Episode 218: Associates Deserve Clinical Calibration

“On the backside of fear we find confidence. And once we’re confident we begin doing more procedures.” ~Dr. Bruce B. Baird

In this special episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast, PDA co-founders Dr. Bruce B. Baird and Dr. Victoria Peterson announced the launch of the game-changing Clinical Calibration Institute to run concurrently with the PDA Conference, September 12-14, in Frisco, Texas.

The Clinical Calibration Institute is designed to empower dentists to overcome common productivity challenges and elevate patient care. Bruce and Victoria discuss the core components of the program, including comprehensive treatment planning, verbal communication skills, and mentorship from industry leaders. This initiative aims to boost dentists’ confidence, reduce the fear of recommending necessary treatments, and ultimately enhance both patient outcomes and practice profitability. 

Listeners will also get a sneak preview of the exciting events planned for the upcoming Clinical Calibration Institute program in Frisco, Texas. 

As you listen to this episode, you are going to learn more about:

• Why mentoring is so important, yet so hard to deliver
• Ways you can benefit from dental practice coaching
• Why comprehensive care is so critical to patient health
• The speaker line-up for the inaugural Clinical Calibration Institute
• Special tuition offers

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Hello everyone, I’m Victoria Peterson here with my partner, Dr. Bruce Baird, and Bruce, we’re celebrating our 20th anniversary this year and in true PDA style, we’re celebrating by creating and for 20 years, you and I have said we’re member-built and driven and we have a huge announcement. It is industry industry-changing announcement about a new institute that we’ve launched and a brand-new program that we’re showcasing in September. Uh, tell everybody what we’re up to.

Dr. Bruce Baird: Well, super excited about our new program called the Clinical Calibration Institute and, you know, we’ve heard, you know, across dentistry, dentists are trying to, um, increase their productivity, but take better care of their patients and that’s something that we found, um, across the board, the better, the better you take care of your patients, the better you do financially. But we’ve started seeing in the DSO world and in dentistry, this same-store sales growth, everything has become about growing my business from one year to the next but associates in these environments are struggling and they’re having a tough time increasing their productivity because, you know, that fear is one of those things and I’ve heard Lincoln Harris talk about it. You know, fear causes us not to move forward with, with doing treatments, even though we’ve been trained to do them and on the backside of fear, we find confidence and once we’re confident, then we begin doing more procedures. And so this program is going to increase. your competence and to get rid of that fear of telling a patient what they really need to have done. You know, what, what do they need to have done? I mean, uh, comprehensive treatment planning. They didn’t come to you to figure out which tooth they need to do next. They came to you to figure out what’s going on in their mouth and how can we help them and that’s what the Clinical Calibration Institute is all about. It’s, it’s taking the verbal skills, it’s taking, you know, the communication skills and adding the clinical skills and the clinical mentors to be able to grow your productivity and to grow your business and so we’re, we’re super excited about it.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: I love it. This, this one project, I went back in my notes, we have been talking about this for five years. We started talking about it pre-pandemic. So excited that it’s coming to life. Um, so let’s talk about what’s happening in September. We’re in Frisco. We have our productivity workshop. We have our clients coming back working on their businesses through the Investment Grade Practice Summit and we’ve carved out some times specifically for associates. We started this at our last workshop and we’re really expanding. So, like you said, you’re going to, it, the number one question I get to is we’re calibrating to what? And for you and me, it has been consistent for 20 years, regardless of the insurance environment, we calibrate to comprehensive care. We calibrate to health. It’s not about finding more all-on-four procedures or more, uh, crowns or anything like that. When you open up diagnostically to diagnosing by risk factors, you see it all. You see the airway issues, see the functional issues and the treatment plans naturally guide themselves. So with that, Bruce, uh, we’re going to let these, uh, associates spend the morning with you on day one, you and Dr.Wade Kiefer, who is a mentor at the Kois Center, Dr. Jackson Bean, who’s been implementing this and mentoring young doctors now for 20 years. Uh, he still thinks he’s a young buck, but we’re all moving over. So we’re going to start out with a strong foundation of what it means to be, uh, a diagnostician first and then repairing the damage second. So I’m really excited about that. We’ve got your, uh, lead assistant, Summer Carroll in there. So you can work with a real-world assistant who knows how to keep up with doctors who are doing 1,500, 2,000, 3,000 an hour. It takes a lot of delegation and a lot of synchronicity. So we’ve not left the team out of this program.

