Dee Bills: How Can You Pay Your Front Desk More In A World Of Inflation

You've got people who essentially need to make more money in order to survive and live. You know, we were talking earlier, I said it now cost me for Mike and I to eat in a week. It costs us what it used to cost us when we had three kids that we were feeding in their teenage, you know, young and teenage years and which is killing us. And. But it's the same thing. You look at these individuals, they, you really want to hire good people that represent your practice really well. And at the same time you want to provide this great service.

How to get smarter in business and in life. This is the question. And I'm on a journey get you that answer. I'm going to interview the world's top entrepreneurs and deconstruct their winning secrets. Going to talk about everything from marketing money and living a bucket list life. I'm Rick Lau, healthcare entrepreneur. I grew and exited my 127 locations in my 30s. Welcome to the Clinic Boss show. Let's just get this kicked off. I'm just curious, Stevie, you know, what's going on? What's going on with the price of burgers right now? I was just in Phoenix and I was like, I can't believe I paid 25 bucks for a burger and fries. Like, yeah, expensive. And that's without a drink, right?

That's right. Yeah. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy.

What do you think it was like maybe, like maybe five years ago, like pre covered that same price in the burger. Like, like what did you say last?

Like four? I bet you it was like 14 bucks. I bet you it's gone. Yeah.

With a drink or without a drink?

Probably without a drink, but I'm, I'm going with 14 bucks. That's my guess.

It's insane. I was in Phoenix. It was 25 bucks. I was in Seattle like maybe like four weeks ago and it was like, same thing. It was like close to 30 bucks and it wasn't even a good burger, you know?

Yeah. We just look at like the price of food down here and both of us are like, there's only two of us at home anymore. And it's costing us what it cost us when our kids were like in their teenage years and we're eating us out of house and home and it's two of us.

Yeah, 100%. That's so crazy. That's so crazy. And you got, you guys are thinking about what impact it has on business and on staff.

Right?

You know, so we'll dive a little bit more about that today. And so we are live. I just want to welcome everyone to the Click Boss show. I'm Rick Lau. I'm your host. And so quickly, my story is I grew, exited 127 locations. Now a $37 billion grocery store own my clinics, and now I make Instagram videos for a living. Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And this podcast or this show is, like, my journey to learn from the top healthcare entrepreneurs on how to get smarter in business and in life. And if this sounds like you, you will love her show. Right? And so today we have a special guest. We have D bills. And why do we bring in deals? Just quickly. Dee is a practice owner, and she is known as a front desk guru. Okay. She's trained hundreds and hundreds of front desks on everything from cancellations, no shows, to messaging or not getting new patients, scheduling, not collecting money, and. And. And patient drops, which is kind of the lifeline, like, of our business. And so, De, thanks for coming. And I'm just curious, like, how. How do we meet?

De.

You know, do you remember how we met?

I think another practice owner referred us. Gosh, how many years ago now? No, I think it was Neil. I think Neil Tricket.

Okay.

I think that's how. Either that or some of my clients were talking about me and it got in person.

Or was it an online thing?

No, it's been online. I can't wait to meet you in person.

Okay. Wow. Wow. And it's so super cool to have you on show. And. And why is it to call you the front desk guru? I don't. I don't understand. Like, why did you come up with that name? Like, why do people call you the front desk guru?

Yeah, you know, I mean, that's a long story, but, you know, I guess the short end of it is I, you know, Mike's pract was really struggling, and the. I was at a financial course, and this guy was talking to all these practice owners, like, make more money. Make more money. And of course, being a pt, I raised my hand. I'm like, yo, dude, we're stuck with insurance and all this crazy crap. How the heck do you want us to make more money? And he kind of slapped me up side of the head in that moment. He's like, you got to find all the places you're bleeding money. You're bleeding. You know, patience, right? If you want to make more money, you need to get. You need to be more efficient at getting patients through your door and showing up and, you know, scheduling, chilling. And so he kept talking, and I stopped listening. And was like, I'm not going to say my pt, my clinicians weren't a part of it, but it was front desk, front desk, front desk. And it really led me to believe that my front desk just wasn't. I recognized they weren't well trained. They didn't know. They didn't know what they didn't know. They are really nice people, predominantly. And it just. It was just a real struggle. And I realized we didn't train them. And so I became the guru because I solved all their problems and taught them how to manage patients to get them to schedule and show up and handled all those problems. And practice owners started reaching out and they're like, hey, you. You're like the guru of this. And I'm like, whatever. And they're like, no, really, you're like the guru in this. You've solved these problems. And one of my good friends who's total smart alec, I'll keep my language good here on this show. He's like, no, D. You're like the front office guru. And I'm like. And I kept resisting it. And then one day I was like, this is what I want to do. And Mike just looked at me and said, go do it. And I just started working with practices. And that's kind of how. That's the short. The long of the short of it.

