Ep. 210: The Office Manager Daily Checklist
Too many practices struggle because their office manager’s role isn’t clearly defined. This episode lays out the step-by-step daily actions that keep your stats climbing and your team on track.
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Episode 210 documents - https://www.mgeonline.com/episode-210-downloads-form-page/
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Questions From This Episode
Why did MGE create a dedicated daily checklist specifically for the office manager role?
Because when a practice hits a rough month or a statistic won't move, the root cause is almost always one of a small set of basic actions that simply stopped happening, not some complex new problem. The office manager role is so demanding and pulled in so many directions that it's genuinely easy to complete 18 out of 20 essential actions consistently while the two that slip quietly come back to hurt the practice weeks later.
What's the difference between how a schedule coordinator and a treatment coordinator should show up prepared to the morning meeting?
A schedule coordinator should arrive already knowing the day's production shortfall and having real ideas to close that gap, not just reporting the number and waiting for someone else to solve it. A treatment coordinator, functioning essentially as the practice's salesperson with a real income quota, should already have a specific plan for hitting that day's number, including exactly which patients they'll follow up with and when, and any support they'll need from other staff to get there.
Why should patients with outstanding treatment be visually flagged on the schedule?
Because it lets the office manager glance at any upcoming day and immediately see how much real sales opportunity is actually built into it, rather than discovering too late that a day is packed with routine visits and has almost nothing lined up to sell. One client's system simply color coded any appointment tied to a patient with unaccepted treatment, making it immediately obvious which days needed more consults added.
Why is a sales log just as important as the daily lineup?
Because comparing what was actually presented and logged against what the morning lineup planned to present reveals exactly where a shortfall is coming from, whether not enough was scheduled to sell in the first place, cases were lined up but never actually presented, or patients simply weren't showing up. Without that log, it's nearly impossible to tell which of those three problems is actually driving a disappointing week.
What should an office manager actually be monitoring throughout the day when it comes to marketing leads and insurance follow-up?
Missed calls and web form leads from marketing specifically, including calls that came in after hours or leads that never left a voicemail, since those prospects are often never followed up on at all. On the financial side, insurance payments coming in under the expected amount need to be caught and either collected from the patient or written off correctly, rather than left to quietly pile up into a large, aging, increasingly uncollectible accounts receivable balance.
Episode Transcript
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Jeff: We've done a number of episodes on the office manager, the qualities they should have, their general responsibilities, and the importance of the role, as well as clarifying what we actually mean by office manager, since that title and its responsibilities vary a lot practice to practice. In some offices they run the front desk, in others they pay the bills. At MGE, our view is the office manager functions essentially like a CEO or COO, the person genuinely running operations, especially since an owner doctor spending most of their time in patient care simply isn't running the business while they're doing that.
Jeff: But what should their actual day look like? This role covers so many areas that it's easy for one to get all the attention while others quietly fall through the cracks. That's why we created an office manager daily checklist, and the main person behind it is Sabri Blumberg, our Deputy Chief Operating Officer, who oversees all of our technical delivery here at MGE and genuinely knows practice management inside and out.
Jeff: Sabri, you're all set?
Sabri: All set.
Jeff: Let's jump right in. This office manager daily duties article runs five or six pages with a checklist attached, available as a free download on the episode page. We already have checklists for other roles, receptionist, schedule coordinator, financial coordinator, but those are usually built for training a newer employee. An office manager typically already has some sense of their responsibilities. So what specifically made you decide this role needed a dedicated checklist?
Sabri: When I'd sit down with clients and their managers, or when other consultants here did, after a rough month, we'd almost always find that some basic action simply wasn't happening. Sometimes it's a genuine management issue, but very often it's just one of the fundamental systems of running a dental practice that quietly stopped. There's really an irreducible minimum set of actions that need to happen every day for a practice to grow, and the office manager role is so demanding, and so often the person everyone goes to when something's wrong, that it's genuinely easy to assume something is happening when it's actually stopped.
Jeff: So out of, say, twenty essential daily actions, someone might reliably do eighteen, but the two that slip could come back to hurt the practice weeks later.
Sabri: Exactly, and when statistics stall or won't move, it consistently traces back to one of these specific points not happening.
Jeff: Give me a concrete example.
Sabri: Just this week, I was talking with someone who'd simply stopped their postcard marketing, for no particularly good reason, they felt like running the same design for a while and wanted to redesign it, so they paused it entirely in the meantime. Now there's no marketing running at all, when even the old postcard was doing something. It just falls off the radar and stays on someone's to-do list indefinitely.
Jeff: So this checklist works a bit differently than, say, a new receptionist's daily checklist, which has specific boxes to check off each day, straighten the reception area, flip the answering service, that sort of thing.
