Am I Sabotaging My Practice?

As an addendum to last week’s “Money Matters” episode, Dr. Kuba and Bethany dig into the various ways that a team member can unintentionally sabotage a practice. While collections (last week’s episode) is foundational to practice success, there are many other seemingly insignificant mistakes that can substantially impact success. Dr. Kuba and Bethany discuss several important ones to consider. This power packed twenty minute episode will provide dental teams with multiple areas to review in their practice. 

📣SUBSCRIBE TODAY!! Learn all about protecting your practice from potential risks. Become a subscriber TODAY!  

Don’t forget!! Free and paying subscribers will have the ability to access our FREE WEBINAR “CUSTOMER SERVICE ON STEROIDS”. It is meant to be free training for the whole team, so become a free OR PAID subscriber today! 

DON’T FORGET the plethora of resources on The Hub. Check out our highlighted HUB documents for the week! 

⭐HUB HIGHLIGHT⭐

Office Manager Roles Bundle

Check this bundle out if you want clearer roles, better accountability, and smoother day-to-day operations in your practice. 

Business System Documents Bundle

Build stronger systems and create more consistency in your practice with these ready-to-use forms, scripts, and templates. 

Don't forget to check out our social media for more
Managing Dental Drama FB
Managing Dental Drama IG

Connect with the Managing Dental Drama Community!
Managing Dental Drama Membership Club Sign Up

Wait! There's More!
We want to hear YOUR voice!
Text a 2-minute voice memo to 214.326.4605 with your questions, comments, real-life examples, or tips for a chance to have YOUR voice on the air!

Interested in the Leadership Summit?
Friday, September 18, 2026 from 8:30 – 4:30
Inquire or register TODAY:  HelloBethany.com

Transcript

0:01
Are you looking for a podcast where you can hear from real people regarding their real dental drama? If so, then

0:09
you've come to the right place. Join hosts Bethany Penny and Dr. Reena Kuba as we dive into the solutions we've

0:17
created and the mistakes we've made while managing dental drama.

0:22
Let's get started. Hello, managing dental drama community and happy Monday to you. Dr. Dr. Kuba and I have some great content slated for you today. But

0:31
before we jump into that, I wanted to give you guys some encouragement. You've got to go and register for our

0:39
leadership summit. It is on Friday, September 18th from 8:30 to 4:30. It is here in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex,

0:48
actually in the Colony. And it is a phenomenal all day seminar packed full

0:54
of content to help you and key team members become better leaders in your practice. And so don't wait any longer.

1:03
Click in the show notes today and go sh sign up for that course. You're not going to want to miss that. Also, we

1:10
have our May content that is still available. If you are a subscriber or if you are not yet a subscriber, you should

1:17
become one. It is an inexpensive way to get really great content this month on managing protection for your practice.

1:26
Just doing everything possible to safeguard it, including diving into medical emergency training and things like that. So, go and subscribe today so

1:35
that you can get that content. And then the last reminder is don't forget that we've got our hub. The hub is something

1:43
something that we've created to have all these downloadable documents and training resources to help you have the

1:50
content you need for your team. So again, in the show notes, you can click on the hub and go and check out all of our content that we have available. Now,

1:59
before I switch gears into today's topic, I do want to let you know that this topic today is in so many ways a

2:07
continuation of last week's content. So, I would encourage you if you haven't listened to last week's episode yet on

2:14
money matters, go and do so first and then come back and listen to this topic today on sabotaging your practice. And uh listen closely. Lots of good content.

2:26
Have a great rest of the week.

2:30
Hey friends. So, as we were wrapping up the episode, um that we talked about the

2:36
money matters and the saboturss and Bethany and I kind of kept talking about after we quit recording and we thought

2:43
this would make great um not footage, great um content content.

2:51
It's it adds an exclamation point to I think what we were already talking about because there's multiple ways that team members can unintentionally

2:58
sabotage the practice and we were like oh we ran out of time to talk about this this so we just did this little addendum addendum. Yes. So and I think for me if

3:07
I was if I was sitting there and going do I do I have a sabotur how am I you know what does that mean exactly? And I

3:14
know we talked some about that in the other episode, but I think these other examples we have are going to even more things that maybe haven't occurred to

3:22
you, but like we've seen live and going, okay, this could be a pervasive problem even if it's not a

3:31
true maybe you've got great collections people and that's not your problem. But um so here here's an example. Can I just dive in? Do it.

3:39
Okay. So, um, we get, um, scheduling institute comes into our office once a year and does their phone training and

3:47
and I, you know, I always think, man, why am I paying for this again? Is my team going to be like, oh gosh, you know, we've already talked about this.

