Dental Practice Efficiency: Cassettes, Checklists & Finding Lost Revenue | Cassie Tallon

How long does it take your team to set up for a crown? In one practice Cassie Tallon studied, 30 minutes of a 90-minute crown appointment went to setting up the tray. Cassie, a fractional COO who started out in hospitality, talks with Dr. Jennifer Bell about the systems that give that time back: checklists your team won't resent, instrument cassettes and procedure carts, and how to find the revenue your practice is already earning but not collecting.

In this episode:
- What dentistry can learn from F1 pit crews and hospitality
- Why teams feel insulted by checklists, and how to change that
- What DSOs and private practices can learn from each other
- The missing CDT codes that cost an associate money on every visit
- Cassettes vs pouches: setup time, inventory and associate retention
- Why your team quietly reschedules patients when instruments run short
- Taking a deposit for implant and other big setups
- Start with your adjustment summary: stop calling everything a write-off
- Bonuses instead of raises
- Using AI to find patterns in your Google reviews

Cassie Tallon is a fractional COO and founder of The Fractional Match, which places fractional leaders in dental practices across the US. She began her career in hospitality with Big Cedar Lodge and Bass Pro Shops, joined her father's dental practice, and helped Partnerships for Dentists grow from 4 to 37 locations.

🙌 Special shout out to Hu-Friedy Group, our educational partner, for making this episode possible!

Chapters:
0:00 Meet Cassie Tallon
1:43 What dentistry can learn from F1 pit crews
2:39 Lessons from hospitality: a checklist for everything
4:03 Why teams feel insulted by checklists
7:10 What DSOs and private practices can learn from each other
9:17 The missing CDT codes that cost an associate money
11:04 What high-performing practices have in common
12:46 Cassettes vs pouches: why setup time matters
15:42 What your Google reviews are really saying
16:16 Are cassettes worth the cost?
17:37 When the team quietly moves patients
18:54 Cassettes and associate retention
20:13 Procedure kits and carts
21:23 Take a deposit for big setups
23:17 Expired materials and worn-out curing lights
26:17 Start with your adjustment summary
28:04 Hu-Friedy's CDT code cassette guide
31:26 Who on your team should lead the change
35:18 Bonuses instead of raises
38:18 From hospitality to dentistry: Cassie's learning curve
42:03 Where to learn more about practice efficiency
43:40 Use AI to analyze your Google reviews
44:23 Where to find Cassie

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