Becoming A Leader By Helping Others Succeed

This episode of beyond you'd why Podcast is brought to you by Dentistry Roadmap. After working for the past 30 years developing and growing my practice, I've learned that a great practice starts with a great message. I've narrowed down the essentials to developing your practice message into a six part online study club where I show you how to do this for your practice. So make sure to head over to dentistryroadmap.com to learn how you can take your dental practice to the next level.

So today we're going to talk about the why contribute. And so if you remember, that's the why. These are people that want to help. They want to be part of others success. They'll use their time, their money, their energy, their connections to help other people do better. They're great to have on your team, but what's interesting about them is they make especially great leaders, which is surprising because often they kind of feel like they should be in the background helping other people do better. But when you put them in a leadership role, they do amazingly well. And so today I've got a special guest for you. He's a friend of mine in the dental world and his name is Dr. Lorne Levine. So let me read you his biology. It says Dr. Lorne Levine is the founder and president of Digital Dentist and He has over 30 years invested in the dental and dental and dental technology fields. He's a graduate of usc, which I like because that's where I went. He earned his DMD from Boston University and completed his residency at Eastman Dental center in Rochester, New York. He received his specialty training at the University of Washington where my brother went and and went into private practice in Vermont until moving to California in 2002 to establish dental technology DTC, a company which focuses on specialized technical needs of the dental community. So Dr. Levine has vast experience with dental technology systems. He's got lots of certifications and as a consultant and integrator. He has extensive hands on experience with most practice management software and image management software, digital cameras, internal cameras, computers, networks and digital radiography systems. Dr. Levine writes for many well known industry publications and lectures across the country. He was a regular technology columnist for Dental Economics magazine and many, many others. In addition, he's a member of the speaking and consulting network. He is also the former technology consultant for the Indian Health Services. Dr. Loren Levine. Welcome to my podcast. Thanks for being here.

Thanks Gary. Pleasure to be on with you. And you and I have been friends forever. So it's great to see you on the other end of the video chat that we're doing and looking forward to this.

Well, hey, let me ask. Let me start with this. I know a lot of the people that are going to be listening to this have gotten emails from you, and you've been around for so many years that a lot of them probably don't know your story. So I. I think your story is fascinating. I'd love for you to tell everybody a little bit about yourself and how you got from dental school to dental technology consultants.

Sure. Well, I went through dental school like every other dentist out there and realized pretty on earlier on that I really didn't do well with materials. So that pretty much eliminated most of dentistry for me. It was going to be either Perio or oral surgery. Three weeks rotation, Boston City Hospital cured me of any desire to do oral surgery. So Perio it was, went through my training at University of Washington, practiced in Vermont. I knew pretty early on that I really did not like doing Perio. And actually when I went through the why exercise? On your website, which only took about four minutes, and I saw the contribute, it really set off, like, these alarms for me or these bells. It was like one of those duh moments. Like, okay, now this all makes sense to me because I remember in my Perio program, one of the things that we had to do as grad students was to work in the undergrad clinic. And it wasn't a lot. It might have been a couple hours a week where we helped the undergrads. I had three other classmates, they all hated it. They're like, why do we have to do this? We've got lit reviews to do. We've got papers to write, We've got cases to document. What a waste of time. I loved it. That was my favorite part of the week, was those two hours that I got to spend with those undergrad students, helping them and contributing to them. And then it started making me think about back to, like, when I was a kid, what did I want to be when I grew up? And really what I always wanted to do was to be a teacher. My parents were teachers. My mother was my substitute teacher. When my nurse, I think it was my nursery teacher, went out on maternity leave.