Dr. Bruce Baird: Not at all. Yeah.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: We’re just adding to it. So day two, let’s talk about that brand new cast of speakers, uh, PDA alumni and friends from around the world. Kicking it off will be Dr. Eric Roman. Um, many of you out there know, Eric, he, uh, He and I were chatting yesterday and he said, “You know, the first class I took in dentistry was Productive Dentist Academy while I was still a senior in dental school. It has shaped and informed my life.” He’s going to be there talking about calibrating your life and your career. Um, and it’s been fascinating. He, he has helped mentor so many clinical directors, uh, for groups and mentor associates and I said, “What’s the number one reason Associates leave their job? Why do they change jobs?” And he said, “You know, they’ll tell you it’s the money or they’ll tell you it’s the freedom, but really there’s a life issue that they’re trying to solve with a career decision and so if you don’t take care of your life and you don’t have a strong foundation there, then you start hitting all the trip wires and all the social statistics we see in dentistry.” I don’t think we need to belabor that, but I’m super thrilled to have Eric there. Then we’ve got, um, our number one hotshot right now, Dr. John Ehlers. Uh, we have so many doctors adopting robot technology, even though they’ve been placing implants for a decade, they know that with multiple doctors, they want a new level of consistency. Um, so there’s, there’s implants, there’s Invisalign. We’ve got Alison LeCoussier coming for a liner technology. She’s probably the world’s leader in implementing this. We have Overjet and AI technology. We’ve got Glidewell. We’ve got 3D printing, not 3D printing, what is it Bruce? Milling?

Dr. Bruce Baird: Yep, they’ve got milling and they’re coming with printing too. Printing as well. So it’s, it’s a super exciting.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Uh, we also have our friends from RIPE Global, Lincoln Harris, international speaker and founder of one of the most innovative virtual simulation training for full mouth restorative implants and aligners. Uh, so he’s coming all the way from Australia to be with us and we’ve actually asked our Alliance partners to create a tech fair. So think of it as like South by Southwest meeting in off in-person networking with virtual components later, so you can stay connected. So you’re going to get to put your hands on artificial intelligence on the fast mill machines, on the robots, on the mannequins. We’ve got it all. We’ve never done anything like this.

Dr. Bruce Baird: No, it’s going to be super exciting and the opportunities, you know, I just got back from DICOM last week and it’s an amazing program, lots of down 2000 people there, but I’ll tell you the thing I heard over and over and over again was, “How do I get my associates? How do I get my younger doctors?” And I’m going to say, even how do I get my older doctors to, to become more productive and to be, you know, with new technology, with new thoughts, with new ideas. Comes a lot of excitement and the fear goes to the wayside, confidence starts to build and productivity starts to build and I can pretty well tell you, uh, the, you know, the small cost for coming to this program. You’re going to make that up in a, in a matter of a day or two days, because when you see things differently, productivity goes up, but more importantly than, than anything, you’re going to be able to make a difference, you’re taking better care of your patients. You’re doing what you really set out to do when you went to dental school, uh, to take great care of people and, you know, we get into this insurance mentality, we get into this, you know, where I’m going to do what insurance covers or only what, you know, third party financing covers. No, you’re going to, first of all, get permission to tell your patients exactly what they need to have done because you know what I believe, Victoria. I mean, I believe that uh, the dentistry that I do for you should have a great chance of lasting the rest of your life. Not be replaced every seven years, or five years, or ten years. That’s ridiculous. I didn’t get into the industry. I didn’t get into dentistry to take care of people where I had to retake care of them every six or five or six months. You know, I don’t want to do that and so that’s where the risk factors play an amazing role and patients when they understand what needs to be done, when they understand it really is their problem that we are now their consultant, their advocate for getting their, their oral health taken care of, guess what? They do it and so that’s what’s gonna be super exciting about the program in September. It’s our first. Clinical Calibration Institute meeting. Uh, and I’m telling you just the caliber of the people that we’ve put together. I’m looking forward to hearing it. So I’m excited.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: There’s so much more to it. We’ve got, uh, Jeff Bowsky, who doesn’t know Jeff Boosky now, he’s going to be talking about your life system and, uh, it just goes on and on and on. Uh, our alumni, are phenomenal. Speaking of which, our, all of our Hall of Famers will be there. So it’s kind of a who’s who of Facebook groups and dental towns and Instagrammers who will be there. So you’ve often said you learn more in the hallways on breaks than you do inside the classroom. We have specifically designed this program for lots of networking. Uh, this one in particular is going to be special. We also have your former hygienist, AOSH board member and international speaker, Michelle Hudson, there to talk about the oral-systemic connection. Um, as a hygienist, uh, it warms my heart to see how far, uh, um, hygiene has come since gosh, you and I are battle-worn 1980s sort of veterans and uh,

