Very Clinical: Stacking Up the Benefits of CareStack with Jamie Flanagan

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[00:01:26] 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, they're giving podcast listeners 50% off implementation costs. It's a great deal, but be sure to let them know you heard about it from the podcast.

[00:01:55] 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, 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?

[00:02:25] Welcome to another episode of the Very Clinical Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Zach Miners. Never gets old, does it? Actually, this is Alan Mead. But joining me as always, my stalwart co-host, Dr. Kevin Harefriar. Kevin, how are you doing? Alan, how are things in Kansas City tonight? I have no idea. No clue.

[00:02:48] So, probably cold being that, I don't know if you guys in Ohio have noticed this, but it doesn't feel like spring yet. Just saying. It does not. I'll bet it isn't in Minnesota either. Yeah, that's the story. Kevin, introduce our lovely guests. We have Jamie Flanagan back from Minnesota representing Karastak and the lovely Missy Fryer representing the downstairs of my house. Hello again.

[00:03:16] Hey Missy, I think you forgot to mention something. No, I was going to mention it now. Okay. So, Alan, I have a question for you. Yes. What is today's date? Well, funny that you should mention that. Yeah. I didn't know what it was, but my son, my oldest son mentioned that it was a year ago that we were in the Metro Cleveland area. Yes. To see the total eclipse. You were with us.

[00:03:45] With you guys, exactly. So, literally like a year ago today, we were hanging out with Kevin and Missy. I had Alan Meade in the house. You were right here where I'm sitting right now. I was. You're in my kitchen. On the 7th I was. On the 7th. That's right. You were the night before. That's all about being at the Metro Park. Yes. Which, by the way, Cleveland area, man. Cleveland area is next level. I have to admit this. I haven't admitted this to Kevin. We were in Cleveland for part of our spring break last week. You should have come! I told you to come over.

[00:04:14] I didn't want to force myself upon me. Oh my God. Come on, man. Stop it. The Cleveland has... Okay. We thought that it could not get any better than the Great Lakes Science Center. We didn't think of it. And then we went to the Cleveland Natural History Museum. Oh, very good. Which is so good. Did you go to the Art Museum? Yeah, we did not. Oh, no. We weren't. No, we did not go to the... What else did we do?

[00:04:42] Oh, we went to the Christmas Story House. Oh, for sure. Oh, yes. Which, frankly, is in the hood a little bit. It is. Yes, it is. That's why we don't go there. Kind of rough in the town than I was expecting. But it was lovely. We had a great time. We were in Sandusky for part of it, too. Yeah. Like, we went to Kalahari Water Park and so forth. Yeah. But we did stray through Ohio before we got to New York for some more. We basically saw a whole bunch of museums. But, oh my God, if you were in Cleveland...

[00:05:12] I mean, I liked the Great Lakes Science Center, which, of course, was right next to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which we didn't go to. Which is under construction, like Crazy Bear right now, too. But I'm going to tell you, if you've got one museum to choose, and I haven't seen the Art Museum, that Natural History Museum is next freaking level. All right. Well, Missy and I will say that the Art Museum is next level. Next level. It's something we're very proud of. And I know our listeners may not agree with this or be surprised, but it's one of the,

[00:05:41] what, top five in the world? Top ten? Something like that? It's a big deal. It's a big deal. Not many people choose Cleveland for a spring break location. I'm going to say that right now. I mean, it's probably not top ten on spring break. It might be like number 11, though. It's going south from Michigan. So there's that. I mean, I went south a little bit. There you go. It counts. What was your favorite part about the museum, the Natural History Museum? Like number one.

[00:06:09] Like it's a natural history museum in as much as they have a lot of specimens. They have a lot of different, like wild stuff. And the way they divide it up is different. They had a planetarium. They have all kinds of astronomy stuff, which is really very cool considering we did the eclipse there, all that stuff. But then then we realized like in the afternoon afterwards, like, oh, my God, they have an entire freaking zoo. You go out the back and there's animals all over the place. And it's not like, oh, we've got these cheesy little.

