- Hello everyone.
I'm Brian Zimmerman with Pets Healthcare.
Thank you for joining us for this podcast.
Today, we're thrilled to be joined by Donnie McMaster,
director of Operations North Carolina,
and South Carolina Guardian Dentistry Partners,
and Effy Weinberg, director of Operations Michigan
with Guardian Dentistry Partners, Donnie
and Effie, thank you so much for being here today.
Um, you know, I'm gonna tap on each one of you to sort
of introduce yourselves a little bit more here.
Donnie, we, we can start with you.
- Sure. No, uh, you appreciate you guys having us on
and, uh, you've already kind of stated the name
and position, but been with Guardian
for little over two years now
and been in dentistry for about 14 years.
So been able to see a lot, uh, when it comes
to these analytics and ex excited to talk about 'em.
- Cer certainly. And Effie, go ahead.
- Yeah, the same. Uh, uh, thanks for the introduction.
I'm, uh, Effie Weinberg.
I've been with, uh, guardian
for about four years from the beginning.
We were one of, uh, one
of the first regions to join Guardian.
We've seen it grow and you know, we've definitely used, uh,
analytics, analytics to help grow the company.
So I'm excited to have the discussion with you guys.
- Yeah, absolutely.
And as you both sort of previewed there,
we're gonna be really talking about sort
of specifically Guardian dental's implementation of,
of, of Jarvis Analytics.
Uh, and let, let's dive in here.
So, and Effie, maybe we can begin with you.
Uh, how did Guardian Dental decide
to implement Jarvis Analytics for, for, for your practices
and what were I guess, the initial goals here?
- Yeah, it's great. Great question.
Um, you know, I think as Guardian has grown over time, it's,
we really needed to find the right solution for them.
Right? When we first started off,
every office was doing their own analytics.
We had, everyone had different softwares,
and I think there are a lot of options out there.
And I think why we chose Jarvis as our partner was
because of the ability to capture tons of information
from all the practices in one platform.
The amount of different practice management softwares
that they integrate with is crucial for Guardian,
that we don't require our partners
to change practice management softwares.
So if we, you know, as we're acquiring
new practices and partnering with new practices,
it's very important that we don't disrupt the office.
And part one
of the biggest disruptions someone can do when they're
taking over is change practice management software.
And Jarvis has really allowed us not to do that,
and at the same time has given us mass amounts
of new KPIs at our fingertips.
Um, and you know, you, you talked about some of the, some
of the goals that we're try to have when using Jarvis.
I mean, it's really just the goals of just being able
to do year over year and comparing office to office
between regions, between regional managers.
You have so much ability with Jarvis that,
that it was just a logical choice for us.
- Yeah, and I imagine that, that that software component is,
is certainly key.
Like, uh, a as you suggested there, that's a big,
the big choice, big reason behind the choice.
It really fits sort of your organization's infrastructure
and, and allows people to, uh, not have to go through
that sort of level of change management.
Uh, Donnie, what would you add to Effie's comments here?
- Yeah, just to add to that would be the size of Jarvis and,
and what they have available to us, uh, again,
within Guardian Dentistry Partners and,
and how we have grown this business is, is every office,
you know, has an individuality about itself.
So, you know, being able
to have different practices focus on
what their strategy may be from, you know, maybe they need
to focus on huddle, uh, the huddle module and,
and really craft that to start their day
or, uh, part of their growth strategy as perio
for the hygiene department, right.
So being able to really hone in on what that focus is
for each individual office has been a huge, huge impact.
- Yeah. And, and let's zero in there e even a bit more.
Um, Donnie, we, we, we can begin with you here,
but just wanna draw out some, some more specific examples
of, of how Jarvis's Analytics has been really integrated
into Guardian dental's operational strategies and,
and how has it specifically improved decision making
within your practices?
- So, uh, a great question
because I think we can, we can really, um,
with Jarvis Analytics narrow down our focus when it comes to
what procedures each individual practice focuses on.
