The Dental Billing Podcast

Dental Front Office Group Coaching Session for Front Office Lab

• Ericka Aguilar • Season 6 • Episode 5

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Are you ready to navigate the world of dentistry with no background whatsoever? Imagine learning everything from dental administration ABCs to a PhD level understanding in just six months. Welcome to the Front Office Lab, our unique dental front office training program where we equip you with a wealth of resources, assignments, and in-depth trainings. In this journey, you'll not just master the administrative ropes, but also uncover the significance of marketing and advertising in a dental practice. 

The second part of our discourse illuminates the wide career horizons that the Front Office Lab program opens up. From being a dental practice office manager to a treatment coordinator, the opportunities are numerous. We delve into the qualifications each role demands and introduce you to the concept of 'perfect day scheduling'. Furthermore, we share the importance of dreaming big and creating a five-year plan. We wrap up by honoring the dental heroes and mentors who have enriched my career, and sharing the inspiring journey of turning a no-patient practice into a successful venture. We emphasize the role of family support during a career transition and give you a walkthrough of our student center orientation and Front Office Lab program syllabus. Embark on this exciting journey with us.

Want to learn Dental Coding and Billing? Join here:

https://tr.ee/efzYrY7mp-

Would you like to set-up a billing consultation with Ericka or Jen? We would love the opportunity to discuss your billing questions!

Email Ericka:
ericka@dentalbillingdoneright.com

Email Jen:
jen@dentalbillingdoneright.com

Perio performance formula:

(D4341+D4342+D4346+D4355+D4910)/(D4341+D4342+D4346+D4355+D4910+D1110)


Want to know what your fee should be for D4346? Send Ericka an email to ericka@dentalbillingdoneright.com


Speaker 1:

I'm going to take you on a journey and this is going to be a very short story because I have talked about this in the past. In fact, I have another episode called why I Started a Front Office School, and you can just scroll back. In fact, I will put a link to that episode in the show notes. We have recently launched Front Office Lab and, for those of you that are not familiar with Front Office Lab, it is a six month dental front office training program. This is not like anything that is currently on the market, because this program is designed for individuals with no background in dentistry. Think about someone who's maybe thinking about a new career and they choose dental assisting. They will go to a dental assisting school and they're going to learn the ABCs of dental assisting. The curriculum is similar in the sense that it is the ABCs or it starts with the ABCs of dental administration or dental front office, and our students end with a PhD in dental front office. And friends, I am not kidding we go from ABCs to PhD in a six month timeframe.

Speaker 1:

In the past, my students were required to attend our brick and mortar classroom and that meant that it was limited to the students in California or to individuals in California. We did have students who would come to California, rent a living space maybe an apartment or a room for six months while they were taking the course and then go back home. I had people come in from the Philippines. I had people come from other states Mexico. We've had individuals come from different countries to take the front office course and then go back and implement what they learned in their new career. We have relaunched that program in light of the staffing shortage that we're seeing in dentistry. We had a great resignation due to COVID and it's been very difficult to find individuals with adequate training, with adequate experience in dentistry. So we have decided to relaunch the program. It is called Front Office Lab. It has been restructured so that we can reach people all over the world and can I just pause and say hi to my listeners all over the world? We are now in 28 countries and I am so grateful for all of you that listened to this podcast all over the world. Now we have the ability to do a comprehensive dental front office training for individuals with no background in dentistry. We will do that in a group setting through Front Office Lab.

Speaker 1:

Today's episode is day one of our Friday sessions. This is not limited to individuals with no background in dentistry. We currently have dentists, hygienists and people with experience in the lab, in addition to the individuals with no background. Today, we're going to lift the curtain and give you a sneak peek at day one in the lab. We're going to talk about the syllabus, we're going to be going through the online learning platform that each student receives and all of the resources and homework assignments, because there is homework involved. A lot of introductory conversations today, foundational information, and I hope that you enjoy today's episode. If you want to join the lab, feel free to go to the link in the show notes for more information. Now, without further ado. Day one inside Front Office Lab.