Dr. Bruce Baird: Right. The important thing was, you know, that, you know, when we look at increasing productivity, you know, which I always like to talk about because that gets to the bottom line. But when you’re taking great care of patients, you know, the average hygienist after maybe doing 110 you know, an hour in productivity, maybe 125, maybe 130, but when you add in the oral systemic connection, all of a sudden, now your hygiene, hygiene is doing two 50 an hour, 300 an hour. That’s very different. Why? Because they, you’re taking a higher level of care of your patient. Same thing that’s happening with the dentist. You’re taking a higher level of care and more people say yes to treatment. So it’s going to be an exciting time. We also have Anna Smith as a keynote speaker. That’s going to be, that’s going to be amazing. So we’ve got a lot of celebrations coming up in September. Super excited about it.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Absolutely. Absolutely. So. If you’ve been struggling, if you’re stuck, if you feel like you’re in an insurance rut, your productivity is just not going up, this is the program for you. We do have special celebration pricing. Our typical fee for dentists is 2195 for this event for associate doctors. There are scholarships available to lower that down to 1495. Um, how long does it take for a doctor to increase? Let’s go crazy and say Five times, they’re going to make back 10, 000 on this 2, 000 all in investment. How long is it taking?

Dr. Bruce Baird: They’ll make it back in the first month. No doubt.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: That’s awesome

Dr. Bruce Baird: I mean, if they’re actually listening and are at the program, you know, that is what’s going to happen. Just being around the type of people that are going to be at the program, your productivity will go up and that’s pretty well guaranteed.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: I love that. I just got a text from a doctor. He’s not in coaching. He came to the workshop, sat there for two and a half days, took it all in and texted us to say, “Oh my gosh, just implementing the scheduling technology that I learned, haven’t added anything to my service mix. I haven’t bought any new equipment, but my productivity went up so much so fast that my Patterson rep noticed and said, Are you doing so based on the supply purchase?” He’s like, “What the heck are you doing? You’ve doubled your, your orders,” and he said, “Oh I went to PDA,” And uh, so so the Patterson supply reps are reaching out to ask him, “Can you help?”

Dr. Bruce Baird: I’ve seen the same thing happen with the laboratories. They go, “Wait a minute You usually do x amount of units per month, now you’re doing double that. How how is that?” Yeah. “Is it because you’re just, you know, have new financing, you have to?” “No, no, it’s, it’s because I’m comprehensively evaluating the patients and getting them to become a part of the long-term care,” uh, and which I think people are becoming much more astute and have a much better understanding. They look up stuff, uh, online. They state, they find, yes, that is a fact. Oh, yeah, there’s, that’s a fact and with AI and with all the things that are coming down the pipe, this is going to be a program not to miss.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Bruce, thanks for hopping on and doing a special podcast, special recording. We are celebrating every way we can this year with new partnerships, uh, new programming. Uh, they say you have to refresh your business every seven years. I think we’re well prepared to launch on 21st year.

Dr. Bruce Baird: I think, I think we are. Thanks so much for having me on today.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Thanks, Bruce.