Very Clinical: A CareStack Story with Jamie Flanagan of CareStack

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[00:01:21] Upgrade one of the most important tools in your kit with Crystal HD Dental Mirrors from Zerk. The moment you bring one into the oral cavity, you'll be amazed at the clarity and brightness. It's like seeing your procedures in a whole new light. Lately, we've featured CareStack, a really great cloud-based practice management software that Kevin is using in his practice. We hope you'll check out all those episodes and then head to carestack.com for more information. If you decide CareStack is a great choice for you, and we think you might, we'll be able to learn more about the very clinical podcast.

[00:01:48] It's a great deal, but be sure to let them know you heard about it from the podcast. This is a production of the Very Dental Podcast Network. Welcome to the Very Clinical Podcast. In about the time it takes to do an M.O. on three,

[00:02:15] we will entertain and amaze you with tips and tricks on regular daily dentistry. Here's Kevin and Zach. What is up, Very Clinical listeners? Welcome to another episode of the Very Clinical Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Zach Miners. Aha. See what I did there? Sounds just like him. I'm not your host, Dr. Zach Miners. I am host of other things, Alan Mead.

[00:02:41] Joining me as always, my trusty co-host, Dr. Kevin Harefriar. Kevin, what is going on in Cleveland? Alan, I closed my eyes and all I heard was Zach. So your Zach impression was dead on. I'm telling you, I've heard this podcast a couple of times. I'm just going to say. Have you spent any money today, Zach Allen? No, I've, I'm, see that's just it. Zach and I are polar opposites in that way. I don't want it unless it's really expensive. Right.

[00:03:10] That's how things work. Zach, cheapskates. You guys will love this. This will be great. Cutting Zach right out of the deal. Kevin, tell us about our co-hosts tonight. We have two co-hosts today. We have the lovely Mrs. Missy Fryer, who can be, Ellie, is downstairs from me. Yeah. The way we're recording this. Say hi, Missy. Hello. Missy has the dogs in case anyone was wondering. Correct.

[00:03:41] Kevin is dogless. Missy has both of them. Yes. And then all the way from Minnesota, we have Miss Jamie Flanagan, who's representing Care Stack today. Say hi, Jamie. Hello everyone. Thanks for having me. Of course. Jamie, what part of Minnesota, what town in Minnesota are you coming from? Minnesota. So I grew up in a town called St. Michael. Okay. I currently reside in Maple Grove. Maple Grove. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

[00:04:10] I know you and I both went to the U of M School of Dentistry. So that's fun. Yeah. I think I graduated a little bit for you though, I think. Pretty sure. Well, hey, Gambucci was still there. Shout out Gambucci. That's right. That's right. That's right. We do have some, we know some people. That's very cool. So University of Minnesota grad and you graduated in dental hygiene, didn't you? Correct. Yes. I remember. See, I met Jamie in Chicago at the Chicago Midwinter and it was touch and go because we

[00:04:39] were texting the whole weekend and did finally end up running into each other. So that worked out good. So it's nice to see you again in person, Jamie. Thank you. You too. All right. We're going to get to Jamie's story in just a minute, but first a humorous comedy bit. Since we're talking about practice management systems and computer type stuff and our last care stack podcast, we talked about our first computers we ever had and all that sort of stuff.

[00:05:06] I thought it would be fun to talk about our favorite video games as children and or adults. Nice. So we're going to go around the horn. I'm going to start with Missy. I already know what it is because, you know, I spent a lot of time with her, but go ahead, Missy, tell us your favorite video game as a child and go. Well, it's not only my favorite video game as a child, but I would say that it's still my favorite video game. Yeah, I know. I've seen you play it.

[00:05:37] That is the one and only Oregon Trail. I mean, come on. Nice. You died. Who doesn't love a good... Yeah. Who doesn't love some dysentery every now and then? Yeah. You know? There's a great modern version on our... What is that? Apple TV. Well, yeah, but there's some game app and it's amazing. But yes, I have played that relatively recently. So for our younger listeners, can you briefly tell us what Oregon Trail is about? Because I'm not sure everyone's going to know, Missy.