Awesome. That's awesome. I don't know you. I didn't even know your name was D Bills. I was always doing your name as the front desk guru, you know?

Yeah.

And so. So you've seen hundreds. Hundreds of, like, worked with hundreds of front desk app. I'm curious, what is the most scandalous, like, scenario you've seen with a front desk? And I'll show you mine. And then I want to see if you have something that is, like, just as juicy or scary. So one of the most frequently asked questions I get is, how can you help me grow my clinic? So every year we put together an annual event called the Clinic Boss Summit. It's basically the Woodstock for everyone interested in growing or selling your multimillion dollar practice. You're going to meet over 300 of the world's top clinic owners. The network is going to be insane. It's three days. You're going to learn everything from marketing, finance, hr, recruitment, and cellular clinic. And the best part, it's going to be Orlando, Florida on January 26th. It's one of my favorite cities to hang out in January because you get the sunshine, palm trees and best theme parks. We usually sell Every year within the first couple of months. So grab your tickets now. Go to clinicxcel.com to grab more details. When I see all my clinics, I. I had this one front desk who stole about $15,000 from me. It was done through like, like cash deposits. Right. You know, and it got to. And I traded her very well. And it got to this point where she felt guilty. And she actually came to me after taking care of her over the past couple years, like, hey, I just. I want to confess that I've been stealing this amount of. But I can't pay you back. She felt so much guilt. She was also on the verge of like, suicide. She was going through some like, mental health stuff. And I felt so bad. That actually paid for her counseling for the next year. Okay. And I gave her a second chance. Dee. Okay, that is.

That is so my Canadian friends. So did she. Did she ever make amends?

She stole again.

Get the heck, dude, man. What's that? What's that saying? It was insane.

And this way I realized with people right after managing Hunt and Let Hunter, like thousands of people, is very difficult to change people unless they go through some significant crisis in their life. You know, whether it's divorce, health, lost a job or something significant. But people typically have repeatable, like patterns of behavior. So if you're wanting to change someone's very difficult. Right. So d. I want to hear from you. Like, that's one of the most famous front desk story. Like, what's. I can heard.

Beat that one. I don't know if I can beat that one.

I like you have to do for the show.

I will tell you though, you're not the first person that's told me that. I've. I've actually had that on more than one phone when I do free call calls. I. People have told me that where their staff have stolen from them and they. And they do it. It's funny though. Would you say that they do it in a way. They do more work to steal and hide it than it would take to just do their daggone job in the first place. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, they're so. And honestly, you. You're telling me about that. I'll never forget the day Mike came home. This was back when he worked at the hospital and he managed the. All the PT clinics in the hospital. And. And to take that one step further in the United States, if you like, if you steal from a huge corporation, the FBI shows up and one day they're all sitting there and they're treating patients, and the FBI walks in the door of the main hospital practice, and they're all like, what the heck? And they came for this one woman, and she had been stealing systemically from the hospital system for like, two years. And yeah, she stole a lot, A lot, a lot, a lot of money. So. But what if I. Oh, God, gosh, you know, I mean, I. I certainly have. I. Mine is not scandalous. Mine is more. The realization is something juicy. Well, I mean, mine. One of mine would be the. Like, I mean, this one isn't even juicy, but it's. It's real. And I think it's real to some practice owners, too, in the sense that when I first took over the front desk and started managing them for Mike, you know, I said, we didn't have training and things like that, but I realized I had. I had Eeyore working at my front desk. So, you know from Winnie the Pooh, where Eeyore's like, oh, I lost my tail. Oh, well, kind of thing. I had an Eeyore at my front desk. And so one day, my mother in law calls me. She goes, call the clinic. And I'm like, I'm on my way there. She goes, call the clinic. And I'm like, why? She goes, call the clinic. So I call the clinic, and Eeyore answers the phone, you know, good afternoon, how can I help you today? And I'm like, oh, my God, right? This is the first, last, and main point of contact for every patient. And they were answering my phones. And this, for me, that's. That's a huge. That was a huge. Like, oh, man, I got to fix that moment. And that's a part of what I do, too, is help you to find better staff.

Because you pissed when you heard that. Like, were you steaming? Like, because when I used to get at my clinics, if I. If my front desk doesn't answer the phone or like, they, like, they do that exact same voice, they talk because they don't want to be there. I'm steaming because I'm spending a bullet of money on marketing, and I'm questioning why the marketing is not converting. And at the same time, I'm like, oh, my God, it's actually me. It's actually my clinic.

