Episode : #953: How to Overcome Negative Production Impacts

Podcast Description

Tiff and Dana share common pitfalls that scale back your practice’s production — and what to do to address them. Included solutions are Dental A-Team’s scorecard and a fixed cost spreadsheet, which you can reach out to the DAT for help on: [email protected]. 

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Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:01.967)

Hello, Dental A Team podcast listeners. I am so excited to be here with you today. This is Tiffanie. I never introduced myself, which is weird. Hopefully there's like some sort of intro that goes to that. just thought of that. Anyhow, here we are. Another day, another podcast. And first and foremost, I want to thank all of you guys who listen. I know we get a lot of practice assessment.

schedules from people who listen to our podcasts. That's how you guys are finding us. And it just means a lot to us that you're here, that you're with us, that you're supporting us. We want to support you and we are doing forever. As far as I can tell, we're doing new free practice assessments for practices all over, all over the country, all over the world. Sometimes we get Canadian practices and it's super cool. I know we've worked with practices all the way in New Zealand and it's just really cool. And these complimentary practice assessment tools.

are fantastic because we really are helping you deep dive and figure out where your focus should be or could be to get you to the results that you're looking to gain, whether you're gonna work with us one-on-one in a group fashion or just continue being a listener no matter what. We love doing these complimentary practice assessments with you guys. And it's just really fun. It's so cool to see where dentistry is at and where you guys are at.

wins and the struggles you guys are having and it's just, it's super awesome. So thank you to everybody who's here with us today. We are excited to take you on this journey with us and doctors and practice owners, leaders, whoever's here today. I really wanted to chat here. I've got my girl Dana with me and I wanted to chat about projections, scheduling, reaching goals. I think that's a huge focus.

for everyone always needs to reach goals, right? But I think in 2025 so far, Dana, like we need to heavily focus on this because 2024, there was a lot that happened in 2024. It was a weird, it was a wild year, right? Like was so weird. It felt like, okay, we're getting momentum with everyone. And then it was like two steps forward, one step back, five steps forward, three steps back. And it was like, gosh, we're getting momentum. But it was an uphill battle in 2024. I don't know what happened, but holy cow, this year feels cleaner already. It feels different.

Dana (01:57.805)

wild.

The Dental A Team (02:17.795)

And I think everyone's kind of shifted their focus to the areas to be able to see what's the most important. So I'm excited to chat with you about that today, Dana, and I hope our listeners are excited for this one. I wanted to just have a conversation around what impacts production from a schedule standpoint, not technical scheduling, right? Not our blog scheduling. We've done a million freaking podcasts on that. Dana and I are not doing that today.

Dana (02:45.276)

No?

The Dental A Team (02:47.601)

But really those other pieces that impact it and how doctors can and practice owners can look at these factors and project. It's still early enough in the year that if you haven't done this yet, get on it. It's totally fine and look for those pieces. So I wanted to pick your brain a little bit Dana and I think let's take it in the space of let's talk about the things that can impact and then let's talk about how we can.

project that and fix it and work it into our goals. So what are the spaces Dana that you have, your clients, and I think we likely do this the same, but what spaces and what do you have your clients look for when they are getting prepped for that next year? We're into the year and we're trying to figure out what's going on, what things impact production goals from a scheduling standpoint like that that you guys are taking a look at.

Dana (03:37.388)

Yeah, I love this topic because I do think when we think about production and impacts on production, we go right to scheduling, we go right to those pieces. And so I love that today is a little bit different. And I think that sometimes we just forget that like taking a vacation is going to impact production, having holidays in there, holidays will sometimes fall on work days and sometimes not.

you know, yearly, they're different. so looking at how many holidays do we have in there looking at, if we're going to take CE, how much of that is time away from the office, team meetings and quarterly meetings and admin time, knowing all of those things, right? All of those things impact your production because then that isn't necessarily time spent taking care of patients. It's definitely needed. It's time spent working on the business. It's time spent training and, working on all of our processes. So

The Dental A Team (04:21.495)

So.

