Very Clinical: Kevin is Playing with Blocks!

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[00:00:56] In about the time it takes to do an MO on three, we will entertain and amaze you with tips and tricks on regular daily dentistry. Here's Kevin and Zach. That is up, very clinical listeners and welcome back to another episode of The Very Clinical Podcast.

[00:01:11] I'm Zach Miners coming to you from Kansas City, Missouri. With me as always my trusty co-host, Dr. Kevin Hairfryer. Kevin, we're not in the same room anymore. Kevin Hairfryer It's nice to see you, but I can't touch you.

[00:01:24] Zach Longino No, I cannot press the flesh, touch the hair, any of that stuff. There are more VOD shows still to come, but we're actually doing a real show on the internet. Kevin Hairfryer This is VOD Interruptus. Zach Longino Yes, yes indeed.

[00:01:40] I have a high budget guest tonight. You may have heard him if you subscribe to this podcast feed. Dr. Alan Mead, what's up? Dr. Alan Mead Hey, greetings and salutations. I feel like at VOD we were sitting next to each other recording like madmen.

[00:01:58] I feel that kindred fellowship here. That's what I feel. Or hemorrhoids, one or the other. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Let's talk that just real quick, Alan. Give me like the total wrap up from VOD.

[00:02:11] What was your like—you run the meeting, you put a lot of hours into the whole thing. Give me just like a quick Twitter version of like a wrap up of how it was for you. Kevin Hairfryer For me? Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, for you.

[00:02:22] Kevin Hairfryer Honestly, it's always really good. The meeting itself goes by kind of quickly. The one thing that's interesting is like we have speakers in the other room going constantly.

[00:02:39] And we all—the four of us, Moody and Costas and Jason and I kind of do the intros or we hand the intros off to someone else or whatever. So I always feel like—but I'm rarely in the room when people are actually speaking

[00:02:53] because I'm kind of running around with sponsors or recording to be perfectly honest. I know that the rules say we're probably not supposed to do that. But let's be honest, you—the three of us were recording a lot. Yeah.

[00:03:04] So it's—I always feel torn in a million different directions at the meeting. I felt like this one was as good as ever. We got as much content done as I can ever remember and that's what Costas was saying to me.

[00:03:16] He's like, I finally—it's the first time I—he said he got like 18 episodes recorded or something like that. So on some level, people have to remember that yeah, it's a great meeting. It's got great speakers. You can get good CE. There's lots of cool exhibitors.

[00:03:27] There's just a ton of podcasts being recorded there. And that was always the goal for me. So I think this year was as good as ever, honestly. I think we did it right. Yeah.

[00:03:36] I know Kevin and I certainly recorded a lot more than we did in the previous year which again, just an opportunity to kind of just talk to a lot of people in person that we—many of whom we interact with, you know, on online interactions.

[00:03:50] But you know, I enjoyed that quite a bit and— It's nice to see those folks in real life. Absolutely. In person. Yes. It's exhausting. Like if you're like—I mean, you guys both probably felt this. By the end of each day, I was whipped, you know.

[00:04:04] Just really just— I was pretty tired for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Kevin, what's our bit for this evening before we get into our weekly topic here? So we're coming off the big Will Smith slapping Chris Rock in the face moment at the Oscars.

[00:04:20] And I'm a big fan of stand-up comedy as I think all three of us are. So I think we'll just make a little left turn into what's the last stand-up comedy show that you saw or maybe your favorite one or something like that. Go ahead, Alan.

[00:04:35] I have to tell you, I haven't seen that much stand-up in person. But a few years back, probably I think 2018, maybe 2019, I got invited down to—where was it? Georgia? North Carolina? I can't remember. I was in some state down south. And I was in North Carolina.

[00:04:58] It was Raleigh. It wasn't Raleigh, but it was North Carolina. Where is Serona based in North Carolina? Charlotte. Charlotte. That's where I went. I was in Charlotte. There we go. And Mike Sola and Dr. Josh Austin invited a bunch of us down to do sort of a—honestly,

[00:05:15] we were doing sort of a comedy. We were doing a lot of—we were doing some brainstorming for DS World. And we were coming up with all kinds of funny bits. It was a really good time around a bunch of funny people, really funny people.

