Very Clinical: Kevin is (Care) Stacked!

[00:00:00] Okay, let's talk about one of the most underrated tools in your practice, the dental mirror. It's in your hand all day, every day. But have you ever thought about how much it actually impacts your work? If your mirrors aren't giving you a crystal clear view, you're working harder than you need to. That's where Zerk comes in with their Crystal HD Dental Mirrors. I love these mirrors. I keep two in every single setup just in case I drop one. These aren't your average mirrors. They're so much brighter than the standard ones. That means better visibility, reduced eye strain, and more confidence during every procedure.

[00:00:28] And they're durable and lightweight, designed to reduce hand fatigue and improve ergonomics, so you can work comfortably even during those long demanding days. Plus, your patients will love them too. Available in a variety of vibrant colors, these mirrors are made with durable resin to prevent galvanic shock and eliminate the unpleasant clanking against teeth, ensuring a more comfortable experience for everyone. 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.

[00:00:56] It's like seeing your procedures in a whole new light. Maintaining optimal ergonomics is essential for a long and healthy dental career. That's where BQE comes in. BQE stands for Back Quality Ergonomics. I swear by a BQE model called the Ergodynamic, but they have a variety of styles that can fit you and your whole team. Keep listening to Very Dental to hear a conversation I recently had with Stephen Hoxma of BQE about their commitment to creating the best seating for dental teams.

[00:01:22] If you're looking to improve your workspace and well-being, check them out at BQE-USA.com. This is a production of the Very Dental Podcast Network. Welcome to the Very Clinical Podcast, brought to you by Zerk Dental Products.

[00:01:46] In about the time it takes to do an MO on three, we will entertain and enlighten you with tips and tricks for regular daily dentistry. Here's Kevin and Zach. What is up, Very Clinical listeners? Welcome back to yet another episode of the podcast. This is Zach Miners coming to you from Kansas City, Missouri. With me as always, my trusty co-host, Dr. Kevin Hare Fryer. Kevin, what's cracking in Cleveland? We're actually sunny days. It was like 60 yesterday. I it's this is March, right?

[00:02:16] We were having a nice stretch of weather. Good baseball weather. You know what? It's it was 74 here today and absolutely brilliant. After work to walk the dog and play baseball with the kids and stuff. Three days in a row. Nice. If you are a regular listener to this feed, you might recognize our co-host tonight, Dr. Alan Mead. I've never heard of him. Nope. Yeah, me neither. I have no idea who that is. He was cheap and accessible. Please introduce yourself to our audience.

[00:02:46] Hello. My name is. Yeah. Our weather's crap here. Just in case you're wondering. Okay. You're up north, man. Yeah. 40 degrees and gray. We did have one nice day. And all that nice day served to do is get my hopes up. And here we are. That is the tale of spring. It is the tale of Michigan. Yes. Yeah. Alan, I know this is radio, but with those new glasses you have on, you kind of are putting

[00:03:16] off some max headroom vibes. Yes. Nice. That's what I thought of right from the beginning. Also, the hairline does that too. When you're having a little bit of sound problems. Yep. That's funny. I have my contacts in. These are reading glasses that I find myself needing pretty much all the time if I don't need them when I'm working on patients because I have my loops or microscope. But if I have to read something. Are those one and a half or two X? I don't even know.

[00:03:46] I have reading glasses everywhere and yet I still never have them when I need them. I feel like this is. Right. So far, I'm just a ray of fucking sunshine, aren't I? I just. Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Reading glasses and you know. Crap weather. That's great. Sorry. That's great. You got any health conditions you want to, you know, tell us about? Yeah, I got a corn on my foot. No, I'm healthy right now. I'm pretty good. Pretty good. Unlike the Detroit Lions, I'm healthy.

[00:04:15] Healthier than you were this morning. Yeah. Yep. All right. Hey, Kevin, what's the bit tonight? We start talking dental stuff. All right. So we're going to be, you know, spoiler alert. We're going to be talking about my new practice management software. So what I thought we'd do is start off with a bit on our very first computers ever. You know, since this is the age of information.

[00:04:44] So, Zach, what was your first computer ever? Um, are you looking more for like our first home computer? Or like, yeah, like I had like access to access? That's done. Come because school, you could probably get on a computer. We did not get a, a, we got a home. I guess I should say we got one when I was a, a teen and dad was actually fairly early to computers.