Dana (04:27.664)

let's not not do it because it affects production, right? Knowing it will impact your production and being able to combat that is definitely super helpful.

The Dental A Team (04:31.174)

Yeah, yeah.

The Dental A Team (04:40.57)

Yeah, I totally agree. think CE is something that a lot of doctors will find on a whim or be like, I need to take this course. You need to block me out these days. And if we're not projecting and planning for that or accommodating the schedule in other places, it really impacts it. I had a client that I was chatting with last week, an office manager, and she's like, Tiff, what the heck do I do? Like they want to make XML this month, but they took between the two doctors, they took two weeks off. And I'm like, well,

This is the shared reality, right? So their reality is they're not looking at that. They're not thinking about that. Your reality is that you have to get it on the schedule. And so that's the first place you look when they come to you and tell you to shut down days is you're like, well, what am I supposed to do with this? So coming to that shared reality is huge and trying to project as much as you can the CE that you want to take this year or

estimating how much CE you're willing to take time off for is always huge as well. I know I've got a few doctors that don't know when they want to take vacation or where they want to go or if they want it. And I say, you know what? That's totally fine. In the perfect world, how much vacation time do you want to take with your family? And I have one doctor that said four to six weeks. I said, great. Then plan for six. I want you to take six weeks out of your productive

numbers, days of work, right, take those six weeks out of that productive time, now estimate what you can do and how we can bump those goals. Because the reality is we need to increase production and collections by seven to ten percent every year to keep up with inflation. And team members that are listening, every year, no matter what, you're going to get a new goal. It's going to be different than it was last year. And guess what? We're doing things on the other side to help you with that.

just FYI, you're going to get a bigger goal every year. Soap. Soapbox. The days of the year that we're willing, that we're able to work, right, impact if how easily or how difficult it's going to be to get to that goal. So we've got to say, okay, this is our goal, this is the number of days we're working with, what do have to do every day to get to that goal? So it's not necessarily, this is how many days I have to work, what is my goal, it's, this is what I need to do, this is how many days I

The Dental A Team (07:03.878)

I have that I'm working, how do we fix that? So I love that. And I've had a lot of doctors in the last couple of years that have really learned to just say, okay, well, I don't have it planned yet, but I would love to take three CEs this year, because I want them and I need them. And I'd love to take this much vacation with my family. Great. Swipe it off, figure it out, we move on. Other pieces that I know have come into play, in the dental industry. So

Guess what, guys? We've got a lot of babies that come along. Maternity and paternity leave is a real thing. Like, we're family. We're healthcare providers, so we are family-oriented beings. So making sure that we're considering that as well. I know a lot of offices that are like, shoot, I didn't even think about the fact that my hygienist is going to be out for three months starting in June, and what am I supposed to do? And it's May. And I'm like, my gosh.

Dana (07:59.95)

you

The Dental A Team (08:00.052)

Why didn't Oyrin want this information? You know, it's just like those pieces we forget about. So I love that. Like, Observed Holidays, which 2024 taught us a lesson if we were not pre-planning for Observed Holidays because Christmas and New Year's landed on wild days for that year, and it really, really messed with December production. 2025, it's similar. It's at least towards the end of the week, so you can work the beginning of both.