[00:06:36] They were they're spectacular habitats for these animals. And the cool thing is they're all looking like they had. OK, they had coyotes and they've got the coyotes in these deep, really deep kind of huge habitat. And what was really great was like I was running back and forth on the little catwalk and the coyote was running. I was playing with. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I mean, this place, this was after we just loved the museum. We're like, oh, my gosh, this place. And then we went out back and there were animals. I'm like, oh, geez, we could spend two days.

[00:07:06] It was amazing. I really we were moved by that. The Great Lakes Science Center is pretty good. That place was awesome. Have you guys been? I haven't been in natural history for a long time. However, I'm going to be going soon. I'm the fly. I'm changing this week's bit. And it's museums minus Jamie. So, Jamie, Missy, what's your favorite? I already know what you're going to say, but tell us about the Cleveland Museum of Art.

[00:07:35] Well, my favorite area is the one room where they have Monet's Water Lilies, which is amazing that we have that. And then turn your head to the left and there is there's a Degas on this, you know, on the wall to the left, go right around the corner in the same room. And there's like Picasso and Van Gogh, like all in this one room there. I mean, it's incredible. It's absolutely amazing. And I know your favorite, Kevin.

[00:08:04] Well, you have two memorable areas, I would say. One would be the modern art. Yes. And the other one, we're going to have to talk about the suits of armor and Charlie. Yeah. Well, the contemporary art section of the Cleveland Museum of Art, there's a Warhol there. It's Marilyn Monroe. It's just completely cool. It's one of my favorite exhibits in the whole place. I could spend a ton of time there.

[00:08:34] They're always switching stuff out. And I really love the goofy stuff that's there. What Missy was alluding to when Charlie was little, real little, like five or six, he was obsessed by knights and armor and that kind of stuff. And I said, well, there's a place nearby where you can see armor and weapons and that sort of thing. He's like, there can't be.

[00:09:03] I'm like, yeah, there is. So took him down to the Museum of Art. And one of the most enjoyable times I've had at the Museum of Art, besides going with Missy, is seeing the art museum from a six year old perspective. And it was like speed exhibits, you know, because the pretend to span was short. He loved all the suits of armor and all the weaponry and all that. And then we really quick went through everything because that's the speed he went at.

[00:09:31] There was some African statue of a man with, you know, an erect penis. And, you know, he loved that. And then I, yeah, I kind of told him that the title of the art tells you about what the art is. And, you know, that, that kind of stuck in his brain. And when we went to the modern art, after seeing the Rembrandts and all that sort of stuff, we were in the contemporary section.

[00:09:59] And there was basically a painting with a line, just a thin horizontal line on a blank canvas. And he pointed at that and just laughed like a belly laugh after seeing all of this stuff. And she's like, what is that? I'm like, I think that's what you're supposed to do. You know, you're, you're just laughing at this. So anyway, all right, Jamie Renaissance festivals. Sorry, we can. Yeah, we do. Oh man, you got to say something about the Renaissance festival though. Yeah.

[00:10:29] So tell us about Minnesota museum real quick, and then we got to get on with our care stack stuff. Yeah. So we're just when you're talking about the armor and stuff that was like, is one of the, my memories that sticks out because they have like live jousting or whatever that's called where the guys are all in the armor and they have the massive poles. And that's cool. It is a thing. And so if you ever want to see a site for armor, Minnesota Renaissance festival. Friend of the podcast, Dr. Darren O'Brien.

[00:10:57] When I was at first off, he and I were classmates. He teaches, he teaches all kinds of stuff for, uh, Sarah docs and all over the place. But bottom line is he, uh, he, he played little John in the, in the Robin hood thing for years. Really? And there's little John in dental school. And I mean, I, I have to tell you his studies sort of struggled because he was at Renaissance for like a month, you know, he was, he was a big part of it.

