The Curve Effect: Real Dentists, Real Results

Curve Dental. Take one. 

Well, I'm here today with Chad and Gary, who are incredible dentists that utilize Curve in their practices. And we're going to talk a little bit about how Curve is impacting their day to day routine, and even how it could have been different when they started. So just the ups and downs of learning with Curve and growing together. So, welcome, and I'd love to just kind of kick things off, if you don't mind, and start asking some questions and get to know a little bit more about your practices. 

What would be one workflow solution you've implemented inside of Curve that you feel like has been a really positive impact to your team, or maybe even to just your day to day?

Curve Gro has been a huge, huge, component to our workflow. Having the front desk, and I just talked to her about this yesterday, since she knew we were going to be talking–the first thing that we did was we implemented the text-to-pay, things like that. And for her, trying to get, her workflow was even so much better once we came to Curve, because, it was so much easier for, her to do her job, which is, you know, make appointments and collect money. In the clinical side of things, I created a whole bunch of shortcuts. Making that the patient had when they come in for, a treatment plan, we can make a treatment plan right behind the patient, right while I'm talking to the patient. And when they say, can I get a printout of this or whatever? We've already emailed it to you before they even leave the room. They say What? Are you serious? And if you want it printed out, it's printed out at the front desk by the time we walk them up there. So, that's impressive to the patient, but it also decreases my work because I used to have to go, I don't know how you did it, but I used to have to go sometimes and say, I'll get that done for you hopefully this afternoon, then I'm at the office longer and I have to do the treatment plan while I'm in my office. 

Rarely do you see a Google review that says that the dentist was bad at dentistry. I rarely ever see that, like it was just the dentistry performed was poor, right? My feeling wasn't accurate. Right. What you do see is the efficiency of the clinic being mentioned in that Google review, which computes to your level of expertise chair side, which, you know, you don't think about it that way, but their trust in what you deliver for treatment directly correlates to them getting that efficient email sent to them on time.

Yeah. And they and they love it because let's face it, everybody hates to go into a doctor's office. And you sit there in the waiting room, and then you go back to the little room and you sit there and these people, we have professionals coming in to us all the time, they've got schedules they need to keep. And the one thing that they love about our practice, Chad’s too, is that they're in the chair on time and they're out of there on time with the information they need. 

I love that because just recently I was in a clinic where the doctor said earlier that morning he had a patient waiting almost 45 minutes for a treatment plan. And he said, I just wanted to do same day dentistry. Like I just wanted to get started. And I said, well, let's talk about how you fix your workflow so that you can get right in there and present a treatment plan. So for doctors listening that are out in the hallway, pacing to do the same day treatment while the treatment is created and put into the, you know, the system, this is the solution. 

He hit the nail right on the head with text pay. Yeah, that was amazing too, because, you know, when we had our previous practice management software, I always say I talk a lot about technology and it's very disjointed. And although it's still disjointed to an extent, Curve joined a lot of it together. And so we, we used to use text to pay, but it would come in through this, and then we'd have to go put it in on this, and we'd have to do this and this–and it was a pain in the rear. But now it's just all right there. And when you have some pretty tech savvy people at the front desk that quickly became such, it was just a huge quick transition and made it really easy to what everybody wants to hear: Collect. Collect. 