Dana (08:03.246)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (08:29.897)

but observed holidays and how much time are you gonna give yourself and your team off during those holidays? CE, how much do you want to on vacations? How much do you want to take? How much do you aspire to take? Always go big, because you can work extra days. Team vacations, especially when it comes to providers, so associates and hygienists, you've gotta make sure we're prepped for that. Maternity and paternity leave.

making sure we're prepped for all of those situations and scenarios, and I'm sure there are some that I didn't even think about, that impact it. I do have doctors that will take some time off and then they'll work maybe extra Fridays or they'll work extra long on Thursdays where they normally would have done some admin work, which I don't love you guys getting rid of admin work. and you said, know, admin hours and meeting hours, things like that, making sure we're accounting for those things. But if you can,

pick up extra days for sure. I'm never gonna turn that down and neither will your schedulers. But making sure we're prepping and planning for that. some tools, Day, let's talk about some tools that we have that we have our clients utilize and then also that you guys who aren't yet clients, your listeners, use tools like this or reach out and we can help you with tools like this. Really narrowing in and making things easy is...

what I love in life. I hate... doesn't mean things are never going to be hard. I hate hard forever. I want hard right now, so maybe it's time consuming right now, but it's going to save me pain later. That's what I want to do. So, Dana, we have our projections sheet, so maybe talk about our projections sheet a little bit and our scorecard and how those combine and then how you're using that now two months into the year with your clients to really assess and see.

Dana (09:59.5)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (10:21.856)

how their goals are going for them as we're rounding out middle of Q1.

Dana (10:26.092)

Yeah, so I love our projection sheet and I feel like in 2024 I used it more than ever because 2024 was wild so let's prep and make sure 2025 stays a little less wild than 2024 was.

The Dental A Team (10:32.031)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (10:37.896)

Absolutely.

Dana (10:38.766)

And so really, it truly is it's mapping out I go through every month of the year with the client, how many working days are we going to have for each provider, including hygiene. And some of that does take prep work as far as hey, I need you to get that information from your heart to can they do they have any idea when they're going to take vacations? Do they have any idea and then honestly, if we don't, okay, well, how much PTO do they have and we build that in just saying like, okay, well, we know they're probably going to use their two weeks of PTO somewhere. So if we even it out throughout the

The Dental A Team (10:53.716)

Mm-hmm.

The Dental A Team (11:01.909)

Yeah.

Dana (11:08.72)

quarters, at least we kind of have the number of days that we're working with. And so we'll go through and we'll say, where do you want to end up next year, right? We'll base it on this year, we'll look at all sorts of things. And then we go through that sheet together and we basically say, okay, if these are the number of working days, if this is the number of providers we have available, this is what it's going to take every single day from each provider to get you to your ultimate goal. So it's kind of some reverse engineering, but it also is some planning and prepping.

The Dental A Team (11:34.315)

Yeah.

Dana (11:38.83)

And I love that meeting with clients because a lot of that goes like a lot of things go into that projection sheet. And I love that you said, okay, well, how many CE days do you want to take? Sometimes actually CE comes down to what do we have for a CE budget next year? And then of that budget, okay, well, that can likely get you two to three CE courses, which then helps with our projections that way. So it is a lot of planning and prepping that goes into it. But I think that it really helps.

got them down to the penny what needs to happen every single day in each month and really gives them a roadmap that then as the year starts going and we bring in our scorecard we're constantly paying attention to where are we to getting to that and following that roadmap that we set out at the end of the year prior. So it's a really cool combination of tools and and I love to see especially this year is like we're

The Dental A Team (12:21.32)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (12:30.802)

Yeah.

Dana (12:38.704)

really customizing and tightening of the scorecard that it constantly has them assessing gaps, it constantly has them going back to that initial roadmap we set, and then like you said, really just looking for opportunities of what is the thing we need to focus on right now.

The Dental A Team (12:56.073)

I love that. think you nailed it with those. The projection sheet is huge. And then coupling it with the scorecard and a piece that made me think of that's on the scorecard. And we purposely put it on the scorecard because this made a massive impact on goals being reached last year. I think every year, but last year, it really showed its face is the number of hours that were left.

open on the schedule, so they were not filled with production either in hygiene or on the doctor's schedule. So when you look at the projections, you're like, great, this is awesome. This is if I were full to 100%, this is what my estimated production could be by provider. But then when you get in there and you start utilizing the scorecard and you're looking at the production, you compare the two, you're like, why am I off and why is it hard to reach these goals? Or why am I just not there yet? Why am I not reaching this goal yet?