[00:05:30] And so in that spirit, Mike got us tickets to go see a comedy show. And the feature, the headliner was Gilbert Godfrey. And we were right in the front row. It was great. They had a bunch of openers. And some of them were meh.

[00:05:46] And there was one opener that—I mean, he made me laugh so hard. And so he roasted me a bunch because I was laughing my head off. Did you walk up there and slap him? I did not. I did not. I continued to laugh at him.

[00:05:57] That's what you're supposed to do. He was actually funny as he was roasting me. Did you feel honored to be roasted? Yeah, I guess. I don't know if I was honored, but it didn't bother me.

[00:06:08] You sit in the front row at a stand-up comedy show, you're going to get it. It's like Gallagher. You're going to get the watermelon on you. Or Shamu at SeaWorld. You're going to get wet. That's how it works. So Gilbert Godfrey was good, different.

[00:06:23] He delivers his shtick as if the audience isn't there. It was wild. He was very good, but he's not an audience guy. Different kind of dude. Yeah, for sure. Yep. Zach. I've been to two shows in the last year.

[00:06:41] I gravitate towards SNL guys when they hit our local comedy clubs up. Within the last year, I've hit Kevin Nealon, who is one of my absolute favorite anchors, weekend update anchors. We've talked SNL and Kevin and I have jawed on that on this show plenty of times.

[00:07:01] I also saw Jim Brewer, who was an SNL guy. Oh man, he's so good. He's so good. I follow him on Instagram. He's really good. He was really good. Seems like a legit nice guy too.

[00:07:10] Kevin Nealon actually kind of let me down a little bit with his modern stuff, but Jim Brewer brought it. That was a really, really good show. I'm looking forward to hitting John Mulaney's doing a stadium tour and he's hitting our

[00:07:23] area this summer and I'm going to try to hit that. So I'm super excited about that. John Mulaney was at DS World, I believe. Oh, really? I didn't go. But I do have a Kevin Nealon story.

[00:07:35] I was going to some CE, I feel like I was going to California or something like that, but Kevin Nealon was in town. I knew that. And when I got to the gate to check in, I looked over and I saw him just sitting there.

[00:07:50] I'm like, okay, that's Kevin Nealon. And I don't feel like anyone should bother a celebrity. I wasn't going to ask for his autograph or anything, but I sat down next to this older couple, they're like, that guy looks so familiar. And they were just going back and forth.

[00:08:08] And finally I couldn't take it anymore. He was on Saturday Night Live. Oh yeah, you're right. I know I'm right. Yes. And so they went over and bothered him? No, they didn't. Okay, good. We did ride the same plane. There you go. All right.

[00:08:24] I was on a plane with John McCain once. It was wild. He was traveling. Were you a POW? No, I was not a POW. He was traveling first class. I was in the cattle car, but he had no security. He was at Detroit Metro.

[00:08:40] Is it Detroit or Chicago that has the... Well, they both have tunnels. Detroit has the light up tunnel. Yeah, and it was that one. So it was Detroit Metro and he walked that whole tunnel, no security. I stopped by. What year was this?

[00:08:54] This was not that long ago. It was probably within the last five years. And multiple people went up to him and talked with him. I stayed back. I was sure it was him.

[00:09:05] I didn't want to bother him, but I wanted to kind of make sure I was right. Oh my gosh, it was wild. So he had no security, just him. Just walking in Detroit. Can you imagine? Dude ran for president. I'm sorry.

[00:09:16] That's my only story of brush with theme. Kevin, how about you? Any comedy shows in the last year or so? So the very last one was obviously pre-COVID. Okay, so a couple of years. Yeah. It was Louie Anderson. He came from Cleveland.

[00:09:29] And I'm really happy that I saw him. We were a big fan of the show Baskets and he was currently on it then where he plays Christine Baskets. He plays a woman brilliantly. And Louie was funny and real ride delivery.

[00:09:48] And there was a couple lines from that, that I still remember. And I'm just glad I got to see him before he passed away. My sister and I, I don't remember what the comedy special was, but one of his lines that

[00:09:59] my sister and I will even 20 plus years later, then I got a little older and a little smarter and a little brother. And it was always so good. Louie Anderson was awesome. He's the best. He was great. Very, very great. So our topic tonight is clinical-ish. Yeah.