[00:11:27] So he was gone all the time in any case. So Minnesota has that kind of culture. I got to say though, if you've not been to Cleveland thinking Cleveland has culture coming out its ears, you could be there for weeks, just seeing really good stuff. Everyone sort of laughs about Cleveland, but is, and the stadium is all right. That's why we still live here. Kevin's been saying this forever, but like, it's for real. It is for real worth looking. I won't see any. Shut up. You guys, there is a podcast that's actually going to happen. We'll talk about dental stuff. So we have, we have Jamie back on as our care stack representative.

[00:11:56] And what we wanted this half hour to be was really our experience of care stack. And so for our listeners, you know, there are many modules with care stack. So we have the care stack platform, which, you know, is involving our schedule, our imaging, you know, like all the clinical stuff where you'd put your notes and all that sort of stuff.

[00:12:19] Um, but then there's also, um, voice stack with, which is the phone integration, including the AI, uh, phone integrations that records your calls and allows you to see everything kind of in, in real time. Uh, we also added on the care revenue, which is handing, handling all of our, um, insurance verifications, sending out all our insurance claims, all that sort of stuff.

[00:12:47] And what am I missing? Missy? Is that it? I mean, I think those are the big things. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, um, I, I guess I, I, the way I kind of wanted this to go was to talk about the stuff that was important to me and how that fleshed out in real life. And Jamie, you can chime in whenever, but Missy is raising your hand. Yes. Well, I mean, in the pink, please.

[00:13:11] I was just going back to that day that we, you talked about, you know, potentially starting care stack and, you know, thinking about the things that were important to me. Um, you know, knowing that I had kind of, I was, had to go back in for a while and, and clean up accounts and kind of prepare things to, you know, to be moved over.

[00:13:33] And I knew that for me, I was going, I really wanted the accounting to be easier to manage with our previous software. Like the support wasn't great. And if there was an easier way to handle the accounting and to handle the overdue claims, like I didn't know it. And I'm not afraid to, to dig into the software and to, you know, try to learn myself, but I just, it wasn't intuitive. I just couldn't.

[00:14:00] So I had to create my own systems for that, which worked, you know, whatever. It worked okay. Um, but I knew that I wanted like my criteria, you know, to switch was like, I needed to have a better way to manage the accounting. I needed to know that claims that were over 30 days were being followed up on regularly because I'm going to be honest.

[00:14:22] We had someone at the front office whose sole job was to get insurance verification and to follow up on overdue claims. Um, Kevin, help me out. How do I describe this person? She wasn't a good employee. She wasn't a great employee. Well, I, when we were talking about CareSec and once I started to learn some of the things that it could do for us, I was like, Kevin, we might be able to let someone go at the front.

[00:14:50] Um, because I think I can replace, you know, a mediocre employee with, um, essentially an employee that's never going to call off and is going to do exactly what we need when I want it to be done. And so that's what we were, you know, ultimately, you know, able, able to do. But what was important to me was, was accounting and reports. What was important to you, Kevin, I know was the, the business side of things and also the reports. We needed more robust reports.

[00:15:17] Um, I know there were different things that were important to our hygienists, to your associate doctor. Everyone sort of had their own, you know, thing. And, um, you know, as we started to migrate things over to, to CareStack, we all kind of went to our specialty, if you will, and really got to know it well. So that way we could, you know, we could get the most out of the software because we definitely weren't getting everything we could have gotten out of our old software.

[00:15:43] And I don't know if it's the, like, CareStack is just way more intuitive than our previous software. Because even before I was ever taught how to, to, like, enter in a payment or whatever, like, I figured it out. You know, I figured out how to enter in the receipt and how, you know, how to do all of that. And I remember having a training session one day and we were kind of going down the list of things. And I said, oh, yeah, I already know that.

