The Wired Dentistry
Ransomware. PPO write-offs. A front desk that can't convert a phone call. The Wired Dentistry is where Dr Lorne Lavine, the Digital Dentist, and Naren Arulrajah of Ekwa Marketing work through what's quietly costing dental practices money — and what to do about it. Two decades each on the technology and marketing sides of dentistry, in conversations built for practice owners, not patients.
Getting Your Whole Team on the Same Page with Lois Banta
Most dental teams come home from a meeting fired up, and a week later nothing has changed. Usually it's because only one or two people heard the message.
Lois Banta has spent more than 45 years in dentistry as a consultant and speaker. She is CEO of Healthcare Enterprises and The Speaking Consulting Network, and a co-founder of COLLABricon, a total team synergy summit. In this episode, Dr. Lorne Lavine asks her why the whole team needs to learn together.
What they cover:
- Why ideas from meetings fall flat when the dentist, hygienists, assistants...
Making Sleep Apnea Treatment Work with Dr. Erin Elliott
Most dentists who take a sleep apnea course never bring it into their practice. They come home excited, and six months later nothing has changed.
Dr. Erin Elliott, a general dentist in Post Falls, Idaho, who lectures nationally on dental sleep medicine, made it work in a busy general practice. In this episode, Dr. Lorne Lavine asks her how.
What they cover:
- Why sleep apnea is "not an old fat man's disease," and how her own dad's snoring turned out to be moderate to severe sleep apnea, with a heart rate of 83 while...
Replacing PPO Write-offs with Targeted Marketing.
Most dentists who want off PPO plans do it in the wrong order. They drop the plans, then go looking for marketing to replace the patients.
Naren Arulrajah has watched practices do it both ways. In this episode, Dr. Lorne Lavine asks him how to get off PPO plans without emptying the schedule.
What they cover:
- Why costs are up 30 to 50% in a few years while PPO reimbursements haven't moved, and how that slowly squeezes take-home pay, staff and patients
- A biological dentist who was 80% PPO: marketing first, then one plan...
The Tech Decisions That Are Quietly Costing You Patients.
A practice was spending around $10,000 a month on marketing. While Dr. Lorne Lavine was in the office, the phone rang five or six times. It got answered once.
No call tracking. No answering service. No way to book after hours. The marketing was working. The practice just wasn't catching what it sent.
In this episode, Naren Arulrajah sits down with Lorne, who has spent 25 years inside dental practices' networks and servers, to go through the technology decisions that quietly cost practices patients.
What they cover:
Why practices buy technology they can't support...The Patients Are There. Your Marketing Isn't Reaching Them.
Most practices don't start thinking about marketing until things get slow. By then the patients who were looking have already chosen someone else.
Dr. Lorne Lavine interviews his co-host Naren Arulrajah on what separates the practices that dominate their market from the ones spending more every year and going backwards.
The three numbers every practice owner should know, and 95% don't. Your phone conversion rate — the average practice books one in three new patient calls. Your cost per new patient call. And what each channel actually costs: around $60–70 a new patient through organic search, against roughly $650 thro...
Two Things Keep Dentists Up at Night.
Two things keep dentists up at night: am I getting new patients, and is my practice one click away from a technology disaster?
Most shows pick one. This one doesn't.
Dr. Lorne Lavine spent over ten years as a periodontist before founding The Digital Dentist 25 years ago — he's been inside dental practices' networks and servers ever since. Naren Arulrajah has spent 19 years marketing for dental practices, more than a thousand of them. In this first episode they explain why they stopped treating marketing and technology as separate problems.
Lorne on the number one is...
