Does technology sometimes feel like it's causing more confusion and work in your practice?

In this episode of Beyond Bitewings, host Ash welcomes a special guest, Megan Sak, a former hygienist who has transitioned into the sales world of dentistry. Megan discusses the world of practice management software, with a specific focus on Archy, a cloud-based platform. She talks about the benefits of Archy over traditional software, the complexities of data migration, and the importance of efficient and user-friendly support systems. Megan also sheds light on the unique feature of Archy integrating with a well-known payroll service to streamline practice operations.

If you feel like you're spending more time on all of the technology in your practice, then make sure you're using the right software for you.

You can find out more about Archy by visiting: https://www.archy.com/

If you have specific questions about any of these topics for your practice, or if you'd like to have another question answered on a future podcast, please reach out to the Edwards & Associates team. Please also contact us to find out more about Ash's financial course.

Visit us at: https://EandAssociates.com

Welcome to Beyond by Wings, the business side of dentistry brought to you by Edwards and Associates PC. Join us as we discuss how to build your dental practice, optimize your income, and plan for your future. This podcast is distributed with the understanding that That Edwards and Associates PC is not rendering legal, accounting, or professional advice. Listeners should consult with their business advisers before acting on any of the information that is shared. At Edwards and Associates P. C, our business is the business of dentistry. For help or more information, visit our website at enassociates.com.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Beyond Bitewings. In today's episode, we have a very special guest. Her name is Meghan Sack. She's a former hygienist, who's recently decided to join up with a pretty well known practice management software company. To and to talk further about The subject matter, we decided to do a specific episode on practice management software. How to consider which one to use and what would be the best one for your implementation because as we all know no 2 practices are the same. So without further ado, Megan, how are you today?

Hi, Ash. I'm doing well. How are you?

Doing well. Doing well. Thank you. Thank you for asking.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me on your show today. I appreciate it. Again, you mentioned I am a former dental dentist. Funny enough, I knew I was going to go into the dental field at a very young age. However, My initial plan of trajectory was to be an orthodontist, but somehow shifted gears and Went into hygiene and, unfortunately, had to leave my clinical position due to Dexterity complications from a automobile accident. But timely enough, I got Positioned with the opportunity to transfer into the sales world of dentistry. So Found myself here at Archie, and I couldn't have asked for a better job.

Being a hygienist, I can't tell you how many times I found myself in the operatory cursing at my software and Wishing that it could do things a certain way or do things differently

Mhmm.

And Wondering how it could just, like, be created. You know, you try to contact these companies to give them their input Or to ask for a different feature, and you just get sent to a general questionnaire box, and it's like, that's never gonna happen.

Mhmm. So it's

been a really cool experience getting to help Give my input in the development of Archie.

Wow. That's amazing. For our listeners that don't know what Archie is, would you mind giving them a little brief?

Absolutely. So Archie is a cloud based practice management software.

Mhmm.

And I like to call it a platform More than a software because we are all encompassing beyond just the practice management component of the patient chart, The clinical schedule, insurance claims, but we bring into also Patient engagement with text messaging and appointment reminders and mass emailing and payment processing As well as online scheduling. So it's all encompassing, and it goes beyond just what the traditional software does.

Wow. Okay. And now when you say cloud based, is it truly cloud based or is it, you know, how some of the other software companies claim that they're cloud based?

Exactly. So there's 2 differentiators. There is cloud based, which is hosted on a cloud service. So we utilize Amazon Web Services, which is the same, company that, Say McDonald's, Starbucks, Walmart, that they house their data on these servers. The other component that software say the are, quote, cloud based is actually known as web hosted. So The server is located at the headquarters of this software company.

Mhmm.

And they utilize A specific software to remotely log in to this very large server. So there's A lag time in the transferring of data between this large computer at their headquarters Mhmm. At the practice, location.

Wait. So tell me this, so these other companies that say they're cloud based but they actually house a server within their headquarters, What if the light goes out in that building?

Then your data is out.