[00:16:09] And Shruti looked at me like, who told you that already? I said, well, I was just playing around with it. I kind of figured it out. But to me, that's a good sign that the software is easy to, you know, to use. It's, yeah, it's not like it. That's huge. That's actually what dental software often suffers from. Yeah. Yeah. It's not intuitive at all. Right. So I. Why would I push here? Exactly.

[00:16:33] I would say that CareStack is the perfect blend of intuitive practice management software. And if you really want to go deeper, you can go deeper. But the things that were important to me were, you know, the first page that you open up to is a dashboard. I know exactly what's happening in my office in terms of production and collection at any moment during the day. It's really important to me.

[00:17:02] And quite honestly, that's what sold me from the very beginning. 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.

[00:17:27] 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. 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.

[00:17:52] 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. 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.

[00:18:21] 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. 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.

[00:18:52] Listeners, if you want to avoid legacy errors and have a timeless organizational system, check out the show notes on where to start. That I could keep a monitor of what was happening almost moment to moment in the practice. That was number one. Go ahead, Missy. Well, I was going to say the other thing that was important to me, and I know you're probably going to say this next, is the call logs. You know, being able to see.

[00:19:19] Like we would do our own call logs on like a Google Doc that we all shared. And so it was up to everyone who answered the phone to track all their phone calls, which works great when people do it. But when they don't put the call in, you don't have a record of, you know, that Mrs. Smith rescheduled for next Tuesday at four. Like if you don't have that written down somewhere, it didn't happen. Right. Right.

[00:19:42] So having those call logs and having the AI, you know, summary or, you know, transcript of the calls has been amazing because now I don't have to breathe over someone's, you know, shoulder. Or rather, Kevin doesn't have to to find out the details of the call. You just go through the call log and, you know, see what's what. And it's just and now no one has to actually track the calls because it's being done automatically. So that's that's another one that I think is important to me also just to know what was happening.

[00:20:13] Jamie, what percentage of your care stack users are like all in like we are likely, you know, the voice stack? Yeah, I honestly, so I don't have an exact percentage, but they're like once people realize the harnessable hour behind what we've built, it's like then as soon as that happens, then they're all in.

[00:20:42] Then it's like, OK, let's do our cycle management. Let's utilize what we have at our fingertips. Let's do the voice stack. I mean, I know you guys didn't even mention, but like virtual assistants, things like that. We've got so many other resources that once you kind of see that aha, like, oh, wow, this isn't what my old software was. And that's a big thing, too, that I always tell people is like, if you want to take your legacy software and use care stack the same way,

[00:21:12] might not be quite as successful as say somebody like you because you really accepted that. Yeah, this is different. Let's use it differently. Let's optimize it. And so once that kind of mind shift happens, people are all in. So I got to laugh a little bit. People don't rave about their dental software, generally speaking. Like, you don't see people getting like tattoos on their on their chest about Dentrix or anything like that. Leave your shirt on.

[00:21:42] Kevin, leave your shirt on. He's tattoo. But I mean, honestly, like to hear you guys talk about it, I'm like, really? I mean, this is dental software. But I get it because on some level it changes the way that you practice. We talked about it a lot in the episode that we did with Zach. And it's just like some of the features are really like I couldn't even conceive of them with other software that I've used. So I'm sorry. I don't have much to add besides that. But it is interesting how enthusiastic people are about it. Exactly.

[00:22:10] And to just and I know I'm one person, but that like in our last episode when you were talking about like that, you liked that it was an organic journey for me. That's why.

[00:22:50] I see that hand. Well, that was just so you wouldn't talk next. But anyway, sorry. It is my podcast. Yeah, I know. I know. Go ahead. I think, you know, again, like for me, I've stepped away from physically being in the practice every day, but I still feel like I'm really a part of things just because I can see so much information that I couldn't see before. Like Kevin said before, in real time.