I will just say, I think that text-to-pay is so under-promoted in general, but it is the one turning point in collections for accessibility to the patient to pay wherever they are. Just a gold nugget from that would be when I first turned on Global and integrated it into Curve. We sent out messages with a very positive impact approach. So instead of sending a message that says: you owe, we changed the messaging to say: great news, we now have a way for you to pay your bill right from your phone. And it was crazy because patients would come in and they would be so positive about the fact that we gave them a way to pay online. But all we did was tell them, great news, right? Great news. We've made this accessible to you and you don't have to worry about paying it. You just shared a gold nugget that I think people need to hear, which was related to collections and even payments on the weekends. One of the best times to send out your text to pay is Saturday morning. Because people are not headed into the office, they're not dealing with kids going to school, and they're able to be home to where they can grab their credit card and process their payment. So just a gold nugget there that your collections keep working even when you're not working. So, really a valuable piece of what Curve can offer. And, we even went as far, in many of the practices I've worked with, to turn on where they actually get that before they leave the chair. So we let them know, hey, you're going to be numb and, you know, have gauze in your mouth, we don't want you to be at the desk. We're going to send you that link while you're still sitting in the chair. You can pay it and privately walk out. You don't even have to talk to anybody at the desk. So it amped up the entire team's ability to see where that collection balance was. And then we rewarded it at the end of the week to say, okay, what did we meet in terms of our collections and let's talk about the creative ways we went after that. And many times, you know, docs, you're looking at the end of the day and going, how did I do a crown on Susie? And she still had a balance of 125 from three months ago, and we let her walk out the door, sending them a message as they're coming in to say, we're excited to care for you today, you have an outstanding previous balance of this, plus today's visit. Now, there is no concern over what that total was. It's all transparent and price transparency is everything now. 

So anyways, I love that text-to-pay, I see such value in it. So you know, kudos to you all for embracing that and adding that in. Curve has done an incredible job of partnering with other vendors that integrate seamlessly and fix workflow aspects beyond just Curve, like, you know, AI for X-rays and things of that nature. Could each of you just talk about what those other systems you've implemented and how they've made an impact on your team? 

Mango has been an integration into our practice that has been fantastic, saved us a lot of money right off the bat. I mean, amazing amount of money that it saved us right off the bat. So I highly recommend that one. But the one that I'm really, really passionate about is the Pearl integration of. About the time that I started with Curve is about the time that I started utilizing Pearl. And although I love Curve’s image viewing software, for me, it's amazing that I can just click on one button. It opens up a separate screen with all of my radiographs that I can compare, I can analyze, I can run through artificial intelligence, and that's through just one click of the Pearl button. And then I can go back to my Curve screen and I can toggle back and forth while I'm looking at those radiographs. And then go back and look at the charting and the treatment plans, rather than having to go from image to chart. So that's been a huge integration for me. I love that integration. I knew that I couldn't live without Pearl, and when they, you know, combined their minds together and, and made that integration happen, it's just been beautiful within our practice. 

Yeah. That was one of the reasons. Big reason that I chose Curve is, they do smart integrations is just, there's a usefulness to it. You know, the text-to-pay, which I got through, Global Payments was great. But when I integrated Mango, that was a game changer for us. Everything's recorded, every single conversation is recorded. And I have had patients who say; so and so told me this, and it's recorded in the correspondence. So you can sit there and say, let's, let's check the tapes.

And, and they said, and there have been a few times I said, no, I've got the recordings. And as soon as the patient hears you have the recordings, you just have to, you know, they start backpedaling really quickly, and it's just for our safety, because we also want to know when the, well, we want to know when the patient is trying to pull a fast one. But we also want to know if our staff, if they're doing the right thing, if they're saying the right things on the phone, how are they saying it? And then the, just the fact that it was documented. Yes, she did call you. She's called you 50 times trying to get payment or appointments or something like that, so. And then it's integration, how, it pops up on the screen. Who's calling? You know, right away, you can pull up their chart. You can have them on the screen before you even pick up that phone. And they think that's pretty neat. I mean, that's really an efficient office when you, you already know who's calling and have all of their profile or chart or something pulled up on the screen.

Oh, I love that. Yeah. I find with Mango, once it gets embedded, the team realizes how frequently they were running around the office to figure out who called the patient last. Because if ever you've gotten a call on your cell phone and they don't leave a message, or they do, you likely don't listen to the message and you just push ‘call back’, right? Because someone from your office called me. That's normally what I hear when I go into practices. Well, everybody starts to figure out who called, right? Like, was it you? Did you call? What was it about? Because it's recorded, nobody is searching for that information. And I absolutely love that about Curve. 