3:54
Is it the same training? I tell you, we glean something every time they're there that makes us better that somebody didn't get the first two times they had the training and now they're getting it.

4:05
Maybe their role changed a little bit.

4:07
Now they're like, "Oh, I get it. now I am the one answering the phone some or whatever it is, right? So, um we're

4:14
still going to continue to do it because we gain our ROI and make improvements every time. But one of the things they do is they cold call competitors.

4:25
And one of the calls that that they made, so you know, I said, "Yes, call this practice down the street." So the

4:32
trainer called that practice and she's like, "Okay, what what is the scenario?

4:36
Like who am I and what are we So we were like, "Well, say your kid's 8 years old and in pain, have a toothache and whatever." So she's like, "Okay." So she

4:44
calls our competitor down the street, and I'm not joking, y'all, when I say this. This literally happened. She calls, the lady who answers the phone

4:52
was like, "Hello, Dr. XYZ," whatever their name is. And you know, how can I help you? And the trainer was like, "Oh,

4:59
um, I'm new to town and we're trying to find a dentist and my kid has a toothache, so I I really need to get my kid in cuz their tooth has been

5:07
hurting." And the person on the other end, the receptionist who picked up the phone says, "Oh, well, um, I mean, we

5:14
can get you in, but honestly, to fix whatever the problem is, we don't have an appointment for that until June." And

5:21
mind you, this was in April. And all of us listening to this call are jaws dropped cuz we were like

5:29
like you know and my heart is beating going, "Oh, for the love of God, please if any of my team members have ever done that, like hopefully they're seeing now

5:37
how awful that is." And I think even the trainer was just kind of like her eyes got big and we're all like not making eye contact because we didn't want to bust out laughing

5:46
while we're on this call. Um gawing, gasping, whatever the the reaction was.

5:51
Um, and so the trainer was like, "Oh, so you wouldn't be able to help my kid till June." "Yeah, no, we don't have any treatment appointments until June." "Oh,

6:00
okay. Okay then, thanks." And we hung up. Gosh. And so on multiple levels where I'm like, first of all, from my

6:07
viewpoint of going, you didn't even ask, "I'm" or say, "I'm so sorry your kid's hurting," or, "Gosh, that's terrible to hear," or, you know, whatever. Like the

6:16
the first answer was, "Oh, I mean, you can come in, but we wouldn't be able to help you until June for 2 months. We

6:23
have nothing to help your kid." Yeah.

6:25
So, I'm like, "That's a problem in so many other ways, too." Like, you know, consulting from you going, "Oh my god."

6:33
But from my side going, I know what we spend in marketing to get the phone to ring. The phone rang. Somebody somebody

6:40
saw our ad or got word of mouth and called us.

6:44
Yeah. wanting to schedule in our practice and we basically said, "Uh-uh, don't come here." Right.

6:50
We can't help you, right? Oh my god. Yeah.

6:54
So, I don't know if they truly didn't have an opening till June. Like, is the doctor on sabbatical for 2 months and like got nobody to cover? Like, what is

7:02
happening? But that receptionist, like, you don't even know what the problem was. Maybe the kid had a canker sore and you lost this patient because

7:10
you assumed that it was something that they would need help with that they couldn't be treated. I we I was just I was dumbfounded. I was like, "Oh my

7:17
god." And then me going, "Oh my god, I hope that's not my team that's doing that." Yeah.

7:23
So, how how can we you know, I'm sure everybody listening right now is going, "Oh my god." Yeah.

7:30
How do we what do we a And I The first thing when you shared that example with me is I guarantee you that practice

7:37
owner does not know that the phone was answered that way.

7:43
And it is. It's jaw-dropping to go, "Really? Somebody would say that over the phone?" I can't tell you how many times I hear a new patient essentially

7:51
be turned away because of of the receptionist at the front.

7:55
Well, and and what we see or hear a lot of is um you know, hello, thank you for calling Kuba's office. Um yeah, do you

8:02
take uh DHMO Metife? No, we don't.

8:09
Okay. Do you know who does? Yeah, Dr.

8:12
Smith's office down the street takes DHMOs. Why don't you try calling them? What? Yeah.

8:17
What? That is not okay. And I won't go into deep dive into right now. Maybe we do another episode for that. But or how do you I know a lot of people are going,

8:25
"But we don't take DHMOs. Like we can't help that patient." Yeah, you can. Yes.

8:29
And so how do you recoup that? How do you train your team to try to recoup?