[00:06:06] I mean, I think everyone knows. How could you not? But anyway... It's class. Yeah, seriously. You're, you know, you've got your wagon and you're traveling on the Oregon Trail. You've got your people and your animals and your axles and your wheels, and you're just trying to make it across the Oregon Trail without dying. You've got to cross the rivers and you've got to, you know, do all the things. And... The goal is to get dysentery. That's not the goal, but you know what? It's still kind of fun when it happens, right?

[00:06:36] All right. Very cool. It's awesome. It's super fun. I got a great side... Check this out. The very original version. In 1971, Don Rosswich... 71. ...a senior at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Minnesota, yeah. He went in eighth grade history class as a student teacher. He recruited two friends and two fellow student teachers to help with his student teaching project.

[00:07:00] He used an HP time-shared basic running on an HP 2100 minicomputer to write the original program. Wow. That's crazy. That is code. Insane. Learn to code. That's crazy. And in Minnesota, no less. How about that? Wow. Jamie, you're up next. Favorite video game as a child and or a belt. I feel like I'm pretty lame in this department, but I mean, I always grew up just played like solitaire on windows. That works. That was about as... That's pretty good.

[00:07:30] That's pretty good. And like changing the card background and like that was the cool thing to do. You need the card background that has the card that goes up the sleeve or whatever. Did you ever use that one? Exactly. Yeah. And then like randomly trying to do that. What was it? Like the mine... It wasn't Minecraft, but like that. It was mine... Oh, it's not Minecraft because wow. Yeah. But it's mine sweeper. Minesweeper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You were just actually knowing what you were doing.

[00:08:00] Yeah, exactly. The whole... The whole... Basically, those are the things that came standard on any windows computer. Exactly. Lovely. Lovely. All right, Alan, you're up next. All right. So, my original favorite video game. First off, I'm old enough to remember when you would hold a quarter up on the top of Pac-Man for the next game. Yeah. I love that. You could bring your report card to the arcade and if you get like four tokens for every

[00:08:29] A and three tokens for every B and that sort of thing. Pretty good stuff. Anyhow, Dig Dug. Dig Dug. Yes. That's a good one. And actually, there is a... On the Switch, there's like a, you know, a 380s video games and it's exactly like the video game and it's still pretty fun. I'm not as good at it now as I was. The other thing is, when I was in high school, college, a buddy of mine and I could play the two-player Double Dragon and we got good enough where we could each get through the whole game on a quarter.

[00:08:59] So, we had some skills on Double Dragon. Both those games are really old if you look at it like really old. So, that's... And then, now, I play a game called Block Doku, which is sort of like a, it's like a weird Tetris version. Oh, Missy's a Tetris master. Yeah. It translates into real life, actually. There's a lot of Tetris variant games out there. This is a Tetris variant. It's like half Sudoku, half Tetris. It's pretty good. I'm not great at it, but I'm all right with it.

[00:09:28] So, there you have it. That sounds like a monster movie, half Sudoku, half Tessarus monster that comes to infect your brain. All right. As the elder statesman here, I'm going to say that back in the day, I actually had Pong. Pong. Nice. Did you have the Pong, which was... You could get Pong on the Atari 2600. No, I had Pong. You had the OG Pong game, which was basically... OG Pong. There was no cartridge. It was just the whole console. It was just Pong.

[00:09:59] Yeah. So, all you youngsters, you could YouTube that. That's what I got to play with in the 70s. But I would have to say my favorite is Super Mario. And funny story, I don't play video games very much anymore because back when I first graduated from dental school, I got a Nintendo and I got Super Mario and I got a little addicted a little bit.

[00:10:23] So, it came to a head one night when I was up at 2 or 3 AM and, you know, had to set it aside. So, anyway, Super Mario is fun. I can dabble in that a little bit. But, yeah, I don't... I mean, we have that car game on the Apple TV, Missy. That's kind of fun. What is that called? Asphalt 9. Asphalt 9. Yeah. That's kind of fun. Yeah. I love me a OG Super Mario.