[00:05:09] He got a computer in like, uh, 1990 at the office. And he had a computer at home to back up the information too. So I was the guy who would bring, he'd bring home like the, you guys remember the a drive, the a little a like heart. They weren't floppy disks, but man, he would have like 15 of them every night. Cause you know, those things were like one Meg or something like that.

[00:05:33] I, I, my job was to back all those up before I could, um, before I could play on the computer. Play or eat. Yes. Or eat. So you were the back, back, back it up guy. I was the back it up guy, which I still am to this day. He's never lost that gig. Uh, but you know, the, it was, it was a classic. You're still using those disks. You probably should get some new ones. Yeah. Can only rewrite over those a couple of times.

[00:06:01] My dad used that dental program from 1990 until I put a hard foot down to make us change to open dental in 2021. Remarkable. The company had been out of business for five years before we made this. But think of all the money you saved. They're out of business. You didn't have to pay boatloads of money. Yes. Yes, he did. Yes. So that was my, uh, that was my, my first computer. Basically, basically didn't even do anything fun.

[00:06:31] It was just like just a word processor for like school. Was it like it was it like a three 86 or something like that? Uh, that sounds familiar, but that almost seems too good. Like that was like your second computer. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but I, I know what you speak of, you know, at school was, it was the apple two seas to play Oregon trail and lemonade stand and all those, you know, advanced games for your, your average 1980, 83 first grader. So anyway, how about, uh, you Alan?

[00:06:59] I had a, I had a Commodore 64. Oh yeah. I had a Commodore 64. And the funny thing about Commodore 64 is that. A Commodore 64. Yeah. So like. My dad still has his. Yeah. They're, I mean, they're, they're, uh, they're a good weapon. Actually. They're kind of like a cinder block to be honest. Yeah. And they had a, they had a slot in the back for cartridges. And so cartridges played pretty well. You could play some decent. Lots in the back are good. Yeah. Slots in the back are good.

[00:07:25] But I, uh, I, I remember going to Kmart to get the, uh, the disc, the floppy disc drive in. We had one on order for like four months and it never came. So I never got a floppy disc drive. I did have, I did have a tape drive, which was like an actual used actual cassette tapes to store, to store data. And so like, allegedly I had a game that I could play on the tape and it never honestly got it never worked once.

[00:07:52] So, um, that was my first, my first computer is basically, uh, uh, it was kind of like an Atari 2600 with a keyboard. That was my first gaming system. It was an Atari 2600. I had an Atari for sure. Yep. What about you? Actually I had a pong. That's how far back I go. Nice. Nice. Um, so my, I'm a big Mac guy. I always have been big Apple guy, which, uh, will become important in a few minutes. I don't think anyone would remember.

[00:08:22] It was made in the early nineties. It was, uh, you know, Mac software on, on, uh, you know, some sort of computer hardware. That's all I know. Um, nothing special. It wasn't their greatest product obviously cause it didn't last. Um, but I just used it for also backing stuff up from the office and, um, you know, eventually

[00:08:49] that sort of morphed into, you know, that was the days starting to be the days of AOL and that sort of thing. So. Kevin, what would you say you had a practice management software? Did you have one from when you started in the late eighties? I started in 1992 and we, here's how this is a really great story. I have my, our first practice management software, my former partner's wife made. Oh, oh wow.

[00:09:17] On a Mac computer using file maker pro. Yeah. Yeah. And multiple databases that all talk to each other. We, we, I, we went to, they weren't married yet. We went, we went to her house. We told her this is what practice management software is do. And she like took some notes, wrote some things down. We went back in two or three weeks and she had the basics of it. And, uh, I used that for a long, long time. Wow. Fascinating. Wow. Huh?

[00:09:46] I got a Mac story before we go on. Uh, so when I went to dental school, it would have been, uh, 1993, uh, fall of 1993. I, I got, I did like the orientation and actually figured out that I was going to be living at the Psy Omega house and then realized that I could buy a computer from, from the school. And you get a great deal when you, as a student, you know, you get a great deal on a computer. I got an Apple power book one 45.

[00:10:15] I think I've told this story on the podcast before a power book. So it was, it was a, I mean, it was just legendary that I had a laptop, right? Like the one 45, it had a, it had a track ball. It had a track ball and it had a floppy disk drive. I got, I just sent a picture in the, in the Facebook chat. Uh, the thing was an absolute brick. I had, I had multiple Apple laptops when I was in dental school and, uh, their batteries were terrible. I had a million max Kevin. I mean, I, I am, I'm a big Mac guy too.

