Eric Vickery and Shyanne McCracken discuss optimizing Dentrix Practice Management Software for success. Tips include running precise reports, managing overdue lists, and involving the whole team for patient recall efficiency.
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About Shyanne McCracken
Shyanne holds a degree in Psychology and English. After gaining valuable experience as a crisis worker and mental health counselor, she transitioned into the dental field, eager to apply her skills in a new environment. Her passion for understanding patient behavior—through DISC profiling, rapport-building, and other techniques—has been instrumental in increasing case acceptance and attracting new patients. As the office manager and patient coordinator of a thriving insurance-free practice for many years and now in her capacity as a Mastery Dental Coach, she is passionate about helping other dental offices break free from insurance constraints and fostering teams that prioritize patient-driven care, ensuring that patient needs remain the focus, regardless of insurance coverage.
About Eric Vickery
Eric holds a degree in business administration and brings a strong business and systems approach to his consulting. His initiation into the field of dentistry was in the area of office management. He managed dental practices for over ten years and has been consulting over 250 offices nationwide since 2001.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:02
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management, and training. Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Eric Vickery, president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy. Very excited to interview our guests today, Cheyenne McCracken, All-Star Mastery Coach. And as we talk to another amazing coach on how to create more success using our practice management software.
00:29
I want to just let you guys know she’s not only a truly amazing coach, but she really knows the ins and outs of DENTRIX. If you’re a DENTRIX user, this is your podcast. This is your training session. Welcome, Cheyenne. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Eric. Awesome. We’re coming from the perspective of I’m a DENTRIX user. I believe it has limitations. I’m just not using it to the full potential.
00:59
What would you say, let’s start with one, what would you say is the biggest challenge you see Dentrix users as you get into their practice management software, you look at it and go, oh my gosh, they’re not even using this, they don’t know it could do this. What pops up for you right away? So really when I work with teams, something I notice is that they’re not using their continuing care systems to the best of the software’s ability. So.
01:27
Really, I want to talk about the best way to utilize dentrics for butts in seats. Okay, perfect. All the time, Eric, right? Yeah, yeah. So obviously there’s two ways to grow a practice, those butts in seats and new patients and working our overdue patient lists, getting those patients in the schedule. And then of course, second, more dentistry per patient. So that’s more case acceptance. But when I work with teams, I often find, like I said, they’re not maximizing their software to be really effective in getting those patients back in the schedule.
01:56
So for example, when running the overdue hygiene report, they’re not setting it up properly or they’re running it for forever dates. Yeah. So as we teach, as I coach, we recommend working in the hot list. So really going into the software and running an overdue report for last month. So those patients who were overdue just that past month. So if I’m in July, I’m running a report for June 1st,
02:25
to June 30th. Does that make sense? Great. Yeah. So you’re running just 30 days worth of data. Yeah. So it’s not overwhelming to our team either. So a lot of people just print out the list and it’s 500 names at a time and they close their eyes and they point at someone to call. And it doesn’t work. It’s not effective. So in Dentrix, when you run your continuing care report from the appointment book, you can just click on the icon. I think it’s…
02:54
It’s a little appointment. It looks like a recycle bin or something triangle and it says continuing care. I know what you’re talking about. Yeah, that icon. If you hover over it, it comes right up, it says continuing care. Once you click on that, it’s going to automatically start generating. Just hit stop so that we can set up our views. We can set up exactly the report we want. So you click, once you’re in the icon that pops up, you click new and…
03:20
Dentrics can separate or does separate from Pro-Fee to Perio. So put in Overdue Perio, put in Overdue Pro-Fee. Run those reports for the Dental Care. So those will be two separate reports that you’re talking about running. You’re going to run a Pro-Fee, Overdue for one month, and you’re going to run a Perio Overdue for one month. Now you’re going to go another level deeper here for me because now here’s what we see. Bad Continuing Care Assignments too.