[00:10:53] All right. That's fun and games for today. Good times. Yeah. Jamie, hello. Hello there. All right. Let's hear your biography. We heard a little bit. You apparently went to hygiene school in Minnesota, but let's start over from the beginning. Tell us all about that. Where you went to undergrad, how you ended up in Minnesota, all that good stuff. Yeah. So, I was born and raised in Minnesota, but I ended up going to St. Thomas, University

[00:11:23] of St. Thomas and St. Paul for music and classical piano performance. Wow. Yeah. I don't... I still play, but I don't do anything professionally with it by any means. But then I went to the school of dentistry for their hygiene program and graduated with general practice for... That was eighth floor, right? Was it still eighth floor when you were there? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, the accent comes out. Yeah.

[00:11:52] I was on the eighth floor for clinical, but then I was like... Our hygiene department was the seventh floor. Did they have the retromolar pan when you were there? It doesn't ring a bell, but I have to say... That sounds like we're all the cool kids that hang out. We only went to the eighth floor when we had dental student period patients or endo. Endo was like in the back, like the very back. So, I feel bad.

[00:12:21] Endo was like the redheaded stepchild of the University of Minnesota for undergrad. They had a whole floor for the grads, but for undergrad, you had like four operatories. And it was like barricades. It was. It was. It was. It was its own thing. Exactly. So, the retromolar pad was... It was essentially like a lounge in the basement, in the like very depths of the basement of the Moose Tower.

[00:12:49] And so, went to the School of Dentistry, did all that. It was fine. I'm thankful for my education, of course. But... You came away a lot better. I would... Exactly. I would have wanted to burn the place down, except it was like a brutalist cement building. It wouldn't have caught on fire if I had tried. Yeah, not a chance. I'm putting a picture of it in the show notes because it is a crazy... It looks like it should be right next to the Kremlin Moose Tower.

[00:13:19] It's very Russian-esque. It's very tall. It's like... I remember it's like 18 floors or something. Yeah. They didn't call it the retromolar pad, but there was a little lounge and it was a hole in the wall downstairs. That probably was it because... It's a good name. They made it because it's like way in the back. Like not much happens back there, but it just hangs out and there's a place to sit. So, I did that. And then I went to a general practice for a couple of years.

[00:13:48] And then our training though, as far as in the hygiene department was very perio focused and I knew that I wanted to be perio. But in the area, at least in that time, it was hard to get a perio position right out of school. So, I had to get some experience. So, then I did perio in the Twin Cities for... Was it like six years, seven years? I can't even remember these days. But I was perio office and I was their hygienist there.

[00:14:17] We had a team of a few of us, but I was there full time. And then I ended up actually moving out to Washington State. Long story, but I moved from Minnesota all the way out there and decided to kind of give it a shot. I had always wanted to go to college out there actually, but when music got into my life and I got a scholarship for it, I ended up staying in Minnesota. So, moved out there.

[00:14:55] Are you arguing? I'm going to be honest, because I needed to have a job. And with the licensing paperwork, it hadn't processed yet. So, I didn't practice clinically right away. And then I really loved it and I loved the doctor that I was working with. So, I ended up staying more admin and became her office manager and would help out clinically here and there. But she, I actually still do billing for remotely through CareStack.

[00:15:23] And she is how I got introduced to CareStack. And we weren't on CareStack right away, but got introduced to it. And then when I moved back to Minnesota to be closer to family, I ended up converting another office, another perio office to CareStack as well. And just knew that I loved the product, really felt passionately about how the product could help practices, both clinically and administratively.

[00:15:50] And so, we joke about it now, but I kind of pestered Nicole, who is our director of sales. And I'm like, hey, I know you're in Minnesota. You need to hire me. And it was months of me being like, hey, got an opening? Let me in. And so, here we are. And so, now I've been with CareStack for just over a year in technically their sales division. I started with kind of being that point of contact account executive for actual practices

[00:16:19] and going through that process with them. But now I'm heading up more of the partnerships and I'm still involved with sales. But that's kind of my background. And then I still have my... What I like about this story is how organic it is. It's like you didn't get hired on and then they trained you into CareStack. You came to CareStack because you were already using it. Yeah. And you're like, hey, I can talk about this product probably better than your salespeople because I used it for a long time and clinically and I know how it works.