I also love the integration with Bola. Bola is a great tool that allows you to have access to period charting and restorative charting just by auditory prompts to AI. And then it also allows you to treatment plan and record the clinical notes for the patient. And in real time, you can even print or email a copy of those notes. So if you go over their health history and then you share with them, these are the steps I would take for better oral health. You can, with the click of a button, send them that protocol of flossing, rinsing all of those things, and now it's not just a verbal communication with them, but you've given them a secondary communication that's in their email to say don't forget, remember what we talked about. So I love that Curve has taken the extra steps to integrate with the right tools. And Pearl is one of those by far that once doctors start using it, you can't live without it because it really is the second set of eyes you need.

You know, when I talk about technology, I always say that we can't have one trick ponies within our offices. And here Gary and I are talking. I don't know if he does, but I sure don't. I didn't even know what Bola is. And I'm sitting here like I'm writing notes like, hey, Mark, back there, where, what's up brother? Help me out. I gotta get Bola in the office. So, you know, there's that's the thing is that they're integrating and they're constantly innovating. And so that's what we need to look for. 

You know, overall, when you implement solutions that ultimately fix the workflow or make it easier on the team, it elevates team satisfaction and patient satisfaction. 

What would be some of those things that you feel like are just a game changer? 

Yeah, Curve has some really great ways to display the schedule. And so we've created a layout where it's just hygiene only. So we are trying to find open hygiene spots for somebody that's just in town for a week or something like that. And so we used to use the search function and, and hit and select all the variables and criteria. But we learned that you can select or create a layout with just hygiene columns and then select this week or the week view. And all of a sudden just all of your hygiene for the entire week is right in front of you. And you see these just white spots of where the open hygiene spots are. And I think Rhonda uses that all the time. All the time. I mean, she doesn't even use the search anymore. It's there if we need it. But to create that separate calendar that you can just scroll through week by week and you can just see really, really quickly, at a glance.

That is a pro tip, because especially if you're bringing on someone new, a full schedule can be very overwhelming if you're looking at all operatories. I've been in practices where they had 27 operatories, and now you're trying to find the recare. To have a tab that's just for me to find my hygiene recare or even scheduling comps in one spot is a great idea.

The Sidekick is huge. After we got used to making sure the correct patient's name is up there. And how you can, do the drop downs and you can find somebody's phone number or their insurance. Do they have insurance? Do they- I can stay on the chart, in the operatory and then find all this information without having to switch the page.

Yeah. Yeah, I think not. Not going to those extra tabs and trying to hunt down information takes away from patient care. So what a great idea to be able to have that there. And you know, really recognizing that the use of that Sidekick is more than just their patient name. You can drop down and find out their next visits, their contact information, you can even find out when their children are due, for their next visits. So it's really kind of this, you know, area of finding the gold nuggets without having to dig too much deeper. 

When we went through these questions, I went straight to the office manager in the front front office team and was like, hey, what are your favorite hidden gems? And so we've been talking about this for a few weeks, and one that came up was the correspondence page. And so Cassie tells me, well, most dentists don't know about that. Well, now I do. And I love it, you know, because on the correspondence page you can tell when a patient's been contacted via text, via phone and it even tells you who contacted them. And so it's great, for instance, last week, a patient doesn't show up for their 2:00 appointment, and it's like, where is this person? This is a great patient. You know, they're usually here, they’re- they shouldn't, you know, not be here right now. What's going on? So my office manager goes right to the correspondence page. Unfortunately, after somebody had called the patient, the patient's like, I canceled that last week. Correspondence page: Yes. The patient had called and canceled the appointment, said they were having an emergency, would call back to reschedule, and here we are making a fool of ourselves. And it's like, oh, who took who took the call? Oh, so and so, you know. But now I kind of go to it because, you know, this always happens with friends. I'm sure this has with you. But we were on a vacation with a friend and they're sitting there going, oh, text from Fossil Creek Dental. Oh, yeah, I'm not going to forget this appointment. Another text from Fossil Creek Dental. So I go back and I'm like, how many times are we texting people? I had to hear about this six times over the weekend, you know? And so we look back and of course, I think they were giving me more grief than the amount of text that they were giving. And I'm like, dude, look, I got it right here. You got three texts and one of them accidentally went to your wife. We remove that. It's all good now. So, you know, the thing is it's a great tool to see because patients, although they want the texts, they will, sometimes complain that they get too many of them, but they don't miss their appointments, you know? So it's nice to really see how much you are engaging or if you have engaged or who engaged with the patient and how they engaged with them.