03:51
I don’t know why softwares do what they do, but have you seen this where you’ll have a patient in their continuing care window, they’ve got what? Pro-fee assignment and they’ve got perio assignment to them. You see that? All the time. That’s typically, so some people will use the blast codes, so they’ll be set for both or we schedule the patient for an SRP and then their old pro-fee is still coming up, so you have to go with the family file. So good.
04:18
in that second column and you have to clear that profie. So they’re always coming in for an SPT. Yeah. And so your report you’re talking about, it’s a great way to clean that up because when you run a perio for the month of June, it’s going to somehow identify what is it that they’re looking for. What do you see? It’s a little plus sign that comes up on that report. So this is another great way to assess those errors that are occurring in our schedule and say, oh, I see Ricky, he’s
04:48
but he’s actually due for an SPT. So if you see that plus mark, it means that they’re scheduled for another appointment somewhere. So you can go in, make sure it’s truly a perio patient, reassign that and clear that in the family file. Love it. So summarizing, make sure I understand. So it’s June, I’d probably run the perio first, cause I think that’s where you’ll get your duplication. I take that back. You’d run the pro fee first.
05:15
because it’s going to show they’re due for a profie, but they’re probably more likely already scheduled for Perio. Perio, yeah. So, under the appointment column, there’s going to be a plus sign. You can just double click on that person in the report, and you can click their other appointment window and look at what they have and go, oh my gosh, it’s saying they’re overdue for a profie, but they have a Perio and SBT 4910, Perio maintenance, where we would call it scheduled somewhere. That means now you’ve got duplication. So where do they go? I’m really…
05:44
test your memory here. Where do they go now to clean that up? How do they make sure that doesn’t happen anymore? Yep. So, I mean, you can go to a couple different places, but the place that I go first in my mind is the family file. So right underneath the patient information box where it has name, phone number, and things like that, in that second column on the right-hand side, it says what they’re assigned. So, Perio, Profi, and you just click on the Profi and clear that.
06:13
I think some people are afraid to clear that. It’s unnecessary to have duplication. Exactly. Yeah, they’re always periodontal maintenance if they have come in in the past for an SRP. Which we should get hygiene coach Lynn on here to talk about once you go perio, they never go back to a profi. That’s key. That’s a good one. Good point. Okay, so let’s go back to our order. So you run profi for June, you run perio for June, you just print them up.
06:39
You do good old fashioned paper then once all the plus signs are gone, then you print that up, piece of paper. Is that how you do it? I mean, I love to print it up so that I can even have team members initial next to who they called just as an accountability factor there. But we have a rule as coaches that everyone leaves when an appointment being created. Created is the keyword there. So not necessarily scheduled, but they’re created in the system. So in Dendrix, that means if a patient comes out.
07:07
They’re not quite ready to schedule that crown appointment. I’m creating the appointment and then I’m hitting wait, we’ll call. So another mistake that I see a lot in Dentrix with Dentrix users is that they hit pin board and then it stays on that pin boarded list, right. And makes a mess of our system. So hitting wait, we’ll call. Then, you know, you have your followup system. So I’m calling that patient, pulling up their name and then automatically it pops up.
07:36
Would you like to view unscheduled appointments? I click yes. I see that Rookie is due for a crown or needs to be scheduled for a crown. And then I put in start date line and start my conversation there. Love it. Yeah. So actually you could work this so well, you would never need to run your overdue hygiene report. So let’s go back seven months, right? Let’s go back seven months. Rookie Bobby comes out.
08:02
and he’s not ready to schedule his six month appointment with Virginia, the hygienist. So we create the appointment though, I’ll make sure I’m hearing you, create the appointment in Dentrix, type a note at the bottom, insert date line, patient not ready to schedule, do July 1st, 2024. And then the right side, you hit, wait, you don’t hit pin board, you hit wait, wait, we’ll call. Okay. And to clarify.