Oh my goodness.

Yes. So unless they are utilizing a larger corporation such as AWS to back up their data, which they likely are not because it's very expensive, and it's kind of a A redundancy. If their lights go out, then there is no way for your practice to access that information.

Oh my goodness. Okay.

So with AWS, they actually have 6 data centers across 3 different time zones, And your data is actually stored within each of the different data centers. So If one goes down, your information is still backed up in a different center in a different time zone.

Mhmm.

You'll always have access to your information.

Mhmm. Okay. That's good to know. And what about HIPAA compliancy?

So that's a great question. With HIPAA, it It's really concerned about the how the data is transferred. Mhmm. So you want that information to be encrypted End to end. So from when you are using your computer in your office to when the data is received By the server. You wanna make sure that it's encrypted in flight so that someone can't just, you know, pull it out in through thin air and Steal that data. So we utilize end to end encryption in our backup process. I Cannot say if these web hosted servers utilize that same technology.

So I can I mean, right off the bat, I can see some of the advantages of Archie versus some of the other quote unquote cloud based, operating software? Now I guess at the same time, we also have to look at or think about the various Kinds of dental practices that are out there. You know, DSOs versus small ones, ones that are operating out of main cities versus rural areas. If they were to consider, let's say, a cloud based one as opposed to an in house server, you know, Something hate to say names, but let's say Dentrix or something like that. What would be some of those factors that they should think about or Consider before deciding which route to take.

Definitely. So, obviously, Each practice is gonna be different, and they're gonna require different needs. The first part of your question was the DSO versus solo practice.

Mhmm.

The big question there is with DSOs is, are these offices run as Individual entities, and there's 1 company kind of overseeing a bunch of individual offices, Or is it 1 company with multiple offices, and they share employees, they share patient database, etcetera? So for the one that's doing sharing across, you know, every component possible

Mhmm.

Cloud based is for sure a solution for them. Mhmm. It's more efficient. It's easier To do remote access, and it's easier to have that file transfer between patients so as to not have to Do a upload and download each time a patient goes to a new office location or in some instances that I Heard of last week still actually moving file charts between practices, which is not safe or secure at all. Now you asked about rural practices, and there are offices that say that they have issues with Internet. And so that is also something to take into consideration when going cloud based. Mhmm. But It really depends on the software that they choose to use because some software is Coated very slim to where they can easily run off of a cellular hot spot or a MiFi.

Really? So if Internet were to go down, you can utilize a phone's hot spot to run the cloud based platform off of. I've had offices that ask, well, My computer is wired through the wall to Ethernet cables. And To my surprise that I learned maybe 6 months ago, 8 months ago Mhmm. You can purchase Wi Fi dongles Uh-huh.

Word,

that plug into your USB port, and it will recognize that Wi Fi or MiFi signal and enable those desktop to computer desktop computers to run off of that hot spot.

Wow. Okay. I see. So you're essentially saying that even if you're in a rural area, There are ways around it where you can still utilize a cloud based software. Absolutely. I see. Okay. That's good to know.

Now let's also talk about, you know, let's say Let's say a dental practice. Owner bought the practice for someone else, already has an existing, you know, platform, but is not happy with it, wants to upgrade it. Right? Upgrade it to, let's say, something like Archie. How quick or how easy is the the migration, basically?

Great question. So migration or conversions for practices, it's all gonna be dependent on The software that they are moving onto. Mhmm. So that's a important component for the practice to research before making that decision

Mhmm.

And really ask the company, what information am I going to lose, If any. Because other softwares out there have limitations on what information they can Pull from your existing software and bring into the current software. Mhmm. For example, some Cloud based or not cloud based. On prem Mhmm. Software are not capable of migrating Social Security numbers. They are housed encrypted within that original software. And upon moving to a different software, all of those numbers will be lost.