Yeah, I think that correspondence piece is so huge because doctors are often going, who moved my appointment? Yes. And before you will, you have no idea where that came from, right? It just the crown and bridge that was on your schedule is suddenly gone when you go to that correspondence page to be able to see the history. And even if there isn't a note, one thing I really love is establishing accountability with your team and weekly check ins to where if there is a missing notation and an appointment is just moved or dropped, especially ones of high value, and you can find the team member that did it, but it wasn't documented. Holding them accountable to it and bringing them in once a week and saying, hey, listen, we saw a trend here this week where you moved a couple of appointments and you didn't document why. Let's talk about how we're going to improve for next week and then even do a shout out and Morning Huddle, again, rewarding the change in positive impact. But noting it, making sure that it's there and available for everybody to know why it was changed. So I love that you're using that for workflow, because it means everyone on the team knows who moved the visit or why something changed. And you also can see how often that patient was coming. Great for accountability too. Yeah. 

So one of the customization aspects of Curve is something called tags. You may know them as explosion codes in your old systems, but, it has been such a game changer for so many dentists because it's taking that visit that maybe previously had no CDT codes in it and making it have a production value and accuracy. I call it the checklist for the dentist. So it's not just that it's a schedule on the appointment, but when I click on it, I can see the checklist of what needs to be done, even diagnostic for the doctor to be ready. Can you talk a little bit about those in terms of your workflow? 

We use them all the time, mainly in hygiene. I have my hygienist schedule their own appointments. So they're in the room. They say, hey, what do you got six months from now? And so before they even go to the front desk, they already have an appointment. And so they find an appointment slot for them and click the tag, and it automatically enters all of those procedures that are going to be done, whether it's– And sometimes we have to delete or add based on what I asked, I sometimes I say, hey, can we take a PA of this next time and they add something in. But for the most part, all the work is already done. We have people that call in and say, that one tooth that he's been watching. Yeah. And it has a crack in it. I lost the whole outside of the tooth. And so without even having to do a treatment plan because we've just been watching it, Rhonda can go in there and select the crown tag, just a basic crown tag, and it enters the, you know, crown and build up. And I think it puts the seat in there. Yeah. And then that just makes it easier for us because even though we're not seating it that day, once it's in the scheduled tab on the treatment plan, we can just drag it to another visit. So it's already in there. Back to when they call in for a limited eval, the other thing is that the codes are in there. I don't know if y'all do this, but, Rhonda is really good about putting an appointment note right below. Yeah, yeah. Love that. And so they I can read that note, I can see the codes and then read the note and say, okay, I can walk right in the room, say, hey, you're having a toothache or you broke the tooth, or, well.

There's nothing more frustrating than looking at your schedule for the day and going, why is this patient coming in? It's just an empty spot on my schedule. I don't know what's happening. You're able to have accountability, even there, to know exactly what you're going to do for the day. 

The tags make it a lot easier for them to do it. I mean, you just it's plug and play and the the golden nugget that I'm going to give is that, you know, if there's procedures that you do in your office that there's no fee attached to it, plug those into them to, you know, like wellness scans or oral cancer screenings and everything like that. The more that they can see and the more that they see $0.00 afterwards, it just provides so much more value to that appointment. And they can understand why it costs so much to get your teeth cleaned, or why it costs so much to get your teeth cleaned and X-rays and an exam. 

I love that, and I think when they do see those zeros on the invoice, but they see the value of the visit was, you know, 15 different things for a comprehensive exam, like oral cancer screening and, you know, health, even putting in a health history review, and, you know, those types of things add value for the patient. 

Can you all talk about, you know, what reports you rely on weekly or monthly that are the most valuable to you? 