Speaker 2:

From time to time, I will be adding bonus trainings, and these are trainings that you're not going to see on Instagram You're not going to see these on LinkedIn and these are going to be exclusively for Front Office Lab. Sometimes they're going to be advanced and other times they could be basic. They will not coincide with any week that we are in. These are just simply bonus trainings that I may feel is appropriate, or maybe one of the speakers will have some material or some bonus training material that they want to share, so that's where the bonus training is going to go. Those are for you to watch at your leisure, and they will not have any homework assignments attached to them. So, moving on from bonus trainings, we also have your resource section. Your syllabus is in the resources, so this is what I want to cover. I want to go over this with you. Here is your syllabus. You're going to go to resources and then it's going to bring you to about the lesson. Your resource is here front office lab syllabus and let's go through the syllabus together, because there is a little bit about it that I want you to understand, so you can read through most of this on your own. This is our mission statement and my mission and those that have agreed to be a part of the front office lab as far as instructors, speakers, we've gone over the mission together, and my mission, at the end of the day, is to produce quality dental administrators to teach you the things that we simply don't have time to train on in a practice. So my mission is to give you the best possible education I can give you. So front office lab is dedicated to providing higher learning for today's dental office professionals. Our program fostered learning with the opportunity to enhance or change lives one class at a time. The integration of liberal and professional learning is one of its strengths. We strive constantly for excellence in teaching knowledge and skills, while, at the same time, helping our students acquire wisdom, leadership and ethical discernment. We are going to spend some time talking about ethics, and we will do that today, so I'm going to let you go ahead and read through most of this. It's one of the things that I want to point out here is that the reading assignments will not be discussed in our lectures together.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I do have a couple of books that I'm going to recommend that you purchase From Amazon. They're very affordable. One of them is called Everything is Marketing, and that is, in my opinion, if you are studying dental administration, this is the book that you need to read, and this is by Fred Joil, and this is an advertising and marketing book for dental practices. And we're going to spend some time, not necessarily in the book, but in order for you to better understand the concepts that I'm going to discuss as we get into how to market and advertise for a dental practice, how to come up with the best possible advertisements for the surrounding area, all of that lead generation, everything related to advertising and marketing. I think that if you have read the book, or you're reading the book while we're going that part of the curriculum you will better grasp all of those concepts. So that's why I say it's not necessarily something that we're going to go through and read together, because it's not a book club, but, again, these are things that will help you. The other one that I recommend for my students to read while you're taking this course is the Nordstrom Way. We will not be reading it together, but the concepts and the ideas in this book we are going to take and we are going to apply to a dental practice.

Speaker 2:

I like to take a look at non-dental organizations and think about the things that we can do to infuse some of their practices into a dental office in order to enhance the patient's experience. And the reason that I want to focus always on enhancing the patient's experience is because everything that we do in a practice is marketing, and marketing has a direct correlation with the patient's experience. And the patient's experience has a direct impact on their desire to want to spend money in our office. And I know that that's a little more advanced for those of you that don't really have a background in either business or dentistry, but you're going to learn a lot about how the psychology of a sale has a lot to do with the experience that a consumer we're not necessarily going to call the patient a patient, well, let's call them a consumer.

Speaker 2:

A consumer desires to spend in an establishment. Think about Disneyland. We all know that Disneyland is expensive. But what gives them the right to charge what they charge? I don't even know what they charge because I don't have small children. If anybody has been to Disneyland recently, you know that it's probably you know well over. I don't know what's the average family. A family of four, can easily spend about $5,000 for a couple days at Disneyland, even if it's $1,500, just for the tickets for a family of four. I don't know if it's more or less, but the idea, the reason why Disneyland is able to charge that and increase their fees, even in a downed economy, is because of the experience. Consumers and we're all consumers we are willing to pay more when the establishment, when the business, makes us feel warm and fuzzy. Warm and fuzzy equals I'm willing to spend my hard earned money with your practice. So we're going to spend some time on that. So I do strongly recommend you get those two books. Everything is marketing by French Oil. You can get the latest version and the Nordstrom way N-O-R-D-S-T-R-O-M. Nordstrom. I don't know if you guys have that in the states where you're at I'm in California Nordstrom is one of the higher end. It's not a Bloomingdale's, it's not an Eamon Market, but it is one of the higher end and they're known for their customer service and we're going to talk about that today.

Speaker 2:

All right, so, moving on to your first assignment, here are the details in your syllabus. Tell me why you chose to become a dental professional and what is your five-year plan. I want you to think about the possibilities that, in this new career that you are going to have. The possibilities are endless, and let me just outline some of the possibilities. Some of you work with your spouse. We have some people here that are helping out. They're jumping in. We also have those of you that have experience and you just want to make sure that you learned it the right way, or you just want confirmation that you're doing it the right way. And then there's those of you that are new to dentistry all together. So let's talk about some of the possibilities, because I do want you to think about your five-year plan in dentistry.