[00:10:19] Probably a little more businessy than clinical, but it has clinical aspects to it. Kevin, you made a outstanding post that got a lot of traction in our very clinical Facebook page, which if you are not a member of, you should do it. It's still on sale for free.

[00:10:33] Yeah. Yeah. Money's worth. Yeah. You bet. So it was on block scheduling and you were talking about some real changes that you've made that had really benefited the productivity of your office. And so Alan and I being non-block schedulers thought, you know what?

[00:10:52] We would like to learn more about this. And I bet other people would too. So here we go. There's a history. There's a history. I mean, honestly, Kevin, you probably remember this on Dentaltown. There were, there were lots of back and forth about block scheduling.

[00:11:04] This is nothing new. Yeah. It isn't anything new, but I will say this, Kevin, you can, and we're going to dig in, but like, I think people have, there's been a lot of tried and failed, including myself.

[00:11:16] I think there was a time when we tried and, and there's, we'll talk about why it doesn't work or why it might not work later. But I mean like this has been around for a long time. Have you been, how long have you been block scheduling Kevin?

[00:11:27] Well, before we get in that, let's, let me, let me ask you something before we start. Okay. Ask me something. Anything. What do you sell at your office? I feel like this is a trick question. It is a trick question. I think I know the answer.

[00:11:45] I'll check if you know the answer. Okay. All right. Time? Yes, you, you, you sell time. So my whole premise for... Time shares actually. You'd be surprised at the kind of things that... Do I have to listen to a presentation? Exactly. You can, you can get breakfast.

[00:12:02] You can get a continental breakfast. Yes. Sold. Okay. So we sell time, but explain what you mean by time. So my whole premise for my business is that we sell time.

[00:12:14] And what I mean by that is that we sell time in a dental chair, just like a hotel sells time in a room or an airline sells time in an airplane seat. And that time is extremely valuable.

[00:12:31] And along with that concept of time, the time right now is the most valuable. The time in the future is the next most valuable. And obviously in the past has no value at all.

[00:12:51] And so you know that the time is important because if you've ever had a big case scheduled for two hours or whatever, and the patient doesn't show, you feel bad about that. Because you have wasted that time. So if you...

[00:13:11] I am obsessed by maximizing the most amount of time and maximizing the most out of the doctor time while I'm here. So each of those hour blocks, I look at those as Zach Miners might look at some supplies that he might want to get a deal on.

[00:13:35] They're valuable to me that I cannot stand to waste any of them. And that is really the backbone to the way we're doing block scheduling. And I hammer that information into my team every single day. Can we back up just a quick second? Sure.

[00:13:59] Let's talk about this as if this is someone who has not heard of it and does not know what it is. Yeah. Define block scheduling versus non-block scheduling. The chaos factor of scheduling like most of us do. In its simplest form, we have a template of a day.

[00:14:21] And that template, there are certain procedures that can't... Or procedures that can be put into that template and not put anywhere else. So for example, I'm just off the top of my head. Every Monday might be a crown from... Because we do CEREC from 8 to 9.30.

[00:14:44] Only a crown can be put into that spot. From 9.30 to 10.30, an implant surgery, only an implant can be put in that block. So that's it in its simplest form. And again, I think we talked about this has been around forever. This is nothing new.

[00:15:08] But it is a way to decrease the chaos and increase the productivity in your office. So let me back up a little bit. We really started this three years ago. Missy put that into place three years ago. And again, nobody invented this out of blue.

[00:15:31] This has been around forever. But what it did was, instead of patients calling and wanting to be seen for X, Y, and Z, and the front desk just shoving them in anywhere and not realizing that there are some things

[00:15:45] where you really can't be in two places at once, which creates chaos. It allowed them to basically plug and play. These are where crowns go. These are where root canals go. These are where fillings go. These are where implant surgeries go.

[00:16:03] And they cannot violate the block unless I say so or one of my managers says so. Okay, I'm going to throw this out there. First off, I've been a patient a lot lately in a lot of different offices.