Sabri: Right, this one functions more like a reminder list. Some items are fairly generalized, and some genuinely require real management thinking. I do expect the manager to have real training, but even without that, simply following this consistently gets you most of the way there.
Jeff: Let's walk through it. Where does the day actually start?
Sabri: With a proper morning meeting. I'm not laying out a specific format here, we have a separate handout for the morning production meeting itself, but a few things need to happen around it. Everyone needs to show up already prepared, so the meeting itself stays fast, ten or fifteen minutes, not a drag. That means schedule changes checked ahead of time, and the hygienist and assistants having already reviewed the charts and notes for that day's patients.
Jeff: We've actually never walked into a practice cold and seen this meeting run correctly on the first observation, interestingly.
Sabri: It's the first thing I check too, and it's rarely done well without direct guidance. People often don't fully understand why the meeting exists in the first place.
Jeff: The purpose is simply getting everyone coordinated and on the same page for the day, a unified plan of action.
Sabri: Exactly, everybody knows what everyone else is doing at any given point, problems get caught before they actually become problems, and everyone knows where they're supposed to be.
Jeff: One thing worth flagging directly: a morning meeting isn't a time to catch up on the weekend or grab a donut, and it also shouldn't turn into the office manager doing all the talking while everyone else just listens.
Sabri: Right, that's a great point, because a proper meeting starts with statistics, but staff need to understand they're reporting their own statistic, not doing the office manager a favor. If I'm the schedule coordinator and production is my assigned number, and we're at 10,000 against a 15,000 target for the day, I shouldn't just report that flatly like a weather report. I should be coming in with what I plan to do to close that gap.
Jeff: This connects to something important when you're hiring anyone into these roles, making sure they genuinely understand what they're actually being paid to produce, not just their time or friendliness, but a specific deliverable.
Sabri: Exactly, and once someone understands that, they can actually get better at delivering it.
Jeff: So walking through it, before the meeting: schedule is updated, hygienists and assistants have reviewed their charts, office manager knows where the stats stand. If I'm the schedule coordinator, what would you expect me to walk in with?
Sabri: Schedule changes, current openings, and what today is lined up to produce versus the goal, plus real ideas for closing any gap. And if something like a same-day hygiene cancellation comes up, the scheduler should already be looking at who else coming in that day could slide into that opening, rather than bringing the problem to the meeting with no attempted solution. It's their job to arrive with a plan, not to use the meeting as a place for someone else to solve it for them.
Jeff: And if I'm the treatment coordinator specifically?
Sabri: At minimum, I'd want you to already know how you're going to hit your specific dollar quota that day, essentially functioning as the practice's salesperson. If you're following up with a specific patient who connected well with a particular assistant, you should already have that call scheduled and know exactly what support you'll need.
Jeff: From an executive standpoint, I'd actually rather see someone newer walk in with an imperfect plan, we're at six instead of ten, but here's what I'm trying, than someone who just reports the shortfall with nothing behind it.
Sabri: Completely agree, at least they're attempting to solve it, which also flags for the office manager exactly where to step in and help, maybe pairing that treatment coordinator with the doctor for a specific patient conversation later that morning, and eventually they learn to solve it independently.
Jeff: So once the stats are covered, what's the main thing that actually needs coordinating in that meeting?
Sabri: Getting the day's sales genuinely coordinated. Treatment can't just get sold in isolation, it has to actually be explained by the doctor first, so real coordination between front and back is essential. If the doctor needs to be in a specific room at a specific time to present a plan to a specific patient, the scheduler or whoever checks that patient out needs to know that has to happen. Otherwise you get a patient with outstanding treatment checked out with nobody ever bringing it back up, sometimes because it was mentioned once months ago and simply never followed up on.
Jeff: Which connects to something important, the financial side is genuinely one of the biggest reasons people don't get the care they need.
Sabri: Right, dentistry isn't free, and that's the real barrier for most patients, more than fear of the dentist itself, which has genuinely improved a lot over the decades. Production simply can't happen without selling the treatment first, so the whole team needs to work together intentionally to help a patient get healthy despite whatever financial hurdle exists, especially with how many financing options exist today.
Jeff: And there's a common mistake of writing someone off because they said no six months ago.
Sabri: Exactly, that's not smart, people simply need time. I remember a newer client looking at the lineup form for the first time and asking what exactly goes into it. To be clear, a lineup is just the list of patients you're planning to present treatment to that day, based on already diagnosed treatment for existing patients, since you genuinely don't know what a new patient needs until they're actually seen.
Jeff: So you're looking at every patient with outstanding treatment and figuring out, in the morning, who presents it and when, especially with multiple doctors involved.