[00:10:45] I don't use it at the office, but I'm, I really have had a lot of Macs over the years, but that was my first one. And it was grayscale. The monitor was grayscale. It was not even color. It was a, yeah, it was, it was high tech. It was great stuff. Excellent. So we're talking to mainly Kevin tonight's Kevin centric episode. So if you're a, if you're a, if you, if you mostly listen for Kevin, you know, uh, this is, this is your episode. He's the, he's the key player here.

[00:11:13] But before we get into, into Kevin's stuff, since we're talking about practice management software, let's just go around the horn. Yeah. Alan, what do you use at your office? I use dentrics for a while. I've used dentrics. I've used dentrics since 1998. Um, uh, it was a terrible choice then. And I've stuck with that terrible choice for 27 years. That's you dug in. Yeah, I dug in. Well, I mean like, and the other thing is it's a bad marriage.

[00:11:37] It's at some point it's kind of like you feel like, you feel like, uh, it's the sunk cost of having purchased the, the, and when you think about it, I don't know how much I bought it for, but, but when you think about how much maintenance you have to put into it, it's like you buy new software every year almost for the, for the upkeep and stuff. So, I mean, and I don't even want to tell you how much I probably pay for monthly on, on that stuff.

[00:11:59] So in any case I use dentrics because it's what I've had and I, I haven't, and I will tell you, I'm obsessed with the idea of cloud software and I still haven't pulled the trigger. I've, I've, we've had a podcast, you know, for years we've been talking about it. I, I've, I've just never pulled the trigger, but, uh, and now there's a lot of compelling products out there. So that's kind of what we're going to talk about, but I have, I have dentrics, uh, and I actually even now use dentrics imaging software instead of Apteryx, which is not great. Not great shakes either.

[00:12:30] You don't know what dentrics costs or you just don't want to say? Well, I know what I pay shine for my IT stuff. So what I'm saying is it's about a thousand dollars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They do, they do backup, they do security, they do, uh, but in the software is part of that. And so we have the, we have the automatic updates, which is fine. And I will say that the, that the backups have been super reliable, so I can't complain about that, but it's, uh, you know, it's a stroke on my credit card that I try not to think about.

[00:12:58] Much like I try not to think about the stock market. Oh yeah. It's been, that's been a rough go. Uh, see I am on, I am on open debt after I finally got switched off of this 90s software that was horrible, which was called dental pro. Um, we were on open dental, which is a, you know, it's, I think that's one of the bigger players. Sure.

[00:13:17] And, um, you know, it's, I, I'm going to hear from Kevin tonight, obviously about what, what modern, totally modern practice software is capable of. But currently this does what I am hoping it does, I guess, or what I was, it's such an upgrade from what I had. And I still haven't, I'm still figuring out new features on it all the time, but it's, it's amazing to me. Uh, and I think open dental, you're basically, you don't pay for the software.

[00:13:45] You just pay a support, uh, fee on it. Um, you get a deal if you pay three years at a time. So I want to say maybe it's a average is out to about 110, 120 bucks a month, something like that. That's terrific. So what it's worth. Yeah. Anyway, people love, people love their open dental. Yeah. It's, it's, it's fine. You know, some people OD on OD. See what I did there? I've still got it. All right.

[00:14:13] So Kevin, it, uh, you made a move. I did make a move. I've been on the same thing for a long time. Yeah. You were on, weren't you on Mac practice or something like that? Yeah. Once we went from the homemade version on the file maker. I don't know. First off, I don't know how you could break away from the homemade version. It's custom, man. It's, it's Kevin and only Kevin. Yeah. And then we, uh, Support fees were probably pretty minimal on that. Yeah. But also there was no upgrades.

[00:14:42] So, um, we've been on Mac practice since I think 2012. 12, 11 or 12. And, um, you know, that was, Wait a minute. You use the homemade software until 2012. Yeah. No way. Yeah. Somewhere around there. That's bold. That is a bold move. Wow. That's awesome. And I have more respect for Kevin now than I ever have in my entire life. Yeah. That's a, that's, that's, that's even crazier than my dad using that 90s stuff until 2020. Anyway, keep going. Sorry.