Well, it motivated me. It didn't make me mad. I was like, oh, crap, she's got to go. But it motivated me to find better staff. And I. So I started interviewing like crazy that day. I mean, I put ads out. I was bringing people in. I was gonna. I was gonna solve this problem. I was gonna find the perfect person. And in that same time, I was trying to convince Mike, hey, I need two people. And Mike's like, we can't just people. And I'm like, I need two people. I want to stagger their hours and really nail this. And, you know, some arguing with my husband in a loving way about, I need this. But then at the same time, I'm like, I need to replace her. Well, I got to two people, and I'm literally walking through the front office like. And she's already helped. She's been in the interview process in the sense that she's heard me bringing these people through, and she's seen them. And I'm like, I just kept going. I really want to hire both of them. How do I do this? How do I convince Mike to have three people? Right? Because I'm saying this in front of her. And the day I'm supposed to make the offer, I still, still haven't decided. Am I going to hire Suzanne? Am I going to hire Natalie? What am I going to do? And Mike leaves. And all of a sudden, the garage door opens, and he comes back, and he's like, I have a present for you. And he hands me his phone. And without being explicit here, there were a few words prior to the I quit part. I left my keys on the desk, and Eeyore quit. And I was able to hire both of those people that day. So I was able to just turn my front desk over and be like, you're out the door, Joe. And. And there they went. And so it felt. It felt really good to. For me, it was the scandal of I essentially, you know, was able to get Eeyore to exit stage left and put in the two people I wanted. And that's really where my training really started.

Wow. Amazing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't have the money. Scandals. Thank you, God.

Oh, man. I could write a movie about that stuff. You know, you're not alone. The fact that she stole twice and I paid for her therapy because I felt like, you know, I felt like I want to. How do I say this? Like, I want to help her through this, you know, because I'm a extremely loyal person. And then I still get burned. I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe this. I'm too optimistic with humanity. So in the very beginning, we talked about expensive burgers are right, you know?

Yeah.

Getting super, super expensive right now. When you think about, like, kind of what's going on with economy, with the news like, and some of the change. Some of the changes are happening within our. Our industry. Like, what are you most concerned with right now? Relating to the front desk, you know, like, the people that work at the front desk.

Well, I mean, you have to look at. I mean, I know in Canada, things are a little bit different for you guys, but, you know, we just. Our reimbursements just keep going down. And that's really. Actually where my. Everything started for me 12 years ago was Mike's, like, we can't afford to be here if we don't fix something. And that's how we ended up in that financial. And it's still playing. It's still in play in the sense that you've got people who essentially need to make more money in order to survive and live. You know, we were talking earlier, I said it now cost me for Mike and I to eat in a week. It costs us what it used to cost us when we had three kids that we were feeding in their teenage, you know, young and teenage years and. Which is killing us. And. But it's the same thing. You look at these individuals, they. You really want to hire good people that represent your practice really well, and at the same time, you want to provide this great service. But in the States, the reimbursements are going down and down, and so it makes it harder and harder for us to.

Declining reimbursements and then increasing, like, wages and inflation is. Yeah, kind of. You know what? I was. I told you earlier, I was in Phoenix speaking at the WebPT event. I think there was 450 practice owners. And I met all these, like, America. I met all these different clinicals in different states. And one. One of the states, I think it was New Jersey, and 80% of his business was Medicare or Medicaid. Oh, God, 35 bucks a visit, you know. You know, I told him, I was like, dude, go move to Washington.

Absolutely, Absolutely. If you want to do that.

Why would you do this grind of like, 35 bucks, like a visit, you know?

Right.

Like, it's just like the cars are kind of, like, stacked against you. Right. Regardless of, like, declining reimbursement, but even declining $35 to $31. Right.

You know, I agree with you on that. And it's interesting. We. We got rid of UnitedHealth care in our practice this year. We just kicked them to the curb. We said, we're done. We're done with that contract. We'll take you as patients, but you're going to be out of network and. Or you can Go cash pay. You can file it yourself. But we were done. And the reason we were done is because it's, it may. It stopped being. There's no value for us. We have to fight for three visits at a time. And, and it's not helping the patient and it's not, it's making our lives, us less efficient, which is what I was saying earlier. I mean if you want to be able to supply, if you want to have great staff and be able to pay those great staff, you have to give them what they need to be efficient and effective and really, really help your business. Because if they're just there doing the basic level job, you're never, the practice isn't making more money. It's not able to survive and then thrive on top of that.

So d. How do we do this? Like, you know, let's just like, you know, every single state, let's be honest, is declining reimbursements. Right. And yes, people are kicking out this payer to be out of network. So maybe you could charge more, do better on direct to consumer marketing. Maybe you could get, you know, more money coming that way. Like so. And then you got your typical front desk turnover. They're lasting for one year, two years. A lot of them just want to leave their profession. They make, they make more money being an Uber driver or maybe like a delivery person or, or even like working in like a. Yeah. So what can you, what, what, what's, what can a practice owner do right now?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean like specifically the front desk, like how can we, how can we, like how can we keep. It almost seems like it's a broken model. Right?