For me, it's the production report. I run my practice a little differently. I know a lot of dentists see the schedule and say, fill that spot, that's not me. I know a number I want to get to at the end of the month. And if we have made that number, then we start scheduling for the next month. And I never want to be so booked out in a two week time period that I'm burnt out in two weeks, but then I don't have anything on the schedule for the next two weeks. Because then I feel that pressure of having to, you know, find work to do. And I never want to do that. Just do the work that comes into the office. And so the production report allows us to see what has been produced in a month. Let's say it's the middle of the month and what we've already done for that month. But the little checkbox that says, show scheduled production. And so now it's a combined report to where it shows what I've done already in the month, but what is on the books. Every dollar that's on the books for the rest of the month. And we take that total number. And if it's, let’s just make it easy; If it's 100 grand, and that's what we want to get to, and we're at 120. Well, we go to the next month and start scheduling out. What that does is it allows me to have, take the pressure off of finding dentistry. But what it also does is it doesn't pack my schedule. So I've got a lot of space. If somebody broke a tooth or they just said, I've been waiting to get those veneers done forever, my kids went to college, I'm ready and I've got time in the schedule to put that on there. And they think it's great. 

I love what you said about burnout, because I think doctors get into this, you know, grind of the day to day and they can't step away to look at how quickly they're exhausting their energy. So even taking time on a weekend to pause and look at that production, slowing things down, putting on the brakes to say, okay, we've met the goal for next month. Yes, we want to go over it, but let's reserve time for those last minute patients. It gives everybody just a little bit of breathing room. And, it's such a valuable missing piece right now because doctors burnout very quickly.

It allows you to roam around the office, too. Because if you're head down into teeth, all day. Yeah. You don't have much time to go see what these other staff members are doing. 

I totally agree, we were talking about this before book out equals burnout. And you know, I'm the same way. I kind of like, you know, here we are into the month yesterday I'm like, no, just leave that open. I'll put that next month. You know, I don't need to fill that. I want to sit in my office. I want to chill out. I want to work on paperwork. I want to do this. I'm going to do that work on lectures or something. It's nice to have that time to myself. So you know, schedule a goal and then, you know, if you're feeling it, then go for it, but don't push yourself. 

I love the period summary. That's like my favorite report. I also kind of sit in my office and just silently watch collections all day long, you know, not all day long, but I do check it frequently. I love the collection reporting. My office manager is a very vivacious young lady. She loves the insurance report and the responsible party aging report. And it's a quest for her just to chase those aging numbers and, you know, it was, I'd love to say that it's annoying, but I absolutely love it on Monday morning when I come in and just say, hey, guess what our collections word last week. Guess what I did on the aging. Guess how much you know of the AR I got. And you know, I'm sending out these letters this week, and I'm doing this and I'm doing that. And, you know, you start really analyzing it. And I love that she's also said, look, this isn't even worth sending a statement for, you know, just we'll get it next time that they're in. And so she's constantly monitoring those reports and people are coming up. Hey, you know, I hate to tell you this, but, you know, $7 from last year, you might take care of that today before we leave. Absolutely not. And so those are the reports that are most important in our office. 

I love that and I love that you said she's chasing the right things. And saying when to let something go. A gold nugget is in that conversion. You know, a lot of people hire outside collections agencies to run after money for your practice. And I think many times it's a waste of money and energy because you end up building this name in the community of being money hungry. It spreads like wildfire. And when you do that conversion, there is value in just going ahead and putting a note and inactivating that patient. If it's from three years ago and say if the patient wants to return, they're going to owe $27 versus them getting nine collection calls and a slew of emails. And in that then focusing on the AR they can get, right? It's, you know, we're chasing after the thing that we may not ever be able to attain that's from 2 or 3 years ago versus looking at the AR right now and going after what's, you know, ready for us. 

I will say this since we've gone to Curve, our AR is the best that it's ever been. And you know, although people will say, well it's not there. Well it's there, it's just in a different place than it was before, you know. But they're chasing it better than they ever have. And I mean, I love seeing the excitement in them. Yeah. When that number gets so low and it takes a lot of stress off of me. Yeah. 