8:32
Does that mean every DHMO patient's going to come to you? No. but could you get some of them that are going to see the value in your practice and why they should spend the money out of pocket?

8:43
Um, so just even things like that that we tend to see where where your untrained team is saying stuff that is

8:52
like pushing people out the door and you don't even know it. Right.

8:56
So, this goes back to what we said in the other episode. Please listen. Yes.

9:01
Listen to what your team is saying. Go back and listen to those Yeah. calls like that is vital to know what is being said and help your team

9:10
strategize. How do we navigate that phone call if we truly do not have any availability until June? First of all,

9:18
what are we doing to try to solve that problem? But secondly, how do we answer the phone in that case? Cuz I'm sure sweet Susie, whoever this was that

9:26
answered the phone, probably thought she was trying to help this parent because heaven forbid their kid be in pain for 2

9:33
months. She probably thought, "Oh, the poor child. You need to call somewhere else." That that is likely what she was thinking. But ultimately, there's got to

9:42
be a better solution to that that does not involve turning a patient away that has called your practice. So, we got to

9:49
strategize on this cuz this is absolutely sabotaging the practice. Most practices, and I would say 99% of them

9:57
need a steady flow of new patients. And so if we're unintentionally turning new patients away, we are therefore sabotaging the practice.

10:06
My guess is if you're listening to this podcast right now, you are interested in growing your practice and awareness is the number one thing you can be doing

10:14
right now to go, God bless what is being said on the phones. Even if you have templates and you have all of that, like these things pop up and if we haven't

10:23
recognized it, talked about it, trained on it, who knows what your front is saying with all of these random things that pop up and if you're not doing your

10:32
due diligence to pay attention to this, um you you are turning away patients without realizing it. And it's gut-wrenching.

10:41
Absolutely. when you realize it's happening in your own practice or you find out. I mean, even for me, the competitor down the street, my heart goes out to her. I'm like, "Oh my god,

10:49
you have no idea. I'm sure that your practice receptionist is saying that." No. A and if that's the case, if that's truly how y'all want to strategize it,

10:57
which again, from a consulting standpoint, I'd caution you against that. Turn off all marketing then. Do not pay to have your phone answered like

11:06
that. Turn it all off. Don't waste the money then if you're going to just intentionally or or unintentionally turn

11:12
new patients away. Um, we also talked about another way that team members

11:18
might be sabotaging and that is not being diligent about patient

11:26
retention. We've talked about that a lot on the podcast, but this to me is an area where I see team members, we have a

11:35
system in place for what our expectation is to keep that patient in our care and then we don't follow through with that

11:41
system for whatever reason. We just we get busy. We we think it's not important.

11:48
And so a patient like let's say in your practice when a patient leaves they we our expectation is when they are leaving

11:56
the practice they are scheduling at a minimum their next hygiene visit and if they need treatment our attempt is to

12:03
also schedule treatment as well. I can't tell you how many times I'm in a practice where the sweet Sally at the front is attempting to schedule, but she

12:12
may ask it in a way that's like, "Well, let's see. Little Johnny's going to be due back in November for his cleaning.

12:19
Is that something you want to go ahead and get on the books?

12:22
Is it truly an option? Do because the system is Johnny needs to be pre-ooked for November?" But if you're saying to the parent, "Is that something that you

12:30
want to go ahead and get on the books?" then you're you've got a 50/50 chance that mom says no, I'll call you closer to time. So that's one system that we

12:38
may just be sabotaging oursel by not just following the system of everybody leaves with an appointment. But then to make matters worse, what I see quite a

12:47
bit is if Johnny's mom left the practice without prescheduling, then we are not

12:53
following up with Johnny's mom as his appointment time or his recall time approaches. we're not following up and therefore we are losing that patient.

13:04
Now, what do you say to the people that are like, "Oh, well, our system will flag us when they're due or overdue." What is your response to that?

13:13
I that makes me very nervous to rely on something, some system or some flag or

13:21
some task or however you'll have it arranged to remind to me. Yes, I'm glad you have that, but that should never be our beall end all solution. We should

13:30
also be pulling the appropriate reports or going back and looking for those people that have slipped through the cracks. But I don't see a lot of teams

13:36
doing that which means then we are sabotaging the practice because ultimately if we're turning new patients

13:44
away over the phone like the example you just shared and then also we are not doing a diligent job of retaining our

13:52
our patients or pursuing those that are not currently retained in our practice.

13:56
We are literally dwindling those patient numbers.