It is a broken model.

It is with like the card stacked against you. Unless you go like, you know, all these people are talking about, I want to do Cash PT, but let's be honest, Cash PT is a small segment of like it's like that 10 of the 90 of the business. Right. You know. Right. Yes. You could do something that could feel that, you know, and, and I'm talking about like not a, like a hundred or two hundred thousand dollar practice. I'm talking about a multi million dollar practice. Right. You know, you can't shift that quickly. So what, what like what experience can you give for practice owners who are kind of in that situation where like they have to pay like they don't have the profits or maybe they do and they don't want to pay. Like how, how would you tackle this front desk issue? And.

Yeah, well, I mean you have to get, you know, Everybody's talking about marketing, right? Oh, you got to promote more. You got to promote more. You got to promote. But the thing that everybody has to realize is, first of all, your front desk sits at the end of that marketing funnel. And so they have to be to know how to convert evals faster and. Right. Because you're less efficient if you have this big long. I was just talking at the conference this weekend about this. You got this big, long list of leads that are sitting there, right? You've got these. This long list of leads and they're just sitting there on this sheet. Your front desk is not motivated to go back to them and try to call them again. So you've got to. The first thing you have to do is convert those leads and those new patients and the returning patients get them scheduled on the first phone call, not having to call them three, four, five, six times. And it doesn't matter whether we're in the US Or Canada. I have a woman in my platform who's from Botswana. She's amazing. And the biggest thing we all deal with is these people that are calling us a don't know what we do. Right. They don't know how we help. They. A lot of them. Do you ever see this in your practices where people call and they get on the schedule and they think that in one visit you're going to have them totally fixed and handled. And that's because we live in a instant message society, you know, where I can text you and you would have that up in Canada. And so the first thing we have to do is be able to teach them how to convert those leads faster and get more leads converted because then we're not spending as much money on marketing and promotion. I'm not. I'm not crapping on those out there that are.

All right, so the systems. I'm just going to sum up. You're saying that you should. You should like maybe allocate those resources instead of marketing, focus on maybe the. Put on the front desk budget to actually increase your conversion rates, you know, to be able to drive more maybe revenue per hour, you know?

Yeah, yeah. You gotta recognize, Rick, that everybody in your practice that's any. That's front facing. Right? So you're. Anybody that's on your phones, anybody that's sitting at your front desk, anybody that's treating your patients, they all are involved in sales all the time. Right. Sales is not just this one thing. Oh, I got them scheduled. No, a sale is to get them to schedule an evaluation. A sale is to get them to show up for the eval to get them to agree to whatever the payment is. Right. They and then agree to this plan of care that's 10 or more visits in a lot of cases. And then to keep showing up, all of that is a sale. And so being able, if you really want to be more efficient and effective, all of your staff need to be trained in sales. They need to be able to sell and help that patient.

So Dan, if, if your front desk is your sales team, which I 100 agree they are, right. Do you like, do you recommend setting up a sales compensation plan for your front desk team so that the practice owner wins at the same time with higher conversion rates, with higher bookings, with higher like evals being booked?

Yeah, absolutely. That's one of five year, that's one of the front desk five metrics is conversions. Right. So absolutely they, but they have to be at a high level. They have to be converting at 90% or better so that you're, you think about, I mean this is a whole other conversation but it goes back to how much is every patient worth to your practice. Right. And it's, you have, it's a really easy calculation. It's the average reimbursement. So if you know what your average reimbursement over the last, you know, three to four months was, you can you get that number and then you. It's the number of visits to discharge and it's not the plan of care, it's the number of visits completed to discharge and it's an average. So if I had 100 patients average.

That you see typically like 8, 8.

Visits, 10 visits, 12I that ranges across the country. Some of my practices, my Midwest practices or my middle States practices, it's probably closer to like 14 in a lot of cases. But then my, I call them the bookends, right. My east coast to my west coast, it's that it ranges a lot further and it's some, in many cases it's closer to like eight to ten visits. Interesting. Max. And it's really just. But you have to remember that to discharge that factors in the percentage of drop off patients. So you can really get, you can get really efficient managing your practice if you know what your average visits to discharge because it accounts for drop offs, it accounts for people that only come from for the eval and aren't sold and it accounts for your patients that are completing, successfully completing care. So if you're calculating that number as a practice owner, I feel like that's a really good number. To have. Because now we can look at that and we can say, okay, that affects how valuable a patient is to your practice. If I'm only doing eight visits to discharge because I have a lot of drop offs that are only making it to visit five or six and that's bringing my number down. And I really. And I know that the patient population I'm treating is usually closer to 12 visits for discharge. Well, I know right then and there I'm losing on average, if it's a hundred dollar per visit, you see what I'm saying? Like average reimbursement, that's a 400 loss on average. If you look at it across, you.