Well, I think one exciting thing in both of the reports you shared is working in tandem with things like Dental Exchange for processing of insurance payments, auto batching them, and then also insurance verification. Curve is relaunching that benefit advisor to where you can go in and actually pull benefits ahead of time. What we're seeing now is Curve is actually preventing you from submitting that claim with the wrong ID or the wrong information. And while it may be hard at first because you're like, why are these claims not able to process, you're fixing root cause. Like for instance, I had a practice where on the forms they weren't making it mandatory for them to put in their birthday. So the birthday was wrong on the claim that was being submitted. Okay, great. Let's go back, make the mandatory field in the claim of the patient's birthday. Now the claim is going through. So Curve is built out in a very smart technology way. All of these safeguards to ensure clean claims and accuracy of what's being submitted to dental through Dental Exchange and other tools. So I love, you know, hearing those reports. If you could think about kind of your AR just a step further. You know, you mentioned your AR is the best it's ever been. What does that mean for your team? Do you have bonuses? Do you does it, has it allowed you to grow in other ways in your practice because of that AR being efficient and effective? 

Don't give them any ideas! Bonuses they’re doing their job. No. They, it take the stress off them. Yeah. They like less stress. Yeah. And the fact that they can keep up with it so much better than we did in practice works. It's just been huge. We never get behind in it. And the way that submits insurance with you can- within Curve now you can do attachments. You can put in not only x-ray attachments, but if you have a letter or something like that, it's all within Curve where we had to do it through, I forgot, fast attach or any or some or maybe those are two of the same, but now we don't have any other subscriptions to anything. It's all in Curve. And then whenever a letter gets submitted back from the insurance company, it's right there in Curve. My office manager loves to instead of chase the ARs, because she doesn’t have to in my office at all, but. she loves going into the claims and right clicking and finding where the, what stage the process is in. Yeah, yeah. 

So it's an employee retention. I mean, you've, we've created systems in Curve that have allowed for some employee retention because it's not as difficult as it used to be.

 I've come up to the front desk many times, and I only have one person at the front desk. Rhonda is, she's checking something on her phone. I never get mad at her because everything is caught up. Yeah. You know, and you let the staff have those moments to, she's checking texts from her dad, who's elderly, and just, you let them have this freedom because they're doing such a good job. Yeah. And, and Curve is, man, it's helped. 

Can you just share a little bit about Curve Gro and how it has impacted your day to day? 

There was a study that was done by AT&T several years ago talking about how patients want to receive communication. And if you look at it, they really want to receive text messages. They don't want the phone call. And so, you know, I love the ability to go into Curve GRO and be able to text a patient and receive a text back. And when we were talking about this aspect with our team, they were like, oh, make sure that you mention the images, because now we can receive images and it's great from my perspective, you know, hey, how are you doing after your appointment yesterday? Oh, I'm doing great, thanks. Or, did you receive my email? Because sometimes I'll receive–I'll send over a treatment plan from myself and just want to make sure that they got it. Or I'll send over a claim check from Invisalign and make sure that they got it. And I'm able to just check on those through Curve GRO. I love the texting back and forth with patients. It's been huge for our practice and it's something that we quite frankly can't live without. And you know, once again, the images, you know, somebody has trauma to a tooth or they lost a crown. Don't know how to tell us where it is, you know, of course we want to know, did we do it? Did we do it? You know, and, you know, send it in, send in a picture of it. 

I totally agree. As soon as they implemented the ability to text a picture, that changed everything. From, I chipped my tooth, to submitting an insurance card for the front desk. And the great thing is that sometimes I'm called on the weekend, we get calls, so everybody out there gets calls, and I can check also, online with the mobile because the text are integrated into that. Yeah. Which is huge because I'll get a call on Mango, they'll leave a message. I get texted that somebody left a message. I can check that message on my phone. And then I can go to Curve GRO on the mobile app, and I can text them right back and say, I got your message. And sometimes you don't even need to have to call them back, right? So it's absolutely essential to running a dental practice, and I don't understand, I'd love for any doctor out there to explain to me why you're not signed up with GRO. Yeah.