[00:16:49] That's pretty cool. Exactly. Hey, it's Kate, the dental assistant, and it's time to get very clinical in this episode's very clinical corner. Are you ready, Dr. Mead? I'm ready. I want to ask your advice on storage. Sure thing. What's the question? So, my team is always looking in multiple places for the same or similar materials. And I feel like no one knows exactly where anything is. Do other practices struggle with this too? Yes, many practices do. And I'll be honest, legacy errors are to blame for this current state of quote unquote organization in dental practices.

[00:17:19] So tell me what you mean by legacy errors. A legacy error is when somebody starts a process or a system with no scientific background or research or education. They just make the decision and then train their successors on the way that they want things to happen and then what works for that one person. So that sounds like it could cause problems over the long run. It can, especially when the person that sets the system leaves and then the next person comes in and then makes changes and now we're creating more confusion because where it was isn't where it was the last time.

[00:17:49] How do you change that or how can you prevent it? Create standard operating procedures and then define spaces for the procedure specific materials and then the general disposables as well. So give me an example of that. Procedure specific materials are the ones that you need to actually perform your procedure. For example, bonding agents, cement, sutures, gutta percha. Often they're expensive and expirable. And those should be stored in a central location where their quantities and expiration dates can be monitored closely. What about the general disposables?

[00:18:16] Those are the items that we need for pretty much every single patient. PPEs, barriers and cotton products are to name a few. And those should be stored in a separate room or closet due to their bulky packaging and quantities. And we don't want to waste valuable space and central sterilization on those items. So two storage spaces for dental materials beats the 15 places that we have them. Absolutely. Listeners, if you want to avoid legacy errors and have a timeless organizational system, check out the show notes on where to start. Yeah.

[00:18:44] So piggybacking onto that, Jamie, that is a great story. And it sounds like you've done this before in real life, but now you're going to do it on a podcast. Sell us Carestack. Why should we start using it? Sell it to us. Absolutely. So what I always start with is Carestack is going to be a platform that is cloud-based, centralizing your data helps to improve your efficiencies and your systems within the practice

[00:19:11] by scheduling your high value treatment better, collecting your funds faster, and really consolidating your reporting to make sure that everything is operating as smooth as possible. There was a saying that I've really grasped onto over the years as far as a system runs a business and let your systems work. And I really feel like Carestack can do that.

[00:19:35] And so when you are looking at your practice, you're looking at your staff, you're looking at what you want to accomplish in the 24 hours that we all have. How do you make it better? And that's where Carestack comes in. That's where we're able to really make some changes in the operations, in the management of the practice to take you from mediocre at some cases, as far as a business sense,

[00:20:02] all the way up to those top 10 tiers of collections, making sure your staff is operating at its best capabilities. And at the end of the day, where that really shines is it all comes down to patient care. Those five extra minutes that you're not having to reinvent the wheel with your software are five extra minutes that you can have conversations with your patients to make sure that they understand the necessity of the care that you are trying to provide to them.

[00:20:32] And that's where it makes a difference. So let the system run it, run the business side for you, that you can be the provider and really make a difference in those patients' lives. I see Missy nodding your head up there. You want to make a comment on that? Yeah. Well, you know, I'm not in the practice on a day to day basis anymore. I left.

[00:20:57] It's been like three years now and I just strictly do remote work, you know, for Kevin's practice. And when I was there and we were using obviously a different practice management software at that time, I don't know if like the software, like I'm pretty good at manipulating the software and figuring out how to make things work. But with our old or former software, I just really wasn't able to make it do the things that I wanted it to do.

[00:21:25] So I did a lot of those things like by hand myself, you know, I was I was seeking out the the treatment and I was, you know, I was looking through everything and sort of creating the reports that I wanted. But what happened when I left was, you know, I essentially I took the system with me because I wasn't there anymore to do it.

[00:21:49] So on our old practice management software, I know that as much as they tried to, you know, to continue doing things, you know, it's there wasn't really a software system to do the things that I was doing. So those things kind of fell by the wayside and things got a little out of control until I really stepped back in about six months ago. Actually, actually more than that now.

[00:22:14] But, you know, I stepped back in and and I well, I knew we were going to be switching to care stack. And I knew that the way our our accounting, our accounting was at that time that it I had to get that cleaned up in our old system because I didn't want to bring old problems into new software. So I spent a lot of time, you know, just cleaning up some things. And the reality is that I don't think anything was ever done, you know, with malintent.