And that was a big differentiator
for us this year when we developed our annual strategies
with each practice, was really focusing on
where can we grow, um, each practice's main focus, right?
So if this fact, this practice over here is,
is a huge Invisalign practice
or a huge implant practice, what does
that growth look like year over year?
Which was really easy, um, to be able to find when,
when you're looking at Jarvis Analytics, um, to give us
that growth or decrease in these practices and,
and trying to understand why that happened when we're trying
to develop our strategy going forward with the practice, uh,
for 2024 and, and what kind of training, um,
or treatment coordinating training, what kind of, what kind
of things that we need to create based on
what these numbers are telling us.
And, um, we didn't have that with past analytics.
Uh, we could find it, but it would take a lot longer
to manually calculate what that looked like, right?
With Jarvis, it's a click of a button and,
and made our annual strategy planning a lot easier
when it comes to the region I'm in when it came focused on
what procedures these offices are great at
and how we can get even better at it.
- Yeah. So, so some real, um, benefits there in terms
of charting specific growth pathways for specific practices
where they can grow Effie.
Any other specifics you could share here?
- Yeah, I mean, I, I wanna, you know,
piggyback a little bit off what Donnie said of,
and you know, really when we're, when we're identifying
goals for 2024, any any goals, goal planning, it's great
to see the year over year growth comparison.
And it's helped our decision making for practices of
identifying which KPIs we wanna work on
and very easily identify
which year over year on the same screen.
And the, the countless amounts of different data points
that we can look at year over year has really helped us
identify which areas of opportunity we have
that we could focus on for when it comes to quarter goals
and year goals.
- Yeah. And, and, and Effie of course,
dental practices is always in pursuit of,
of achieving greater overall efficiency.
And, uh, I imagine that's especially true for, for Guardian
considering the multiple different practices in d in
different regions, how you wanna drive
efficiency across those sites.
Um, and, and FEU sort of mentioned some KPIs there that,
that were really important to you all.
I'm curious if we can get some specifics around that.
Are there any other KPIs that have, have notably improved?
Um, has Jarvis Analytics been been effective at,
at helping you sort of enhance those efficiencies that, that
of course are so, such a big target for for many leaders?
Effie, you wanna kick us off there? Yeah,
- Yeah, I would definitely, uh, love to kick us off.
'cause I've, I've, I've seen improvement pretty,
pretty quickly, right?
We all know that when you keep your eye on certain KPIs,
you see improvement and Jarvis has made
that easy for us to do.
And something specific
that really stands out is our hygiene reappointment
and our perio percentage.
Uh, we've just launched, uh, creating a hygiene leader
for our region and, you know, putting this person in place,
we're able to see all the offices
and comparing our perio percentage,
which offices are strong, which are, which need, uh,
some opportunity for both perio and hygiene reappointment.
That's what we were focusing on.
And over the course of the first three months,
as she's come up
and she's talked to the offices, show them these stats,
we've been seeing improvement already
after the first month, right?
It's really focused on, uh, creating the dashboard there.
There's a whole KPI dashboard
that highlights a hygiene section, so she's kind of taken
that on, presented it to the team,
and help them keep their eye on specific KPIs.
And we're really watching that grow,
uh, into better metrics.
- I appreciate you walking us through that Effie.
Donnie, anything else you would add here in terms of
your experience, uh, or,
or what you've seen in terms of the,
the analytics helping you improve efficiency
and any notable KPI callouts here? Yeah,
- I would say notable KPI callouts, I would say, uh, kind of
what he said just to, you know, base it on one KPI of,
of hygiene reappointment.
Again, what this gives us a tool of is, is
to show a practice what other practices
or what a region is averaging when it comes to this,
or what a top 10% practice looks like based on
this certain KPI.
And that, I think has opened up a lot of doctor's eyes
of when they say, well,
85% hygiene re appointment's not a bad thing, it's
what I've always hovered around.
But if they don't have the knowledge of understanding that
a lot of practices live in the 92, 90 3% range, that, uh,
they're okay with that 85.