A lot of times it's lost in those pieces that we haven't always paid a lot of attention to, or just like we could, we should, why isn't it happening? I'm not sure. Looking at those open hours and even taking into account maybe, know, with that, that you're likely going to have like 3 % or so left open on the schedule. But looking at those open hours and saying, great, well, if I multiplied these open hours by that producer's average dollar per hour, that's going to show me I probably could have made that goal.

really focusing the attention in on there and bringing it back then to the schedulers and treatment planners and full team of handoffs and all of those pieces we talk about because of schedule working takes the full practice. So it takes you guys projecting, you guys prepping and planning takes, you know, the back office and front office working really hard together to ensure that our patients are the healthiest they possibly can be. Dana, you mentioned CE budget.

And that made me think of the other tools that we're utilizing that I hope other practices that are not yet Delay Team clients are utilizing as well. that's in the, which goes along with that projection, right? The fixed cost spreadsheets, making sure you know what your fixed costs are. That's also part of that planning and projecting because if you're fixed costs and your bare minimum production and collections that you need in order to have the overhead that you want,

The Dental A Team (15:12.587)

If those aren't in alignment, right, with your projections, your projections are low, we might need to look then and say, okay, well, where can we add days back in? Because if we're not combining all of that information, again, we're just not seeing all the levels. It's like not seeing all of the colors. It's like being colorblind to orange, right? You can't see orange anywhere and you're just missing all of these flowers and things that could light up your life. It's like.

not being able to see those pieces. So the fixed cost spreadsheet and knowing what are the fixed costs, what are my average payrolls, what are my average supplies, what should this look like? Then you look at what that needs to be, what are my projections, and what can I do then minus those fixed costs? What would my overhead look like if this is the projection for that month? So then tackling that and looking at that growth percentage and profit percentage,

opportunity allows you then to again look at what you're projecting and what you're taking time off for and evaluate what do I need to do to change that result or it's perfect. And Dana, I you've been working a lot, a lot, a lot with the fixed cost spreadsheet. How has that impacted the being able to project and impact the schedule for the clients that you've got utilizing that spreadsheet?

Dana (16:35.374)

Yeah, I really used to fix costs heavily this year because I do feel like that was part of the wild of 2024 is you know with everything going on and things are just more expensive wages are higher and I feel like practices we're seeing really good growth as far as looking at production but offices who weren't keeping quite an eye on expenses got some surprises because it ended up that like

The Dental A Team (16:41.294)

Mm-hmm.

The Dental A Team (16:56.345)

Yeah.

Dana (17:03.36)

you know, we set goals based on the numbers from the previous year. And so then when this year's expenses are quite a bit higher, and they're not watching them, or that's not something, you know, that they consistently look at, it just became more necessary this year to ensure that they knew where their fixed costs were. And they also knew that, okay, if it's outside of this, right, that is like,

The Dental A Team (17:07.769)

Mm-hmm.

The Dental A Team (17:17.051)

you

Dana (17:28.31)

an alert that like we need to take a deeper dive into this and we need to really keep an eye on it. So it was something that I really incorporated in 2024. And again, this year, I love that it is part of our scorecard and the things that we're really tracking with clients because that was an area that really hit offices hard. was like, were just giving raises and we were just saying, yep, you know what, I think I can extend my pay range for this new position to this and, just making some of these

The Dental A Team (17:29.614)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (17:56.641)

Mm-hmm.

Dana (17:58.186)

decisions like a little bit on the fly without crunching and saying, All right, well, what does that look like on the expense side? Or how much does that actually add to my BAM and my bottom line? And so I think that that it really was impactful this last year. And so, you know, I with you, I'm encouraging offices, even those listening to really make sure that that is a number that you know.