Know, so d what you're telling me, there is no reason why a practice owner should not be able to pay their front desk more because there's a lot of money left on the table.

Yeah.

And if you do feel like it.

Is salary, it's not. Sorry, it's not salary. It's in bonusing. Yes.

Right. And so what's your total comp like? If, if, if like in, in, in the software. In a lot of industries they like to like to use something called like ote. So this is based, if you add up the what percent of their compensation is actually based on bonuses? You know, is it 10, 20, 30? Like what's the number that you like to see based on them hitting certain like metrics that actually drive like revenue and P. Ls.

So I think you have to look at it. The first thing you have to look at, and this really comes from the financial guys I've worked with, is you. The practice has to be making money first. Right. Don't go bonusing staff if you can't pay yourself. You know, I mean if there's so many practice owners out there that aren't paying themselves and I'm not talking give yourself a $500,000 a year salary and say until I get to that, I'm not going to bonus my people who are on the front end. But you have to make sure that the practice is able to pay its bills. That money is coming in what. And really it's percentage. It should across the entire practice. Not just not, not for the evals but you know, like the practice. If you're bonusing one, you got to have metrics in place to bonus all of them. And then it really comes down to look, if I convert, if I'm at.

90 percentage D. What percent of their salary that you should be salary?

I would say per visit. I would say your average visit I would say, you know, 10 to 15% max of your average.

Okay.

Per visit fee of that eval. Converted. And it's converted. And then there's the arrived part of it too. Right. It's not just, oh, I got 30.

People outside the metrics. Are you telling me that, like, if a front desk makes $50,000, they're eligible for a bonus of 60 to 65,000? Like that would be reasonable.

You guys, you guys are paying 50,000. Okay. So that's not.

I'm just using that example.

Okay. I'm just like, yeah, well, I mean, you have to look at that too. You have to look at how much you're paying this person on the front end. Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm metrics based. I'm. I'm going to be really honest with you. And I actually, it started from my first front desk person that I ever hired. She said, look, you're paying me. You are paying me to do a job. You're giving me a salary to do a job. So you, if you're going to bonus me, bonus me for going above and beyond that number. Not just because I showed up and did my job. And so if they did their job.

Over and beyond, what percentage more would you give them? Like 10, 15%? Is that kind of your number?

D. It still goes back to 10. Would be my. Would probably be. But you have to look at that in again, they have to be hitting their weekly metric and the practice has to be making money in that week.

Because here's the dilemma I see. Deal. In theory, everything I talked about is great, but let's. I'm going. I'm talking about the reality. Reality is a clinic owner isn't making money and they're posting a job for 16, 18 an hour. They got terrible quality. And even if they hire someone, they stick around for six months. It wastes all this time training and they don't do. Do that, you know, and, and like, and so. And they're not spending money on marketing. Right. You know, so what, what advice would you give to someone like that? You know, like, how are you training them?

I mean, are you really training them or are you giving them on the job training and Sally's training Sue and Sally kind of sucks to begin with, or she's okay, you know, like, are you giving them what they need to be successful? We live in a society. You see it on TikTok, where you can watch 50 videos of quit your job. You can find a better one that pays you more money, and it's this whole big, long thing. But in reality, if you look at every person who's saying that, I'll bet you money right now, they're not training them to be successful and they're not having that person track their metrics.

So it's not the money. You don't think it's the money, it's them.

I think it's purpose, and I think it's purpose and products. I think if somebody does not know their product and they are not, and they're not trained to achieve that product, they get bored, dissatisfied, and they're out the door. I don't think. So.

This. This comes from identifying the right person, making sure that training actually makes them successful so that they could hit some of these bonuses that you give them. And third is that you have a clinic culture that makes them want to come to work outside of them just making money, right?

Yes.

Would that summarize it?

Yes. That's actually the first parts of my training is you got to have purpose and product well defined for that front desk. And they have to see themselves able to win. That's the other part of it. They have to see themselves winning. They have to track their metrics and see that they're hitting their targets week after week. Then you can start looking at bonusing. Don't look at bonusing until they're. You've given them that success.

Yeah, I love it. And you know, one thing, let's be honest, like, if you have some. If you have some, like, superstar, even rock stars right in your business, they love winning. So if you, like, if you can't help them win or that your business is not winning, it's really on you. Why they're not sticking around. You could blame inflation. You could blame this, you can blame that, you know, by the end of the day, is that you don't create that environment for them to win. They're gonna leave because they want to wake up and go to job and feel like they're winning and have purpose, and they love working there, you know?