[00:15:12] I didn't. Mac practice was mainly because of my love for Apple stuff and it would run on a Mac and I had this aversion to anything on windows, but, um, and Mac practice served us well for a long time, except for what ended up happening is two things.

[00:15:32] One you're tied to a server and the server, you know, either it, uh, crashes or you don't have enough memory or they're upgrading things. And then you have to upgrade everything else. And it just became this endless cycle of, you know, there's, there'd be sometimes I was, I'm the IT guy. So I'd be there till midnight or all night long, trying to upgrade everything all at once. So you can get back up and running the next day. That was a pain in the neck.

[00:16:01] Also, there was all these extras that we added on in order for it to do texting and all that sort of stuff that was really important to me. Um, but you know, Mac practice worked fine. It suited all our needs. The accounting part of it was easy to understand and the scheduling was easy to understand all of that. It just, I just felt like we were, um, maybe not advancing.

[00:16:26] And then at the smile 3d clinic, the nonprofit clinic that's associated with 3d data. They started using care stack like two years ago. And I was like, Oh, what is this cloud-based? It was, to me, it was cool that you could just get on a Chrome browser and access everything. I thought that was fantastic.

[00:16:45] And then the more I looked into it, the more I felt like I really wanted to have an all-encompassing solution with no extra add-ons that it all kind of worked together. Worked together. Yeah. 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?

[00:17:11] 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. 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.

[00:17:37] 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. 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.

[00:18:07] 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? 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.

[00:18:36] 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. Texting, I didn't realize this at the time, but phones, that's been a huge thing.

[00:19:01] And really trying to utilize the software in a way that is more like we interact with other software. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we're making, for example, other softwares may do this, but I could not do this with back practice. You just came in for your hygiene appointment. You know, we're going to schedule in six months. Boom.

[00:19:28] You get a reminder right then that you have this reservation. Just like if you went to a restaurant and you get put on a waiting list. Boom. They send you something right away and then they keep in contact with you. And it's all running, it's all connected through the same platform. Plus the cloud based part of it, you know, I can, I could access my Mac practice from anywhere using Splashtop. Yep.

[00:19:55] That's not a problem, except I'm accessing the server and that could be buggy or weird. Yep. I can get on a Chrome browser anywhere in the world and access my whole practice management, including the imaging from, from anywhere. Now that is both a plus and a minus. Sure it is. Yeah. Because you're on vacation and you're, I don't know, you know, your wife's in the shower and you're bored and you click on your stuff.

[00:20:27] Um, you know, you can look at it, uh, and you know, sort of get tied into that, but I really, um, So you have access from everywhere. It's super easy to access. Everywhere all the time. And, and the, and what you're also saying is you're not accessing a server that's in your office. You're accessing, you're basically if there's any server to be, your, all your data is stored in locally where they are, where their servers are. Probably multiple servers. I'm guessing. I suspect they have, they have multiple.

[00:20:57] There's gotta be some sort of, um, I was going to say. I think, I think they do. They do the thing where it's redundant in multiple places and stuff like that. But the reality is, is that a Chrome browser is all you need to log in. That's first off. I mean, for all the different, that's all I need to know. I love that. I, and I don't love having to get on my computer from home, my, my office computer, but, but when, when you do need to, uh, what a pain, right? Like, I don't know.

[00:21:24] I just, I use Splashtop too, and it does fine, but it's also sometimes it doesn't, or sometimes the server is down or disc. Connector is some dumb thing. Correct. Yeah. It's happened all the time. Especially, it would always happen when you really needed to see something. Always. Of course. Of course. So, okay. So CareStack. First, what's okay. This is really funny. CareStack has nothing to do with CareStream. Is that correct? Correct. I know that's such a dumb thing, but I always, I, cause I think of CareStream and CareStack the same, you know, cause they both have care and blah, blah, blah.

[00:21:53] So it's a, this is a separate company. It's also not anything to do with CareBears. CareBears. Well, that's a, as far as I'm concerned, that is a downside. I would have been way more into it in that case. CareStack is, is a, how long has CareStack been, been around? Well, I mean, if it's been two years since you were using it at 3D. So it's been around for a while. No idea. Five years, seven years. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

[00:22:16] The other part of it that really sold me and I, it was just, I could just get a glimpse of this at 3D cause we really don't use it. It's the analytics. Okay. That were built into it. Okay. So it's a dashboard that comes up right away. It lets you know what you produce, what you collected. It has some very, if I want to run my practice as a business, I can dive very deep into stuff or not.

