Ep. 64: How Company Culture Impacts Patient Care

Part 10:00

▶This is Beyond the Arches, where full-arch dentistry meets real talk. Let's get into it. I'm your host, Dr. Daniel Noorthoek. I am joined today by Nicholas Glick. Hello. And Lilia. Hi. How are you, Lilia? I'm good. How are you? Good. What do you think? Rock and roll. I'm good. Today, we're talking about the buy-in of the team and how that matters in full-arch. And for those of you at home, maybe why that even matters to you. What does that mean to a patient that a office culture is strong and that there is a buy-in from the other employees around?

And so this is something that we hold very, very important to us. I know we've talked about this a little bit before, but it is essentially how we move and operate. Relying on each other, getting that buy-in, forming that culture. Because at the end of the day, it's a lot more important than just the money and the income and the things that you can buy with said money and income. It's all a personal thing that we get to go home with, a good feeling of helping somebody and having done the best by patients. But it's also a good feeling as a person that runs an office to know that, you know, the assistant is going to be there for you.

The assistants can rely on each other. The doctor can rely on the assistant, et cetera. ▶So the staff that you go to, in our opinion, matters in many ways more than the implants and the teeth themselves. And I say that mostly because the implants themselves, the teeth, the implant screws, those are unfortunately a little bit more and more of a commodity in this digital age. Yeah. I mean, as a patient that's picking the whole large procedure, like you're assuming that they're doing their due diligence in the fact that they're picking a strong clinical team, someone that has a good restorative process, someone that's going to get you a set of teeth that you absolutely love. But if you walk into the clinic and you're greeted by some old grouchy fart that's just like, here's a deli ticket. Go ahead and sit down. We'll call your number in, you know, 30 minutes and you'll call to the back.

Like it's a terrible experience. You want to walk into an environment that is warm, you know, has inviting when you walk in, everybody knows your name. They say, oh, hey, Nick, like good to see you. Yeah. Dr. Laks and the team are wrapping up. They'll be with you in five minutes. Do you want a water? Do you want a coffee? Like you want to feel like you're like a part of an experience. You don't want to just be another number, which goes into that buy-in. And when patients or, you know, when team members want to be there, it's very infectious. And it kind of translates through the entire procedure. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's important. I, the moment I go into an office, a medical office, especially in some of the nasty roots, me, like I'm turned off immediately. I, to the point where I will find another provider. So I always think, you know, how do I want to feel when I go to an office? And that's what I try to, you know, picture our patients and then our whole team does that too.

Part 23:22

And I feel like I'll piggyback on that a little bit. Like when you walk in and you feel somebody that's like cold and they don't want to be there. Like, I feel like that's a good indicator of, like how the clinician is and how he's treating his staff or her staff and how they're trained, going to translate that to the patient care as well. Because like, if somebody, I mean, we all have bad days. So it is, but like, if you're really grouchy, you know, let's just say your receptionist or your front desk individual, like if you're super grouchy and just having a bad time, like it's probably because you were treated poor from the very second you walked in the door and like, that's just okay. They're going to treat their front desk or assistance for what's going to happen to you as the patient. The, we all can think of going to a restaurant as the easiest example, going to a restaurant, a server can make or break the experience. It can make the taste, the food tastes good and it can make it taste poor. And, um, that's a very easy one to relate to because we've all had that experience. I mean, obviously some of my top restaurants were, you know, in my mind, the food was amazing, but how much of that was really even the server, uh, and them being bought into what food they're, what, what food they're selling and how it's prepared really plays into the experience and just the overall, um, way that things go.

Um, and you know, when it comes to establishing an office, the, the, the backside of it that I think of quite often is that you can establish whatever protocol you want all the way from doing conversion dentures, um, milling, whatever you, whatever version of the protocol that, that a person wants to do for full arch, you can do it and you can do it well. ▶What you're doing as you're building this protocol for your staff is you're creating a world that has the least amount of hardships to overcome for both the patient and the staff.