[00:22:42] Once I left the office, I'm just, you know, the owner and super type A. And I had, you know, systems. And for 25 years, I, you know, did things a certain way. And then, you know, that just kind of got overlooked when I left. So anyway, when I came back. Let me stop you for a second. What's interesting about that is that, Missy, you you were the system. Yeah, that's that's that's.

[00:23:04] And this is this probably is a lot of offices that that probably have this situation where there is the one superhero that can run things nicely and smoothly. But if that person gets hit by a bus, goes to the hospital, has the flu, whatever. All of a sudden, the office doesn't run the same way. And that's not always the case. I'm not saying that's what I'm.

[00:23:26] But the reality is, I have this I have the sneaking suspicion that you guys are going to tell me that CareStack is more systematic than a lot of other software. So that, in other words, you don't have to rely on one superhero to make sure everything is done the same. I think we're going to get into that in the second half hour. But go ahead and comment on that, Missy.

[00:23:47] Well, it's just, you know, once we got through the transition period and figured out CareStack and migrated everything over and really started to get to to to know things, I felt like, you know, I could step back a little bit from, you know, all of my, you know, heavy engagement at that time. I could step back. We were in a better place. And I have way better ways to, you know, to look at the data and to look at reports, you know, now that I ever have.

[00:24:16] So, you know, it just it makes my life a lot easier. And I know it's making, you know, Kevin, your office manager's life a lot easier, too. Yeah. So, Jamie, what do you think if you're selling me CareStack, what are the top three things that you would you would say to someone who's new? That CareStack can do. And then I have a follow up question to that.

[00:24:42] So I'd say, first and foremost, it really consolidates a lot of the operations that sometimes take multiple people, multiple systems, as far as like multiple softwares into one space. So that even if you are having that common struggle that I think a lot of offices are having now, which is there's so many hats that one person is expected to wear.

[00:25:06] Because of the way dentistry is at times, it's like it brings everything into one so that you're not having to expel so much energy and effort going into these multiple different areas to put on hat A, B, and C. The other thing I would say is that we take a lot of, say, like it being cloud-based and with the security things with technology these days.

[00:25:31] We take a lot of that burden away from practices, which I think a lot of times is very overwhelming for dentistry. Because I don't know if you guys feel this way, but after the conversations I've had with people, we aren't trained as a profession, I don't think, very well. And this is a blanket statement as far as like different technology requirements when you get out into private practice or even with like DSO type organizations.

[00:26:01] We know dentistry and the sciences and the artistic nature of dentistry, but we take on that burden for you so that you can focus back on that. So consolidation, security clearance.

[00:26:13] The other thing I would say is really, I don't know if you want to call it an SOP, but like going back to what Missy said, as far as she was the system, we help have a lot of that automated so that we don't have to have you recreating the wheel anytime something changes in the practice. Again, go back to the business.

[00:27:06] You know, it's very easy to get set in your ways. And I totally understand that. We had a meeting at our house, right where Missy's sitting over to the left or right. I don't know which, over there. Right over there. With my office manager and my clinical manager and a receptionist. I said, I really want to change things to this care stack. I want to make a change. Are you guys willing to go along with the right? Right.

[00:27:31] And I, you know, I told them some of the things that I knew that care stack could do from using it at 3D Dennis. And to my surprise, everyone said, let's do it. Because I knew there was going to be a learning curve, some hassles, all of that stuff to switch.

[00:27:51] So, you know, if you're out there and you're a startup and you don't have anything right now and you're looking for a great practice management system to start from scratch, that's great. But Jamie, most people have something else. Tell us about how the transition goes and alleviate. I've been through the process. I have no fears about that at all right now.

[00:28:20] But alleviate my fears of switching from my tried and true whatever I have right now to your product. Besides building a great software, we've also built a great infrastructure to essentially manage change. That's where we understand the because a lot of us, especially on that implementation side and that kind of account management side, we have dental experience.