So, you know, fast forward. I'm doing Perio, and I realize I don't like it. And I think it relates back to the contributing fact factor, my desire to contribute, because, as you know, Perio patients aren't the most compliant people in the world. That's how you end up in a Perio office, is because you're non Compliant. And I would keep doing surgery and keep trying to drum in, brushing and flossing and home care to them. And it just wasn't making a difference. And it got very frustrating for me. So about halfway through my perio career, about five years in, I decided to open up a satellite office, and I worked out of an orthodontist office. This was back in the mid-90s, right around the time where a lot of offices were really becoming computerized. And he came to me one day and said, listen, I need your help. I know you're into all this technology stuff, but I got a quote for some computers and some software. Can you let me know what you think about it? The quote that I saw was outrageous. It was $50,000 for literally two computers and some software. I mean, this was a guy who wouldn't have known where the on button was on the computer. And, you know, I said to myself, gee, it's really too bad that dentists don't have someone that they can turn to who not only understands the technology, but understands things from a dentist standpoint. And all of a sudden, this light bulb went off, and I was like, hey, I can do that, and started working with my referring offices, offering them my help. Word got around, and now I was getting calls from non referring offices, and I figured, okay, I should be charging for my time. Now I'm working evenings and in between patients and weekends to help these other offices out. And I just got busier and busier and busier. So fast forward to the year 2000, or maybe it was 2001. The American Academy of Periodontology used to do a technology day. And they had a couple of speakers there. These are guys that I knew. I'd met them briefly before, and I was there with maybe 400 other periodontists. And halfway through the morning session, someone gets up and says, asks a really tough question about some networking issue or whatever. And the speaker stops and said, you know, I don't know the answer to that, but there's someone here who I think might. Do you all know Lorne Levine? And I was shocked. They stood up in front of 400 people and asked me the question. I answered it within about half an hour. I had close to 100 business cards. People all come up to me and say, hey, I want your help. I want your help now. I was really like, okay, now I need to make a decision, because this is taking off. And that was right around the time that I heard California passed licensure by credential, as you mentioned. I Went to usc. I had friends and family out here. I said, I'll sell my practice in Vermont, move back to LA, practice three or four days a week, do my consulting a day or two a week. You know, maybe in 10 years I can kind of flip the ratio or phase out of the practice. What they didn't mention was the 15,000 people on the waiting list by the time I applied. So I moved here thinking I could just send in my application and get my license. And when I sent it in, they replied back and said, thanks for your application and here's where you are in the waiting list and, you know, should be about a year before we get to you. And I'm thinking, oh, crap, this is not good. Because I had done okay in Vermont, but it's Vermont. And now I'm living in the heart of LA with no income, which in retrospect, was the best thing that could have happened for me because I started doing what I'm doing now full time. And it took off. Howard Ferrand from Dentaltown contacted me. He'd seen some of my posts. He wanted me to start moderating all the technology forums on their website. And then Joe Blaze, who was the editor of Dental Economics, gave me a call and said, hey, we need a technology editor and someone to write one article a month. I said, sure. So literally within my first month or two of moving to la, my name was getting out there to pretty much every dentist in the country. And to this day, that's what I do. I work with dentists all over the country, I write articles, I lecture, as you mentioned. But I don't really have to do a whole lot of marketing because between my webinars and email blasts and all the things that I do, my name gets out there. And unlike Perio, where I dreaded probably 9 out of 10 mornings going into the office with this career, it might be 1 out of 10, 365 days a year that maybe I dread, you know. So I got a difficult client to work with. But for the most part, I love what I do. And I still get to work with dentists every single day, just like I did as a periodontist. And it's, I think, been really the key to the success of our business is that people see me as a colleague, even though, honestly, my IT skills have nothing to really to do with my period background. But when I come into an office, I walk the walk, I talk, talk, and they see me as a colleague. So I've been very, very fort awesome.

That's A great story. So what about working with dentists, what about working with technology do you think fits you so well?

Well, as I mentioned, part of the difficulty I had doing Perio is that I'm the type of person that likes if I'm contributing, I want to be able to see the results of that. I want to feel like if I do the same thing every time, I'm more or less going to see the same results every time. Perio. No way. That wasn't happening. People were coming back after multiple surgeries and you know, months of initial therapy and they still had 6 millimeter pockets and they were still had plaque all over the place and became very frustrated with technology. You know, we, as an IT consultant, I'm always looking for the latest and greatest. I'm always fine tuning what we're doing, but for the most part, when I find something that works and I've tested it and I know that it works in other offices, I, I'm going to keep recommending that and if I'm using the same hardware, the same software, the same setup, I'm going to get pretty much the same results. So really that to me is very appealing that not only am I contributing, helping these offices out, but I know it's going to work 99% of the time. And there's always gotcha. Just like with in dentistry, there's always things, you open up a tooth and you think it's going to be easy and all of a sudden it's down into the pulp and you've got a major problem. We get those surprises as well from time to time, but for the most part it's very predictable and it's constantly evolving. Like I said, which I love, I have to always be online reading and testing and I go to all kinds of CE courses to stay up with it. It's just a really exciting field and I love working with dentists. I think that for the most part there, it's a great group of people to be working with. They're intelligent, they're knowledgeable, they're very pragmatic in their approach to things and it's just been a really good fit for me.

