The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry

Jeff Bertsch, Vice President of Special Markets at RecallMax, joins the Group Dentistry Now Show. Jeff shares his DSO experience with us and offers thoughts on:

establishing consistent workflows
driving organic growth
integrating software like RecallMax
much more

Jeff has deep operations experience previously working with Pacific Dental Services, Dental Care Alliance, DentalOne Partners and Smile Design Dentistry.

To get a RecallMax network analysis email Jeff at jeff.bertsch@recallmax.com or book a demo at https://www.recallmax.com/book-demo

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Get to know experienced DSO executive, Jeff Bertsch, VP of Special Markets at RecallMax. Full DSO RecallMax Podcast Transcript:

Bill Neumann: Welcome everyone to the Group Dentistry Now show. I’m Bill Neumann. And as always, we appreciate you watching us or listening in. We have a new guest to the podcast today with a company we’ve had on a couple of times, but new to Recalmax, but not new to the DSO industry for sure. We have Jeff Birch. He’s the vice president of special markets at Recalmax. Jeff, thanks for being here.

Jeff Bertsch: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Bill Neumann: So I mentioned it briefly that Jeff has been in the DSO industry for quite a while. He has over a decade of experience and has a lot of experience on the operations side of things, working for various DSOs. So Jeff, maybe talk a little bit about your past experience working in operations and for some of these different DSOs and then what brought you to Recommex.

Jeff Bertsch: Yeah, thanks, Bill. Yeah, I started started in the dentistry world just shy of almost 13 years ago. I started with Pacific Dental Services. I was an operations manager there. work my way up to a regional manager. Then I was there just as shy of six and a half, seven years. When I moved to Dental One Partners, I was there for roughly a year as director of affiliation and integration. I oversaw Arizona, Colorado. And then I moved to Dental Care Alliance. I was their director of affiliations and integration. I spent a couple of years with Spear Education as a practice consultant. And then I really miss being back in the practices. I moved over to a small design dentistry here in Tampa, Florida. I was there for about two years as a regional manager and then my most recent was with Parkview Dental Partners as director of operations. I really moved into the Recall Max just shy of a month ago. I just really loved their platform. I loved how engaged it is from a front desk perspective. I mean, I’ve, again, to experience being an office manager and having to run lists and things like that, just, you know, Recall Max really highlights that and makes it super seamless for your front desk and things like that. So that’s what really attracted me to the position. And so, yeah.

Bill Neumann: Thanks, Jeff. Yeah, it’s great that you’ve had that hands-on experience and probably ran through quite a few challenges as an office manager and a regional and those various operations roles. So yeah, maybe let’s talk a little bit about your role at Recallmax and then a little bit about the organization and then we can dig into the product itself and some of the latest offerings that Recallmax has.

Jeff Bertsch: Absolutely. Yeah, so my role is Vice President of Special Markets, basically in charge of North America, from Canada to US, but really mostly focused in the United States. We’ve really got a good tie of a lot of practice, a lot of corporations in the Canadian market, so I was brought on to, obviously with my experience in the operations side of things, just to, you know, I think for me, which is great, is that I have the operational experience, right? So I understand how the platform and how Recall Max can really elevate practices in the DSO space.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, I mean, I think it is great that you’re able to, again, bring your experience. And I’m sure I know Recall Max has had people in special markets role before. Recall Max is not new to DSOs. So the platform works well, whether you have one location or you have multiple locations. So Recall Max, talk about the product itself. What does the offering do? I mean, obviously it’s Recall, but it’s a lot more than that.

Jeff Bertsch: Yeah, I mean, Recall is, you know, obviously, I would say a small percentage of what Recall Max actually actually offers, right? I think, you know, just been with the company a month now, you know, obviously learning a lot and learning a lot about the software. But I think what I like about is, you know, we sync to your location, it’s a it’s a platform that sits on the outside of your software, right, where your traditional retention-based products or web-based, right? So you have to toggle between different, you know, different applications where we sit right on side, right? There’s a little toolbar called Max and he highlights and organizes and syncs automatically with your software, which I just, I can’t understand, you know, what I guess from my perspective is that it’s just really seamless and it makes you know again you don’t even have to have dental experience to be able to use recall max right is that we highlighted that all these patients are on the side in this little toolbar they’re grouped by specific needs of the practices from unscheduled treatment to patients that neither missed or cancelled an appointment to you know the confirmation section which really highlights you know, your upcoming schedule for the next three weeks and tells you, Hey, here’s your opportunities. Here’s what patients haven’t confirmed. So it really gives you a specific direction on how to manage their front desk. I think the one thing, you know, being in the DSO space for so long is that we always sort of get that notion of like, we want new patients, new patients, new patients, and don’t get me wrong. That’s fantastic. But. Ultimately, right, we have thousands of patients that are sitting in our practices that don’t get reached out to, you know, we have to pull a list, you have to go print it out, you don’t know who’s contacted that patient, you got to go back to the PM. Well, Max does all that for you and it syncs automatically with your software.