So the practice would then have to go back and ask the patients for those additional details moving forward with, New treatments. Other softwares, they will not migrate or convert over The perio charts. So past history for periodontal patients, that information could potentially be lost. I am very proud to say with Archie that we will move over all data points. Nothing is lost. We have that information readily available and clear to our clients.

Mhmm.

And each Software out there on the market, if you look into their website and look at their conversion details, They will list out exactly what is able to be moved over. So definitely wanna give that a look before making that decision.

Wow. That's actually pretty amazing, because in my experience, you're right. At least 1 or 2 things are lost. I mean, for me, I see the accounts receivable numbers being very different when it gets moved to a different platform.

And so that's always going to be a challenging component because it's all about how clean your data is. So if your staff has been very sloppy in the entering of Insurance information details or the processing of claims or even the the details of the insurance companies with Group numbers, plan numbers, etcetera, if that's all messy, it's going to move over messy. So You have to pick and choose what you want to move over, and sometimes it's Best to just start clean and just carry over balances. So insurance owes x and patient owes x and all relevant history is left behind, and then move on from there.

I see. Okay. Now which I completely agree and honestly, this is something we always tell our clients is to kind of look at their aging reports And to clean up what's been there for a really long time, and you're fairly sure you're not gonna be able to collect. So this would be a good time to kind of look at that and Clean that up. Okay. That's good to know. Now again, going back to the migration or the implementation, how long does it typically take If one makes a decision, you know what, I'm either going to let's say it's a start up practice, and like, oh, I'm going to implement this, versus someone who already had a software and is now wanting to move to, you know, let's say, a platform like Archie?

Another great question. So It all depends on, again, where you're moving from and what you're moving to. So Other companies out there, when you migrate onto their software from a previous software Mhmm. It usually takes a couple days for them to extract that data information and then load it into their software program. So when I was practicing hygiene, my office moved from Dentrix onto Open Dental. And I'd say that the practice actually had to close down for about 2 or 3 days because we're a very large practice with tons of data. I have no idea how many, but to give reference, it was a 40 year old practice. Wow.

With 20 employees, 3 full time dentists, and 5 full time hygiene.

Mhmm.

We saw about 65 patients a day, and so they required 3 days for the office to closed down for them to be able to extract all of our data and move it on to Open Dental. We then spent 2 more days doing training for the new software. So that's now an entire week of loss Scheduling and production.

Yeah.

And to say the least, when we did get up and running, we were at a modified schedule so as to not be overwhelmed with using the software.

Mhmm.

I'd say in total, it took about 2 weeks to get back to our normal pace for the office.

Mhmm.

With moving on to Archie, We do not require any downtime for the practice. So we will have them finish out their end of day, be it a Thursday or Friday, close down all their computers. We will extract all of their information and upload it On to Archie, usually anywhere between 12 and 36 hours over the weekend. Come Monday morning, they'll be up and running on Archie.

And that's also you actually brought up a good point. So, you know, whatever you're thinking about Moving to a new software, implementing a new software, and not the same software, this platform. Right? A practice management platform. It's not just the cost of it, But also the downtime because that's also cost. Right? Opportunity cost. You you need to Absolutely. Take that into account. So looking into a software that can Minimize that time is also critical.

Definitely. There's it's A big pain point and misconception within the dental world that migrating or converting Your software is a painful experience in which you have to strategically plan for.

Mhmm.

We at Archie really wanna change that stigma to, no, it's not a painful experience. It's actually quite easy, And you can honestly do it at any time. You don't need it to be during the holidays or when you're closed for vacation. You can do it when the time is right for you.

Wow. Okay. And how are you guys able to do that?

It is honestly due to the skill set of our team.

I see.

Our engineers all come from big tech backgrounds. Mhmm. I won't Save the specific names because, you know, some people don't like certain companies.

Yeah.

But, really, the skill set that they embody makes it so that they are programming automation for these conversions. So on the front end, they have looked at these Previous software on prem software

Mhmm.

Looked at how the data is housed in it and mapped it line item for line item onto how we surface it in Archie. And once it's mapped out, We're then able to automate the process of simply downloading and uploading.

