September has been Office Manager Appreciation Month and we want to take a moment to recognize some amazing office managers!
Office managers are near and dear to our heart here at Smile Advantage. Everything we do, we do to improve the experience of office managers and make their daily office life a little easier. We want to honor two amazing office managers as September comes to a close, Angie Coffey and Staci Sweeden!
Meet Staci Thrasher Sweeden, FAADOM, the Office Manager at Heather Adams Dentistry and Chapter President of the Northwest Arkansas AADOM Chapter!
I like to say I grew up in a dental office. My mother is currently an office manager, and has been in an administrative position or a dental assistant for over forty years and the dental office has always felt like home. I worked in my first office at the end of high school/beginning of college and then stepped away for a while. I had an internship with Walt Disney World and came back to manage a restaurant for five years which I LOVED. I was able to travel to different states and work in different stores as well as move to a different city where I met my amazing husband, but it just wasn’t checking all the boxes for me. I made the decision to step back into dentistry and was fortunate enough to be hired by my current doctor who actually was the one that introduced me to AADOM. Her passion for continuing education and helping lift up other people has inspired a lot of my career. I decided to form a local AADOM Chapter about a year ago and my board and myself are continuing to grow that chapter to serve our fellow office managers in our community. I recently earned my FAADOM and am working toward my MAADOM which I will hopefully have by 2024.
How has a membership plan helped your practice?
Offering a membership plan has helped our practice by offering benefit discounts that a patient with in-network insurance might also have at our practice. We want to celebrate our loyal patients, who choose to make their dental health a priority even though they don’t have a dental insurance allowance, and a membership plan gives us the opportunity to do just that. In fact, when applying for the job at my current practice, one of the first things I looked to see if they offered was a membership plan! Transitioning from running that plan to working with Smile Advantage was something I was part of and being able to maintain those memberships in one place has made things much more manageable in our office!
What excites you about having your own custom plan?
What’s exciting about having a custom plan is exactly what it says: it’s customizable! In these past two years, if nothing else, we have learned that everything is changing and can change rapidly. Having a plan that we can alter and customize to OUR practice needs is essential to be able to care for our patients and still maintain a profitable practice.
How long have you been involved with AADOM?
I have been a member of AADOM for almost three years now!
How has AADOM helped you professionally and personally?
Professionally, AADOM has provided SO MUCH education. They bring in the best of the best to speak at our conferences (it’s not a conference for me if I don’t hear Lois Banta and Judy Kay Mausolf speak at least once), as well as the distinction programs they offer! It’s provided a network far greater than I ever imagined having, and it is such a relief to know I have a tribe of people I can call with questions (or to vent) any time. Personally it has helped me about the same way it has personally! My network isn’t just professional relationships, those people are my friends, too! I’m also the kind of person who has to be learning and has to be moving forward or I feel unsatisfied in my career and life. AADOM providing those distinction opportunities and the opportunity for me to form and be a part of a local chapter fills a need in my soul to always progress so that even those times that I never hit a place that I feel “stuck” in my career.
What are your favorite things about being an OM?
It allows me to make connections with people and make a true difference in people’s lives but also be able to run a more operational side of things as well. I love hitting goals; looking at numbers and trying to always do better and more efficient is so fun for me.. but that can also be very unsatisfying when you want to be able to connect with others also. Being an OM really balances those two things nicely.
Meet Angie Coffey, FAADOM, office manager at Dentistry @ University Pointe and Vice President of the SW Ohio/N Kentucky AADOM Chapter!
How has a membership plan helped your practice?
As an established practice we have a lot of patients each year that transition into retirement. It is great being able to offer a plan that takes care of this demographic as well as our self employed patients that don’t have access to dental insurance.
What excites you about having your own custom plan?
We have the ability to decide what we want to charge for the plan as well as what we want to include in the benefits.
What has your experience been with working with the team at Smile Advantage?
The Smile Advantage Team is awesome. Whenever we have questions we generally get an immediate response.
How has Smile Advantage helped your practice?
Smile Advantage was integral when we decided to go out of network with a large local insurance carrier in Cincinnati. Having the ability to offer our patients SA helped us retain more than 85% of these patients. For some of these patients it was a short term change and they only need SA for a year. Others have decided to stay on with SA and not go back to traditional insurance. I like to sit down with our patients that have insurance questions and explain exactly how it works. Being able to show them SA along with their insurance options is great.
How long have you been involved with AADOM?
I have been involved with AADOM since 2017. I met our local Chapter President, Dawn Lang, at a Henry Schein event. I signed up with her on the spot.
How long have you been an OM?
I have been an office manager since 2014.
How has AADOM helped you professionally and personally?
The manager that was in my practice was completely mismanaging the practice. I sort of got thrown into the position and had to get the practice back on track. It was a long 3 years before I found AADOM. That has been life changing. I found a group of people that knew what I was going through. I was able to turn things around and our practice is thriving. In 2020, I received my FAADOM distinction and I am currently working on my MAADOM. The doctors in my practice truly value the education that I receive from AADOM.
What are your favorite things about being an OM?
I love being able to manage a great team. Most of us have worked together for more than 18 years. We are truly a family. Along with that interacting with our patients are great. I love being able to watch generations of families come into the office. You know that you have something special when you are seeing 3rd generation patients.