[00:28:47] We know that this change is like open heart surgery for a practice. So we go through these steps with you and we really fine tune the process of helping you still be operational. Because, again, kind of going back to we don't know technology sometimes. We're there helping you and analyzing how your practice specifically is working, is operating, who's involved.

[00:29:11] And we help essentially construct this optimal environment for you with the data you already have, with the staff you already have, with the requirements and kind of hopes and dreams you already have. To get you through this process from, hey, I want to make this change to how do we actually implement that and go live with this change. And it doesn't even stop there.

[00:29:34] That's where, too, I've been through other, personally, other software conversions where we don't stop at that kind of, hey, here you go. So we're there continuing to help support you through this change because no matter how much you prepare, change is hard. Change can be uprooting. And yes, you can train. Yes, you can prepare.

[00:29:57] But once you're actually in that session of change, you don't really know how it's going to feel. And so we're there on the back end monitoring those reports where they're helping, checking in with you, having those weekly meetings every step of the way. I always kind of going back to the clinical sense, I always think of it kind of like a hospital setting. And I've been using this lately, but it seems to resonate.

[00:30:24] When you first go live with us, it's like if you were to get out of surgery and you're on an ICU floor in a hospital. A lot of times you have much more critical needs and you have more one-on-one care with that medical staff. That's what we are right at that initial change moment.

[00:30:42] As you get more fluent, as you get more prepared and comfortable in the software, managing it, having those operations functioning for you, that's when, okay, you get to go from the ICU down to the floor nurse section. Where you've got a little bit more like kind of still one-on-one care, but they have a little bit more on their plate because it's not quite as critical as a need. So you still have that one-on-one care with your nurse, just like you do with our account management.

[00:31:11] But you're self-sufficient. You're walking on your own. You're feeding yourselves like all of these things. And we're always there with you. So that's where from the moment you start this sales process with us to even get information with someone like myself to the moment you're with us for 10 years. You're always here supported. Yeah. And that's where the change difference is.

[00:31:34] My office manager, Tammy and Missy were really the ones that were most involved in the conversion. So since Tammy's not here, Missy, tell us your perspective of how that went. Because I thought it was quite remarkable. As true to form, I handed that off to other people. Let them run with it. So go ahead and tell us about that, Missy.

[00:32:01] Well, that day that we were sitting here in the dining room and you proposed to all of us that you wanted us to look into CareStack, it looked really cool. But my first thought was, like, I just felt overwhelmed with how are we going to do this whole conversion? Like, you know, you've got 600 years of your patient history that we have to go through and, you know, convert everything. Are we going to lose stuff? Are we going to know how to use it?

[00:32:28] I mean, I wholeheartedly thought we should switch, but I was scared out of my mind. And, you know, what Jamie just said is absolutely true, that throughout the whole process, I mean, CareStack was really great at, you know, surveying us and what our needs were and how we did certain things and, you know, helping us to prioritize, you know, our own process. And we had meetings with them, a ton of meetings with them.

[00:32:58] Very, very often, I feel like sometimes, I mean, it felt like every day we had a couple of meetings in the beginning, but that was because we were just, you know, starting the process. They were getting to know us. They were, you know, understanding what, you know, what we needed out of the software, where our focus was.

[00:33:18] And just like she said that, you know, they took us through that process and then we had the big day where things were officially migrated and then we went live, but they were right there with us, you know, holding our hand through that time in the beginning to help us, you know, get through it. And then as time went by, we, you know, obviously needed them less and less. But I mean, I periodically will shoot over a support text and someone's always there to respond to my question.

[00:33:43] And, yeah, that I was really scared that day that, you know, just the overwhelming part of it. Knowing that you were really scared, knowing that you had a lot of fear. And honestly, there's a lot of people listening that are like, the reason I won't switch or that I haven't switched or I'm not interested is that the transferring from one to the other is a lot of fear. Yeah. Knowing that you had that fear beforehand and you've gotten to where you are now, tell me how you worked through that.

[00:34:13] I got to tell you, every software always says, no, no, we get all the data and it's a great, it's easy transition. And the story is, it's not an easy transition. Even when it's really good, it's obviously not an easy transition because it's a heck of a lot of stuff. So knowing how afraid you were, how glad and how well did it work out? It worked out much better than I hoped, honestly. And I think part of that is because Tammy and I were kind of a team with that.

