Saige

The Teenager Who Drove Himself

A seventeen-year-old with a license walks up to the counter by himself. May he be seen today, and who gets told what afterward? The first answer belongs to your state. The second is a federal rule most front desks guess wrong. Both belong on one page the doctor writes before he arrives.

October 12, 2026 · 7 min read

The Call That Went Badly

A bad phone call is the one failure in a practice that the patient reports to somebody else's front desk. If you do hear about it, the usual fix is a conversation in the hallway, which reaches one person and nobody else. This post is about taking the call to the written page: whether the page was right, silent or wrong, and what it should say afterward.

October 5, 2026 · 7 min read

What a Trial Is Actually For

The email says your trial ends tomorrow. In a lot of practices nobody can say whether anyone used it, because nobody decided at the start that this was the thing to find out. A trial is not for confirming you like a product. It is for finding out whether your team will use it before the money is spent.

September 25, 2026 · 7 min read

When a Patient Asks the Assistant

The doctor steps out and the patient asks the assistant what she would do. The ADA has drawn her line in a different place from the front desk's, and the state practice act draws it again by how close the dentist has to be. Neither is where most practices assume.

September 21, 2026 · 7 min read

AiroDental Raises $0 to Keep Dental AI Accountable to Dentists

AiroDental today announced that it has raised $0 in outside funding. No venture capital, no private equity, no debt, no board. Founder Deren Flesher, DDS, a practicing dentist in Edmond, Oklahoma, owns 100 percent of the company, and explains why the person deciding what dental software does should be someone who has to use it in a dental practice.

September 8, 2026 · 5 min read

What the Front Desk Is Allowed to Answer

"Am I allowed to tell him that?" Most practices answer with "use your judgment," which is not an answer. The line between what the treatment coordinator can say and what goes back to the doctor already exists, drawn by the state practice act and the ADA's own consent guidance. Here is where it sits, and how to write it down in three lists.

September 7, 2026 · 7 min read

The Handoff Nobody Documents: From the Chair to the Front Desk

Every practice runs the same twenty feet dozens of times a week. The doctor finishes, the patient walks up front, and a different person takes over the conversation. Almost nobody has written down what is supposed to cross with them. The ADA has, and the word it uses for the person at that desk is worth reading twice.

August 31, 2026 · 7 min read

What Your New Front Desk Hire Cannot Even Ask About

The workarounds and exceptions and small decisions that never became procedure are the hardest part of a dental practice for a new hire to learn, because they cannot ask about what they do not know exists.

August 24, 2026 · 7 min read

Who Is Your Security Official? A HIPAA Requirement You Have Probably Already Met

Ask who calls the IT company and you get an answer right away. Ask who the practice's security official is and the room goes quiet. The practice is not missing a role. It is missing a sentence.

August 17, 2026 · 6 min read

What to Do When the Person Who Knows Everything Leaves

The list of everything only one person knows gets long fast, and almost none of it is written down. Some of it, though, is already required to be on paper. Start there, then work outward to the payer specifics, the workarounds, and the reasons behind the rules.

August 10, 2026 · 6 min read

Writing SOPs Your Dental Team Will Actually Use

Most practices are told they need SOPs and handed a template. The template is not the problem. Your office already writes and maintains required written procedures and keeps them current, which means the capability is there. What the operational procedures are missing is an owner, a review rhythm, and a place people can reach during a busy morning.

August 3, 2026 · 6 min read

The Ten Questions a Practice Owner Sent Before He Would Take a Demo

A practice owner we had never met sent ten questions through his marketing consultant before he would agree to a walkthrough. Price, setup fees, BAA, integration, insurance workflows, emergencies, call tracking, contract terms, and whether he could test it on his own scripts first. We answered all ten in writing the same night. Here is his list, our answers, and what a good answer sounds like from any vendor you are considering.

July 31, 2026 · 10 min read