Speaker 2:

After taking this course, you are going to be qualified to run a dental practice. Now you will have the knowledge. You will not have the experience under your belt. Have I had students graduate and get hired as office managers right out the gate? Yes, I have. Did they have a background in dentistry? Some of them did, some of them didn't. The physicians get hired right out of the gate as office managers. You will be qualified to do dental billing. You will be qualified to be a treatment coordinator. You will be qualified to be a receptionist, if that's what you choose.

Speaker 2:

And, by the way, let me just talk about that position for a second, because when we think of a receptionist, we think of reception as an entry-level position. Unfortunately, in dentistry there's really no entry-level position, but if we were to, I guess if we were to kind of like stack them against each other, the reception position, the receptionist position, still requires you to understand dental terminology, insurance terminology, how insurance works, because you're dealing with the schedule. And when we're dealing with the schedule, it's not as simple as being a pretty face at the front end of the business and answering a phone. It is much more than that. We're talking about understanding schedule goals. We're understanding you know how to strategically schedule the perfect day.

Speaker 2:

We do have perfect day scheduling, which you are going to learn about, and perfect day scheduling requires some degree of dental knowledge and dental insurance knowledge, because we don't want to place patients on the schedule that are not producing any dollars for the practice, right? So there's a concept that you're going to learn about. It's called the rocks, pebbles and sand. So we're going to learn about scheduling in terms of you know, rocks are going to be the big procedures that have that bring the most money into the practice. The pebbles are going to be things like not so major, like a filling, a simple extraction. Those would be considered pebbles your implants and bridges and dentures and the higher producing procedures. Those would be the rocks, and then the sand is going to be everything else, like things that do not produce any money for the office. So in perfect day scheduling, as we will talk about further into the course in perfect day scheduling, we are going to learn how to look at a schedule strategically and go we've got a ton of sand on the schedule. Let's we got to move this around, or let's only place rocks in our power hours in the morning and focus on only putting our rocks in our power hours. So strategic scheduling, but that's done by the receptionist. So, as I just explained all that to you, I can't hire a receptionist with no dental background and expect this individual to optimally manage my schedule, because they don't understand these concepts, they don't understand the procedures, they don't understand the concept of production and scheduling to production goals.

Speaker 2:

So, going back to your five year plan, I want you to think through what is it that you want to be doing? What is it that you want to be doing in five years with your new career? Do you want to own your own dental billing business, because that's a possibility too. Think big. I have this. I've had this plaque in front of my computer and I look at it every day and it says dream without limits, because we tend to put limits on how big we want to dream Right. So what is your personal five year plan? I want you to think through it. I want to help my doctor grow to another office. Just think about it. Put it in your 750 word essay. What type of research went into your decision making process to take this course? Who influenced you to take this step? Were you inspired by anybody in the dental field?

Speaker 2:

I have my own dental heroes that I look up to. One of the biggest influence in my career is Dr Mark Postes. Dr Mark Postes has a podcast called the Dental Prenuer and he also had back in the day when I opened my first Dental Practice in 2015,. He happened to launch his Dental Podcast, so he launched his Dental Podcast the same day I opened my Dental Practice. I followed his podcast religiously. I learned so much and it helped me with some of the decisions I was making as a new practice owner, because we opened our office with no patients. It was a startup. We were very successful in our first month. We started June 1st 2015. And by the end of June and we were only open 10 days we had collected $63,000 and some change, which is unheard of for a startup. My dental hero, dr Mark Costas, linda Miles she was a mentor of mine when I decided to start the school. I reached out to anybody and everybody that would listen to me when I wanted to create this curriculum. So, linda Miles, fred Joyle, you know, I could go on and on.

Speaker 2:

So I want you to think about any people in the dental field that inspire you, because this is your new career, right? And does your family support your decision to go back to school? Because this will involve quite a bit of self-study, depending on the amount of effort that you plan on putting into your new career. Okay, alright, so moving on, I just I'm gonna go ahead and this is your syllabus. I do want you to sign it and return it. Let's go through week one of module one. Every module is broken up into four weeks, so there are a few modules in here, and we went through the Student Center orientation. Okay, so now we are. We all understand the syllabus. We understand how to navigate through your learning platform.

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Ericka Aguilar

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