I can imagine, Lorne, that the dentists are very appreciative because I know I'm one of your clients and you've been helping us with our technology for many years. You helped us with our upgrading all of our computers, upgrading to digital radiography, any kind of technology that we problem we have or we just call you and we know that you're going to get us something that works. And we know that you're going to stand behind it. And I know one of my concerns actually when we talked about working with you is the fact that you're not here or in LA and I'm sitting here in Albuquerque and what's going to happen if my computer goes down? Where are you going to be? And I know you've got systems for that as well. Is that right?

Yeah. Oh yeah. So that was one thing that's really been. I think one of them, the major keys to my success is that when I started writing these articles, people were calling me up. They weren't in California. I was getting calls from Boston and Seattle and Florida and all points in between. And I had to develop systems very quickly. And this again, this is back in the early 2000s. Nowadays, everyone, when you talk remote access, no one thinks twice about it. People use Log me in and TeamViewer and they've been doing it forever. Back then it really wasn't as common and honestly the software wasn't as sophisticated back then. But I had to develop systems that allowed me and my techs to be able to work on computer systems as if we were right there. So we fine tuned it over the years. But to this day, probably 85, 90% of our clients are out of state. So yeah, it's been easy for us. You know, we start at 6 o' clock in the morning because we have so many clients on the east coast and Midwest, we have to be available by 8 or 9 o' clock when they get in because they. A lot of times people have problems first thing in the morning, they come in and there's a problem. So we want to be available for that. And yeah, I think most of our clients are appreciative. I mean, listen, as with patients, you know, you get some that just aren't happy for one reason or the other. We do our best. I've always found for me personally, it's just making sure that the lines of communication are open. If someone has a problem, if they're concerned, I'm immediately on the phone with them or emailing them and say, hey, let's find a time to chat. I really want to figure out what we can do to make this right for you. And I shoot for a 95% happiness rate. If I can get 95% of our clients happy, I'm pleased with that. But that also means I'm going to have 5% who aren't. And we've worked with over 3,000 offices, so that's still 150 practices that I feel badly about that we weren't able to make them happy. I think half of those were ones I probably could have done something better or changed the way I did things. Half were just people that weren't going to be happy no matter what I did. But, yeah, listen, we do our best and we try to give people honest advice. There's a lot of things that we're able to resell at a discounted fee. I've actually honestly gotten away a little bit from all the hardware and the sensors and cameras. We still do that. That's still the core of what we've always done. But really the last few years with all the HIPAA rules and regulations, especially after 2013 with the omnibus rules when HIPAA became finalized, and then of course, nowadays with all the cybersecurity concerns, that's been a really big part of what we do because people are just scared, as they should be. They see the news about Equifax and Yahoo and all these companies that are suffering major breaches and it can be devastating to a practice to go through that. So the good news from my standpoint is that helping an office get compliant with HIPAA or helping them deal with cybersecurity concerns really isn't a whole lot different than what we've been doing for the last 15 years. It's almost all the same stuff. The encryption and backup and disaster recovery and patching and firewalls and anti malware and ransomware obviously is a relatively new thing that we have to deal with. But these are all things we've been doing since 2002. So it's been a nice transition for us.

You know, what I think you've done for me personally and for my practice is given me that peace of mind. Because the reality is I don't worry about technology at all anymore. I mean, I don't even think about it. I just come in, I know it's going to work. If there's a problem, which at some point there has to be a problem. I mean, it just. Nothing's perfect, but all we do is pick up the phone, hey, call Digital Dentist, they'll take care of it. It's such a relief. You have no idea what it's like to be on this side when you have no idea what to do.