Sabri: Right, and if a doctor gets pulled into an unexpected root canal and can't make that presentation, you need a real alternative, at minimum rescheduling that patient specifically for the exam rather than letting six more months pass and having them show up later as an emergency instead.
Jeff: And the exam itself doesn't have to happen at the very end of the hygiene appointment either.
Sabri: Right, it can happen whenever the doctor has a moment, X-rays can be taken upfront, and the doctor can step in anytime to look, request an additional PA if something looks off, whatever's needed.
Jeff: The lineup also covers referrals for the day, what does that actually mean?
Sabri: Statistically, about one in four patients has no other household members coming to your practice, meaning three out of four do. So during the lineup, you're looking at who's coming in today and asking directly whether anyone else in their household needs to see a dentist, then getting that person scheduled, even offering the new patient special if that helps close it.
Jeff: That takes someone with a genuinely upbeat personality to pull off well.
Sabri: Definitely, you want someone chipper handling that conversation, matched with the right patients. Even scheduling just one patient a day this way adds up to roughly 20 additional new patients a month, and they tend to be your best new patients too, since they're coming through an existing relationship.
Jeff: And this same lineup process covers asking for reviews and patient testimonials too?
Sabri: Right, but assigned specifically to one person for a given patient, not five different staff members all trying to grab the same review. If you're completing a significant treatment plan with someone at three o'clock, that's a natural moment to ask about a video testimonial with a signed release for social media. But if it's just a vague, someone should get this done, it never actually happens. Assigning it directly, and having the office manager follow up on it during the day, is what actually makes it happen.
Jeff: So the morning is fully lined up, sales, referrals, reviews, content. Now we're actually running the day. What happens there?
Sabri: The office manager needs to check in throughout the day, hourly if needed, to confirm the targets set that morning are actually being hit. Things run long, people forget, patients no-show. The office manager's job is to notice in real time, remind someone about a review they were supposed to ask for, adjust if a patient didn't show up for a planned closing conversation, and make live adjustments so the day still comes together despite whatever shifts. That's genuinely an active role, not something done from behind a desk.
Jeff: And how does the day actually wrap up?
Sabri: Most of the next day's prep actually happens the evening before. At end of day: confirm stats are properly reported, the day sheet matches the deposit exactly, every patient has their next appointment confirmed, nothing left open.
Jeff: Which also happens to be a quick way to catch embezzlement early.
Sabri: Exactly right.
Jeff: Beyond running the actual day, what other ongoing duties fall to the office manager?
Sabri: A handful of things I'd want them personally monitoring daily. First, the schedule itself needs a genuine balance between production and sales opportunity built in, you can't manufacture a sales lineup out of a day with no potential sales connected to it. One client system I really liked color coded any appointment tied to a patient with outstanding treatment, regardless of what department they were in, making it immediately obvious at a glance which upcoming days needed more consults added.
Jeff: Not that every green block needs to represent a huge case, sometimes it's just a couple of small fillings.
Sabri: Right, that's completely fine, the goal isn't fixating on dollar amounts, it's making sure the team internalizes why this matters in the first place. The practice exists to make patients healthy, and if someone walks in unhealthy and leaves unhealthy, even if somewhat improved, that's a failure on our end, not the patient's, usually a gap in education or in overcoming a real barrier they had. We're not pushing money, we're pushing genuine care, and more revenue simply means helping more people.
Jeff: What else should they be actively watching?
Sabri: Making sure hygiene stays fully booked every day, confirming every appointment is actually confirmed, not just a message left, since a lot of so-called cancellation problems actually trace back to someone quietly deciding voicemails count as confirmation. Financial oversight matters too, monitoring accounts receivable, and if you're on a prepayment model, making sure credit balances are actually being tracked so treatment gets delivered, not just collected and forgotten. And following up on insurance if you take it.
Jeff: What share of newer clients coming to us now outsource their insurance filing?
Sabri: Around 40 percent, genuinely a lot.
Jeff: And what problem tends to show up with that?
Sabri: Say insurance pays 600 dollars when you expected 800, that 200 dollar patient balance just sits there if nobody's actually tracking it. We're seeing newer clients come in with genuinely enormous accounts receivable now, since nobody's actively collecting or reconciling those balances anymore.
Jeff: If there's no dedicated financial coordinator, that oversight really falls to the office manager by default.
Sabri: Exactly, reviewing what insurance posted, where patient balances actually stand, making sure the right write-offs happened so patients aren't billed incorrectly, which is genuinely one of the reasons practices lose patients entirely.
Jeff: I know you had me look at a case recently, an accounts receivable balance of 1.4 million dollars, almost entirely insurance, most of it aged past 90 days.