[00:23:17] And that makes me feel better because I'm trying to run another business, but I'm also trying to help, you know, Kevin with the accounting and, you know, support his practice as much as I can. And, you know, I just feel like this allows me to see more without having to, you know, message them a hundred times a day. And did this person call back? What's going on with this? You know, you know, did this lab case get sent? Whatever.

[00:23:44] Like I can, I can see things, a lot more things where I feel like I know more about what's going on, but I'm actually conversing with the office a lot less. You know, does that make sense? It's just nice to, to be able to, to, I don't know, to be more involved, but not be so annoying to everyone by asking them all the time. You can remote in without having a remote in software. It's not even remoting in because it's on the cloud. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[00:24:10] And the reality is, is it's like, there are some cloud having, having something native on the cloud is like, I, not that you necessarily would want to, but you could have as many remote people as you wanted to because they're all getting the same data. You're not, you're not getting whatever one computer can see because you have to remote into one computer. That's, and that is the huge appeal of cloud. I mean, that's, that's a huge appeal of cloud. Yeah. One of my new tricks, go ahead, Missy.

[00:24:40] Well, the amount of times that we had server issues, the amount of like, like heart attacks that I would have because we would come in on a Monday morning. I don't know what ever happened in that office on the weekends when no one was there, but it was always a Monday. You would come in and your server would be down and I would be sweating trying to get things back up, you know, before patients started arriving. I can't, I mean, how many times has that happened to us? A million. I don't have to worry about that anymore. Yeah.

[00:25:07] I was going to say my new trick is to have two tabs of care stack open on my browser so I can just flip around very easily. That came to me about a month ago. But yeah. Yeah. So the things that were really important to me were the voice stack to be able to, in real time, see the phone calls that were coming in. So I can, because I think one of the deficits for the owner doctor is not knowing what's happening at the front desk. And now I know everything that's happening at the front desk.

[00:25:37] And by the way, it is searchable. So when Mrs. Smith calls, I can just search for Mrs. Smith and I see the whole call log there. And I love that those calls are graded too. Yeah. The calls are graded. Yeah. You can see how your team is responding to things and they get graded. Yeah. And then, you know, the other thing that I like is the work list. My routine is to come in every morning and click through that.

[00:26:04] So it really, it's kind of a mini report of what happened the day before or what happened this week. So, and it, it alerts you to things in grades of severity. Like if he didn't send the claim, which is handled now by care revenue. So that doesn't happen to us at all. But, you know, if notes weren't written up for a particular patient, it alert you to that.

[00:26:29] And it also, one of the things that's really important to me is keeping track of scheduled and unscheduled treatment. So, you know, when Alan comes in and I tell him that he needs 12 veneers and Invisalign and 10 implants and that didn't get scheduled. I know that. Or if it did get scheduled, I know that at a glance.

[00:26:51] And that has allowed me to keep even a better finger on the pulse of what's happening on a day-to-day basis. And I, I don't, I kind of delegated out the care revenue part. And I know, Missy, can you speak to that or Jamie, how that's worked? Yeah. I mean, I can speak to it essentially. Yeah. That's really Tammy's realm. Tammy's the one that meets with them every week. So. Yeah.

[00:27:22] Essentially, the way we've designed it is it's kind of like an extension of your practice. It's like you've got, again, on that same rhetoric of a person there. They are there knowing your workflows, knowing your insurance statuses and being there in spirit, helping you with all of that process. But they're experts in it. Not only are they experts in the insurance process, but they're experts in care stack.

[00:27:48] So they can help make sure that your staff can focus on what they need to do in office and kind of take that burden off of them. Right. So, uh, in my opinion, the number of unpaid claims or rejected claims or problem claims have been greatly reduced. It's sped up our cashflow.

[00:28:09] So, um, the aging report that we looked at on Sunday, Missy, um, from the, uh, we have, uh, the current one, the stuff that's over 90 days is minimal. And, um, at a glance, we're able to see that. And, uh, I think we alluded to, it allowed us to get rid of a person and in my opinion, have a better employee that that's their only job.

