean manufacturing principles of the famed Toyota production process to optimize offices. They improve everything from patient flow to team flow, allowing the overall environment of the office to improve. Their methods reduce wasted time, energy, and materials so practices can be extremely efficient and productive while providing a better patient experience.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why simply moving faster doesn’t improve efficiency in a dental office
• How to identify wasted time or energy in a practice’s operations
• How to create a centralized, low-cost inventory system
• The best place to start when optimizing your office and simple things you can do to improve your efficiency
• Why there’s a tendency to overcomplicate an operatory and how to encourage the team to maintain simplicity
• How to create a universal, agreed-upon setup and processes that are the same in each room

We hope you enjoy today’s episode! If you’d like to get in touch with Angie Bachman, you can reach her atabachman@desergo.com or www.desergo.com 

In this episode of the Double Your Production podcast, Dr. John Meis and Wendy Briggs are diving into Adam Grant’s new book, Think Again. They are unpacking some of the key insights from the book and talking through how these ideas apply to dental practice owners and teams.

The business environment is always changing, so every practice owner needs to have a certain level of flexibility in their thinking and a willingness to pivot. This adaptability can impact team management, patient communication, and overall practice success.

This episode kicks off a new series within the podcast. Each quarter, we choose a book that can create meaningful change in your dental practice and talk through some of the key ideas and learnings. We do this with our highest-level clients and we want to bring a bit of that book club to our broader dental community. We hope you read along with us each quarter and join us in continuing to grow personally and professionally.

In the episode, Dr. John and Wendy mention the upcoming Summit Launch Party! Register to join us for a chance to win tickets to the 2023 Summit, Disney World passes, and more!

If patients don’t move forward with treatment, everybody suffers. The patient’s condition worsens over time, team members get frustrated, and the practice performance declines.

Part of providing the very best care for patients is helping them feel comfortable saying yes treatment. When it comes to case acceptance, small things make a big difference and when everybody on the team does their part, case acceptance rises quickly.

In this episode of the Double Your Production Podcast, Dr. John Meis and Wendy Briggs talk through their 4-part case acceptance formula for dental teams. They address why patients decline or delay treatment, what gets them to move forward, and how to systematize case acceptance throughout the practice.

You’ll learn:

• The 4 parts of the case acceptance formula 
• How to navigate and work through disagreements about patient care between the doctor and other team members
• How to establish a consistent standard of care
• How to present and communicate treatment options to patients clearly so they feel confident moving forward (even if they need a lot of treatment)
• How to present simple and flexible financial options to patients to reduce money stress
• Important benchmarks to measure your success in case acceptance

What exactly is “quiet quitting”?

The term has been trending in the news and on social media lately, so Dr. John Meis and Wendy Briggs are diving into the topic and how it affects dental practices in this episode of the Double Your Production Podcast.

Quiet quitting occurs when team members who are frustrated in their roles drastically reduce the amount of effort they put in. Simply put, quiet quitting is a way of quitting without actually quitting.

Shockingly, a recent Gallup poll found that roughly 50% of Americans are engaging in quiet quitting. While discontent, unmotivated team members have always been around, the Covid-19 disruptions to the workplace have caused a surge in workplace dissatisfaction leading to this wave of quiet quitting.

If left unaddressed, dissatisfaction at work can be contagious and these behaviors and attitudes can quickly ripple across an organization. 

In this episode, you’ll learn how to prevent this from happening in your dental office, how to right the ship if you sense it’s already happening, and how to keep your team engaged, motivated, and performing at their very best.

On this episode of The Double Your Production Podcast, Dr. John Meis and Wendy Briggs sit down with Paul Lowryfrom Dental Menu to talk about how to add a customizable, flexible benefit plan to your practice. 

Patients without insurance (or patients with not-so-great insurance) don’t always keep up on their appointments because paying out of pocket can get expensive. Adding an in-house benefit plan to your practice can be a great way to take care of these patients and give them the flexibility to maintain their regular appointments and get the services they need.

Including a plan like this in your dental practice can transform the reappointment rate for uninsured patients, allowing you to provide a greater level of care and boosting results for your practice.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to design a range of benefit plans that work for patients
• How to communicate the in-office benefit plan in a way that helps patients sign up, use the benefits, and continue to renew their plan
• How to use add-ons and customizations to allow patients to get exactly what they want and need (increasing satisfaction and retention)
• How to set up pricing to deliver a great value for the patient and still maintain profitability for the practice
• How Dental Menu can help you easily offer these benefit options and make them accessible to patients

Paul will also be joining us at our next quarterly practice growth retreat!

These retreats are reserved for our clients, but we do have a few select guest seats available. If you’re interested in joining us as a guest, click here to fill out a quick form and we’ll be in touch: http://www.theteamtraininginstitute.com/guest 

In this episode of The Double Your Production Podcast, Dr. John Meis and Wendy Briggs sit down with Dr. David Ahearn, a dentist and the founder of Design Ergonomics and Ergonomic Products, to talk about how to find and alleviate capacity issues in your dental practice. 

What we find overwhelmingly with our clients is that doctor-owners often believe they need new patients for their practices to succeed, when in reality, they’re suffering from a capacity problem.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to identify capacity blockages in your practice
• How to reduce wasted space in a dental office and get the most out of the space you have
• Simple ways to improve efficiency (adapted for dental practices from the Toyota Production System)
• How to increase your capacity with confidence
• A better way to think about investing in your office capacity

Get Your Resource Package: Design Ergonomics and The Team Training Institute are providing all listeners with a free package of resources to help optimize and improve your practice. Get this resource package by clicking here: https://theteamtraininginstitute.com/designergonomics/

Guest Bio:

“I just wanted to make it easier to provide great dental care.” – Dr. David Ahearn

When Dr. David Ahearn began his career as a dentist in 1983, his mission was simple. He was committed to providing the best care possible for his patients, and to making that care affordable. 