Well, that's good to know. Unfortunately, not every office is like that. Certain practice management software systems are far more complex or really create a lot more work for my technicians than other one. Some offices are just, we Inherit a lot of offices that, you know, we don't want to go through the time and expense of blowing it all up and starting from scratch. So we're keeping systems that were set up by other people. That may not be the way that we would ideally set it up. So, you know, we take on those problems and sometimes those are a little more challenging to deal with. But, you know, your experience is fairly typical. You know, we. Most of our clients are in some type of support package with us where we have multiple services.

They're all running in the background. A lot of the times we get alerts about problems and hop onto a server after hours and fix the problem, and you didn't even know that we were doing it. To me, the best conversation I can have with. I'm being a little facetious here, but the best conversation I can have with a client is when their contract's up for the year and they call us up and say, listen, we're not sure if we want to renew because we didn't really need you guys that much this year. We didn't call you that much. And then I can show them the whole report of all the things we did and say, well, actually, we were on your system about two to three hours a month, but you didn't know about it because we were doing it behind the scenes and we made sure that everything's running smoothly for you. And you're right. This is really what you pay us for, Gary, is peace of mind, to be able to sleep well at night, to know, hey, you can practice dentistry. Let us deal with the IT issues, and if there is a problem that crops up, you have one phone number to call and we're on it. I've got my four technicians ready and waiting and able to hop right on and hopefully get it fixed as quickly as possible.

Yeah, I mean, so in essence, the way you've contributed, the way you've made a difference, the way you've added value to my practice, and I'm assuming all the other practices that you're. Most of them, that you work with, is giving us peace of mind so that we can focus on our patients, so that we can focus on what we're doing versus the things that we're doing it on, which.

Yeah, and we have some clients that love to tinker, that love to do their own it, and we're saying, great, hey, if you want to do that. But, you know, I certainly know what it run, you know, how much it costs to run a dental practice, and I know what we charge. And I'm pretty confident that what we charge is a lot less than what you lose being out of your chair, trying to fiddle with all these computer issues. So it's peace of mind, it's just knowing that you can focus on what you do best, which is dentistry. We'll work with your staff, we'll work behind the scenes and get it all handled for you. And because, listen, if things aren't working, you're dead in the water for the most part. You can't pull up your patient records. If you can't take your digital X rays, you can't produce. So that falls on us to make sure that you can do that every day.

So, Lauren, let's switch gears a little bit. You've been in 3,000 offices or you've worked with 3,000 offices. What have you seen as the difference between. And I don't know if this is a fair question or not, but what have you seen as the difference between offices that are doing really well in today's world and offices that are kind of struggling in today's world?

That's a good question. You would think, as an IT person, my answer would be, well, the offices that have the best technology are the ones who are succeeding. That really isn't the case. Yes. I think you need to have a baseline technology system. Patients, you know, they know that digital X rays are pretty much the standard of care nowadays, and they know what internal cameras are and they know about all the fantastic stuff that that's out there. So you really can't be without it. The mistake that I see a lot of offices making is technology for technology's sake, that they think, let's just put the stuff in here without any thought about how we can introduce this to the patients, how are we going to market it to our patient population?

It's just there. And, you know, most patients, they don't know what it is and what you're doing and how it's helping them. It's kind of lost itself. The offices that I think have been the most successful are the ones who've really embraced marketing as not just a chore, but they did something that they love doing. They've embraced social media, whether it's Facebook or Twitter or whatever, you know, whatever it is, the emails, engaging their patients on a regular basis, for the most part, those are the ones that we have found to be successful. And I don't always dig into their numbers. I don't know exactly what some of them are making, but usually when I'm in an Office, they've got patience. And I know the difference between an office that's really busy and one that's got big holes in their schedule and they're sitting around twilling their thumbs. So, yeah, I would think it's the ones who are just, you know, who understand the dentistry to be successful, it's not your clinical skills, it's not all the tools. Tools that you have. It is your ability to relate to patients. And we see. But without. I give you, like, a warning with all that is that. And you talk to any practice management consultant, they'll tell you this.