Yeah, I know, but I want to touch on that. I want to touch on that real quick before you. It's not about giving them everything they want. It's not like me coming in and being like, oh, Rick, let me give you a hug today and let me buy you ice cream today. Or, oh, wow, you guys, you got one new patient schedule. Let's. Let's have a party and let me give you prizes. It's. Yeah, it's the setting of the target and them achieving the target. Now you can reward it. And by the way, in our practice, the, the biggest reward in our practice is not money. I'm not saying we don't help our staff or, you know, and give them that. It's the, the fist bumps, the high fives. That's the culture. That for the well done job, not the I did my job right, so I don't go. It's that. It's not a participation trophy. It's that we really busted our butt and won the game kind of reward. That's what I'm talking about. That helps them.

Okay. I love it.

Somebody said virtual receptionist.

Yeah. So, yeah, and. And that's actually the next topic I want to kind of jump on D before I actually want to talk about, because this is. I see the rise of virtual receptors, call hero. We're doing this right now. Like, it's amazing. We're getting 95 answer rates and 82 booking rates. But I also see the rise of these kiosks. You know, like, you talk to a screen, it's like going to McDonald's, you know, and then you press a button and. And maybe if you push a. You might talk to a clinic. You could talk to maybe a virtual receptionist working another clinic. You know, what is your thoughts about this trend? And do you think. Do you think you could actually turn our physical therapy clinics or chiropractic clinics or massage clinics into the McDonald's of, like, having these kiosks? Right. I want to hear from you since you've. You are the front desk guru, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So it's funny that you say that. And it's funny because somebody just called me, like, I was chatting with somebody about this recently that's a good friend, and he's like, you know, you really changed your mindset on this in the last eight months. And I said, yeah, I have. I was talking to this guy in New York, probably this. It's actually been a year. And he's like, this is my idea. We're gonna, we're gonna boom with this. And. And I was like, oh, virtual front desk, like, what? And the more I started thinking about it and really looking at it, if it's done right, it could really, you know, you've got these practices. Imagine if you could get a collective, maybe like five, six practice owners, small practices, you know, ones that are really already still struggling. They don't, they don't have that large staff that's producing at a high number. And you can get these groups together and they bring in this virtual platform and the one that you're talking about, like one of the ones that, you know, like they're, they've got somebody on the other side of that, right? So these five or six clinics are sharing, let's say, for staff. And those staff can work staggered hours, so now they can cover more hours and they've got this, this. I always like to say that some of these remind me of. If you ever watch the Jetsons as a kid, Rosie, she was like their maid and she was a robot. And I, I swear they, they make me think of that. But initially I was not keen on it because I was like, oh, technology. Partly because I had a bad experience in an office one time where I had to check myself in, but there was nobody on the other end of that computer. And so as I started to talk to people, these platforms that have a body on the other side of the computer and that body can hit, somebody hits the button and I, or I see from my side, if I'm the front desk person that's working remotely, I see that you've, you're checking in, in clinic A. Well, if I'm free, I can. And I hop right over there. I'm like, hey, Rick, how's it going today? I'm Dee. And you're no different than in the office in that sense. And you're like, you're like, oh, I'm doing pretty well. And I'm like, I see you're trying to, as one of the women I've talked to says, you know, I see you're trying to reschedule an appoint. Let me help you with that. Right? And now you've got that face to face interaction. I'm, I'm definitely leaning more toward that.

I've actually had interesting d. Because we just spent the first half and you talked about that, like people should be cutting their marketing costs and doubling down on like front desk because like you said, you know, there's average of $400 that is like missing from them, achieving your plan of care. And now like, and a lot of people who are using the kiosk, right, you know, it's really like slashing their admin costs down even further. Right. You know, so you think that like, you know, like, if they can't, you think that like from a, from a front desk, call it conversion rate, you think we could achieve those type of like, financial gains, like remotely as well. Okay.

But they have to be trained. Like, you can't. Here's the thing. Like, like, I, I am, I'm, I'm not touting myself in my training here. They have to be trained. You, if you, if they're not trained, then you, you're just as responsible of not training your your know, these are people that have to be trained and be on your like in your system. If you're going to do that, it's got to don't just be like, oh, I'm going to go hire some agency and whatever. You got to make sure these people are, they represent if you're going to do that and go that way. The and, and whatever you're using, you.

Think you could do a better job than a hu. Like a in person or you think it would be like the same or.