[00:34:40] And she did, you know, she's in the practice every day. So she did a lot of things that sort of required her to be there and to talk to Kevin about during the day. And I was, you know, we kind of divided up some of the things. I was really focused on the accounting aspect and how we brought over accounts and how we read them once they were going to be, you know, migrated over. I was like, let me deal with this big chunk and then you deal with like this, our block scheduling.

[00:35:08] And, you know, she was really focused on some of those areas and I was focused on completely different ones. And that helped, I think, to keep us so we both weren't, you know, having to be responsible for everything. So I think splitting that up helped. But, you know, being on those meetings and then getting, you know, copies of all of those meetings so we could rewatch them, we could share them with the team. You know, that was, it was very, very helpful. In hindsight, there wasn't any reason to be that afraid.

[00:35:38] But, you know, you don't know that going into it, right? No, I totally get it. I get it. That's honestly, I think that's a hangup for a lot of offices that would consider doing this. Because they're just like, oh, man, it's like, it's like moving. I'd love to move to a new house, but oh, boy, is it a mess to get there. You know, it's just like that. So it's like a, and part of it is that you've also heard horror stories of people that said, oh, yeah, we're going to help you the whole way. And then they're like gone.

[00:36:05] So I think the moving analogy is great, Alan, because it's, you know, there's some there. And Jamie said there's fear with change. And, you know, from my perspective, again, I delegated a lot of this. I was in on some of the meetings, but not very much at all. But what my perspective was, is that CareStack was along with us every step of the way when there were some roadblocks or things we didn't understand.

[00:36:33] They're, you know, everything was explained to us. The data transfer was fairly seamless, very minimal hiccups. And I couldn't be happy. Overboard with support, in fact. So, and that's a good thing. I mean, it was, you're taking data from, what do you think, 13 or 12 years, Missy, that we had that. That's a lot of stuff. Yeah.

[00:37:03] And we didn't miss a B, you know, you worry about, you know, some angry patient calling, why did I get this bill or what, you know, none of that happened. And we, you know, we didn't lose anything. And, like I said, CareStack was very, very supportive. And it wasn't one of those situations where they said, yeah, we'll support you. And then, you know, you can't get a hold of everyone. No. Anyone. If anything, if anything, I feel like they did a good job in, like, pushing us along in the process. Yeah.

[00:37:32] You know, it was like they were, you know, we had goal dates for when they wanted to accomplish certain things. You know, prior to having the, prior to everything being officially migrated over, we had all these sort of goal dates of things. And if, for whatever reason, we didn't meet a goal date, then we kind of pushed everything back a little bit, you know, to make sure we still had time for everything. They, you know, gently nudged us along and we kept up with what they needed. And, yeah, it was pretty seamless. So, they have enough support people.

[00:38:03] There's plenty of support at all times. There's kind of nothing worse than when you've paid for a support plan for something and your team is hesitant to call the support. Nothing like that. I think. Give me a break. Sounds like that's the opposite of this. I think Tammy and Missy made some friends. Yeah. We did. Shruti's my buddy, man. Shruti. That's for sure. I love it. Yeah. I'll have to tell her for sure. Because, too, like you're saying, you've got so many different support options.

[00:38:30] So, for instance, you've got your client success, which is like right when you go live, you've got your onboarding implementation before. You've got your account managers after. That's all like your assigned team. But then also on top of that, we have an entire division of just support representatives that are trained in care staff that know dentistry, that knows a software that can be a resource, whether it's email, chat, call. Within 30 seconds, you're going to get a person that knows care staff. No charge. That is true. Everything.

[00:39:00] Yeah. All right. Jamie, Missy, Alan, we're going to wrap up this half hour. We've got more to come in the next one. Any – I got a – Zach said we have to ask for – You got to do it, Zach. Any takebacks? Any takebacks? I don't know what else he says. I don't have any takebacks at all. I have no takebacks. All right. None. So, we did good. We – so, for Alan, Missy, and Jamie, very clinical listeners.

[00:39:28] You can go to our Facebook page and, you know, join up and let's join the discussion. And we thank you for listening and we will see you next Tuesday. See ya.