08:28
Uh oh, I’m about to should on people here. You should never, never should on anybody. This is a clean podcast. That is the word should. You should never have a whole list of appointments in your pin board. When I see a client share their dentrics with me and I look at it and they’re just pin board appointments, something’s off. They’re not fully understanding the system. So if they’re doing it right, they’ll hit wait, we’ll call then. And then it disappears though. So that I’m not relying on the report. I now go out.
08:57
I don’t know, five months, four months, three months, a month, whatever, and then how do I, what do you recommend they do to prompt themselves to now call Ricky Bobby to get that appointment schedule? What are you doing inside of Dentrix to do that? Yeah, so one of the features of Dentrix that I absolutely love is the ability to make notes, right? So you create an event and I make that note. So I know Ricky didn’t schedule, I’ve told him, hey, Ricky, is it okay if I follow up with you on Tuesday?
09:23
Then I make that note right in DENTRIX. So a couple of months out, I put that note, follow up with him, and then I see that note, pull up his name. Yes, I want to view that unscheduled treatment. Perfect. So I’ve seen it done where you schedule an event. Just Ricky Bobby has his hygiene appointment with Virginia yet, my initials. I know I get to that day I see it. Then also seen up in the top left corner, there’s that yellow note of DENTRIX scheduler in there. Offices will put a whole bunch of notes in there. They’ll put their voicemail.
09:52
They’ll put what do they need to do that day to tackle it. Okay. All right, so either is okay with you? Yep. Okay. So as you work yourself out of the need to run these reports, you are running this June report. I don’t know, you got 12 profis on there and two pair of maintenance on there, and you’re working that list. I’m done with the list, now what? So now I would go back. So if I did June, then I’d go back to May and I’d continue working.
10:21
Then you acquire month. Yeah. Okay. Oh, our hot to our cold list. So I like that. So define what does that mean? Hot list to cold list. Yeah. So our hot list is the people who are most recently overdue. So overdue last month and then it gets colder. Yeah. So in other words, we’ll see team members, make sure I understand you here. We’ll see team members and they’re like, all right, we’re running my overdue hygiene list. I ran 18 months to two years ago. I’m calling people who don’t even remember our name because they haven’t seen us in a year and a half, two years or longer, two and a half years.
10:51
you’re probably going to get burnt out on calling those people because you’re not going to get a great return on your investment of time. Whereas if you’re calling somebody who saw you seven months ago, that would be your hot list. Is that what you’re saying? Exactly. Yeah. If you print 500 names at a time, you might as well point and pick, right? Not effective or efficient with our time. That’s right. Love it. Okay. So is this a single person project? Is this a team project? How do you determine who does what here?
11:21
Total team project. So any open time we have, my personal belief is that assistants can call, hygienists call, everyone can call. It’s great and more effective if it comes from the provider. I always believe that. But we’re also calling and we’re expressing a concern. We’re not just calling up and saying, hey Ricky, you’re overdue for your hygiene visit. Can you give me a call to schedule? Not effective, right? So calling and expressing a concern first.
11:49
That’s our message one conversation one system. That’s a whole another podcast. So yeah, we’re going down the rabbit hole. But I love this because I think people, so some warning signs. Let’s summarize here. Some warning signs on this. We’re only 11 minutes in. We’re kicking butt here. So if you’re a Dentrix user and you’ve got a bunch of appointments on your pin board, that’s probably a sign or a symptom that something’s off. If you’ve got a lot of.
12:12
I run my continuing care report and it doesn’t look right because you haven’t assigned people the right continuing care, something’s off that can be fixed. And probably don’t wanna run historically way back when overdue, that to me is like, you’re gonna go through and inactivate a bunch of patients basically, trying to archive people. We wanna fill the schedule, butts in seats like you said, run the hot list first. Okay, you’ll run Profi and Perio, beautiful. Okay, now, it’s a team effort. I don’t, I mean.