Well, I think one of the things that I, you know, I really don't believe doctors fully understand or utilize right now is they think of patient communication as re-care reminders or treatment plan reminders. What I just heard from both of you is it has allowed you the ability to do your post-op check, to call or to text the patient if there's something that you need them to know or there's a follow up, you know, referral or whatever that is, utilizing it all the way through that clinical experience so that it's not just automated messages, it's your direct line to the patient, and they get to hear from you. 

The biggest thing is you got to remember to go back and check if they respond, you know. Because you're not necessarily going to get the notification. 

Yeah. And one way to keep in touch with that is that mobile app, you know. Just to talk about the mobile app, and if you haven't downloaded it yet, it is not just a time saver from an efficient perspective, but I hear doctors say all the time the fact that they can see their X-rays on a patient, especially if there is a watch and now they're calling in in the weekend in pain. Can you talk about, you know, the life changing aspects of the mobile app? Because I think it's the best mobile app out there. 

It changed so much just from a convenience factor of, it’s Sunday night, what am I doing? I'm sitting there watching football or golf or something, and I don't want to go get my computer. It's over there. Yeah, you can just see how busy your day is going to be just right on your phone. Sometimes I don't. I made the wrong choice. I shouldn't have looked at it because now I'm stressed out. But, And that's right. But it's just the convenience factor of having it right there. You can make appointments and I don't know. Have you, have you used it to make appointments?

I don't- I'm not allowed to make appointments.

 I've made one. 

You know, we live in such a subscription based society, you know, and before we had Curve, we had that Log Me In and it was like 99 bucks a year. And then all of a sudden it's like 99 bucks a month, and then it's a couple hundred bucks a month. And it was very clunky and it was horrible. And the only thing I ever used it for was to check the schedule. And you have to log in from your computer. You have to wait for the computer at the office to pick up, and now it's included in your Curve subscription. You know which, yes, it's a subscription, but it's just so multifunctional that now we have this app and it's so easy and it's right at our fingertips. It's almost too easy sometimes because there's certain places that we don't want to be bothered, but if we have to be, it's right there. 

Yeah. I love the way that the Curve mobile app and Mango sync. So to your point, you can have that call that came in, know what the urgency was, look at the patient information and immediately have a response. So another core aspect of Curve that, just I absolutely love and that there is such immense value for the doctors in their team is just the readiness of support. The systems today that, you know, aren't cloud based, or maybe they are oftentimes have outside off shore support, which means you put in a ticket, and it goes somewhere far out into the universe, and days later you get a response. Can we just talk about that readiness to support you with what you need? And even I'd love to hear, you know, downtime and then being back up and running over the course of having Curve, how well has it worked for you to be up, functioning, producing, over the years you've had it?

In the days of past it wasn't necessarily the offshore support, it was always like, oh, well, we have so and so and there are specialists and they can come in and spend a day with your team, and it's $900 for a half a day or $1,800. It's like, I just need one question answered. That's it. And so with Curve there's always a phone line. But the beauty of it is, is that I'm a big fan of telling my kids and my team, problem solve. Just figure it out. Just problem solve. And Curve has the easiest way to do that through Curve community, you go to Curve community. That's the first place they go before they pick up the phone, they go to Curve Community and see if it's a problem that's been submitted or there's a solution for it. Nine times out of ten, it's there. If it's not, you pick up the phone, you call and they've, I can say this, there's a couple of companies that I work with, Curve is one of them. They answer the phone. They're always very pleasant. They're always very eager to help. And you're back up and running. And the problem is solved almost immediately.

The other awesome thing is the ticket system. Yeah. You can go into the little hamburger menu up there and submit a ticket, and you can submit a issue, a question or a suggestion. And, you know, I, I'm sorry, guys, I've submitted a lot of suggestions. But  it's important to get those suggestions from all these doctors out here because, I mean, how many great ideas are we all, missing? And if you don't have a way to, you know, put it into the system, tell Curve about it, then how are they going to make the, program, the, system work better for us on a daily basis? But if you have an issue, I submit a ticket, and I don't know, it might be an hour or 30 minutes, and I've got a response. And that's the easiest way to do it. Just submit the ticket. Go on, go do dentistry and come back and you can check it later. 