The amount that you spend to bring in new patients is significantly more than what it costs to keep your existing patients happy. And we see so many offices that, yes, they're doing a great job with marketing, but their practice is basically a sieve that for every new person that comes in, there's two or three that leave for whatever reason. You've got to be engaging your patients. You need to be surveying them, figuring out, what are we doing right, what are we doing wrong? How can we improve? Ask them. I mean, there's lots of ways you can ask them. You can ask them point blank, you can send them surveys. There's all kinds of software systems out there between Demand Force and Smile, Reminder, Solution Reach and Yapi and all those ones that can do this for you. But use technology if you need to, but figure out, what do people want, they'll tell you and then obviously do it. It's not enough to just ask.

That's really what I think, too. That's what I've seen is that dentists think that, hey, you know what, if I go out and I buy a new piece of technology, man, people are going to be so impressed with me. I'm up to date, I'm state of the art, I've got all my gadgets. Or if they build this amazing practice with all the cool looks in the fountains and all that stuff, I'm going to create this spa thing and that's going to do it. Or I'm going to take another course and I'm going to learn a new procedure that I can do, and that's going to. That's going to make my practice, and I don't think that's the way.

I'm not sure if you're one to talk about that, Gary, because I know you, and I know when it comes to improving yourself, that you have taken more courses than anyone that I've ever met. So, yeah, I know what you mean. I mean, obviously Talking. I'm not talking dental. I'm talking about, you know, life.

Yeah. Well, that's, to me, the point. The point is, it starts with looking inward. It's not the outer things that make the difference. It's the inner things. And when you know who you are and then you use that in your practice, you make your practice a reflection of you. You make your marketing a reflection of you. That's when you're real. That's when you're authentic, and that's when you bring the right people to you. Right.

And again, I think you just made a good point there, is that it's one thing to bring in 40, 50, 60 new patients a month. Great. But if these are not good patients, these ones who don't mesh with what is important to you, your why, what good have you done? That's where the sieve comes in, that you just don't want those people. So it's not enough to just attract patients. I think you need to be figuring out, how do you attract the right patients.

Exactly. And so a perfect example would be you, when we talk about messaging, because essentially your messaging is all around helping people have peace of mind. I mean, that is, you're there to contribute and add value in the way that you can, which is to help me have peace of mind, that my technology will be invisible. It's not about the stuff I'm doing my work on. It's about the work that I'm doing. And so you allow me to have peace of mind by making sure my stuff works, and you do it in the background so that you're not in my face all the time. Right. And that's. That's the key.

That's the goal. And we get clients, as I said, all the time, who call me up saying, hey, I'm not sure if I want to renew, because we just don't know if we use you guys that much. And I try to explain that, listen, this is not the way it's supposed to be. Having an IT person in your office every week to fix issues is really not the way it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be there to help you and to make your life easier.

So, yeah, that's.

And you're looking. Yeah. And you're looking for someone that you can make a difference for. Right. And so how does it feel to you when you've got a doctor that you. That, you know, they're always complaining and moaning and they're bitching about their bill, and they're like, you haven't done crap for me and make. How does that feel to you? I mean, I can't imagine.

Doesn't bother me that much because normally I get rid of them.

Yeah, there you go.

Well, I mean, a little facetious, but no. I'm very fortunate that my business has grown exponentially over the 15 years I've done this. Just like a successful practice. I can be a little more selective and if someone comes to me and says, you know, I'm unhappy and I know I've made a good faith effort to get them there and it's just not working, I have no problem saying to them, listen, we've tried. I know you've tried. It doesn't seem to be working. It's. There's probably a good chance that some other IT company is going to be a better fit for your current needs right now. Let's part as friends and let's, you know, let's say goodbye. And that's usually the best approach to take. I prefer not to. I prefer to obviously resolve the problems, but as I said, there's going to be a certain section of the population either that we could not resolve their issues or they just which their expectations weren't matched by reality or what we are able to do. And in those cases it just makes sense to go separate ways.

So if you're not able to make a difference in their life, you'd rather not have them as a client, right?

For the most part, yeah. As I said, I'm not. I don't want people to think I don't want, you know, I'm not super selective, that I'm only going to take the best possible clients I can. I often don't know. I mean, when someone comes to me, I have no idea what that relationship's gonna be like. Our typical clients we have for, you know, five to eight years on average would be pretty typical. We have some that have been with us for 15 years. We have some that, you know, leave after a couple years. A lot. There's a lot of factors that go into it. You know, you had mentioned the concern about the distance and that is a concern for some people. Even though we can get on remotely and do what we need to do, some people after a few years say, you know, I'm just worried that as my computers get older I'm gonna need someone on site and I think I'm going to find a local guy and I say fine. And when that doesn't work out, we're still here and we're more than happy. To take you back on. So you should just tell them, call.