13:59
Which this is where, and I know we've talked about this before, and it's not the scope of this, but something I've heard a lot of is, well, we're busy right now. It's okay if these patients

14:07
met m metriculate out. I would say there's probably 1 or 2% of offices that are in that boat where they truly can afford to let patients metriculate out.

14:16
Um, so if you cannot accommodate them and you're like, eh, it's okay if they come or not, that's going to bite you in the butt at some point. If you are

14:24
trying to grow, if you're trying to retire, different story. If you're trying to grow your practice, not actively trying to retain every single patient is very costly. Yeah.

14:37
It will come back to bite you.

14:39
So, um I think the example you gave, if you don't mind sharing, the one client of yours.

14:45
Yes. So, in one of the practices that I work with, we went back and audited um 6 months ago. I said, "Let's go to a schedule 6 months ago and let's pick a

14:54
day to go through." And there were about 13 patients on the schedule um on this particular day. And I said, "I just want to see

15:02
how many of those are have an appointment because again, everybody should have an appointment in the practice. And then if they don't have an appointment, I want to see our follow-up

15:10
attempts to get them back on the books." And out of the 13 patients that were on the schedule that day, four of them had an appointment.

15:20
and nine of them did not. And out of the nine that did not have appointments, only two of them had been followed up

15:29
with or there was proof showing that we had followed up with them. Guys,

15:35
that is seven out of 13 that were not retained in the practice and there was no effort made to retain those.

15:43
And we know how much we spend on marketing dollars to get these patients into our offices. And if you're saying, "Oh, I don't I don't do Google ads. I

15:51
don't do anything in the community. I don't whatever." Well, even your word of mouth, like that's still you have to tap dance on your head to keep these

15:59
patients happy to keep patients coming back to you. Unless you're resting on your laurels going, "Oh, my competitors suck, so I'm the best of the bunch."

16:06
When is that going to change? So, it's you can't even rest on that because people will. If you if yours is

16:14
mostly word of mouth, but people are calling you and are going, "Oh, they don't have time to accommodate me," they will find another source. They're like,

16:21
"Well, yeah, this is who came recommended, but I can't ever get in or it's not convenient to my house. I I was driving all the way out there when I could get in. They've gotten busier.

16:31
They can't accommodate me. They can't be the only show in town. I will seek out another office." Yeah.

16:37
So, that's going to last for only so long as well. I agree 100%. And again, I think costly is the right word. We don't

16:46
really evaluate the cost of either not getting that new patient or losing this current patient. And it absolutely is

16:53
costly. They will go elsewhere. It's just a matter of time. Even now, as we say this, and you and I didn't talk about this, but I want to add one more

17:01
that I think is a sabotage, and that is missing the phone call or the the contact altogether.

17:10
It's so common now to have one person at the front that does miss phone calls.

17:16
She's checking somebody in or checking somebody out out and that phone call goes to voicemail and then she doesn't get back to those voicemails until the

17:24
end of the day. Well, if any one of those was either a new patient or one of our patients trying to get scheduled,

17:30
they are moving on. And we get a lot of online requests now that usually we get notified via email. Sometimes we'll have

117:40
texting capacity that they've texted the office for an appointment or something like that. And again, the early bird

17:47
catches the worm. Like, if you're going to see that email come through, respond to it immediately. Do not wait until the end of the day or until the next day.

17:57
They have moved on. I I just did this for a an appointment that I was trying to get scheduled. Reached out to a

18:04
place, couldn't get through to them. um emailed, nobody ever emailed me back, not that day, and next day I was calling

18:12
a different office. So, people move on very, very quickly. So, I think we unintentionally sabotage by not

18:19
responding quickly to those missed calls or those missed online contacts. And if you, you know, if you're like, well,

18:28
we're just too busy. I couldn't find another front desk. I just can't get to it right now. I mean, know that maybe that's why you can't get off of

18:35
insurances because those patients will come to you because you're the one who takes their insurance, but you'll never get off of it then. Yeah.

18:41
So, it's again when you step back and you look at the big picture, these are all little things that have huge impacts.

18:49
Making sure that you're responding timely is a huge impact.

18:54
Um, and people don't have time now to sit and wait for you. Who knows what they're, you know, so many people that have like calleds all day and they had

19:01
this window of time to reach out and make an appointment. Yeah. And you missed it. They're going to move on. They're gone.

19:09
Yeah. So, I think just reassessing your systems and I know like the challenge of that is if you do have the one front desk, we're about to be in that boat.

19:16
Our front rock star front desk is going off on maternity and not coming back.