[00:16:17] And when I hear you say that, the first thing that comes to mind is like, yeah, but what if I have a patient that can't get off work until X or whatever? And what I've realized as a patient that if I want that appointment, I make it work.

[00:16:35] So I guess the story is like my first objection in my brain because I'm broken is, but my patients only have a certain time they can come in. But I realize as a patient, if you want that appointment, you're going to make it work.

[00:16:48] But what do you say to that? So if you, let's say you needed a knee surgery and the orthopedic surgeon just does knee surgeries on Thursdays. That's when you're going to get your knee surgery. What if the patient doesn't think a crown is that important?

[00:17:06] And eight o'clock in the morning, I'm going to work for him. They just don't do it? They don't do it. I don't care, but they will do it because that's the time we're offering them.

[00:17:16] So for example, today we have a patient that is done with Invisalign and is ready to have their buttons removed and their retainers placed. He's a 19-ish, I'm going to guess. And he said that he can only come in at eight o'clock or 4 PM.

[00:17:37] Well, we don't have any of those for weeks. So guess what? He's coming in at two o'clock next Wednesday. So you found that when you have a block that is very specific for production or a particular,

[00:17:55] and I'm sure you can set it up a lot of different ways, but for a particular procedure, let's say, and the patient's like, I can't do that. They're like, okay, well then you're just not going to do it.

[00:18:04] And when you've got a four o'clock or an eight o'clock, and this guy can do eight and four and there's nothing open, but like what if, is eight o'clock always for crowns or does that switch around? No, it's true.

[00:18:19] We've, for lack of a better term, like rotated the blocks. There may be a crown at eight o'clock on Monday, and then maybe it starts at 10 on Tuesday or better. So that actually offers some flexibility that I wasn't seeing. Yeah.

[00:18:40] So every day there's one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and that way it can be scheduled as such. But again, I have the ability to alter that if I want to. Sure.

[00:18:59] Like if something were to open up tomorrow, it's like either the time is going to get burnt because you don't have that procedure or... That is the concept of time. So that happened today. There was a one o'clock appointment that was open and that... What was that block?

[00:19:23] That block was for a crown. The patient rescheduled to another day, whatever. And a guy called with a toothache and I didn't need to be asked. They knew the time needs to be filled. We're probably not going to... This was like around one o'clock today.

[00:19:42] It was unlikely that that spot was going to be filled. The guy has a toothache, he probably needs an endo. They just put him into that time. So that's an exception that was made.

[00:19:52] So I guess the rule is time supersedes the blocks, but it takes some coaching of the front desk to know when to do that sort of thing. I got a bunch of different angles to go and we got to cover kind of all of it.

[00:20:09] But so part of this is that this works particularly well in your office because you are able to delegate a lot of different things to a lot of... So basically, but you are a four operatory practice, is that right? Yeah. Okay.

[00:20:24] And how many of those operatories are hygiene? Two. Okay. So you've got two operatories where you can do dental procedures, basically. I guess you could probably scan for Invisalign in the hygiene room or something. We scan them all over. We scan them in the waiting room.

[00:20:38] You scan them wherever they are. Okay. So you've got... Are each one of those rooms blocked at all times? There's some kind of block in each room? So the hygiene rooms... So first of all, this just applies to me. I don't have a hygiene room.

[00:20:56] All of the rooms are completely flexible. I can place an implant in any room. I can do hygiene in any room. So even though the day starts out, the hygienists may start out in room one or two every day, which they do.

[00:21:11] That doesn't mean that's where they're going to end up. Interesting because hygienists kind of get funny about their rooms. Yeah, they do. And that's ridiculous. Every room is set up the same. So anything can be done in any room at any time. That's very unique actually.

[00:21:26] That's very interesting. So when new hygienists come in, they look at that a little weird, but that's allowed us to have a lot of flexibility. So there are two columns that are blocked for hygiene. So that's all... And new patients are put into hygiene.

[00:21:44] So there's new patient blocks in the future, which that could be a question you call and need a new patient. Is it you're a new patient? Well, we have those blocked out. Dr. Fryer sees new patients on Tuesdays at one o'clock or whatever it is.