The Dental A Team (18:08.548)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (18:22.36)

For sure, and I think you're 100 % right because our goal is to be profitable and to have a thriving business that patients can continue to come to. But when we're making decisions without knowing the full spectrum, makes it really difficult. And to combine those pieces into what you just said, the...

holiday situation at the end of the year. I know I had a lot of clients and it was like November, December. They're like, Tiff, we decided to just take the two weeks off. And it's like, my gosh, like you just deleted four days out of December and that's massive. So going from a 16 day month to a 12 day month, like if you're averaging, you know, $10,000 a day, that's 40 grand that we've now deleted at the end of the year. There's nowhere else to put that. So being able to know.

Is that 40 grand going to affect the profit, the profitability and the overhead of the practice? Do I have that saved somewhere to cover it because I'm not collecting that 40 grand in January from December, right? So having that fixed cost information and what your bare minimum is to know where your overhead will be to know, can I actually deduct 40 grand from my production?

and be okay because I've got a couple practices now, you know, into January, February that are like, Tip, why is my collections low? And I'm like, well, girl, you took two weeks off in December and we collect on a lag when it comes to dental insurances. So I'm not surprised that it was a little low in January. So I think that was brilliant to really be able to combine all of those pieces. And again, that's like missing a color in the rainbow spectrum of colors, whatever. Like, you can't, you've got to look at it all.

Dana (19:51.595)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (20:09.444)

And if any of those pieces aren't missing, it could be really detrimental to the practice. So I think that was really cool, Dana. Thank you for bringing that up. You guys, it's simple. Even though it's February, if you haven't done this yet, like, that's okay. It's not December. You guys, you're not telling me in November, you're taking four days off in December. So guess what? It's only February. It's only whatever month you decided to live, you decided to listen to this in, go do these things. So look at, if you don't have the spreadsheets, if you're not one of our clients, then...

Dana (20:26.67)

Thank you.

The Dental A Team (20:37.805)

Create one. All you have to do is know what you can work and what your estimated dollar per hours are or reach out to us. [email protected] We're happy to help you with some ideas and some tools as well. Again, we are doing our complimentary practice assessments. Always TheDentalATeam.com That'll pop up. You can sign up for one those. This is definitely something that we talk about on those a lot. So we always look at your profitability. We always look at how the business can grow clients and non-clients. We like to help you guys with all of that. So

Dana, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for being such a huge advocate of the business side of all of this and really helping your clients and all of everyone to see those pieces and for helping on the back end so much of the creation of all of these pieces. It was a huge project within our company to ensure that we had it dialed in as much as we.

have the knowledge for now or know to look at. So thank you so much for that. Thank you for this conversation today and freaking rock it out. Your clients are doing amazing and I love seeing you all, you and your clients just thrive in those worlds. So super cool. Awesome. Guys, go do the things. Like I said, it's gonna take some time upfront, but it's gonna save you.

pain in the long run. So do the hard right now, save yourself pain and hard later. Get those numbers dialed in. Dana had some amazing tips and tools today within all of those different areas and realms to look for. Don't forget the meetings, you guys, I think that's a space that a lot of us miss. Meetings, CE credits, those hours, those pieces like that that you're taking off in admin hours. So make sure you're calculating correctly.

Go look at what can impact your production and your schedule and work with your team to make sure you guys are doing the best ever possible. Dana, thank you for being here with me today. I loved this conversation. Your brain is incredible and I don't, that's it. Like you're just freaking amazing. I don't know how you do it and I just love it. So thank you so much.

Dana (22:37.826)

Thanks for having me and right back at you, Tiff.

The Dental A Team (22:40.263)

Thank you. Thank you. All right, guys, let us know what you thought about this. We'd love to see a five-star review and letting us know how much help this information was or what have you. [email protected] And we can't wait to see you guys, if you are not yet a client, on a complimentary practice assessment because I really, really, really want you to get dialed in this year, no matter what that looks like for us and you. And keep listening, you guys. We're gonna always have some amazing content here for you. Catch you next time.