12:41
I see offices, I don’t know, they’re in that 5 to 10% open time rate a month. That’s about 5 to 10 hours a month of one hygienist open time. There’s 5 to 10 patients we can get in. We typically don’t find out about it until the day before, or days before, and there’s a cancellation. If we can’t fill that time, you’re saying, hygienist, jump on board. You got some time every week to make some calls. Assistance, you end up with some time to make some calls. I typically see clinical team members go into…
13:10
sharpen instrument, organize drawer mode versus create business mode. And I will lay that gauntlet down and say, hey, I wanna challenge you. When was the last time you picked up the phone and called to grow the business? I think that’s an ownership mentality thing. And we got the verbal skills to help you feel comfortable with that. So let’s set that aside. We’re not asking someone to make 50 calls a week or something like, what would you say it would take to fill those 10 to 20 hours a month of hygiene open time?
13:39
How many calls are we making here? What are we looking at? Right, so if we have 10 to 20 hours of open time, then it’s 10 to 20 calls, right? And enough to try to get them in the schedule. But what I’d say is when we’re printing that month out, there’s not those 500 names on the list anyway. So you’re working that one list that maybe has 20, 30 names on it at most. Perfect. And so we’re trying to accomplish that list, make those calls in a week, in a month.
14:07
What would you say? It depends on the team size, availability, variables there? I mean, I would work. I would continue working this list. So it’s not something that we stop working. So we’re working on it every single week in preparation of cancellations as well, in preparation of open time. You know, our responsibility is to our patients anyway. So if they’re not in our schedule, then we should be calling them regardless. So I would say it’s a constant effort to continue the re-care recall list.
14:35
So let’s look at goals. Your team’s listening to this now. You decided to make this a team meeting. It was such a good podcast. And you’re going back through it. And you’re a clinical team member. You’re an administrative team member. Obviously admin’s gonna be able to make more calls than the clinical team member. But let’s say we need to make, let’s say we have a 30% success rate on number of calls. So you have 20 open hours a month. We need to call 60 people. Oh my gosh, 60 people, that’s a lot. We’ve also got, let’s see, two admin.
15:03
two assistants and two, I gotta use my fingers to count that high. You got six team members that can make calls. If you made all six people, each made five phone calls a week, that’s 30 calls a week, that’s 120 calls a month, that’s double what we need. So you probably could get through this faster than you think. Is that fair? Totally fair. And you’re gonna get admin team members out there like, oh, make 20 calls a week. That’s okay, but I think we’re more.
15:32
Alex talks about this all the time. We just need consistent energy. We don’t need these spikes of intensity. Just consistent effort. Think cruise control, not in a negative way, but in a consistent way. So I don’t know, what have you seen hygienists and assistants agree to as far as number of calls a week? Is a four to a five calls a week, is that a normal number? Too high, too low? What do you think? Five is perfect. I would say anywhere from five to 10 calls. I mean, reasonably, how long does leaving a message take?
16:01
in a minute, right? So we’re typically leaving that message and then probably admin team is picking up when the patient calls back. So that’s right. Yeah. Okay, good. So let’s go back into Dentrix mode now. So I’m a clinical team member. What am I doing? I got this report. It says Ricky Bobby’s overdue. What do I do? Where do I go in Dentrix to figure this out and just kind of take us through that process as a clinical team member to find the
16:31
wait, we’ll call unscheduled appointment and then notes and then putting it back. Like take us through that process. So I think you’re asking where you find the report. Where do you find the, I have the report in front of me. Where do I find that patient’s unscheduled appointment and what do you click on in Dentrix to go find it? Just give us your perspective on the right way in your mind to do that. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s
16:55
It’s as simple as clicking anywhere in your appointment book and pulling up that patient’s name. So you have the list in front of you already. You click in Dentrix, pull up the patient’s name, you know, Ricky, and it will automatically pop up. View. And it’ll say something right there. What does it say? Yep, it says view unscheduled appointments. You click yes every single time. Always click yes every single time. You know I was gonna say that. Never click no. Yep.