19:21
And we have not looked to hire and replace and I don't want to. I'm going to drag my feet as long as I can. But those are things that I need to be mindful of and going, "Okay, not only

19:30
are we checking in, checking out, but are we collecting? Are we reappointing, but are we answering our phones quickly?

19:35
Are we paying attention to all of those things that she was really in charge of doing?

19:40
And now we are going to be stretched thin at the front. But we've got to figure out who or where to make sure that that doesn't slip through the cracks." I think that's one thing that

19:49
helps our new patient rate be solid is when you've got the competitor down the street saying we don't have anything

19:57
till June. You know who she's calling next is me and we can get you in that next day or get you in today if you want cuz we've we've prepped the schedule

20:05
where we've got those open blocks for that. We've we've kept space open for things down the road. So, um paying

20:13
attention to all of those things. I think the other comment I was going to make when you said um how retention falls to the wayside where you know, oh would you like to make this appointment?

20:23
No. Okay. Yeah, just call us when you're ready.

20:26
That should have been like do you want to come in? Are you still like you came in in the morning today in November. Do you want to come in in the morning or in the afternoon? Like you are giving

20:34
options and you're trying to get them in. It's not It's kind of like when we say, "Okay, Johnny, do you want to get in the chair and we clean your teeth?" No.

20:41
And Johnny says no. What are you going to do, Johnny? We're going to get in the chair. Do you want strawberry or mint?

20:47
Right. For your toothpaste. Like we're giving choices, but we're giving choices that get us to the result that we want. That's right.

20:53
And we want them to schedule. So that right there, giving that out messed it up. So even making sure you're not your

21:01
team isn't giving an option that's really shouldn't be an option. Um but then if you're talking about like in

21:08
that office that there were seven that had zero followup.

21:12
Yeah. And I'm going to stretch out and say I doubt it's that it's any employee doesn't care. I think they probably do care. They're caring. They're trying to

21:19
build their practice. They're part of this, you know, newer, younger office and they're giving it their all. But calling patients to try to get them

21:27
scheduled is really not a glamorous or fun thing to do. And they know they're probably going to get like, you know, of the seven, six are probably going to go straight to voicemail. So they're like,

21:35
"Eh, I would rather do XYZ." and they'll find other tasks to do that are more glamorous, more fun, more seemingly

21:42
productive. Um, so in our office, it really made all the difference when we had a person. Yeah.

21:50
You are directly the person who your side task is staying on top of retention.

21:55
Mhm. And once we did that, now it doesn't mean she's the one who makes all the calls and does all of that, but she's the one who when she has downtime

22:03
and she knows that's her task, she is leaning into her team members and going, "Hey, what are you doing right now? You don't have a patient. Call as many of

22:10
these patients as you can. Document where you're doing that." And then we've got our system of going, "Okay, we're calling first. Next, we're going to send an email. Next, we're going to send a

22:18
Right." like we've got our system of how we're trying different methods to get that patient to respond so that they will either respond either way to go,

22:26
"Sorry, we're not coming to your office anymore. We'd rather wait till June cuz she takes my insurance. My kid can be in pain that long." Or

22:34
we're actively trying to say, "How can we get you back in?" So, until we're told that you do not want to come back and see us, we're going to continue to try to reach out to you.

22:42
That's right. So, I think that would be my tip is making sure you've got a directly responsible individual from

22:48
last month's podcast that you've got you're making sure you're assigning that.

22:53
Yes. Yes. I think that's such a key takeaway on this is all of these really ultimately can be solved if we've got somebody that is responsible for

23:02
evaluating that category and ensuring that we're not unintentionally sabotaging oursel in it. Gosh, we had a lot to say on that, didn't we?

23:11
We did. Yes. So, so go do something with it. Go figure it out.

23:15
This is this is a lot more like where for me, especially for our subscribers, this is a higher level of thinking and functioning. I think a lot of practice owners don't even touch it. It's

23:23
uncomfortable. They're too busy. They feel drowned. They feel like they just want to bury their heads. But these are again extra things that you for for all

23:31
the time, effort, money you're spending to work smarter is making sure you're not sabotaging yourself. Absolutely.

23:40
Thanks for joining the conversation today. We hope that you are comforted in knowing that you are not alone, but we also hope that you're walking away with

23:49
some really great tips and tricks to try in your practice.

23:53
We value your feedback, so please take a few moments to rate and review the podcast. Finally, we want to make sure

24:02
that we're covering the topics that matter to you. So track us down on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and let us know what topics you want us to

24:10
cover. As always, please know that we are rooting for you today as you manage your dental drama.