And that doesn't mean that it's infallible and it breaks down in certain places. And, um, for us, it's always been important to deliver and have people and employees that pick up that slack to get that result to the patient so that they don't even feel it, you know, to carry on with the, with the server. It's like you've been waiting, the person's been laying on the food, the server comes out, they drop the steak on the ground. How fast can you make one and make it so that it's not any extra weight? Um, and so I feel like we've, that's one thing that we excel at is getting that buy-in where the patient, the end user being the patient, doesn't really feel those crazy little hiccups that happen along the way and what happened along any protocols way. Absolutely. And you know, I have the privilege of being one of the higher managers for, you know, the different offices and getting interview multitude of people. And

Part 36:22

one of the kind of things I picked up as a saying throughout the entire process is we're going to treat you as fair as we can from the very beginning. So that's one of the things I've beginning, because then that way you're going to treat the office fair, the co-workers fair, but more importantly, you're going to treat the patient's fair. And, you know, it all kind of starts and stems from that very initial interview of kind of setting like, hey, this is, we're a team here. This isn't just a job that you're going to come in from eight to five, clock in, clock out, like, are we all here to make a dollar? Sure. But at the end of the day, like, let's have some fun with it. Let's showcase that, hey, this is an expensive procedure. Like, let's give the patients the best possible experience and restoration and all that other fun stuff. But it's huge to have that right mindset of going into it as a team member saying like, okay, I'm here to have fun.

Like, let's be human throughout the entire process, which you can go to restaurants and you can just tell that somebody's scoffing at you. Can I get my burger medium rare? Just like, I was like, okay, well, this is the way I want it. Like, so yeah, it's, it all stems from, from that even initial kind of walk in. It's, um, it's very happy wife, happy life, happy staff, happy boss. You know, like it, that's the way it runs. Um, and a lot of this that we were planning on talking today, I think that the summary really comes from the, the way that we teach and impart that into, um, our new employees and into the people in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, vendors that we work with and that excitement that can generate and then translate over into the patient's experience is a lot through example. So I know on our plan sheet here, we're, we're going to talk about how we incorporate that culture, how we establish that culture.

▶And for us, it's not like read this book and then you're going to be fixed, but it's not do this and do that. And then you'll be happy. It's a lot of lead by example. it's a lot of teach show do and so like as an example you know tampa when we took over that tampa office the culture was totally fine but it wasn't really our culture and we spent it was a year right maybe even a little bit more we spent a year going there at least minimum once a month and essentially showing them you know you don't have to be concerned about talking to a doctor you don't have to worry about talking to a patient about a complication if you set them up correctly for it to show them really how we like to develop that but then also how that parlays into a better patient experience which is one of the difficult things speaking in this room here the three of us here are very frequently now in jacksonville to impart that and to build that and establish it and i've mentioned it before on the podcast but some friends that have made comments like cool you have culture or it is cool and it is does take time and it does take effort and it does require us senior leadership team to be there um and it can't be just sort of artificially manufactured and just present all of a sudden um it has to require that being there um and then all of that being said i don't i think we did a really good