His focus was singular --- he put the patient first. 

In the early 90’s, Dr. Ahearn became convinced that the Toyota Production System could make dental offices more productive, while improving the lives of dental staff and the patients they treated. He thought that if the principles of continuous improvement, right process, and organizational learning transformed industrial production, couldn’t they do the same for dentistry? 

He applied the Toyota principles to the design, construction, and management of his first dental office, and the results were dramatic. His practice quickly became one of the most productive in the nation. The dental staff was engaged and empowered. Patients were happy ... and happy to refer others. He soon realized that he had refined a process that could help other dentists transform efficiency and patient care in their offices. 

He founded Design Ergonomics (www.desergo.com) in 1993 to Design, Equip, and Train the best dental offices across North America. The company has since grown to become the largest independent dental office designer in the United States as it works towards its goal of creating the best dental practice in every town in North America. To learn more about how Design Ergonomics will make your dental office a fun, easy and productive place to work, subscribe to www.youtube.com/designequiptrain.

In this episode of The Double Your Production Podcast, Dr. John Meis and Wendy Briggs sit down with Dr. Travis Campbell, a dental insurance expert and dentist who teaches teams how to navigate the complexities of insurance. 

Known as “the dental insurance guy”, Dr. Campbell understands the nuances of insurance and helps practices get fewer denials and make more money in insurance reimbursements.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Common insurance myths and what the insurance laws and contracts actually say
• How to navigate underhanded insurance tactics and get your claims paid
• How to anticipate incorrect EOBs (and what to do about it)
• Where to find up-to-date laws in your area regarding insurance
• Simple ways to improve your documentation (how detailed notes, charts, and photos can help you get better reimbursement)

It’s easy to take the simple things in life for granted, like breathing.

Breathing is so simple, that we don’t even think about it. Yet, if we don’t breathe well, we don’t sleep well, and we don’t live well because our health falls apart.

In this episode of the Double Your Production Podcast, we’re discussing new developments in dental sleep medicine that can be life-changing for you and your patients.

Listen now to discover:

• How to open the adult airways permanently (without CPAP or RPEs)
• Why treating sleep disorders in your practice is the next “Align-type” technology
• What nearly 60 peer-reviewed papers reveal about new sleep disorder treatments
• The overnight “ring” for diagnosing sleep disorders that any practitioner can offer
• Why most dentists fail at offering to treat airways (and how to avoid it)
• And much more …

It seems like every doctor we talk to these days has a similar problem: they’re struggling with finding and building a team. We’re seeing signs on front desks saying, “Please sign in and have a seat. We’re short-staffed today.”

So, what’s the solution?

In this episode of the Double Your Production Podcast, Dr. John Meis and Wendy Briggs are sitting down with team performance expert, Daren Baird. Daren has consulted with some of the top dentists in the US as well as Fortune 500 companies and brings a new, valuable perspective to team building in dental practices.

With his vast experience, he’s able to see things differently and solve team problems faster.

Listen now to discover:

• Why some practices are growing by leaps and bounds after Covid, while others struggle
• How to avoid common (and costly) hiring mistakes
• How one missing conversation is likely at the root of nearly all your staffing problems
• How to make sure your staff show up physically AND mentally (the secret is to “tend”)
• And much more …

What can a champion figure skater teach you about success in a dental practice? It turns out, a lot. Because winning an Olympic medal is much like building a winning practice.

What are the secrets? Find out in our exclusive interview with U.S. Olympic medalist, Nancy Kerrigan.

You’ll discover:

• The life-changing magic of self-belief
• Why you cannot be a champion without a team to support you
• How c – – – – -, p- – – – – – -, and m- – – – – – are keys to your growth
• Priceless lessons from adversity that you don’t want to learn yourself (Nancy did for you)
• How to stop the doubters from wrecking your future
• And much more …

Did you know… Between 70% and 80% of dentists don’t have a tax strategy. And if you’re among them, you’re probably throwing away money that you could be investing for retirement. Why work harder and longer than you have to?

In this episode of the Double Your Production Podcast, you’ll discover:

• The biggest tax deduction on the planet for dentists
• How to legally boost profit margins from 35% to 50%
• Why the “tax punches” you don’t see coming hurt the worst
• How to keep your best employees with clever benefit packages
• Why buying vs. leasing your auto can save you thousands
• And much more …

Can better patient care really lead to more profitability (even during Omicron, with staff shortages, cancels, and fails)? Yes, it can.

How? That’s the subject of today’s episode of the Double Your Production Podcast.

Listen and you’ll find the surprising keys to profitability as we take a deep dive into Dr. John’s new book, Cracking The Code. (Plus, there’s a free copy waiting for you at the end of the episode.)

Listen to discover:

• The critical difference between production and profitability
• How to tell if your hygiene is hopelessly outdated
• The 3 keys to profitability
• Why most practices spend too much on marketing (and where to reinvest those dollars)
• How to get your free copy of my new book

Is growing your practice fun? If not, you’re doing it wrong.

Today’s episode is special because our guest is Dr. Ed O’Flaherty, based in Dublin, Ireland.

The traditional practice in Ireland has only one or two treatment rooms, maybe 6 at most. But Dr. O’Flaherty has 16 ops. So, he’s doing things very differently in an environment where growing a practice is more challenging than in North America.

In this conversation, you’ll learn:

• How to grow your practice in a city or state that doesn’t support you
• How to find where 80% of your patients come from (so you can scale with precision)
• Why having extra ops is like having extra cash registers in a supermarket
• How to get the highest yield per square foot when renovating or building a practice (hint: it does NOT need to be over the top)