[00:22:00] And just pull that out of thin air. And that's where they're going to get plugged in versus trying to find a spot for them and just plugging them in where I may be in the middle of a million other things and I can't do that.

[00:22:13] That doesn't happen anymore. There is a column that is set aside just for me, for higher production services. And then the quote overflow column is anything that's going to be done by an EFTA or like

[00:22:30] your Invisalign tray seats or switch outs or denture adjustments or anything that's really non-productive, a crown seat. If I send a crown to a lab, all of those are going to go in that third column. And those are all blocked out too.

[00:22:47] So the front desk knows how to manage those. So I can be in two places at one time for some things, but a root canal, I can't do a root canal and do an extraction in the room next door at the same time.

[00:23:11] I don't want to do that. Someone else might want to do that, but I don't want to do that. So do you have to... Next question, I was wondering like, if you just so happened to be in a slightly bigger

[00:23:20] office where you had some extra rooms, would you still be doing this? 100%. Okay. 100%. Because what it's... I didn't know how... I thought it was like, well, okay, he's only got four rooms. So he really does have to structure things a certain way for sure.

[00:23:34] I mean, I wish I had five. I wish I had six. There would be a way for me to manage that, but I don't and that's not going to happen. Right. So what it really has done is eliminate the chaos and allowed us to make the very best

[00:23:54] use of every hour of all of it. And particularly the change this year has been scheduling the blocks for production. So that has reaped tremendous rewards in the short three months that we've made that little tweak.

[00:24:18] So our base production is 10,000 and the standard blocks in my schedule will allow us to... If everyone shows up, the base we're going to do is 10K every day. Awesome. So, okay, I got a couple of questions. Are you scheduled two hygienists every day? Yes. Okay.

[00:24:44] So two of those columns are going to be hygiene pretty much all the time. Okay. So the other question I have, how important is it that... Would you be able to do this the same way if you didn't have AFDIS, if you weren't able

[00:25:01] to delegate as much as you do? It would be more difficult, but I think I could still do it. So one of the... I mean, this is getting a little bit in the weeds of my particular practice, but...

[00:25:16] But I will say that blocks could work for everyone, but I think the magic with you is you've got blocks, you've got really well-trained staff for delegation, and you are trained in high-dollar productive things. So you've got the ortho implants and sleep along with a CEREC.

[00:25:38] You've got sort of a magic combination. I'm just curious how much of each thing brings to the actual magic in your practice. So as far as... Tell me how you do it if you didn't have...

[00:25:48] Because there are states that don't allow the delegation that Ohio does, let's just say that. Yeah. In terms of delegation for the AFDIS, the big thing would be them filling teeth. So if I could not delegate that, I would need to...

[00:26:10] Well, right now we stagger those anyway into the milling time of the CEREC block. That's the way it's supposed to be. So I could theoretically prep the crown and have an assistant design it, which we do that

[00:26:30] all the time and same glaze it and do all the other things, and then go in the next room and prepare some class twos and fill them myself. So yeah, that could be done for sure.

[00:26:43] But it would take away some of the magic, but not all of it. Sure. But the other part of it is you look at a filling, something direct like that, that's a lower production thing.

[00:27:00] Those are the pebbles put in where you got the boulders in the bigger blocks where you're always planning for that kind of production. Right. So taking a page from T-Bone, it's really priority scheduling. So the priority are the big three.

[00:27:18] So if we need to make room for someone, we're going to put an implant ortho or sleep in and push off a filling if we need to. That's just a business decision we've made this year. Sure. How often do you have a block that's unfilled? All right.

[00:27:38] So this is the interesting part of all of this. I thought so. I thought so. So we're going to get in a little bit of the weeds for my particular practice. So my Efta Rita said in December, we have this block scheduling and it's great.

[00:27:58] You want to do more implants. We don't have enough blocks for those. So we need to create more blocks. Great. That's great. So she started to do that and then she sort of took a sidetrack and she said, I don't

[00:28:17] like these days where we have these big swings of, you know, we're producing a whole lot and then the next day we don't produce anything. And the days that we're producing a whole lot, that gets, that's a strain on the team. What if we evened it all out?