Bill Neumann: So the type of recall it’s doing, is it doing email, texting? Is it helping kind of connect the office manager or remind the office manager to actually make the phone call? What does that look like?

Jeff Bertsch: Yeah. So to my understanding, roughly 80 to 90% of the patients don’t really use automation, right? So Aside from just having lists and things like that, there’s an automated feature which will send obviously confirmation reminders, recall reminders, unscheduled treatment, obviously if you need to fill the doctor’s schedule. So there’s more than just having a list. It’s really tailored towards how do I drive patients back into my practice.

Bill Neumann: Yep. Yeah, that makes sense. Keith, there are a lot of different recall offerings out there, different platforms. Maybe discuss, and you touched on it earlier, the recalls, the tiny piece of what RecallMax does, but maybe compare RecallMax to some of the other products on the market.

Jeff Bertsch: Yeah, and I’m just obviously getting pretty familiar with some of the other ones, but you know, in my past experiences, we’ve used some softwares. What I liked about, you know, really the main difference between Recall Max and any of the other softwares, it sits right on the front desk screen, right? It’s there. It’s not like I’ve got to toggle to a website to go back to send a patient a text message or a recall reminder. it literally sits right on top of their software. Super simple to use. You can click it to hide it. You can bring it back. I mean, it’s just, it’s really seamless. And it’s, I guess, giving them direction versus having to go, okay, what list do I pull a day to fill these patients for tomorrow?

Bill Neumann: Gotcha. How about, you mentioned something earlier, you know, about really not even needing to be under, be from dental to understand how to use recall max. And I think that’s become more. Certainly, it’s more common than it has been, where people are coming from outside the industry to fill different roles, office manager roles. talk about a little bit about the ease of use and then also maybe like onboarding. So if a practice or a group decides that they’re, you know, going to use Recall Max, what kind of support do you and your team offer somebody that’s new to the platform?

Jeff Bertsch: Okay. Yeah. So when you think about ease of use, right, is that with it sitting there virtually, right, on side of your software, anyone with any experience, and I highlight that, I kind of highlight that, right, is that I didn’t start in dentistry. I didn’t grow up being a dental assistant in a practice. I came for retail. I worked for Enterprise Rent-A-Car for just shy of eight years, so I knew nothing about dentistry. I tried to get my regional managers and things to understand, we always want to hire somebody that has dental experience. That’s great, but not everybody has dental experience. What I like about RecallMax is that you don’t have to know what list to pull. You can go in and in a really simple format of a couple clicks and I’m sending multiple messages to multiple patients to fill an opportunity. So it’s really seamless. I can’t remember the last question you asked me, I apologize.

Bill Neumann: Well, I was just talking about the onboarding process. You know, once somebody signs up, what kind of education and training do you really provide? Because there is, I’m sure even if it’s relatively easy to use, there is a learning curve with everything and you want to make sure that it’s implemented and that you just like one of your positions, integrate it right into the different practices.

Jeff Bertsch: Yeah, it’s I mean, I obviously just getting to know a lot about the software. But what I can tell you so far is that, you know, the support system that we have, if I you know, if someone was to sign up, I mean, it’s all how it’s all hands on deck, like everybody from the team is going to help support where needed. The learning curve, the recall has an academy where we There’s videos, training videos. But I think most importantly is once you’re integrated, we set up training sessions for the team members. So we walk through on exactly how to use Recall Max. So it’s, you know, obviously, again, we want to make sure that people are using this offer, right? If someone’s investing in a product or a platform, we want to make sure that the team members are using it and are engaged in it, right? So that’s really what we’re trying to make as easy as possible and seamless. So it’s, you know, easy to use, and it’s not a burden like having to go to a web based platform, toggle between pages, etc, you know, because not everybody has multiple monitors in their offices. So one, if you got one office or one monitor, you’re having to use back and forth. So it’s just, it’s really seamless, I guess, if that makes sense.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, it sure does. If What’s your experience? I know you’ve been with RecallMax about a month now, but you’ve worked at these different DSOs, have a lot of experience there. What traditionally are DSOs using as a platform or not necessarily asking for the name of a particular product, but what traditionally have you seen as far as how a group or a DSO handles recall? What are they doing and how are they handling it? And then you maybe touch on how Recall Max can make that a little bit more efficient or easier.