Sabri: Right, and a lot of that becomes very difficult to recover once it's aged that far.
Jeff: Though worth noting, if you have documentation showing a claim was properly filed electronically, insurers typically allow a much longer window, sometimes several years, even if they claim they never received it originally.
Sabri: Right, and if you're dealing with a backlog like that, it's genuinely worth hiring someone specifically to recover it, since writing that off is essentially the same as not accepting insurance at all, you did the clinical work and simply never collected for it.
Jeff: What about marketing leads specifically?
Sabri: This is a big one. If you're running Google pay-per-click, which a lot of practices are now, most leads come through calls tracked via a dashboard, but two things consistently get missed. First, calls that came in after hours, those patients may still be entirely viable, they just might not have left a voicemail. Second, a lot of pay-per-click campaigns drive to a landing page with a form option, not just a phone number, and those form leads often go completely unchecked because staff simply don't know to look for them.
Jeff: And staff generally prefer taking calls over making them.
Sabri: Universally true, and everyone has a different internal sense of how many follow-up attempts is reasonable before giving up, usually fewer than whoever's actually paying for that lead would prefer.
Jeff: We actually have a client who takes this to the opposite extreme, in a good way, calling an implant funnel lead as many as several dozen times before giving up entirely.
Sabri: Right, they'll call daily until they either reach the person, who might ask to be called back in a week, in which case they follow that request exactly, or the person explicitly says they've gone elsewhere or aren't interested right now, at which point they shift to a simple monthly follow-up. They never just discard a lead outright.
Jeff: And that's genuinely one of our more successful clients specifically because of that persistence.
Sabri: When I worked chairside myself, I never had an issue calling patients repeatedly to get them scheduled. You'll occasionally get someone testy about it, but most people, when you point out you've called several times without a callback, are genuinely apologetic, they're just busy, not upset.
Jeff: So beyond marketing and insurance, staff performance and quotas factor in too.
Sabri: Right, genuinely validating whether people are hitting their numbers, correcting issues properly and promptly rather than letting them compound, and if someone genuinely isn't a fit despite real coaching, helping them find a role where they can actually succeed elsewhere, that maintains overall team harmony too.
Jeff: You also mentioned keeping the sales log current, can you explain what that actually is?
Sabri: A lot of dental sales genuinely require real follow-up, not because the patient doesn't want treatment, but because something legitimate is in the way, waiting on a paycheck, refinancing, needing to talk to a spouse first. None of that means they've said no permanently.
Jeff: Is this a notebook, a spreadsheet, what format?
Sabri: Whatever's easiest and HIPAA compliant for you, some use a spreadsheet, I've always personally preferred a physical notebook. Whoever presents a case logs it, the date, what was presented, who presented it, and the outcome, closed, not closed, and why, with any follow-up needed.
Jeff: And that log should line up with what was actually planned in that morning's lineup.
Sabri: Exactly, and if income isn't where it should be, comparing the two tells you exactly why. Either not enough was lined up to sell in the first place, which shows up in a weak lineup. Or things were lined up but never actually logged as presented, meaning cases are quietly slipping through without ever being addressed. Or everything was presented and logged correctly, but patients simply aren't showing up, a genuine cancellation problem. Keeping both the lineup and the sales log lets you diagnose exactly which of those three is actually happening.
Jeff: One more thing worth mentioning while we're on outreach, this is a good time of year to send use-it-or-lose-it insurance benefit letters, even for patients whose insurance you don't directly accept, they still have year-end benefits worth reminding them about.
Sabri: Exactly right. And addressing staff issues immediately matters too, if someone's been late repeatedly, don't wait until it's happened five times to address it. If someone who's normally upbeat suddenly seems off, don't just speculate privately, go check in directly. As the manager, you're responsible for creating an environment people genuinely want to work in, and one where patients feel comfortable getting healthy.
Jeff: So this checklist covers all of that, and the full article walks through each point in more depth than we could cover here, with a checklist attached at the end. If I'm an office manager, I'd keep this on my desk and refer back to it throughout the day?
Sabri: Absolutely, it keeps you honest and on track. You won't have a perfect day or week every time, but consistently covering these fundamentals is genuinely what drives long-term success.
Jeff: This was great, Sabri, thank you again.
Sabri: Happy to be here.
Jeff: The full checklist and the morning production meeting handout are both available as downloads on the episode page. And as Sabri mentioned, real training matters here too, the MGE Power Program trains both doctors and office managers as genuine executives, which is exactly why our clients succeed with this. If you want to learn more about MGE, find us online at mgeonline.com or call 800-640-1140. Have a great week, and we'll see you at the next episode.