"How Can I Personally Make Your Visit Better?" With Caitlin Maehr of Areo Dental

🚀 3, 2, 1, Liftoff! In the new episode of Kinda Different,  Matt is joined by Caitlin Maehr, Vice President of Operations at Areo Dental.

They discuss the value of being with people through change, building dental clinics on Mars, and ensuring that every team member is connected to the goal of creating a stellar patient experience.

Watch below, read the transcript, or listen on Apple/Spotify!

You can find more about Caitlin and Areo Dental  at the following places:
Website: https://www.areodental.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/areodentalgroup/

‍

Transcript
What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Kinda Different, your favorite dental podcast, hopefully, but certainly one where we talk about innovation and dental care. We talk about how we make dental care more human, and we connect with just some of the most amazing people in this industry that we all know and love.
I am Dr. Matt Allen, CEO and co-founder of DifferentKind, and your host for Kind of Different. And I am thrilled. I love talking to people who are in operations, because that is not how my brain works.
And so I always love talking to operators, because I'm like, man, I learned so much. And today, I am thrilled to be talking with Caitlin Maehr, who is the vice president of operations at Areo Dental Group outside of Chicago, certainly an up and coming dental group, and somebody that I have listened to on other podcasts, you know, seen and, you know, kind of be this person who's like, whoa, like I have heard you say some things that I don't hear a lot of people talking about. And so I'm really excited to talk with her today.
Caitlin, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. I would love to have you kick us off just by telling us a little bit about you, telling us a little bit about Areo, and then we'll dive in.
Awesome. Thank you so much for that introduction. So I'm with Areo Dental Group.
We're a doctor owned and operated partnership group south of Chicago and then in Northwest Indiana, making our roots a little bit further north, I think soon in Illinois. So we're hitting the ground running in 2024. We are a stellar patient experience focus group.
That's our core focus as a company. And yeah, a little bit about me. I've been in dentistry, I believe a combined 12 or 13-ish years, somewhere around there, I've lost track.
But dental found me and I'm really excited to be a part of this discussion today.
Awesome. Well, thank you for yeah, giving us a little background on yourself. Let's jump in.
You said you were hitting the ground running this year and working on some cool stuff. I always find that I love when especially talking with leaders and people who are probably really inspiring to a lot of people that you work with. We talked about that a little bit before in terms of how you're growing people.
And I'm sure a lot of those people really look up to you. I would love to hear from you as you kind of set out 2024. Tell us about somebody, could be company, could be a founder, could be just somebody in your life that's inspiring to you.
Tell us why and kind of give us that like, hey, here's what that means to me at this moment in my life.
I think you're asking me about who inspires me. I think we got a little glitch there, but. So Lauren Hobart, she is the CEO and president of Dick's Sporting Goods.
She caught my attention during some controversial topics that we as a society were going through. And she was bold. She made some pretty bold moves that frankly could have been pretty unpopular.
But one of the things I think is really awesome about leaders or what you need to do as a leader is sometimes recognize that you're not gonna make everyone happy or bought into your viewpoints. But she did things from the best interests of what I think she felt for her was for her employees. One of the other things I noticed about her is that she's very active with the Dick's Sporting Goods stores.
So if you follow her on LinkedIn, she's always popping into a store. She seems as big of a company as Dick says, she's always there visiting the team. And I think that's very admirable.
I think at times with groups, especially in dentistry, because there's a high volume of growth in many companies now, people sort of go, well, now I don't really have the time to spend with those teams on that level anymore. My responsibilities have changed. And I admire her ability to both lead a giant company and also be very well connected to those that are in the stores.
Yeah, totally, I mean, that presence piece is so crucial in all aspects of our life, right? I think we all want to be more present with all of those people around us and to have that leadership position of, hey, I will be present despite the fact that I might have to be having board meetings and doing all these other things, like I can be here with people, such a crucial thing. And I love that, I'm sure that that is something that you are actively applying within Areo.
So that is awesome to hear, I love that. I think you've had a pretty decent amount of experience obviously being in dental for this amount of time. But I also think that, like I said, you've talked about some things that I just don't hear a lot of people talking about.