Me, you know, and let me give you this guy's number, because that was my issue too. And I can tell you, after however many years this has been, I don't even know how many years you've been doing our technology. I've had no problems.

Yeah, well, whenever I send out a proposal to a new potential client, I list three or four references and you're in there. There you go. I'm not sure if people actually call them up, but, you know, we offer you as a perfect example of someone that doesn't have a problem with the distance and seems to be functioning fine.

Okay, so let's change gears again. What's the latest, greatest, coolest, newest gadget you've seen coming down the pipe?

Nothing.

Nothing.

We're in a lull right now. We had, I'd say over the last five to seven years, just an explosion between CAD cam and digital impressions and cone beam. We're seeing a lot more integration now between those technologies for implant planning, for example, where we're seeing a lot of open architecture that in the past, it was a very closed ecosystem. You had the shine ecosystem and the Patterson, and you had carestream. But now with three shape ones like those, you're getting a lot more openness to all of it. There hasn't been any really amazing technology that I've seen over the last year or so that's like, oh, my God, this is going to revolutionize dentistry. You know, eventually at some point, we're going to see sensors that are as thin as film or as thin as phosphor plates that are all wireless. We're not there yet. You know, I'm not sure if we ever will be.

How about 3D printing?

3D printing, absolutely. I'm not sure exactly what the applications are going to be in dentistry, but certainly when it comes to models, things like that, that may be changing the way that some offices practice. But, you know, you think about it, well, when you're practicing day to day, what are things that are really critical for you? It's illumination, it's magnification, it's efficiency, you know, and we're just. Handpieces spin about as fast as they can go, and loops are about as strong as they can be, and the lights are as powerful as they can be. So we're not really seeing, you know, a whole lot that's affecting day to day. And of course, I say this, and next week there'll be some great announcement about some fantastic new Product that will make me look like a fool.

But I'm wondering when we can 3D print crowns. I don't know if that's possible, if it's strong enough to 3D print a crown. That's a good question, Gannett.

I think it's exploding. So, I mean, we're seeing out applications in 3D that we probably never thought were possible even a year or two ago. That would be something. If we can 3D print crowns, that would be a revolutionary step.

One of the things my brothers just started doing was the prp, so, you know, spinning the blood, getting the membranes and using that for his implants. I think that's been around for a while, but it might start to be more common.

Yeah, absolutely.

So anything I haven't asked you, Lauren, any. Anything that you're dying to tell the audience?

Not that I can think of. As I said, you know, our focus has really been on HIPAA and cybersecurity. And, you know, a lot of times when I lecture on this, people come up to me and say, hey, you know, I. I'm not sure if I really enjoyed the lecture because it really scared me and it really got me thinking and I just, you know, it feels like scare tactics. And I said, listen, I got to be honest, you should be scared. You know, the cost of going through some type of data breach would just be horrible. There's laws that, you know, the breach notification rule that basically says if you suffered a breach, you have to notify the local news media, you have to be listed on the Health and Human Services website. But the worst part is you have to send a letter, not an email or posting on the door, but an actual letter with a stamp to every patient of record saying, hey, we suffered a breach. And here's the data that was lost. And it may have been your credit card information, it might have been your Social Security number. And it's devastating. We've had clients who have gone through that. They've lost 15 to 20% of their patient population virtually overnight. So I think it's something that people really need to be aware of. It's not all that difficult. The way that we approach it is the same way that I approach treating patients. You can't treatment plan until you diagnose first. And that's why HIPAA has laws called risk assessment, that you have to do a risk assessment first and you have to come up with a management plan, their version of the treatment plan, and then start doing that. And so many practices we work with say, well, you know, I looked around the office and I thought maybe, you know, we walked around and that's how we did our risk assessment. Or gee, you know, we, we went online and we filled out a questionnaire. I mean that's like having a patient fill out their dental history and then treating them. I mean you have to diagnose. So diagnosing means looking at everything. The computers, the networking, the firewall. Do what's called an external vulnerability scan where you literally try to hack into the network. Can we get through or not? Look at the status of all your computers, the screensavers, the password policies and the list goes on and on and on. But that's my recommendation to people, is take the time. Yes, it costs money to do this, but go through the process of evaluating your practice, find out where you're at risk and start the process of addressing those risks. This is something we can help with. There's a lot of IT companies out there that I can sure can do similar things as well. But at the end of the day you got to do something. If you ever get audited and they see that you have not done a risk assessment or done have a management plan in place, it's going to go downhill really quickly for you.

