Photo by Brandon Alms
Communication
Innovation from Innovative Dental
Dr. Grant Olson works on driving performance and communication throughout Innovative Dental with the use of the Rheostat app.
by Jo Jolliff
Sep 2022
The Problem
When the team at Innovative Dental expanded from a building of 10 rooms within 30 feet of each other to a building with 31 rooms across 29,000 square feet, they knew they would have to work at maintaining the same customer experience and communication within the office. “We had it planned a year before we split into two locations, and we mapped out how we would keep accountability, track performance and know who needs more help or training,” Dr. Grant Olson says.
The Big Idea
Out of this need Olson formed a team to build the Rheostat software. “Rheostat isn’t just a tracking tool for behavior that drives performance. It’s also a communication tool that gives us a better patient experience because we’re more aware of our patients’ needs.” Rheostat has many functions, from showing where patients are in the office queue to telling doctors which patient to see next, based on wait time and the nature of the case.
The Learning Curve
Rheostat is currently on version 1.49 and is nearing a major flip to 2.0 once it becomes mobile-capable at the end of the summer. The goal for the new app is to have it available on mobile devices, but more importantly on Apple watches. “In our industry, we’re often gloved up so being able to rotate your wrist and see that dashboard is helpful,” he says.
The Takeaway
The hope for Rheostat is that it’s able to help lead Innovative Dental to consulting with other dental practices to finetune training, while also being used in a variety of other industries by customizing the rules of the app to what best suits them. “We want to target dentistry first, but I can see this working really well in everything from restaurants to chiropractors to optometry,” he says. “There are a lot of areas, any office moving people through appointments wanting to have a better understanding of their customers and patients as they are served.” The team plans to market the app across all industries and customize it to function according to businesses’ needs in order to best track their employees success and communication with those they are serving.