17:22
So, and then you’ll see message one conversation one. If you have gotten into that coaching with your coach or you already know this system because you’re watching Eric’s motivational moments, right? It’s right in that insert dateline, that note section, what the conversation was, possibly even what the concern was and who spoke to that patient last. Love it. You know, I just do a sidebar here, Cheyenne, you’re an amazing coach. We have an amazing team of coaches.
17:50
And this is gonna sound so full of ego. I promise I don’t have ego, but it’s amazing when a coach can finish all of my… Sentences. No, I was gonna say sandwiches. I was gonna say sandwiches. Oh, darn it. Okay, we’re almost there. Okay, Julie. Sentences. No, look, I think, and we’re not so isolated that we only think one way, but I just love that…
18:14
that we’re on the same page as coaches at All-Star. We know what works, we know what systems will work for you and make it easy for you to implement. So some things I just heard you say, okay? As a hygienist, can I make five calls a week? I think I could do that, okay? What I say is really simple, that’s a whole nother training, but I’m simply going Dentrix, I’m gonna find the appointment by double clicking in the schedule, it’s gonna pop up and say, this patient has an unscheduled appointment, would you like to view it? Say yes.
18:40
this scheduling window pops up, I can see an unscheduled appointment right there. As long as there’s no other scheduled appointments, don’t duplicate, don’t reinvent the wheel. I click on that appointment and there’s notes in that appointment now that say, hey, a month ago, Cheyenne left a message for this patient. It’s time for me to call them again or whatever that is. I put a new note and I sent a text message or I leave a message, again, another training. And I then hit what button at that point? I made my note, I’ve left the message on the phone. What do I hit then? You hit wait, we’ll call. Wait, we’ll call.
19:09
and it’s going to disappear and it’s not going to be a pin board, you’re going to feel a little worried. And then once the patient, the appointment’s disappeared, now what do I go do in the dentric schedule? What’s the full circle here? Yep. So full circle, you’re looking up the unscheduled treatment list. So you literally go to your reports and you can find the unscheduled treatment list. I think that’s what you’re asking. Well, let’s say I don’t want to, again, I don’t want to lose this patient.
19:37
I left them a message, I didn’t schedule them, so there’s got to be another follow-up. So what do I do in Dentrix to make sure this patient doesn’t fall through the cracks for this specific appointment? Do I leave it up to the unscheduled? Your team could decide, do I leave it up to the unscheduled appointment or overdue hygiene list? Or do I go schedule one of your notes or events that you’re talking about? What do you prefer? I personally love the notes or assistant to track it. So if you have a tracker where you’re filling out patient’s name and last time you followed up with that patient. So case acceptance tracker.
20:06
But the notes are really, really great reminder of, okay, I need to call this patient at this time. Perfect. All right. Curveball time. Ready? All right. What do you think our hygiene appointment rate should be? In other words, we get 16 patients coming out every single day. How many patients are scheduling an appointment in the future? Just curious. 100%. All of them.
20:34
Why would we have anything less? Okay, I’m just making sure we’re finishing each other’s sentences here. All right, so all of them. But we know some people are going to say, I don’t know what I’m doing in six months. So can I call you? Or whatever silly thing they say. So maybe every couple of days you got one that’s doing this. When that happens, when that happens, what we’ve said before is go ahead and create the appointment. Wait, we’ll call it, but schedule yourself something in a couple of months to get them that appointment schedule. Most hygiene departments are booked out really far right now, right?