[00:22:43] You know, I could dive deeper into what's there and, you know, kind of go nuts with that. Or I can, what has happened over the last six months is that I pick and choose the things that are important to me to help me know what's happening inside my business. And it, you know, totally integrated into the whole platform. So what I'm hearing is, okay, first it's cloud based.

[00:23:12] It takes a, first off, I have multiple, I'm, I've complained about this and not ever done anything about it, but I have like, I know that I can text in at least two different places because I'm paying for two different services. I'm, you know, the, the, I, over the years I've kind of, sort of like you did with Mac practice, you sort of piece things together to get the features you want. And now what you're saying is with care stack, you get all those features. Yeah.

[00:23:37] And the other thing you're talking about, you, you can pay for dashboard software that dives into your software and pulls that stuff out. You're saying that that's built in as well. It's built in and it, you know, it's care stack. So things are stacked, right? So stacked. Right. I've always said that about Kevin, he's stacked. So, I mean, that's what the, the texting is and all that sort of stuff and the, and the, and the analytics. All right. How about forms? Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.

[00:24:03] The, I, I went all in. I got everything that I got because once they did the, um, CS conversation. And then they did a, uh, the conversation demo with me, which is their phone system. So, uh, patient calls in, uh, it's automatically that the conversations automatically transcribed by an AI. Oh my God. I know exactly what happened. Are you serious in the moment? Transcribed?

[00:24:31] Yeah. So the way we used to do this is, uh, someone calls the office, the front desk has a conversation with them. And then we had a Google form that they would fill in, you know, like, uh, Joe called his crowns broken. And, and most of the time they did it right after that. Yeah. But when things got busy, not all of that happened. And the way I like to practice and run my business is know what's happening at the front. Yeah.

[00:25:00] Yeah. So, you know, if, if Joe calls us a broken crown or Sally has a toothache or whatever, I want to know all this stuff, or someone has a problem that we need to address or, you know, complaint or someone loves us. Also all of that stuff. I want to know that in the moment. And the AI transcribes all that stuff.

[00:25:17] It's taken that burden off of my front desk of having, having to physically write that because the AI is doing that for them. And to me, you know, that pushed everything over the top. I love that feature beyond what I can even describe on the, on the podcast. That's wild.

[00:25:35] Also it scores the calls, which I used to look at more before, um, before I fired someone, but, uh, it scores the calls. So, you know, we can have a conversation, you know, you, we could have handled this better or we, I can call, I can coach them into, you know.

[00:25:58] So not only does it transcribe it, it tells you if they did a good job or not. Like I'm glad I'm not answering. Like our AI overlords should. I'm, yeah, exactly. What else are AI overlords for? But like, I'm really glad I'm not answering the phone. Cause I'm not sure I could, I'm not sure my self-esteem could take that getting a beaten beat down from an AI. Well, I will say that, um, every time I look we're scored at like 80%.

[00:26:25] So you're doing pretty well, pretty well. That's amazing. Okay. So I got another question. Forms. How does it do forms? Like, like, does it, does it send emails prior to appointments? Can you do it on the tablet? Oh yeah. There's a patient portal, which is, uh, thanks for saying that. That was also very important to me. So, um, I don't know how the hospital systems are in your guys' area, but in our area we have my chart.

[00:26:49] Uh, so, you know, Zach goes to the hospital cause he has leprosy and. I told you that in confidence. I know, but now everyone knows. It's a HIPAA violation there. Before his finger falls off, um, you know, he can access his, my chart and see all the blood tests and everything that's happening there. Likewise, our patients can see pertinent information in the portal.

[00:27:14] So as soon as someone calls a portal, uh, email gets sent out and they can fill out their medical history, their insurance, all that information stuff gets filled out way ahead of time and can be accessed through the portal. Also, they can pay us through the portal, which is also awesome. Yeah. Um, they can text to pay, which is really awesome. And something I'm forgetting. Insurance verification. Oh, insurance verifications are happening also. Automatically. Yeah. Cause we got that service too. Okay.

