Episode 161: Dayna Johnson of Novonee Consulting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8218sVLg_Q Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Workflows for Maximum Efficiency Carrie Weber: Welcome to the Jameson Files. I'm your host, Carrie Weber, and it's so great to be back with you as we have an amazing guest with us. Dana Johnson is with us today. Dana is a good friend of mine. We've known each other for several years now, right, Dana? Dana Johnson: Many, yes. Dana Johnson and Novonee Consulting Carrie Weber: And you know when you're all in the same realm in dentistry and in consulting and working with dental practices, you can't help but become friends when you're on the road speaking in consulting. For those of you that may not be familiar with Dana, Dana has a consulting company called Novonee. And Dana's background is pretty incredible as a Dentrix trainer moving into consulting. Some of your accolades are Dentrix Trainer of the Year and Top 25 Women in Dentistry. So it's a real honor to have you on as a guest. Dana, thank you so much for being with me. Dana Johnson: Well, thank you for having me. When you were talking about me being on the Jameson files when we were at Hinman, I'm like, oh my gosh, that sounds so fun. And I am super excited to share some experiences with all your audience. Carrie Weber: Yes. And you know, for those of you that are wondering, “What's Novonee?” There are times when I'm talking with practices and their specific need is around getting team onboarded and utilizing Dentrix in a maximized way, and becoming more efficient, more effective in their work, especially in the business side of the practice with their practice management software. And boy, that's when your name comes up a lot, Dana, because you excel in your expertise and in your ability to give instruction that's not only helpful for the team to learn, but you also help them know how to apply it and implement it, which is the key.  So that leads us to today's conversation. Something that you've been talking about a little bit more and more recently is workflows and what that means in dental practices, what practices are struggling with. So as we step into that conversation, which I'm actually really excited about, I'd love to hear what's led to this element of what you're instructing and teaching practices. What is it that you're finding in the dental practices today that has really put an emphasis on helping them build out workflows in the practice? Why Proper Workflows are Important Dana Johnson: Yeah, thank you. There have been three layers that I've been noticing across our industry– new team members coming into dentistry for the very first time. I have several practices, and so do you, probably, with new team members who are coming from retail or they're coming from medical or they're coming from another industry and they have no idea how to work the front desk in a dental practice. And so a lot of times what happens is you hire this new team member and you kind of throw them out to the sharks with no training, no onboarding. And they're wondering what to do. So these new team members are really looking for help. They're looking for onboarding, they're looking for training and that. So that's the first layer I'm seeing a lot of. And then we're also seeing a lot of team members, whether they're a dental assistant moving up to the front desk, or maybe somebody that started out as an amazing receptionist and now she's being promoted to a treatment coordinator, and she's asking, “What is this job supposed to do? Help me.”  Then the third layer I'm seeing is a lot of doctors reaching out to me and really wanting to be more involved with what their team should be doing every day, every week, every month. They have no idea. They’re in the back treating patients, but they really want to have a more hands-on approach. And so I've been having a lot of doctors reach out to me saying, “What should the daily, weekly, monthly workflow even look like?” It's been really, really great. And because I can help with all of that, it's been really fun. Carrie Weber: I'm curious when you go into conversations about workflows, are there some specific ones that you see the most frequently non-existent in a practice. I always talk about when there's a lack of intentionality, a lack of process, typically how that shows up in practices that are lacking systems, processes, workflows, is chaos. A lot of people throwing their own past experiences into the pot and just hoping it all works out. Where do you see it show up the most in the work that you do? A little bit of that accidental workflow or lack of workflows, so to speak.  Dana Johnson: I really see it showing up with a lot of frustration, a lot of feeling overwhelmed and stretched. I feel like a lot of people are reverting back to their old ways. This is how I used to do it. I'm just going to go back to this way. I'm going to pull out my three ring binder and start writing down patient names because I don't know how to do it in the software. And so I'm just going to go backwards. But then I find that they're spending an enormous amount of time, because anytime you have that manual system, it takes three times longer to do it. So team members are getting to the end of the day and they’ve worked eight hours and don't feel like they’ve gotten anything done. Or they're getting home late to their families and they're frustrated.  And so I feel like team members are at their wits end. They don't know what to do, and so then they leave because they don't know what else to do. They're not getting the training and support that they really are asking for. Carrie Weber: Yes. Two out of the three main areas that you're seeing these requests or needs for workflow training and clarification are in that onboarding process. Either hiring a brand new employee or bringing a person that's on the team into a completely new role, which still demands training as if you're onboarding them as a new employee because they're entering into a whole new realm of the practice. Dana Johnson: Exactly.  Using Practice Management Software to its Full Capabilities Carrie Weber: It’s interesting, I think you probably say this, too, especially when it comes to practice management software, or any of the software's tools, technology, if we were to step into anybody's practice, the likelihood is that they're all only utilizing it at a fraction of the capabilities that that tool has for them to be efficient and successful. Dana Johnson: For sure. 15 to 20%. Most offices are only using about 15 to 20% of the software's capabilities.  Carrie Weber: Wow! What are maybe one or two of the things that are huge missed opportunities that you see again and again for those 15 to 20% utilization practices? Dana Johnson: Definitely what I see is the operational side of the practice. I talk about that in the weekly workflow. That is keeping your schedule full and productive and keeping money in the bank. Those two things, being productive and collecting what you produce happens in that weekly workflow. Most teams that I go into work with, or do a practice assessment for, or I'm just having a discovery call with a doctor, most practices do not know the reports or the lists that they can generate out of their own practice management software to find patients that are unscheduled. They have post-IT notes all over their desks for their patients that want to come in sooner.  I remember walking into an office in Alaska once, and on the backside of where you walk in, you have cabinets and stuff where all the office supplies are, and there were color coded post-it notes everywhere. And I'm like, “That's beautiful. Tell me what that is.” And they said, “Those are all the patients that want to come in sooner.” Well, you know you have an ASAP list for that, right? And so they just didn't even know what the ASAP list was. So I see millions of dollars sitting on the treatment manager of patients that have unscheduled treatment and they just don't know that these reports or these lists even exist. And so that's where the 15 to 20% comes from. Because they just don't know what they don't know.  Carrie Weber: They're barely using it for its scheduling functionality. They're barely documenting what they need to have documented in there for each patient record.  Dana Johnson: I know. Carrie Weber: That's something else that I thought about when you were talking about the chaos and the stress and the overwhelm. So many practices are living almost in a little bit of a digital purgatory. They want to go paperless or they want to be more digital. They want to maximize the tool, but like you said, they get overwhelmed and then they revert back to those old habits. And so they're often doing both and end up with the inefficiencies of double work because, well, they put it in the computer, but then they write it down over here so that they have easy access, and we're asking, “Why are you doing it twice?” Dana Johnson: I know. And I say, redundancy will kill you.  Carrie Weber: Oh, that's good. Redundancy will kill you. And it’s a little bit of a case of we've always done it this way. This is the way so and so wants it done or whatever the case may be. But it's almost like they haven't fully embraced or fully believed in the tool to say that this is where we're going to put it. This is how we're going to do it, and so eliminate that extra work. The Advantages of Proper Onboarding Dana Johnson: And what happens is, for example, that you have an outgoing office manager or treatment coordinator who is now training the new person coming in. So your outgoing office manager, she only uses 15 to 20% of the software. And now she's training your new person.  Carrie Weber: So you’re just passing on the bad habits. Dana Johnson: Yeah....