Worse if they're well trained and the system that you're using, the person can see you. I think you could get to a point where it is the same or better from a better sense that it could make you well for the patient. I would say the same for the practice. And looking at okay, we need to look at the survivability.

Like I, I, maybe I'm old.

Here's the thing.

Hold on. This is where I wanted to be you because I'm a little old school. Like to me, healthcare is very personal experience. I want someone to talk to me.

Yeah, but they would be there.

I want to push a button, talk to a kiosk. I already do that with my phone every single day. Now you're telling me that like it could be I don't buy that, D. I don't buy that.

I didn't say it would be right now. I said you could get to the point of that if it's done right. Right. Some of these kiosks are pretty amaz the and the results that they're getting if it's well trained staff. Right. So and it could also you have to look at, you have to look at the, you have to look at the overall picture here. If I can't see you okay, that's not. But if I can see you and you're the same guy that checked me in the last like a week ago and you're like, hey, D, how's it going? I haven't seen you in a week or so. Maybe we haven't crossed paths. No. You know, but it again it ha. If it's just somebody on the other end of the computer or you can't see them or okay, that to me is not the idea. Ideal scene. And again, demographics too.

I think if you're maybe the younger demographics like you know, maybe something in la, like in a high end, like maybe that might work. But if you're maybe like a democratic is all seniors, right? Or maybe like they're a little more like traditional, like maybe you might not.

Perform 50, 50, probably on that. The other thing with that is, though, there's the other side of the virtual, right? Like having a call center, right. So you're a really large practice and you have a call center and now your front desk staff that are in your office or even a smaller practice, if you can hire a virtual, you know, assistant virtual, somebody who's really a rock star on the phone, it's no different than having a scheduler in your back who does that for you. But if you can find somebody that you can train really well and just do that side of it virtual where I wasn't going to see you anyway because we were on the phone and then I can still have that body in the office who's really focused on getting patients checked in, handling that, that payment, really handling that plan of care being scheduled out. And they handle all the six, right?

Yes. Yeah.

Now the phone. This is where having a. Again, you could have a group of practices where you have six practices and four staff that are helping demand your phones. Now you guys are deferring the cost across, you know, six practices for that four people. And those people could have staggered hours. So now you can. Somebody's answering your phone on. There's ways to do, There are ways to do this. And my brain has been going, I, I'm, I don't think what I'm hearing from a lot of people is that not all more practices are in your thinking. You have to remember, I'm looking at it objectively. I'm not. I still have front office staff in my office. And you know, and our, we have a very op. Our clinic is completely open. So other than our eval rooms and our staff office, our front desk and our clinical side of things are completely open so patients can hear us, see us, you know, all of that. And that's where, where, you know, for me, that's, you know, really the next, the next thing we're looking at. So.

Okay, you know, Cool, cool. So in your, in your. If we're in a flash forward, like maybe five years from now, right. What percent of the practice do you think would be a combination of like, say these VRs slash kiosk slash call center versus like just traditional front desk? You know, like in house, like in person, you think it's 50, 50, like 80, 20.

It's gonna go. I think if it takes off, it's gonna go faster than we think. And here's why. A lot of doctor's offices are already doing something similar and they're not necessarily all doing it to the level that we can do it, because as PTs, we still have this, this desire to help people and have that relationship. And I, again, I'm not saying that's all doctors, but I do think bigger systems are already going there. And what's going to happen is they're going to train the patient to expect that and more people are going to already be open to it and it'll. It's going to come already.

The grocery stores are training us like the McDonald's.

You know, that's the thing we. But that's what we need to avoid. We need to make sure that if they. This, you know, as this takes off, that it's not the McDonald's kiosk or the one that I. This was a big health system. I went for my hearing and I walk in and there's two women sitting at the front desk and they're on the phone. So I'm like standing there politely, you know, like a patient. I'm a good patient. I'm early and everything. And they're still not looking at me, and they're still not looking at me. And finally I turn away because I'm feeling awkward. And right behind me is this big sign with a computer and it says, patient, welcome. Check yourselves in for us. And I had to enter all my information. I had to run my insurance card, run my credit card, which I avoided because nobody was there to handle me. And I. And then I had to seat myself and it was like that turned me off, like that I am not keen on it. This needs to be something that, when it takes off, there's that still that, that real relationship that's happening. If it's going to work or else we're going to become this digitized industry. That. That's not. Not. That's not what I'm. I'm not for that either. I want it to be a well handled situation.

Okay, Cool. Cool. We just got a couple minutes before we wrap up. The last thing I want to ask you. Yeah, no, this is because we're passionate about this topic, you know, and it's.

Time flies. What's that?

Yeah, I want to ask you, like, you know, like. So in essence, it sounds like you, you and your, your husband or business partners owning a practice together. Right? You know, know.

Yeah.