So them being able to see that other practices do,
do it differently, gives us more,
it supports our influential ways of, of trying to get them
to adjust and,
and realize that that is an important growth
opportunity for them.
And, and that growth opportunity can,
can also grow other KPIs based on just changing one.
- And Donnie, I wanna move back in time now a little bit
and, and, and think about, you know, any challenges
or pain points guardian dental faced prior
to implementing Jarvis Analytics.
Um, can, can you talk about maybe how the, the choice
around Jarvis integrating these analytics was meant
to solve some of those pain points and,
and what have been the, the results,
have they fostered better management
and coordination, things of that nature?
Donnie, you wanna, you wanna kick us off here?
- Yeah, I think, um, a little bit we, we've kind
of brought up already, which was the year over year numbers.
That was a huge pain point for us
with previous analytics was, uh, trying to find
that really quick as a click of a button and,
and discuss those in a, in a fast manner versus
before we would have to, you know, have Excel sheets
to figure this out, right?
And, um, that was a huge pain point for Guardian
as we grew from the time I
and Definitely's been here way longer than I have,
but when I got here, I think we had 40 practices and now 164
and, and when I got to my region, we had eight practices
and now we've got 34 practices.
So trying to be able to manage multi-practice
and multi-regional goals from a uh, 30, 40, 50,000 foot view
was challenging
unless you had a really up-to-date Excel sheet
that you were manually updating often, right?
Versus now it's, you know, a couple clicks of the button
and 30 seconds for it to load,
and now we can see exactly where we're at month to date, uh,
how many days in the month
and, you know, goals of certain KPIs
and where we're at, uh, you know, multi-practice versus
before it was office to office to office and,
and managing it by office to office
and building your own
regional template, if that makes sense.
So that was a huge, uh, pain point
for us in Guardian in, in each region.
- Thank you Don. And Effy, turning back to you now,
is there anything, obviously we've, we've,
we've certainly hit on the, the, the year, year over year,
how, how impactful that's been to have that sort
of conveniently at your fingertips,
but anything here you wanna re-emphasize for, for listeners
or anything to call out around sort of maybe pain points
that you were experiencing ahead of this implementation?
- Yeah, um, and it,
besides what Donny was saying of like our growth
and having pain points of just using an Excel sheet,
now we have Jarvis, but also when we come and we're looking
and reviewing with our partners, our financial statements,
you know, it's, it's very helpful to present, uh,
to our partners of a trends, trends analysis.
And, you know, Jarvis has really helped me
and I know our partners of visualizing
how our new patients are doing,
how our net production is doing.
They, I recommend everybody to go on
and check out the trends.
If, if, if you have, if you're not familiar with it, it's,
you can do office over office comparison, you can,
but it'll show you a trailing 12 months of
how the office has grown or gone down.
And I would take screenshots
and present it as we're presenting financials.
And that has really, really helped address some, uh,
visualizing, helping the doctors visualize
where we want the performance to go,
and also identifying some opportunities in that performance.
But the trend view really helps us visualize it.
- And, and so most of this conversation has been sort of,
um, we've looked it been retroactively sort
of looking at what, what's happened.
It's been a retrospective, but is certainly useful.
You can learn a lot, but I wanna wanna just pause here
and switch gears a little bit and look to the future and,
and, and hear about maybe how you're planning to envision
or incorporate Jarvis Analytics into other projects.
So how do you see the platform evolving
to meet the changing needs
and challenges at, at your organization
and, you know, within the dental
and DSO landscape more broadly?
Uh, Effie, do you, do you wanna get us going there?
- Yeah, definitely. Uh, I think, you know, that's,
it's a, it is a big question, right?
We don't, it's hard to predict the future,
but as we're seeing, you know,
the way our landscape is going
and you know, how many DSOs are popping up
and how we are evolving,
I think the dental industry is evolving.
It'll be nice to see, and I think it's already happening.