And so I'm curious, just in terms of, as you think about how can we learn from innovation in other spaces, et cetera, and you're obviously talking about Dick's Sporting Goods, that has nothing to do with dental, what are you kind of thinking about in terms of like, what can we learn, especially maybe specifically from healthcare, you talk about this excellent patient experience, et cetera. What can we learn from innovation in other industries? And kind of how specifically are you as the VP of Ops operationalizing that within Areo?
Yeah, so I think it's really important. One of the things I love about Dr. Raj and Dr. G are co-founders, and myself, I think we're very much aligned on the fact that we have a growth mindset. And we also realize that as much industry knowledge as we have, there's a huge gap in what we don't know.
The dental field is very young still, and it's consolidating much like healthcare was 20 years ago, but we're still 20 years behind. And as much as there's these bigger groups like Heartland with like awesome leadership teams in those companies, I still think we're in that pioneer phase. And so we kind of have to check ourselves from like, where are we?
Are we just following the norm of what the industry is doing? Or should we be doing something different? I think I have like a probably multiple times a week thought as I'm driving to a practice of how can we be different?
And it's not necessarily like, maybe we don't need to be different, but I'm gonna keep challenging that for myself and for others around us, because I don't think we should ever go with the status quo. I don't think we should ever go with what everyone else is doing. And that's why I look at other leaders like Indix in these other companies that are much bigger, because at some point, there may be a dental company that is that large and has that many locations.
And what do we wanna represent? How do we wanna stand out? Do we wanna follow suit with what the medical industry has done?
I think there's a lot of patient concerns around that. So is that really where dentistry wants to follow? I would argue we don't.
So how do we keep ourselves separate and also stand out and learn from those that went before us? Learn from how what went wrong, not necessarily to criticize, but to use that as an opportunity for us to do things differently.
Totally. I'm sure a lot of people who are listeners are probably familiar with Marko Vujicic, who is the chief economist for the ADA, not too far from you, and everyone's favorite health economist. I love Marko, great guy.
But he just had a podcast where they were talking about trends and what he sees coming in 2024. And he was just talking about consumerism in general, kind of coming more and more into healthcare and seeing that really impact dental. And I think that's one of those things that, you know, yeah, we're looking at other industries that are not just, hey, this is what has happened in medical care for a while, but how can we learn from these other places that are really cool and doing awesome things?
So I love that, I love that answer.
So I was just gonna comment on your thought around how with medical kinda changing, they don't fight for new patients really, right? Like you don't see a lot of new patient marketing or hey, we're gonna do a promotion to try to drive patients into their practices. Patients just Google and they go.
They generally are very reliant on who's in network with the insurance plan. Dentistry may change if they offer more benefits. We worked with Blue Cross Blue Shield and did a pilot with them around periodontal disease at my last company.
And there was a lot of proof in that that being proactive on the preventative side was really helpful in the overall patient health. And so if insurance companies start to catch on, like, hey, if we actually invest some more resources into the dental side, maybe we'll stop paying so much on the medical side. That's not really the best reason to wanna do that, but that's what they're kinda doing.
So will that force dentistry into kind of again, that very like, to me, medical feels very dry. Dental still feels very fun, very innovative, very, we can differentiate ourselves from one group to another and kind of find our niche. Be very interesting to see how over the years that plays out.
Yeah, 100%. I mean, I certainly love the idea that some of the things that are, what gets paid for is what gets done, right? And you're, I mean, we're talking with payers of different kind around, hey, how do we incentivize patient experience?
Because we know good patient experience leads to better patient outcomes, right? And so, you can reward those things in the right ways so that people are like, hey, we don't hate going to the dentist. We actually like going to the dentist.
So I think there's lots of innovation that can happen in that specific space, which I'm super pumped about. I think we have the advantage of being a little bit behind medical in some ways. And sometimes it's like, yeah, we don't wanna go down that same road, right?
Let's divert over here because that didn't work for them or that is not what we should do as a profession. So I'm excited.
For sure, me too.