What advice or experience here? You could give on like other practice owners who also do business with their spouse and also sleeps with them, you know, but like, what advice you get. So that is like a healthy relationship, you know? Right. Well, like that life, that life, work, life, balance. Is that even possible? Or you both are doing like roller coaster sprints at the same time, you know? Right, right.

Yeah, yeah. Leave the practice. No, I'm just kidding. Leave your practice a thousand miles away and then you don't know. I'm just kidding. So this took us. I, you know, it's really an interesting topic that you bring up and I have a lot. I actually have quite a few friends whose spouse is part of, like they're, they're either co owners or the spouse is part of the practice. And you know, I think the first rule we all have to keep in mind, and it's the hardest rule. Mike and I finally just had to put it in on ourselves on this. You can't take business home with you. Don't bring. And he and I used to do that because we're both physical therapists. We had a rule that in the first hour that we were at home, we didn't go downloading our day with our awful patient or our bad experience or our. We just let. We just lived and we spent time together. And we had to put that in when we started working together because we didn't always work together.

How is it possible if your phone's buzzing with like someone who just quit or left you a voicemail?

Well, you know, you have to also have policy of might deal with it. Well, but when is, but when is. When is the right time to deal with that? Is it, is it a good idea to be looking at your ph and not being present with your spouse? Because that creates problems. You're ready together eight hours a day, potentially at work. So we even have a policy now. I've been in the practice, I've been in the practice in six years other than to be a patient. And so we don't, we don't bring, we don't talk about the practice heavily when we're together at home. Like even my business, I don't, we don't spend six hours rehashing my day or how that is. We talk about our day for a short bit, but then we move on to kids and family and dinner and going for our walk and stuff like that. And so, but we had to put policy in that we didn't bring the problems of work home with us. We let it stay at the office. And when we Went into the office at 8am unless it was that immediate fire. But we both didn't have to handle it right. So one of us would take that on. If the front desk quit, that was my thing to deal with. If a clinical quit, that was his. Oh, wow, that must mean we're done.

Yeah, no, that, that was, that was good. That was a good tip. Good experience. I hear this all the time in our community. We got a lot of people who are, you know, in the exact same situation is challenging. So. But that was amazing. What an amazing show. I really enjoyed chatting with you, Dee. And just before we sign off, one last question. If you only had like $1,000, okay, how would you spend it to grow your business next month? If you want to have $1,000, what would you do?

Oh, that's a good one. Where would I put it? I would. Okay, so this actually came up for us years ago. We were afraid to train our staff and take them offlines to train them. And if you go back to what I was talking about earlier with visits per, you know, visits to discharge and average reimbursement and the value, once you know the value of a patient and you start really looking at, well, let's say I take a PT offlines and that's 25, that's $75 for that hour to train them. And let's say I take a front desk offlines for an hour a week and that's $25 that I'm losing because they're not working in my mind. But now at the end of that month, you've spent $400 essentially, right? So now you still have five to six hundred dollars to spend on marketing. But what if that front desk could get, See, this is where my brain always goes is, what if they could get one more person converted at. Let's just say we'll stick with that $800 we were talking about earlier and that PT could get them to take a sign up for a full plan of care and the front desk could get them to schedule that full plan of care. You just spent $400. And just, even if it was just one patient to make an additional 400. So now next, the following month you have 1400 dollars to spend and you're, that's, that's the. Becoming more efficient and effective is your. Yeah, like you just keep, you keep doing that. Now you're, now you're in building a more efficient and effective practice. You have more to divert wherever you want it to go, but it comes from becoming more efficient and effective. Effective. And that's training staff. And it's not just front office. It's clinical need to be trained in sales too.

Okay, so that's the long thousand dollars. You would spend that thousand dollars to actually invest in training with your staff on something that is measurable and that works. That will actually drive revenue the next month.

Yep. Yep.

Okay.

And then you. And then you keep reinvesting that money in your staff while taking the. The revenue, and now you've got more revenue, and you're still investing every month in your staff.

That's amazing. T. Just before we sign off, how do people get to know you and find out more about you? Yeah.

So you can check me out@front officeguru.com and learn more about what I do and how I do it, or you can email me at dfrontofficeguru.com and I'll be happy to say hello, and we can schedule a call to chat.

Okay. Amazing. Dee, thank you very much. I'm really enjoying this session we had, and I'm gonna. I'm gonna talk to you soon, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much. You guys have a great day.

Okay, awesome. Bye, everybody.

Bye, guys.

If you found this helpful and want some free resources to help you be an even better clinic owner, head over to clinicbosstools.com we've got tons of free stuff on getting new patients, bone scripts, selling your clinic, managing clinical teams, and much more. Head over to clinicbosstools.com.