Part 49:51

job not micro managing it it's more it's not that we have to do a lot of work but it's more we have to be there to force that down their throat it just sort of comes through osmosis and experience and time um and for me when anybody reaches out to me like there's something i thank you for like staff wise i'm like well that's how i would want to be treated as well and we're a team number one and you know anything can be figured out and solved but i think this main thing is just like being able to happy to train someone nothing is worse than having like some sorts and we just know it's a big regret to ask for anything of how do you do this it's all new stuff so we all i've seen it on all our team families that was having to help and training training is a huge part of it there's so many jobs that you start and they're like you go in for an interview and they say when can you start today and then they throw you in the fire and it's like okay well then you're just gonna have a poor experience through the entire process because like there's nothing worse than to use a restaurant metaphor again but like an analogy you go there and you're like oh what's on the hamburger and they're like i don't know and it's like okay like that's your job like what do you mean you don't know so like with our team members whether that's treatment coordination team restorative team even the surgeons like with surgeons with dr seth mcduffie doing the surgeries in tampa like you were over that course of year we're not just doing the culture install but like we're doing you know actual install of methods and systematic approaches and how we handle certain cases complications straightforward cases whatever you set up for success and like he feels like he can have conversations with you as clinician to clinician and handle cases appropriately for the patient base but same with like you know the treatment coordination team like let's ensure that they have a full training protocol and system that they can feel confident in themselves because when you show up to work and you're confident in your own skills that's when it translates to patients being like oh my goodness lilia you're so kind you're so sweet you know everything well you didn't know everything to start but you invested all these invested need for the training and now it's a it's a fruit of that kind of product of you know the training cycle so you know it's something that i don't think a lot of places value because they do look at it as a raw raw instagram reel of you know oh culture so important but like it is like patients also can pick up when dang this is the fourth doctor that's seen me in my six months that i've been here or new faces all the time like they might make that little joke to you when they walk in the front door it's a little bit that kind of means that i'm like what's going on here i keep on seeing new people so like we pride ourselves on staff retention and keeping the same folk and i know dr northex made the joke to me plenty of times but i will share that same bit to the team members like i don't want when we hire somebody like i want you to call me and say hey nick like did you know that there's a little cuban restaurant down the block that's so good like i don't want you calling me in two weeks saying like nick this isn't what you promised me like that's no fun for anybody in the system so i don't want to have those phone calls so like let's set up for success let's have it in an environment that once we do identify that this is the right person and that's i guess such a long way of them going a little ramble here but like a little bit about the culture is also picking the right people not just the first person and like ensuring that the right person is coming on to the team to then fit in well and then also from there they'll be able to pick up and be able to respect the patient base and showcase that to them so yeah you know it's it's a long-winded piece but training and just being human through the process is paramount to success if you if you watch enough instagram reels or you've been paying attention your whole life to different motivational speakers they'll kind of tout it's about more about the right person than it is about the right set of skills and we have certainly taken that to heart and we've certainly like imparted that into the way that we bring a person up into our space you guys are both examples of it you're not traditionally trained we didn't steal you from a different center and i think that that gives us a really big competitive edge because everything that you've learned about it is about this protocol and everything that you bring to the table isn't this um archaic sort of cobwebby you know bad process but you also have an excitement towards it because we all like to you know be able to get the best out of whatever you're doing and so we've been able to do that do it with these guys like you know a good employee here or a good employee here is somebody that really wants to learn or somebody that really wants to apply themselves uh and so that's always been a secret of our success is hiring that server that we had a great experience with what's your experience fire dental experience we don't care yeah we'll get you there and and just

Part 514:43

treating people like you want to be treated the golden rule but also like treating patients like they were your own family member like on the sheet here we have uh stories where your team saved the day for a patient like that's a nice canned bit but like it's also a very organic way to talk about it like there's been times where it's life and cases may you know a zirconia might have a little issue or pti or something like that and you know i know in a personal life if i have an issue with my car on a friday at 4 30 i might call in i'm not gonna get anybody but if i do they're gonna say come back on monday or come in tomorrow and there's nothing more frustrating because you're in a situation that you need it and there's been plenty of times where lillia's rallied the troops on a friday with you know the restorative team dr lax and they've stuck it out until five six o'clock at night to deliver a set of teeth but it goes further than just that there's also the lab that is 10 minutes away that we have a lab manager ceramics all doing their part to be able to provide that for the patient is that necessarily in their scope of job work yes and no i mean they're paid for you know the time that they put in but in the same breath like they're willing to do that they're willing to say to their husband their wife hey i'm going to be a little bit late because i have this going on and i think the culture also of a good organization goes further than just the employee it goes to the employee's family like you know i know when i talk to my wife hey it's going to be a late night okay great i'll walk the dogs i know the same bit with you guys like if you have a case early morning case late night case or you know some overflow it's like the culture is so strong here that it also impacts the rest of the you know the kind of environment of them saying like okay do your thing like i understand you're passionate about it so like totally fine see you at 6 30 we can walk the dogs then so it's it's huge when you do have the foundation set correctly to be able to save the day for the patient's we are very intentional to pick like-minded people and therefore get along very closely and pretty much everybody here is a close personal friend of mine but it's not a forced rah-rah like hey lilia we're all gonna go admin team and go you know take tony robbins new force or or whatnot um it's not a forced rah-rah this is what we're gonna do it's organic and it comes out as a friendship and then there's a professional side and i think it's very healthy the way that we try to establish things every time every time i hire a new person or i'm involved in hiring a person um i always tell them 80 of your day i want you to enjoy to the fullest extent there's plenty of work to be done that you should be able to find 80 of joy and the other 20 20 is just going to suck because it's work and you still have to get up at the end of the day um and if that number changes in the balance then we've got to talk because i want it to be 80 20 and um i feel like that's been a good rule to go by um for me is that making sure like you said we're all friends number one it's not enough anything if you're disagreeing with someone or not and it's like everyone's not gonna love everyone but at the end of the day i treat everyone like friends because we're all working hard and you know i'm gonna make silly jokes and comments because it's just an athlete there's a hierarchy for decision making there's certainly has to be a hierarchy for