Well, let's learn a little bit more about you. I love how you're thinking about just your role as somebody who grows people, develops them, helps them see what's available. I mean, I love that as a leader.
I would love to hear from you. You have this kind of long-ranging career now in dentistry. Done a lot of things.
What are you most proud of? What's something that you're like, hey, this is not on my LinkedIn. You're probably not gonna see it if you're just clicking around, but this is what I'm really, really proud of as a person.
Oh man, this was a tough one to answer, but honestly, it's my team. It sounds very corny to say that because it's not disingenuine. Truly, I am inspired by people and actually get my energy from external places most of the time.
So if I'm around an awesome group of people, I can really absorb that energy and it really lights up my fire and gets me excited for what I'm doing. I always talk about culture and companies. They actually go 360.
It's not a top-down thing, which many employees think. So I'm very early on in the employee experience. I share with them like, hey, you impact my culture and engagement in the company as much as I impact yours.
So if we're all working together, like this is all great for everyone and that energy will really come full circle. I think the team at Areo Dental has been super nimble. 2023 was an incredible year for change for us.
We also hit new goals in our revenue, which is super exciting, but we couldn't do that without our team. And we changed our system. We went to Dentrix Ascend.
We changed our HR company. We changed over our phones. It was change, change, change.
That was the word of 2023. And yet everyone really did that super gracefully. We went through Dentrix Ascend.
I'm used to conversions. There's inevitably someone who's crying. People I think had some learning curves to make to the new system, but generally the team was very accepting of it.
And I think they share our vision and that's super exciting to work with a team that's so easy. You don't have to go through the politics to actually get something done. We're like, hey, what do you guys think?
Are we good on this? Like, do you feel good about it? And if the answer is yes, then we go.
If the answer is I'm not sure, we talk more so that we can try to figure out how to get everyone feeling good about the change.
I love it. Yeah. I mean, certainly, obviously you have a huge role in that as a leader and hiring that right team and all of that stuff and creating that space, but do that well, right?
And I mean, I always remember learning, reading Tina Fey's book a whole bunch of years ago of just like hire great writers and get out of their way. And it's like such a, yeah, like, hey, there's a reason that we want you to be here. Like we want you to become the culture of this company in every single way, right?
This is your team, right? Like, and I love that idea in general. You mentioned something in there though that I think I would love to dive into as well.
And that's around trust. And this kind of maybe goes a little bit towards making dental care more human, which we'll talk about in just a minute, but I think it's important, right? I always love to think about myself as a patient, right?
Like what, when I go to see a doctor, or when I take my kid to see the doctor or a dentist or whatever it is, what are the things that they do that build trust? And so from you personally, like as we learn more about Caitlin here, like what is something that like when you receive health care, dental care, that builds trust with you? And then how do you take that idea and operationalize that at Areo?
Do you mean like for me as a patient or for me as an operator?
Yes, for you as a patient. So like, hey, when I go to see my doctor or my dentist, this is something that they do. I wanna make sure that that is 100% happening at our clinic because it's super, super important.
I think, so actually I've had a couple of visits at Areo Dental now since it's been a year. I've had my hygiene visits, which I'm on track.
Good job, way to go. I have not, so you're way better off than me.
I was late on the last one, but it's got done. I think it's the personality of our team, right? If they're engaged with their patient, they're talking to them, and my hygiene visit was just, you can't say a lot of things because there's stuff in your mouth, but I think we do a really great job of engaging the patient through the experience, most of the time.
I still think there's tweaks for all of us to make, but I think our teams really care about the patients, and because we're trying to provide that stellar patient experience, they're really asking questions that are personal. They know me, so they'll follow up like, hey, here's something that was going on with me, and thanks for checking in on that. How is your holiday or whatever?
But it tends to be very personal, and I like that. And I think that that's important that even though they don't see the patients every day, maybe it is every six months, I'm a big proponent of putting notes in, patient's gonna have a wedding, patient had a death in the family. Just something that really says, hey, we thought of you that visit, I listened to you, and I wanna acknowledge.
And that makes a patient feel really validated, and they go, oh, wow, I can't believe you remembered that. It feels good when people pay attention to you, right? So I think that's a really important thing to implement into our patient experience.