Are we up to date? I don't even know. I think we are.

You are up to date.

Okay. I remember when OSHA was the big deal. Remember when OSHA was the big scare, man, if OSHA comes to see you, they're going to shut you down. And all the issues with osha.

OSHA is a slap on the wrist compared to the hipaa. The lowest tier of HIPAA fines are usually in the 25 to $50,000 range. In theory they can go up to a million and a half for each type of violation. We haven't seen that in dentistry yet, but we do know there's on that, on that HIPAA website, we call it the wall of shame. It's not a place you really want to be, but there certainly are multi hundred thousand dollar fines and penalties out there. Not to mention as I said, the loss of patients, which I think would be even worse for most people. So yeah, no one wants to think about it because it doesn't affect your bottom line directly, it doesn't improve your efficiency, it doesn't put more money in your pocket, it does the exact opposite. It takes money out of your pocket because it's money you need to spend in order to get compliant and it's a pain in the rear and, and your staff are going to be complaining about it because they say we don't like the fact that we have to log in every morning with a username and a password and we don't like the fact that if we walk away from the computer for 15 minutes, we need to put our password back in. Trust me, it's to your benefit to be doing those things. So, yeah, this is my advice to people, whether it's us or someone else. Go out, find out what you need to do, do it and you'll sleep better at night.

And lastly, Lauren, where are you? How can people.

Follow you? Used to write a daily blog. Now you're doing a little bit less often, I think. And yet what are the different areas that you're connecting with Dentists?

Sure. So we do, we still do the blog. It's not daily. I still do about 22, 23 times a month. I had about a seven year run there where I did it every single day, even the day my son was born. That was more of a challenge. I think I got that one in at like 11:58pm but I still got it done.

So.

But we still do a lot. You can go usually. My website's a great first place to start. It's thedigitaldentist.com My blog is right on that main page. It lists all the different services, ways to contact us. There's all kinds of articles on there as well. I'm on Facebook at the Digital Dentist and Twitter the digital dentist LinkedIn. Just do a search in Google for the Digital Dentist and you'll come up with hopefully a few hundred thousand hits or something like that. I'm out there. There's lots of yes, people can also call me. I never charge for my time to talk on the phone to offices. We have a toll free number. It's 866-204-3398. Extension 200 gets you through to Candice, my office manager. She'll be more than happy to schedule. She can answer probably half the questions that people have. But for anything that's a little more technical, should be more than happy to set up a phone call. And again, I would never charge for my time to talk to people and help them out any way that I can.

Awesome.

I like to contribute.

You do, you do. I know that about you. And are you at any of the big shows this year?

We cut down. I was doing about eight or nine shows a year. And anyone that's done trade shows on the other side of the aisle knows what a nightmare it can be. You know, you're schlepping across country and you're there for three or four days at a time and setting up the booth and standing around for 10 hours a day. And it's not the most fun experience. We are doing the CDA in Anaheim that we do every year. We're thinking about doing San Francisco. CDA does, you know, two a year. They do the north in San Francisco. We may do New York. We didn't do Chicago like we've done in the past.

We just cut way back. It's just, it's not the best use of my time. I can go on a webinar and be communicating with two or 300 people and giving them more information in that 45 minute webinar than I can in four days standing in my booth, you know, talking to people that are walking by. So that's a better way for me to get our message out there and get people engaged.

Well, Lauren, thank you so much for spending an hour with us and I appreciate all your information. I appreciate all the help you've given me over the years. And of course, we'll still continue to work with you. And let's tell as many people about you as we can.

Thanks, Gary. Appreciate it.

I appreciate it. Have a great evening.

Thanks for having me on. I appreciate that too.

Sa.