[00:27:44] So, so the. And they enter in our mail. She should have just been on this. I feel like, I feel like, I mean, you could move over. Right. So I, I, so you're doing insurance verifications. You've got, you've got, uh, I, I guess the, and all the, I'm sorry, can the patient access the portal and get their, like, for instance, see their billing information or see all that stuff as well? Because that is an interesting point you bring up.

[00:28:12] If you are in a medical situation with a hospital group, they, we have my chart also here and it is pretty wild that you can actually, like, I mean, I've got, this is terrible, but I have, I have an employee who actually, you know, got to see her. Her radiograph of her, of her cancer before the doctor, before the doctor called to tell her she had cancer. Uh, I mean, like, that's how efficient those stupid portals are.

[00:28:38] That's not, I'm going to suggest that isn't the way to run a business, but I'm just going to put it out there that having that portal. I mean, I, I'm not, I'm pretty sure you don't have their radiographs up there necessarily, but, but the reality is you could have treatment plans up there. You could have past treatment. You could have, that's what it sounds like. And they could get enough. See, this is, this is very modern. This is how people are beginning to expect their healthcare to be delivered. You know, this is kind of. Yeah. I would say it's, it's as my charty as it could be for dental.

[00:29:06] Also they can through the portal, they can make their own appointments, which we've limited. You know, you can, one of, one of my. That's another service you could pay extra for. Doggone it. One of my mandates was I wanted to, there to be less calls. Like people could do things over text. Oh yeah. And we haven't really broached that as quickly as I would want to have happen.

[00:29:31] You know, we, we, we don't get as many online requests to change appointments as I would like, but I think that's a retraining our patients problem. Yeah. Yeah. Patients are used to, it kills me to even have to call. Places to make appointments and stuff. But what the reality is, is patients are still pretty comfortable with phone stuff. So that's going to take a while. But, but the fact that you have that available, there are going to be some people that jump on that. Yeah.

[00:29:59] There are, there, there are going to be some early adopters that are looking for that right off the bat. Yeah. Makes me happy when we get a notification that someone made a appointment online or paid us online. Yeah. So does it not, maybe I misunderstood. Does it not have just like a, like an opening text platform, like a patient can, can text the office? Yes, they can. Do that also. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. It's a pretty robust texting platform, which is also really great.

[00:30:27] I just want to, I want to eliminate the bottlenecks at the front desk. And to me, the bottleneck is the phone. And if we can do more texting, that's great. Yeah. My, my office staff loves to send texts. I mean, we're doing a lot more transaction via, via text these days. Oh my gosh. Totally. So, and actually like any doctor's appointments that I have or whatever, you know, I'm, I'm now getting the texts the same way that we send them.

[00:30:55] And I think honestly, on some level for the appointment reminders, I think sometimes people are a little irritated by it, but there's a lot of stuff that would be wonderful to be done by text that it sounds like you're able to do. Yeah. And, uh, you know, it's been approximately six months, five months, something like that. We're still, um, discovering new features. That's the other thing. They've been really, really helpful with us because this was a big transition for us, uh,

[00:31:22] after using the same software for a long time, that was really my big, uh, fear. And I, you know, I had a meeting with my managers and I said, this is what I'd like to do if you guys don't want to do this because it's going to be a hassle. You tell me right now, every one of them said, let's do it. Good for you. That's awesome. Um, they, um, you know, that everyone's taken to it really quickly, but we, you know, God bless Tammy, my office manager.

[00:31:47] Uh, she's had voluminous meetings with care stack to not to, to get the ball rolling, get things moving forward to learn everything. And then Tammy taught us along with care stack that, you know, taught us the basics of everything. And then care stack to their credit, uh, sets up other meetings, you know, like, how are things going? You know, about this feature, you know, this is what we see you doing and we can help you out with X, Y, or Z.

[00:32:17] And they've been very, very, very helpful with that. And I, how do you feel, how did you feel about the transfer from, from Mac practice to care stack? How did that go? So everything was really smooth except for, and they told us ahead of time, the documents and stuff would be slower to migrate over. So the first, I would say the first month or so, uh, you know, there are still times where I go back to Mac practice cause we still have it to look at something. Well, yeah, I get it. I get it.

[00:32:45] It, it was slow to move over. They warned us that that was going to happen. It was a little glitchy with that, but, uh, I also knew that as time went on, we were creating our own images and our own documents of stuff and it wouldn't matter as much. It was just those first initial days. Sure. Okay. So tell me this for, for imaging. Is there a bridge software? Yes. So tell me about that. So we use tiger view. Okay. And that, that's what, uh, care stack recommends.