[00:28:37] And it's all happening behind the scenes for us, including the insurance verifications, which, uh, that's great to not have our phones tied up with our own people, uh, verifying insurance all day long. So, so true. Yeah. Well, and that goes back to what I said last episode about, I, you know, created certain systems. And then as time went by, some of those systems got, you know, kind of put to the wayside and weren't being done.

[00:29:06] Well, you know, sort of outsourcing those things to a, to a division of care stack, then just, you just know those things are going to get done no matter who's working at the front office, you know, in your practice, Kevin, it doesn't matter who's there. It's just still going to get done. It's still, it's still going to get done in the background. And I don't have to, like I said before, I don't have to micromanage or, or nag anyone, or I don't have to run the report and look and follow up on it myself. It's, it's being done. I haven't looked at that since they started doing it. No need to.

[00:29:33] So a couple of things that Jamie said in the first episode, it, you know, your current practice management software, you have other, uh, plugins, other companies that are plugged into you because it doesn't do what you want it to do. And we've eliminated all of those. That is okay. I want to, I want to say something about that right now. A lot of you are like me and are probably paying. Yes. Added things in at certain times.

[00:30:01] Sometimes you're, they're taking a $250 swipe on something and you've got three different or four different places that you could text a patient because they each, you added something at some point and they had, they've got multiple of the same functionality. And, and, and you don't even know what you're getting the swipe on because it's all different software companies.

[00:30:20] I do have to say there, it makes a lot of sense to consolidate in one place because the reality is you're probably already paying for your, paying for your subscription to care stack with the dumb swipes of the things you don't even realize you signed up for over the years. I'm not proud to say that, but I know that I have that going on in my own office. Yeah. So we've consolidated all that into care stack. I forgot to talk about the patient portal, which is great. The patient can log in and look at their own stuff. And also they can, it's the dental version of my chart. We talked about it.

[00:30:51] And also they can pay us by a text. So that is great too. Um, so all of that sort of stuff has, again, allowed our cashflow to be great. Um, because the revenue cycle has been shortened tremendously. Would you agree with that Missy? Yeah. The only accounts that I'm still working on are prior software issue. Yeah.

[00:31:17] I was still trying to, you know, clean some of those things up, but yeah, I mean, everything else with care stack is great. And I think the, if we bring it back to the meeting at the dining room table over there, one of the things that I really wanted to do was modernize the front desk and automate the front desk. So if we bring in the AI for the phones, that's one, I know I've said that a million times.

[00:31:43] Um, we've gently pushed our patients into texting, which doesn't tie up our phones. We've gently pushed our patients into paying us via text or by the portal, which also doesn't tie up our phones. I have, um, a, I have a more than robust reporting system, but the things that are important to me, what did we produce today? What did we collect today? What did we produce this month?

[00:32:13] Um, and what treatment was, uh, scheduled or unscheduled and why I can get that at a glance every morning. And, uh, you know, it's just, again, having everything consolidated into one platform is perfect for, for a lot of time to do. It's crowd-based too, no less. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:32:35] And also too, and Missy, Kevin chime in as well, but having that transparency as well, because of that consolidation, because of all of that accessible real-time data, whether it be phone call transcripts, reports, even like simple automation, things of like automated texts or forms being automatically generated. Oh yeah. All of that transparency that comes into one system adds up exponentially over the day.

[00:33:02] These tiny little things that are consolidated, it just makes a bigger picture better. That's a great point, uh, Jamie. I get an alert that, um, Mrs. Smith has signed her new patient forms, you know, online or completed her forms online. I'm like, okay, great. I know this patient's coming in. You know what I mean?

[00:33:22] Like it's, that's, they've, they've gone through, uh, the hoops to go through their medical history and all of our, uh, onboarding forms. I know that's going to happen and I can see it right in front of my face. So. And even when you're talking about other things besides the actual practice of dentistry, I always think of the example of OSHA. Everyone loves OSHA.