I see. And then at the same time, let's say if someone does run into some kind of a hiccup, right, how quickly can they reach out to someone for some support?

So we have support that is located here in the US.

Local support.

And all of our support team comes from a dental background, so either clinical experience or admin office manager experience. And so We have support hours from 8 AM to 6 PM Central Standard Time

Mhmm.

Monday through Friday. And, Currently, our report time is 67 seconds to get a response for Chat support or email.

Wow. That's amazing. And, you know, that's that's also amazing that you guys took the time To decide, okay, our support team needs to also come from the same industry, so that they can understand What the person who just called in for or, you know, put in the ticket for is going through.

Absolutely. Because there's nothing worse than trying to explain something to someone Who has no understanding or background of the field.

Oh, absolutely. Trust me. And then they keep saying, oh, you you know, let me forward you calls Over here or there, and then you're just like, wow. I've been on the phone for so long, and I didn't even achieve anything.

Exactly. You're just spinning in circles, and they're passing singing you off to someone else, and then all of a sudden you're disconnected when you get transferred. You're like, cool. I'm back at square one, and now they're Closed.

Now I know it wasn't just this now. There's something else that I feel like Archie is providing that's very unique in its platform that honestly, I haven't seen any of the other competing platforms offer, which is sort of like a bonus. And And I feel like in in today's rise in cost of doing business, pretty much across the board, that bonus can also help, which is the implementation of a pretty well known payroll company.

Absolutely. So we have taken into account what we call employee management. So when a user logs in to Archie, Why not take advantage of the fact that they are logging in to the platform and therefore track their time usage there? So we have enabled time clock within Archie in order to be able to process payroll. And so we have partnered with Gusto, who runs on the back end of our software, to Be able to then process payroll for the practice. So when a practice onboards with Archie, they will Simultaneously create an account with Gusto and link their bank accounts to that So that when they choose to run their payroll, they will automatically be able to pay their employees Through the platform, and Gusto will handle all of the tax documentation on their end. So They will get their pay stub pushed into the employee's document center to be able to view that, as well as end of The year their w twos will get pushed into their employee document center. So this eliminates The need for having to pay for payroll outside of your practice management software, I think on average, a practice will spend around 45 to $90 a month just for the service And then $5 per paycheck per employee. It could end up being around A 150 to maybe $300 a month Mhmm.

That ultimately a practice could be saving by utilizing Archie.

Right. And you're just talking about the cost savings. I mean, I'm also thinking if about it from an administrative standpoint. And you just mentioned that all that information We'll automatically allow Gusto to produce the payroll tax reports, the quarterly reports, the w twos, the 10.90 nines, you know. That's going to alleviate a lot of the headache that sometimes the fundest people have to go through to obtain, like, a w nine from oh my goodness. We brought in We need to get hold of this w nine that the account is asking for so they can issue a 10.99. All of that headache gone. So that to me is amazing.

That's one of the things to look at for with a new software is where Can the software save you on time

Mhmm.

So that it gives the practice more time to focus on what truly matters, Which is the patient who is standing in front of them or sitting in the chair. So providing that Quality customer service when they're in front of you versus being all consumed in the busy tasks you need to complete before the next day Or feeling as though you can't provide the quality care while they're in the chair because You have to jam pack your schedule because your collections are poor. So Choosing a software that really streamlines automation for you so that you save Time, which is ultimately money.

Yeah. Couldn't have said it better. I completely agree. Well, thank you so much for being on our episode today, Megan, and taking the time out.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate you.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you shared some great points and honestly to tell I mean, before we sign out, can you please tell our listeners, you know, how to reach out to you if they're interested in Archie, and then again, it's Archie, a r c h y.

Correct.

That would that would be great.

Yeah. So, it's archy.com is our website that you can Go and check us out and learn about us, or you can feel free to give me a call at my direct line. It's 6692596442. And I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have. You can also shoot me an email. It's megan.sack@arche.com.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thank

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