I want to give Curve a lot of kudos, okay, so first of all, I'll say that any technology you're going to have an issue with at some point in time, no matter what it is, there just needs to be a solution. There's always a solution with Curve. But the thing that I want to point out is that several months ago we had this issue that fortunately we've all forgotten about with the insurance deal, you know, and and, you know, it was to me, it amazed me that it wasn't a Curve problem. It was an everybody problem. Yeah. And Curve was like, okay, we're going to try this until we get the other one fixed and there was an immediate solution. There was kind of a patch. And honestly, I don't even know. I know it was resolved. I don't know if we ended up sticking with the patch or we went back to the original, but they were working on a solution. And then when you're dealing with something that's cloud based or internet based or whatever you want to call it, stuff's going to go down. Yeah. I mean, you know, God forbid your phones go out, that's going to happen. But there's a solution and there's a remedy, and it's always very quick. I mean, this week we had an issue, and he's calling me on the way to the way to the office.

And I'm like, dude, it's already, like wildfire on social media. By the time I get to the office, I like, walk in and I'm like, hey, there might be a problem with the cloud this morning. Just chill out. And you're like, it's been working just fine for us, you know? And I mean, so it was fixed before the start of the day, you know. 

I texted him and your solution was don't start so early.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 

I think that Curve has done such an excellent job of listening to the needs of the practices, to the doctors and building a system that's made for you versus you signing on with a system that they engineered and created that you have to adapt to. So it's very much so, a learning environment where Curve is building and growing. And, you know, just thinking about, from the standpoint of those tickets and being able to have a fast response. One thing that's launched just recently is the Curve AI search. And so now a team member doesn't even have to go to the Curve Community. In a separate tab at the top left hand side on that home screen you can actually type in a question with Curve AI and it will pull the exact community article and information to solve it. So it's seconds versus even having to pick up a phone. 

Would you save it from a standpoint of, training new team members, you know, thinking about, Curve beyond just that day to day function and workflow. You're bringing someone new into the equation. How has that been in terms of having, you know, a new team member learn Curve?

I haven't had to hire anyone new since, since we started with Curve. The plan is to go back to those videos. Yeah. Go to Curve Community and they need to go through the videos. Because they were so thorough before we did our training, that Joyce was at a loss sometimes for what she even doing, you know, because the staff already knew what was going on. Now, again, shout out to Joyce. She trained us, gave us so many golden nuggets. But the videos are really thorough, I think.

Yeah. We had, you know, unfortunately, not by choice, we had to hire a new office manager, and it was very easy for her to integrate, and it was mainly through the videos. And, you know, prior to starting, kind of gave some homework: Watch the videos. Felt pretty in tune with it when they started. But we also had a contact at Curve that was like, hey, I'm here to help. 

I think the good thing is the resources are there when you do need to bring someone on. I love, love that you haven't had turnover. That's a testament to a great workflow and a great environment. But you know, having to hire someone, you think about the potential lost revenue and downtime, especially if they're the dental IQ person. Right? They had the knowledge of your practice. And so one of the things I think about, is last year I had a pediatric clinic with four front desk team members that made a decision to all leave at the same time. They were just ready for something different. And I was consulting for that doctor. All four left. They were on Curve and we hired immediately. And in two days, all four of those front desk team members coming from various backgrounds, not Curve, were able to learn the system and immediately start answering phones and scheduling again. 

Okay, so if you could, you know, wrap up Curve in one word, what would it be?

I don't think you can. I think it's just too robust to do that. It's innovative. It's intuitive and I think it's just very necessary for your practice. 

Yeah. I think one word would diminish the power of Curve. It does so much. It's so advanced, but yet easy to use. I mean, the user interface is so clean, but you start drilling down, it's just so powerful. Innovative. Yeah, I think diminishing it to one word is I don't I can't even do it.