We're, we're using it in a certain way,
but we're gonna be starting integrating our marketing
platform, integrate with Jarvis,
and we can track our leads of new patients
from when the top of the funnel of the marketing funnel
as they come in the door to getting the referral base
and seeing that production per patients all through Jarvis
through our website, the, uh,
the coding on our website can link into Jarvis
and we'll, we'll be able to get a true ROI comparison of
how our new patients came into the door
and how we're seeing the results all on one platform.
- That's fa that's fascinating. Thank you for sharing that.
Effie. Donnie, what would you say here?
- Yeah, I think for, for us, uh,
one thing Guardian Dentistry Partners is, is wanting to get
to is, is
how do we get the offices more involved with the analytics?
Um, as you guys have probably realized in the analytics
world, um, very few people dive into it that,
that probably need to dive into it.
And I think one area that, you know,
we're really successful in is, is the directors,
regional managers really, you know,
getting into this analytics and,
and trying to influence the office manager to the doctors
with it, but trying to really ingrain each office that is
so different into these, um, analytics
and each tool that that's available for the front desk,
the hygiene, the assistance, um,
we've noticed within our own, um, you know,
160 plus practices that one area that needs
to be strengthened is, is the office manager area.
And, and from an analytics standpoint, that's a big area
for them to improve on and understand.
So how do we incorporate more training for
that in the future so we can fully use, um, all
of Jarvis analytics versus just a little bit of it.
- Appreciate that, Donny as well,
and appreciate you both coming on the podcast
and really walking our listeners through your,
your experience with Jarvis Analytics, sort of the, the,
the reason behind integrating the technology
and what the results have been.
I, I wanna close here by asking each of you just, I guess,
what advice would you give to other dental practices
or DSOs that are considering implementing Jarvis Analytics?
What should they be thinking about?
Uh, just any advice you would have for them.
Donnie, we can begin with you.
- Yeah, I don't think in my, uh, you know, 12 to 14 years
of being in the dental industry
that every time I've had a conversation about analytics
with an office or a doctor, there's never been a time
where the doctor's eyes have not opened up wide of realizing
what they're missing out on
or how many patients are going out the back door
or how their hygiene reappointment per percent rate.
Any, any KPI you can pull up on that, the analytics, um,
every doctor's eyes have gotten really wide
and be like, wow, I didn't, I had no clue.
I've never seen this, never I heard of it.
Um, wish I would've known, um, man,
if I just made a small little adjustment there.
You're talking about a huge increase in revenue.
Um, that's what, again, trying to get that across
to each practice, each DSO is, is a huge benefit
and, and how you'd do it.
Um, I wish I was a, you know, Einstein on that one
because it's been tough in my, in my days,
but, uh, that's, that's what I've seen is,
is if we can just put it in front of more people more often
and, and watch their eyes light up and,
and then at that point, how do we reach their team
to make that adjustment?
- Yeah. Get that visibility out there,
get it in front of folks.
Uh, Donnie, appreciate it. Effie, go ahead.
- Yeah, so I would, I would say first of all is, you know,
in order to right, like get, get it out there,
but we have to make sure that, you know, get,
get the first step is get it in your practice, set it up,
and then I would say it's, there's tons of modules.
Every module has their own unique characteristics, uh, from,
you know, what Donny said is, you know, eye popping moment
where you like the doctor's
like, wow, I wish I would've known.
It's like a lot of like outstanding treatment is there
and the amount that you can capture
and the list of patients
that Jarvis can provide is just mind blowing.
But the key is, is there's so many different modules.
Take one module at a time, get it installed on your,
on your server, and then take one module at a time.
There's so much data that can be,
that you can extract from every module.
Go from one module to the next
and you'll see yourself once you,
once you master three modules, you'll see yourself jumping
to, to every single one and catching on very quickly.
So just take it slow and then it'll move very quickly.
- Oh, Effy, Donnie again,
appreciate you both coming on the podcast.
It's, it's been a
pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much.
- Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it. Yeah,
- Thanks for having us.
And I'd also like to of course,
thank our sponsor, Henry Schein one.
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