[00:28:34] I said, fine. Sounds great. So that's what happened. Sounds great. So she, we're at my office right now. She sat over there for a week and cut out all of the blocks of our schedule. She went analog, baby.

[00:28:49] Hung them on the wall there and taped them up on paper to make everything 10K. And then what she noticed was if she made, and I'm going to get part of this wrong, but it was Tetris. It was Tetris. Yeah.

[00:29:11] But there was a big blank spot on Thursday. I'm like, well, what's that? And she said, that's all the extra time you have. That's amazing. Right. So there was, there was like two or three hours or maybe four hours a week where we weren't doing anything anyway.

[00:29:31] And so, so she found her extra blocks. Yes. And so we, you know, we were able to fill those, but like for instance today, a lot of the big stuff happened in the morning and we, we kind of pussed around in the afternoon and we did 18 today.

[00:29:50] And you don't, you don't feel bad about putting her on in the afternoon if you've crushed the morning. Yeah, exactly. But you also, you also, what I'm hearing is that the chaos is much less than that. That might be even better than production.

[00:30:00] So here's the other, other thing we get out on time, which is really important to me. I don't want to keep anyone here past five. I feel real bad about that. Me too. And so I'm, I'm trying to do everything we can to get done before five.

[00:30:17] There have been days where, you know, we've produced whatever we've produced 10, 10 K plus and walked out the door at four 30 because that's the extra time. So it's just eliminated the chaos and then added the extra of, you know, tweaking things so that we are just scheduling to production.

[00:30:42] Again, none of this is new. No, it's not new, but, but all over have implemented this. Yeah. Executing it well is, is the key. Now here's the last question. First off, this, this episode is, is epic already.

[00:30:55] And I have to say that people are going to listen to it. There's gonna be about a thousand questions. So we're probably gonna have to come back and revisit the questions, which I think would be great.

[00:31:01] But the other thing is it's really important for the people who are scheduling in answering the phone and stuff to be militant about that. If they can't do that, you can't have blocks. Am I right?

[00:31:13] I mean like how did, cause cause that had to be once you, when you went from Mr. Chaos schedule where they could be the nice guy and put them in wherever to, to blocks, how did your team handle that?

[00:31:24] I mean that's a, that's a big ask for when they haven't been doing it. There's a couple things that go along with that. We had a little bit of a turnover at the front desk. Okay.

[00:31:36] But the, the old people were block scheduling the older way, but they didn't have as much of a connection to what they created to making the chaos in the back. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Totally. They had no connection to that or very little or couldn't understand why they, everyone

[00:32:00] in the back is rolling their eyes and bitching and the front has no idea. Yeah. So when we got to do it's even worse cause it's all sideways stuff. No one says it directly. Yeah. Right.

[00:32:12] So when we got new people, the imperative was to, I, I realized I had an opportunity and I had a problem because some of these people had never worked in dentistry before. So we started right the way we started this podcast. What do we sell here?

[00:32:28] We sell time. And if you've never worked in a dental office and this crazy guy with a lot of hair is telling you this it, it didn't land at first, but if, if I hammer that home every day it eventually did.

[00:32:48] So it also took a leader in the back to communicate you know, you put this person in you know, this, this is why this isn't a good use of this time because it makes us be in two places at once.

[00:33:10] Or I'm trying to think of a scenario where maybe a block was violated or something, or they're trying to be nice and put someone in there's, you know, I, so the example I

[00:33:23] used earlier of the guy that wanted is Invisalign off when office manager came back and said, Hey Henry, what can only come in at eight or four? And we're like, well whatever these are the times we have.

[00:33:35] If he wants an eight o'clock it won't be till April, whatever it is, you know, three weeks later that's his problem. When she walked out of the door here, Rita said that they're trying to be too nice.

[00:33:47] I understand the patient wants that pressure, but they have to play the game our way because otherwise we're going to be back to chaos again. Yeah. Guess what? Like I, I, uh, I got this custom boot that I've told you guys about.

[00:34:01] Uh, and, and honestly it was, it was a lab thing. I swear to God. So everything's dental to me. So like he took a cast and they didn't know exactly when it would be back. They figured around two weeks. Well, here's the, I really wanted it.