[00:33:14] There was another one they recommend too, that I forget. We had to choose between the two, but we chose tiger view. I also got over jet at the same time. Like I really whacked everyone over the head with a bunch of new stuff over just the AI software that reads your x-ray. So tiger view communicates with over jet and over jet and tiger view communicate with care stack. So, um, now there have been some minor glitches with that, which they're very quick to, you

[00:33:43] know, jump on our server and fix. But, um, I really, uh, the imaging has been great. So right now your images are on a server or your images are in the cloud? Both. Are there, is it, is it like, so you have backup images on the server, but you also have them on the cloud. There is a server. I can, I can access all the images, uh, by a care stack, by a care stack on a Chrome browser.

[00:34:12] Um, and I can also access them on over jet, which is in the cloud. And I could, if I knew how to do it, I could get into the tiger view server. Okay. So you, okay. So, and I'm assuming the tiger view is in, that's a server based thing. So you can, the, the images go directly to the server when you take them, like it's taken bite wings. And then they sync, they eventually sync up to the cloud stuff. Is that right? Okay. Okay. That's, that's, uh, that has been for all of them that I've talked about.

[00:34:41] Imaging is always the thing, particularly radiographs, you know, because you're taking a mass amount of radiographs and, and it's vital that you don't lose those. And it's vital that you can get to those easily. And I guess that, that seems to be what he, what these softwares are doing where they're sort of redundant. And, and, but the reality is as long as you can get them, um, you know, uh, you don't have to go into the server from, from the cloud. That seems okay to me. It doesn't seem to be a thing. I actually prefer to look at everything at, on overjet right now.

[00:35:11] So I can also access that from anywhere. Okay. And over overjet as an app is also then cloud-based. Is that right? Correct. Okay. Yes. So, so do your, when you're using overjet, this is, this is not as care stacky as, as what we were talking about. When you're using overjet, you, you take the radiographs and then overjet. Kind of grabs them off your server. Is that the idea? Okay. Okay. I don't, yeah. It must grab them off the server. Yeah. So when we take a radiograph, it goes on the tiger view server.

[00:35:38] It goes, it gets uploaded to care stack and it also gets uploaded to overjet. When you're using this as when you're using overjet, do you use overjet immediately typically, or do you use overjet after? Okay. So you're looking at overjet while the patient's in the chair. That's what the patient sees. Okay. And I see at the same time. Okay. Okay. Okay. It's almost instantaneous. And again, we've had a couple of glitches that they fixed. So there's a, there's a decent chance we'll be driving near Cleveland, Ohio for spring break here in a couple of weeks.

[00:36:03] I may have to arrange a demo of care stack at Kevin's office. Yeah. We only charge a thousand dollars an hour for that. 10,000. I'm bringing, I'm bringing Sean and Jacob too. 20,000. There you go. For sure. 3K. Yeah. Well, Sean will bring us too, but he'll, he'll play for you. Stop by it. Yeah. I'd be happy to show you everything. It's well, okay. So in along those lines, cause we've been going for a little while along those lines, we're going to bring, we're going to bring someone from care stack on another episodes at some point to get, cause, cause Kevin's good, but Kevin doesn't.

[00:36:34] Kevin, your sales pitch is good. I'm here for it, but I want to hear from, I want to hear from the horse's mouth. If you will, if you will. So I met Jamie at the Chicago midwinter. I ran into her and that's, that's Kevin's, that's Kevin's person. That's the face of care stack for Kevin's office. Is that right? Um, I've talked to Jamie. We also talked to Raquel. Okay. So there's, there's multiple. Okay. In any case. So she was really cool. And it was nice things where I, they, I wasn't going to get the demo cause I knew we were going

[00:37:04] to be talking about it, but so shout out to Shruti who really helped us through the initial transition. She was there from the beginning. I think, I think one of the things that's worth mentioning is that every transition from one software to another, none of it is, none of it is ever seamless. And so having that service, having, having someone that you feel like you can lean on, and it definitely sounds like you've had a really good experience with that. Yeah. They've been great. They've held our hands.

[00:37:31] Um, they've been very, very good. Cause I think they recognize that the, you know, like you said, the transition is going to be really difficult, could be difficult. And, um, getting us over the hump was, was great. And you like the fact that you're not paying for all the extra specific, like the, the texting and we were able to, Oh, that was the other thing. So it's always been my dream.