Part 618:15

doing the work etc but one thing that i think is cool is that no one is above including myself is above sweeping the floor changing the changing the uh chairs running to go pick xyz up or um whatever it may be and um that's that's what i feel the most success from that that's what makes me feel the most successful sort of in my career is that i know that um you know i can change over a chair for nadia and she appreciates it but i also know that i can rely on her to if i get stranded somewhere if she gets stranded for somewhere they're going to be taken care of in the same way um which is really very gratifying and rewarding oh yeah i mean we've talked about it on other podcasts here but our other episodes is you know dr northey spoke at me plenty of times like oh man look i know you got to get back you have so much work to do and like maybe when we opened a new center or something like that but it's the systematic approach from an operation standpoint is only as good as the people that are doing it and when that goes translates directly into the culture behind things like there's plenty of times where i'm kind of maybe twiddling my thumbs because the hierarchy of decision making is being owned by each and every individual like yesterday there was a great example we needed to order more cross but instead of just giving me an open answer like hey this is what we need they you know the individual that needed it not necessarily the decision maker always but reached out find out how much they needed what the product was going to be how much it was going to cost and then also helped with the decision making of like hey you know what i know we're going down a different process late or tomorrow or we're using a different vendor so like here's what i found but just know that this is what i need but here's some other solutions to the process as well so like it makes sense to say hey this is what i need and like okay well that that's when the culture kind of breaks down because people don't feel ownership of their their silo yeah and you know also that when the time comes for them to have an emergency you know a family emergency or whatnot that set of teeth isn't going to get dropped on on the table the person next to them is going to pick it up and finish it or you know when five o'clock rolls around they're not like oh see you later and leave everything on the table if they do need if they do have a hard out they're gonna find somebody to cover it and we'll get finished all the way through yeah and you know it continues there's so many stories they can go but i mean i'll leave a shout out carly doing the producing right now she's with our marketing team and does a lot of like the patient advocation stories and success stories and posting all over but like when we started this podcast or dr northwick had the grand idea like hey let's get patients like a kind of a peek behind everything like no doubt she picked it up and learned the different processes you know didn't even skip a beat of saying yes i'll do it and like i think that was because a we hired the right person in the very beginning for it but b she found out like okay this is the part of my job this is the culture i'm in like i'm gonna pick it up i'm gonna do the best of my abilities for it and now we're dropping a podcast every tuesday so like it's incredible when you have the right people to do it like it just becomes something that isn't expected but it's like refreshing to know that it's going to get done allowing for ownership of each individual thing as a person in a leadership role both you guys are included is to me the secret to success if you don't allow for ownership you're going to kill yourself and you're not going to create a good world that that person can work in it will always a job to them and they will only know and have and function in the role that you tell them to do and like life is all about growth and maybe the growth opportunity isn't always here at dun & morn but if that individual is going to take the step to a different walk of life different you know corporation different industry like they're now more set up for success than they were when they walked in the door with us and like that's super you know satisfying for me knowing that like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody like you're able to take somebody

Part 723:09

but like if it's not you're now like the culture has allowed you to grow into that which is which is really satisfying yeah let's finish this out with um a story of uh just a random story from the team of when something was surprisingly the culture and above and beyond to meet the needs of the patient i was gonna say yeah i they've heard my voice too many times on this already so this is on you i know the one i think you have the same one yeah but i think we've told