21:04
that we’re seeing with clients, they’re booked out, they have this problem of heavily booked appointments. Yep, especially catch up from COVID. So it’s scheduled out at least three, six, nine months is what I’m seeing. Crazy, yeah. Three to six months has been my experience as well. All right, wonderful. Anything else you want? Oh, so and to take that curve ball full circle, how do…
21:27
appointments end up on our unscheduled appointment list. It’s like these people cancel, they no show, they leave a message or answer machine and we need to continue to follow up with them. If we forget, they forget. They’re not going to remember. They’re going to think they have something in their in their schedule. So continue to stay in touch with them. But if someone cancels their appointment with you, we can they’ll be on the report, but we can also go schedule a follow up for someone who cancels, right? Okay. All right. How many
21:56
I don’t know. I mean, what’s the percentage of patients? I don’t even know the answer to this. You can’t finish my sentence because I don’t know. But what are the percentage of patients you think should be unscheduled? If we have a, I don’t know, you know, typical practice, 1500 patients, how many patients are unscheduled right now for hygiene? What’s our retention rate, I guess? Oh, well, that’s a difficult question. Yeah.
22:19
I just think of case acceptance. Are we creating the value and the urgency where it’s more than just a cleaning? All of us know that what happens at a hygiene visit is more than just a cleaning. We do oral cancer screening, et cetera, et cetera. So are we doing a good job with our verbal skills to create that value and urgency where patients are wanting to come back? They’re wanting to schedule. It is important for them. So we’re addressing conditions and concerns, having the appropriate conversations. So if we’re…
22:48
you know, our verbal skills are really, really good, then that rate should be really low. Okay, so that created another question for me. That rate should be really low. What if I’m a a leader of the practice? Okay, doctor, team member, I’m a leader of the practice. What would I see in the continuing care world that would tell me there’s a problem enough here to be concerned about because this many patients aren’t
23:18
How would I figure this out that, hey, we got a lot of people slipping through the cracks or what would I identify? Is there a way to do that in Dentrix? So I mean, even if you go to your unscheduled list, if there is more than two pages for a month or even more than one page for a month, that’s a sign that you have something wrong. But also, are you tracking these things? So are you tracking your open time? Are you tracking your cancellations? Are you having constant conversations with your team about why people are canceling? Are they saying, you know what, that two’s not even bothering me? Right?
23:47
So it’s what you measure your proof. So you track those numbers, you print those reports, whatever it is in Dentrix. So unscheduled treatment list, all those. So maybe you could run every month. Let’s say you haven’t done this before, okay? It’s, I don’t know, early July. And you’re like, okay, I’m gonna run all of June’s, Prophy and Perio, May’s, Prophy, Perio, April’s. I’m gonna run those reports and I wanna see.
24:15
Do I end up with more names as I go out further or less names when I go out further? That can be a way to do it. I’m just thinking out loud here. And then you stack them June to January and then everybody starts taking a piece of paper and working a system. Just working the list. Working the system to the list. And have a culture of butts in seats. Have a culture of doing that and have the right verbal skills for it. Work with your coach on message one, conversation one to get that put in place. Does that all sound good?
24:42
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a continual system that you have to work regardless of. If you look at next couple of weeks, there’s no openings. That’s fine. We’re still working this list. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We have several coaches who are really masters at Dentrix. I think it’s a pretty common software. This is part three of a three part series on, uh, Open Dental, Eagle Soft and Dentrix. Kind of the big three out there for the GP practice. So if you’re,
25:10
at all ever struggling with any of those and you just you have questions, just reach out to us. You could shoot an email to our fearless leader Heather, Heather at alls and just say, Hey, this is what I heard. This is what I want to work on. And just put a question out. She’s great at responding to that. And I would also say, look, if you want to coach and you use Dentrix and you’re looking for it, just ask us which coach you’d want to work with to really up your
25:40
or practice management software skills, whether that’s EGLEsoft, Open Dental, or Dentrix. We’ve got great people. They’re at trainer levels on all of these softwares. So we’re here for you. Just email heather at alls If you enjoyed this podcast and you think there’s someone else that could enjoy this as well, you know, your colleagues, please forward this to them. Just share it, send them a text message. I’m sure they would love it. And.
26:06
Thank you for spending time with us, taking the time to invest in yourself. And until next time, go out there and be an All-Star.
26:18
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardetnalacademy.com