Jeff Bertsch: Sure. Yeah. I mean, this is really the first software that I shouldn’t say the first one, second software. The first one we had was really more from a KPI perspective. Some of the front offices used it for some messaging and then some would use the internal software. It was obviously very cumbersome. But, you know, in previous worlds, it’s the traditional style. You print a list, you start making phone calls. you know, or you’ve got your quick fill list or whatever software list you have, you know, it’s really traditional. You’re picking up the phone call and you’re trying to get patients on the schedule. I think that’s where, you know, Recalmax really has done well with, right, is that I can go in, you know, just specific, let’s say tomorrow a hygiene appointment cancels at eight o’clock. It’s now 1.30. I can go in and select, you know, tomorrow at 8.30, I can select 15, 20 patients that have registered with us and said, Hey, I love, you know, Fridays at eight o’clock in the morning, I can go in quickly, select those 15 patients, send them all a text message. And hopefully within an hour or half an hour, you’ve got that, that appointment filled with our traditional style. You’re calling, calling patients till seven, eight o’clock at night to try to fill your hygiene schedule. So, uh, you know, same thing with the doctors, it does similar things like that for the doctor schedule as well.

Bill Neumann: Well, that’s great. Any other results you can point to as far as some, you know, a DSO or a group integrating Recallmax and whether they’re going from the traditional method, which is what you’re talking about, or maybe from something that’s more of a competing product? Talk a little bit about the results that, you know, you’ve seen.

Jeff Bertsch: Yeah, I mean, it’s hard, you know, it’s hard to give, like, specific results because, again, it comes down to a couple things, right, is how well they actually use it. And if there are using it, you’re going to see, you know, a really good ROI. I don’t, you know, I don’t want to throw out a number because I don’t, I don’t know that specifically, but you know, it’s anywhere from six to 10% ROI on just having recall max. Right. So I think in my mind, when, when I’ve learned so far is that. you the software just makes things so seamless and from what i’ve seen and what i’ve used in previous world it’s it’s just it’s just a great product it’s very patient specific it’s very front desk specific you know and there’s also dashboards and things that we have along the line that will Obviously, as an executive in the company, if you want to see how your front desk is working, and if they’re all aligned and they’re doing the same thing, we give you a scorecard dashboard that really highlights that. So it’s really cool.

Bill Neumann: It sounds like there’s an ease of use factor. So if you have people that maybe aren’t familiar with the office manager role, or they’re coming from outside of dental, You also have the academy from an educational perspective, so people can get ramped up and you and your team obviously support as somebody is onboarded and it’s integrated into the practice or the practices. Talk to me about the Recalmax network analysis and what that is and how maybe a listener can, or somebody watching this can get one of these analysis to see if Recalmax would make sense for them.

Jeff Bertsch: Got it. Yeah. Um, so our network analysis is, you know, I, what I would call it is like, you know, traditional consultant coming in and doing a chart audit. Um, we can link it. We basically sync up to each location, you know, within 48 to 72 hours, we’ll have a report that will highlight a bunch of different opportunities in the practice from hygiene to doctor, to, um, your active patient base. Like we want, we want people to really understand, you know, that your active patient base is, that’s where the growth is at, right? Is how well we’re utilizing the patients that are in our network. So yeah, they can go to the website or they can also, on my email, I can share with you a link that they can schedule a booking. They can call me specifically, they can email me. Those are usually the easiest ways to reach out. My email is jeff.birch at recalmax.com.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, so it’s jeff.bertsch at recallmax.com for people that are just listening. We’ll drop that email address in the show notes. And then we’ll also, is there a link somewhere on your website where they can sign up for that network analysis as well? Or is best way to do that is to reach out and email you?

Jeff Bertsch: I believe so. Yes, there’s up on the top. address bar when you’re on the main page, it’ll say book demo. You can do that.

Bill Neumann: We’ll link to that as well, directly link to that book of demo as well. Well, thanks, Jeff. We appreciate this. Great to have you on the other side of the industry now, working on the vendor side and bringing your 13 years of experience in the DSO space, working in various operation roles. I think it’s important that you now represent You have an understanding when you’re talking to the customers, kind of going through the same challenges that you went through when you were working at these various groups.

Jeff Bertsch: Yeah, I agree. It’s that’s, you know, one of the things Jeff and I, who is our CEO, talk about all the time, right, is that it’s, you know, for someone that’s been in the operations world for so long and to have, you know, just to be able to sit and talk with people about, look, I’ve been in your shoes. I understand the challenges of running a front office and getting, you know, 20 or 100 locations all rolling in the same direction, it’s challenging. And that’s what’s really cool about RecalMax is that we show you that we highlight all those areas for you. So, yeah, I’m excited. So far, it’s been a great journey and I’m glad I joined RecalMax.

Bill Neumann: Well, great. And with that, I’d like to thank everybody for listening in to the Group Dentistry Now show today. We appreciate it. Again, if you want to find out more, we’ll drop the link in the show notes so you can sign up for a demo. You can go to recallmax.com, or you can email Jeff at jeff.birch, which is B-E-R-T-S-C-H at recallmax.com. Thanks everybody for watching. Thank you, Jeff. Thanks.

Jeff Bertsch: Thank you.