[00:33:49] Well, now even we have features where you've got task managers where more and more of our clients and my offices that I used to work at as well are incorporating all of their like OSHA requirements, timeline, system maintenance, checklist, all of that into our task manager system. So that again, if you've got somebody like Missy that can't be in the office, things don't just disappear.

[00:34:13] And that system head, that rockstar that was there, everything doesn't just fall apart. You still have that transparency of, okay, these tasks were Sally's, these tasks were Missy's, these were Becky's, et cetera. So that the system as a practice can still operate automatically.

[00:34:34] And I think also one example of that is the lab tracker where, you know, we can enter in all of our lab cases that are coming in and going out. And, you know, we had a way to do that in the past. It was written down on a piece of paper and Molly would, was the person that was in charge of that. She still is in charge of it, except that now all of us can see what Molly's writing down because it's all on the cloud everywhere.

[00:34:58] And, you know, it even alerts us when, you know, cases are past due or something like that. And it's, you know, brilliant feature of that is, you know, Alan's 12 veneers are supposed to be seated next Friday. And, you know, I can click on one simple click and I can see what they, he's appointed for. And if we have to manage that, manage it.

[00:35:25] So that's just one little thing that I also really love about. It sounds to me like, it sounds to me like a lot of this, a lot of all the tracking that's built in, all those things that are built in would make it easier to onboard new employees too. Like, in other words. Yeah. The idea is that you don't, I mean, if you don't have a system for onboarding employees, I gotta tell you, I'm not, I'm guilty of this.

[00:35:48] Um, stuff can get missed or whatever, but if it's all in one place and, and literally, I feel like this, you know, on top of everything else, it probably makes bringing new employees in a lot easier. You have to reinvent the wheel. We had a new employee in the middle of all this, um, Naya, and she didn't, I don't know what she was using in the past office, but she'd never missed a beat.

[00:36:09] I mean, I did hear some conversations of, oh no, you click here or click there, but, um, you know, that, that to me is normal stuff when you're faced with a new, uh, but yeah, she's, she adapted very quickly. And, and I think that, go ahead. No, I'm sorry to say, I think that, um, you know, we always had a million systems in the, in our office, but they were all disjointed. Right.

[00:36:35] And the, the one commonality that would keep them all together was me while I'm not there anymore. So, you know, it's, it's nice to have as many dental responsibilities, you know, in the practice in one place. So care stack, just keep adding more, just keep going. Everything. Yes. Keep stacking. Get, get my inventory in there. Get everything in there. I love it. All right. You get the last word, Jamie.

[00:37:01] I just was going to add a story that I had had a conversation with a doctor a week or so ago, and they were telling me that with some of the staffing challenges, they've had trouble with hygienists. So they've been utilizing some temp hygiene to keep up on their recall schedule. They shared with me that they have never had temp hygienists or new employees come in and learn a software and be so quickly adapted to it.

[00:37:30] Even within a single day, she's like, they, their treatment planning for me. Like they figure it out so much easier. Their notes are more comprehensive because it's just better. I'm like, perfect. Also, I will say that the note templates are amazing. All right. We're going to wrap it up. Jamie, thank you so much for being on the show. Kudos to Kerestack. Thank you so much. Missy, thank you for being downstairs and keeping up. There's Harry. Harry's making an appearance.

[00:38:00] Hi, Harry. Hi, Harry. Missy, thanks for being on and chiming in from your perspective. Alan, thanks for being Zach's replacement and pretending that you're in Kansas City. Are there any takebacks, double downs or apologies? Yeah. Okay, great. We got that in for Zach. For Alan, Missy, Jamie and apparently Harry.

[00:38:29] Thanks for listening to the Very Clinical Podcast and please join us on our Facebook group. And we will see you next Tuesday. See ya. See ya. Forgot it.