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oh this is maybe more in the early days i would say there's some there's so many random ones i remember i dropped off a night guard in someone's personal house because we were having some sort of issues with tripping and she was really adamant about wanting it and i just was like i don't want her to be disciplined it's not that we didn't um but we really don't want her to be upset at the company upset me because i programmed you know we'd send it out so i dropped it off not gonna do that now we have so sorry but uh there's some so yeah i'm getting late i'm getting early going to jacks like all those things that we do that maybe patients capitalize a lot of times patients are but really want to get in to a certain day to be very specific i need this fee for surgery school i start a job again i will make it happen i don't know how i'm gonna make it happen but we'll be in there at 6 a.m dr dan whole team not just myself but it's nice to see the dedication which is great because it isn't a whole lot of like special procedure you know if you want to add there isn't a whole lot of back and forth if we need to add anything in jacksonville or we need to go in at 6 a.m lillian knows that everyone's going to follow so if she says it's going to be at 6 a.m she just has to tell me that we're going to be in there and we're going to get in and then at 6 a.m and that everyone else is going to follow in everything will flow along nice um which i think is a testament to the culture because she has the ability and the power to say yep we're going to do it without doing all these routes to jump through doesn't waste any of her time but also she has the comfort and the knowledge to know that like i'm going to tell this patient that and i'm not going to have to deal with them being mad when i have to go back to them and say that i was wrong my favorite personal not my favorite but one of my favorite personal uh stories since you're on this is about nick um and it's really just a funny very funny story actually so when we were just the lab service and we were servicing other offices we had a person in the lab up in jacksonville who was her duty was to pack the case that had been done overnight into the shipping box and in that shipping box was also a return label um for no sometimes it would be a return label if we needed to get the records from them sometimes it would just be the one way if it was a finished product well she packed a return label for a different office uh inside of um the one and then packed the return label to our office on the package itself and this final delivery had to be out um what office was it it was columbia south garland wasn't it no it was in delaware it was a brand new potential grew up brand new potential and so the evening went by she dropped off the box at where she showed up where the fedex delivery drop center and it's the next day nick went into the lab and it was at our doorstep because it had it didn't even go to memphis dynasties dropped off in jacksonville all the way up to memphis and then returned back to our doorstep right to our doorstep yeah and it was the first case we'd ever done with this office and so the testament to nick and his buy-in um i was in surgery he came to me and he said this is the crazy scenario what do i do and i said do what you gotta do and so he booked a one no it was a round trip and you had a different layover different city that you were leading and he said do what you gotta do and so

Part 827:30

i was in surgery left didn't have anything literally didn't have anything on him just was getting to get that delivered hand delivered it to the office got it in time basically a couple hours late and um then then had to figure out how to get home because he had gone without any plan just out um so that was pretty that was pretty awesome there's lots of we call them done on miracles um but i think you could break them down to be like done in one culture instead of miracles and one works hard for you yeah absolutely yeah it's funny because like you said earlier the patient would never know this is all behind you and this doesn't happen i would say anymore but like these are all things that you would never know and there are some fires will bring up on time they do not like you know and you also shout out daniel too oh absolutely he's saying maybe he's not fly somewhere he would do it but he's driven to draxtonville overnight to a case that didn't you know but it's lost whatever it might be and he's totally would do whatever it takes yeah i mean that's the nature of our beast is a lot of patients are on timelines of things and like we gotta we made the commitment to you that we are going to fulfill it and we're going to do whatever it takes so whether that's getting a plane get on the road work late work early we're going to get it done and um but that doesn't start it doesn't happen without the culture in the body yeah so if you're listening to this and you want a product made by a team that is fully committed and fully bought into the process and the culture and the product we we create stand behind uh please let us know uh email us call us schedule a consultation we're more than happy to talk uh to you you'll be talking to a doctor pretty much as long as you need to we'll be more than likely talking to lilia um but uh please give us a call and let us know and uh thank you guys for being excellent employees and excellent parts of Done In One uh and coming on the podcast to talk about this of course thanks for having us