100%, yeah, connecting the dots of various parts of, different parts of patient experience, right? Whether that's, hey, we learned something about you on your initial call to your, now you're here, now you're there through the system, right? Patient journey is not, hey, from the time that you find us on our website until you come into the office and then it ends, right?
It's like, no, it continues to go. And the more I think that you can pull that string for people, certainly, yeah, that's a huge trust builder, I would say. So I love that, love that idea specifically.
And certainly, yeah, for those of listeners who are not doing that or not finding ways to operationalize that, certainly, I love that idea. I wanna talk a little bit, cause you're talking a lot about culture here too and whatever. How do you specifically, you yourself, you Caitlin, as a leader, stay grounded and rooted and how does that impact your team specifically?
So how do you keep yourself grounded and rooted? And then how do you feel like that spills over to your team?
Great question. So I really like being in their seat. I think it's super important for the reality track, no matter how high you go up the corporate ladder or how big your title is, it really doesn't matter.
It's all just a title, right? At the end of the day, and that title comes with responsibilities. My role at Areo and in operations is to understand what my team's going through, to understand if the changes I'm making for them is actually helping or hurting, and to take note of that very quickly, not to be rigid in my approach or to say, it's my way or the highway, or I know best because I was in reception 12 years ago.
We know dentistry has changed since 12 years ago. When I came to Areo, I spent a lot of time at the front desk. I actually just observed, I actually answered phones and checked patients in, and I wore the practice manager hat for a little bit.
When we lost a couple of staff members, I sat in that seat and got a refresher on, oh yeah, this is what the practice managers have to deal with. Frankly, at the time, it might have been a little bit stressful, but because again, I was wearing the director of Ops hat at the time and practice manager and a little bit at the front desk, but it was super grounding and humbling. And I was like, oh, okay, this is what I want to remember about Areo.
Areo is funny at the term Areo actually means to Mars. So we have a joke here that we're going to Mars. Like meaning we're gonna take over planet Earth and then go to Mars, kidding.
First dental clinic on Mars, you gotta have big goals, right?
So, we have big dreams. And that means that it's all the more so important to me that I stay grounded through those big dreams. When you have a team that's walking with you, it's better to have them walking alongside of you than to you be running and the rest of them are behind you, right?
And we can only do that as a team. I learned that I think I haven't always had that view. I used to be like a very fast runner and I had a big challenge with like getting people like on my level to understand my vision.
I just kind of didn't understand it. I was like, wait guys, like, don't we wanna do this? This makes total sense.
Like, why don't you all get on board? And I realized that a perch didn't actually fit everyone. So just maturity in my career and in my roles, I've had some awesome mentors who gave me really good feedback and I've learned how to help motivate people and that every person I'm talking to is truly an individual.
It's not a group that I'm talking to, it is their individuals and they have individual motivators. And if I can figure out what those are, then I can help that person find their right place and feel like they're at their top of their game, as opposed to really pushing or pulling people. That's more exhausting.
It's better if people come with you for the ride. So yeah, I think that's kinda my approach.
Excuse me, I love that. And yeah, 100%. Yeah, I think there's a lot that we can all learn from that.
So yeah, the journey that you've taken can inform that of others. And I love you sharing that. So thank you for taking the time to do that.
One last question for you. And you've talked several times about like, hey, what we want to provide at Areo is this exceptional patient experience. So I'd love to hear from you, like a very practical way.
What's one small and easily implementable tip that you feel like people should be doing in dental visits in general, right? Share some of your secret sauce from Areo here of like, hey, this is something that we think is super important. We do it every time.
This should be happening across the industry. Tell us what you think.
So I think we're young, right, as a company. So there's been things that I think there's processes that we definitely have that are different than other companies that I think make a true impact. However, I'm gonna go with something that I'm gonna newly sort of derive.
I've been coaching the team to be a little bit different on. When patients walk in, if you're in any organization right now, if you go to a random practice, it's very likely that the check-in process is still kinda weak. I think when patients come to an office or answer phones, if you listen to phone calls, it generally goes from thank you for calling.