[00:34:14] I wanted it as soon as it hit their door kind of thing. And they called back and said, the soonest we can get you in is X. And it was a Monday afternoon on a day I'm working. Guess what? I canceled patients because I wanted that done.

[00:34:26] So here's the thing. And I have to tell you, I am hung up on the idea of, Oh, the patients want this. But the reality is if you did it long enough, I suspect that you don't get hung up on it as much.

[00:34:35] I mean, I know that the front desk feels like they take the heat of the patients that are not happy with it. But I think it also, if it's just plug and play, you know, our, our schedules all color coded crowns are purple. You need a crown.

[00:34:50] Here's the purple spot. That's where you go. They don't have to think. I know that patients can be naggy or why can't we do it this day or that day? But the simple answer is this is when we, we do this extra wide procedure. And that's really good.

[00:35:06] And the other thing is, is you have to think like if you're hung up on that, think about it like a patient, a patient that wants to get it done. If they don't want to get it done, you've solved the problem because if they're going

[00:35:16] to be, if, if, if the only way they were going to do it is if they got their way, then screw them who needs it. You know what I'm saying? That's not how people work at some point, they'll figure it out. I know I did. But okay.

[00:35:26] Last, last thing I have to ask, um, how long, what's the latest you'll go for an unfilled block before you fill it with whatever? Or is there a point where you feel, you know, feel like if you have blocks open the day

[00:35:40] before, do you, do you start merchandising for whatever you can get in there or, or do you just leave it open? So one of our strategies is let's say like, um, this scenario that happened today where the one o'clock block for tomorrow, that patient reschedule.

[00:35:55] So generally my, I had to coach this. My first inclination was let's go forward in time, future time and bring someone because the time right now is the most valuable. That time right now is going to be tomorrow.

[00:36:12] That's what I had always heard on the dental town stuff. That's what you're supposed to do. So Sandy, that was a big Sandy thing. I'm sure Sandy is all over that. So we would go forward, you know, uh, Joe's Joe Blow has a crown scheduled next Thursday

[00:36:27] at one. Let's call him and see if he can come in tomorrow at one. And generally we're able to fill blocks in that manner. So that's strategy number one. In this particular case for tomorrow, it just worked out that the guy called right when

[00:36:42] the, you know, so, um, you know, so you can, you can be, you're, you might be a little less choosy if you, if you got an open block and someone else calls to fit it in there. Yeah. Okay. This is, this was freaking amazing.

[00:36:55] I mean, I want to keep our time like normal, so we should wrap here, but this was really, I mean, it was all I kind of hoped it would be.

[00:37:02] And all I can say is I'm going to listen to when I edit it, I'm going to have about 30 questions. So we're going to, there will be a part two to this cause I think there's gonna be a lot

[00:37:08] of people that listen to this and they're going to want it. They're going to want to needle you, but why don't you do it this way? Why don't you do it this way? So we'll definitely have another round.

[00:37:16] I think the scheduling to productivity is, is really the, you know, like we, we, um, we're messaging back and forth earlier today, finding out what are the things you wanted you liked doing and just that's where the majority of the, you know, of your blocks should be. Yeah.

[00:37:35] If you hate to do endo, then don't make blocks for endo or yeah. Yeah. Man, this was really good. Zach, what do you think? You wrap it up? Yeah. Let's uh, you know what that was? Thanks for having me, Kevin.

[00:37:46] Thanks for, you know, that was like a long form of your, uh, excellent, uh, post in the Facebook group and people should go check out. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Alan, thanks for joining us as well. You bet. It's good. It was good to have a, a, uh, excellent podcaster.

[00:38:00] That's a, got a good voice for the show on love it. Hey, I try, I try. You do. You succeed. The smoky voice of Alan. Uh, all right. So we will, we will catch you guys next Tuesday. It might be a VOD show. We'll see. Maybe not.

[00:38:17] It will have another guest. I don't know. I think we have a guest lined up for sometimes. Quick hanger. Yeah. I like it. For Alan Mead, for Kevin Fryer, this is Zach Weiners. We sure thank you for listening and we'll catch you next time. See ya.