[00:37:55] So, uh, we had, um, we are marketing for certain services. We used to use, uh, Missy had built this MailChimp network. So let's say you came in for an extraction, Alan, we took your teeth out, you get your post-op instructions via MailChimp. And then a week later you get an email about the, uh, the pluses of having an implant.

[00:38:24] Um, a couple of weeks later, you get another one and then you get another one. Um, and we had those set up for the things that are really trying to sell, which are implant sleep implants and ortho. So you would get these things. Now all we have are gummy codes and they automatically go out through care stack. So that was huge for me once I realized, so once I realized we could do that. So we got rid of another service. We don't need to have MailChimp anymore.

[00:38:52] And, um, yeah, it's, it's so I like mass marketing through email is easy to do. I think a lot of the, and, and what we're going to find is there's more and more things that can be done within the software. I suspect at some point your website will be done by them because it's all, you know, your website's going to be all plugged and chugged and all that stuff. There's a lot, there's a lot there. Uh, so I can't, I kind of can't wait to talk with you and Jamie about this more. Yeah. So. All right, Kevin, I gotta be, I gotta be that guy. Yeah.

[00:39:21] With care stack, with all this stuff that can do, what do you, what do you have to pay for all that? I knew you were going to ask. I have no idea. I really don't, but I don't because one million dollars. I just went whole hog on everything because my premise was, I, I want this to run like a real business. And if that's what it takes to run it, I know that I'll get the revenue back. The return on investment is going to come to me. Oh, I believe you. I'm not saying it's not worth it.

[00:39:51] I'm just, I just want to know what the price is. I have no idea what it is. But that said, that said, I don't have to ask. I will let you know tomorrow and we can put it in the show notes. I promise. What that said though, I tend to think of, at least in my situation, I'm paying for a bunch of services that are, that are redundant. That are probably not. And that's, that's irritating. But also like it, I tend to think by the time all said and done, I suspect that whatever you're paying for care set can't be as much as I pay for all these dumb redundant things.

[00:40:21] And I, I'm, I'm saying that without having added them up. Cause I'm, I would literally be too embarrassed to say it in front of Zach. I feel like Zach would, would never look at me. I'd fact check you in. Yeah. Boom. He would. I'm not going to be that guy. He would. Well, maybe I would, but I was looking up, I was looking up on open dental. What? Cause I knew they had patient portal. I just haven't invested in it. And I realized they have a bunch of add-ons that would get me there.

[00:40:47] And I mean, it sounds like to me that care stack bundles a lot of stuff rather than something like maybe open dental or dentrix where you can maybe get most of what care stack has, but you gotta, you gotta add. That's the thing. You gotta add to it. Yeah. There's like a base package and then, you know, they do have a bunch of add-ons, all the, all these things that are stacked onto it. But yeah, I just, I just. You went all in?

[00:41:17] But they're built to, they're built to work together. That's the one thing that like, like they're, that's, that's, that's the thing that I don't have for sure. Right. Right. Super. All right. Hey, any, uh, the, uh, double downs, apologies, take backs, anything, Alan? I, I actually run my practice on a Commodore 64. I feel like I need to let you know that. Yeah. I have one, I have one in each operatory and the radiographs, the radiographs plug into the cartridge in the back of, of the unit.

[00:41:46] So yeah, the slot in the back. I started day one on paper. Yeah. Paper, calendar, paper, paper bookkeeping. And I still have it somewhere in the, I don't keep a lot of stuff, but we, we have that in the basement somewhere. Pegboard? Pegboard. Yeah. Pegboard. So the thing is anyone, anyone who actually is old enough to know what a pegboard is, it's time for your, it's time for your colonoscopy. They're also not listening. Probably. That's right. That's right.

[00:42:17] You know, it's interesting how much you guys love Apple. I've never owned an Apple product in my life. None. Zero. Wow. It's time Steve Jobs would thank you. Yeah. Very good. Always. Like I said, Microsoft, Google, those, those are the people I pay. I get it. All right. Hey, thank you guys for listening. We will have more, more care stack content down, down the road. More hot care stack content. But next week's show will not be about care stack. Just so you know. Yeah.

[00:42:46] Something a little different. Something different. All right. Thank you guys for listening. We will see you next Tuesday. See ya.