Sometimes it's a drier answer to the phone to what's your insurance? And I've listened to some calls over my career that were shocking, that lacked empathy. And I think empathy is a big deal.
Like we have to have that. We have to show like, hey, I'm so sorry you're going through this. I'm sorry you're in pain.
I wanna help you and I'm gonna make sure that this process goes super smooth. So I'm just gonna ask you a few questions. Is that okay?
Getting the patient to, again, it's that walk with the patient. Don't run full ahead past them. Get them to be with you through that experience.
So one of the things I really love doing with new patients is asking them proactively at check-in, hey, thanks for choosing our office. I know you might've already had an initial call where you've explained this already, but I'm just curious, how can we make sure that today goes better than any previous experience that you had? And usually patients will either say like, maybe they've gone to the dentist before and they're just like, I'm just new to town.
I just picked you guys because you had great reviews. Okay, awesome. Sometimes patients say, well, you know, my last dentist didn't listen to me or I didn't have trust because they gave me this crazy treatment plan and it was $10,000 and I have no idea what I'm even doing.
So that should set off like a flag. Like, okay, I'm going to tell the doctor that we probably need to really hone in on the intraoral photos, that this patient's going to need a little more education than we might normally do. So if you can tee the doctor up for that, then you have such a much smoother process.
And if you acknowledge what the patient experienced throughout their visit, then they heard you, they know they were heard. So I'm big on letting people feel like they were heard. We all want to feel heard, right?
It's such a very simple thing. It's truly simple. But we get in the hustle and bustle of the day, and sometimes that's the first thing to go.
So it's really a big push, I think, on our group as part of the stellar patient experience to really incorporate a lot of that. And then one more thing is asking, I think each team member has to feel like their role is super important in the experience. That no, it's not just up to the manager to ask for the five-star review, or it's not up to the doctor to nail the presentation, but the dental assistants and the hygienists and we call them patient care ambassadors, our front desk, to make sure that throughout the visit, they say, hey, how can I personally make your visit better?
How am I doing? Am I doing a good enough job for you? That shows that customer service side and the patient experience, and I'm super passionate about that.
I love that. There's so much I love about that. I love that idea of just like, hey, what is gonna be success for you?
And it's like, great, now you're giving us the answers to the test. Now we just need to execute on that. But if we don't ask, we don't know.
So I love that. And then yeah, especially that like, give me feedback in real time. Like, how is this going for you?
Like, I just wanna make sure that we're doing what you need from us, right? Man, that is such a helpful way of approaching interactions just in general, right? Obviously, but especially in healthcare where you're really trying to build trust and you're really trying to do these things that are really, really meaningful for patients.
So man, I wanna talk to you a lot more. I wanna hear all of your awesome ideas, all of your crazy ideas, all of the ideas that you have. This is a great conversation.
And we wanna make sure that we always keep these relatively bite-sized so we can listen to them on a commute or something, I guess. If maybe you're commuting in Chicago into the city, maybe your commute's a lot longer. I live in the mountains, a small little town, and so my commute's sometimes just a walk.
But Caitlin, I am just so grateful for you taking the time to join us today. If people wanna learn more about you, connect with you, where would they do that if they wanna learn more about Areo? Tell us a little bit more about where they should go to find more about you or Areo.
So you can always go to our websites, areodental.com. You can visit, you can see there's an interactive map. You can see our practice locations, and you can click on those to get links to our websites and read about us.
We also are on Facebook. We do have an Instagram. We're building our following there, so we'd appreciate the follow.
It's the same handle, areodentalgroup. And there's a link tree right from Instagram where you can click on some of our other pages.
Sweet, sweet, sweet. Well, thank you again so very much. We're super excited to learn from you today.
And like I said, I had heard these things where I'm like, not a lot of people are talking about this. And so I'm glad that we got to dive deeper into some of that. I love how you're leading your team, building this culture at Areo, and I'm excited to see what that holds in 2024 and beyond.
So thank you so much for taking the time to join us today and look forward to chatting with you again soon.
It was my pleasure, thank you so much.