DSO Secrets Podcast - Don't Hire a Problem

[0:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I am Ken Kaufman, your host for today, and very excited to introduce our guests. I'm going to just turn it over to you, David Harris of Prosperident. Go ahead and introduce yourself and your two amazing associates,

[0:16] and then we're going to jump into today's topic. That sounds great, Ken. My name is David Harris, and I'm the CEO of Prosperident. With me are two of my favorite people anywhere, Amber Weber, who's one of our senior fraud investigators

[0:32] from Texas, and Wendy Askins, who holds the exalted position of supervising examiner. So she's one of our most experienced and absolutely one of our top bananas, also from Texas. I am coming to you from Halifax, Canada, which is where our head office is.

[0:51] And before you ask me, Ken, I do play ice hockey. Oh, I'm really, really glad to hear that. I can't remember if I told you that I lived in Canada for a couple of years and was amazed at how, in the wintertime, in the parks, they actually turned them into ice rinks.

[1:10] And we'd go out and play, and it was so much fun. I loved it. I am a very novice, rookie hockey player, but loved being on skates and learning how to do all that. Good. I don't think I did know you lived in Canada.

[1:25] That's very neat. Yeah, I lived kind of between in Ottawa for a fair amount of time and then in and around the Montreal area for a fair amount of time. So very neat. Awesome.

[1:36] Well, we're going to dive right into today's topic. And for those that are regular listeners to the program, David and his team have been on our show a couple of times before talking about how to think about organizing your dental practice to protect yourself from fraud, theft, embezzlement,

[1:55] and of course, David, you don't give yourself enough credit. You wrote a great book called Dental Embezzlement, and it's something that we use inside of our organization and refer to on a regular basis. It's a great resource, and I'd recommend it to anybody who wants to really think

[2:10] about protecting the business. But specifically, David, we're trying to focus on the DSO because the types of opportunities for fraud or embezzlement are different between a single doctor-owned practice versus a DSO where you start to get centralized services and these other things.

[2:28] And today, we really want to focus on the hiring process and how who you hire has a lot to do with the types of risks that could potentially be exposed in the future. So do you want to maybe give us a high-level overview and then we'll dive in and start kind of picking this topic apart?

[2:47] Absolutely. And I suspect most of the audience know this part can dentists. And when we're talking about owner-operated practices, of course, in those practices, for the most part, it's dentists doing the hiring.

[3:01] And they all categorically hate the hiring process. So like any job that you hate, they take shortcuts. And they get somebody who has a good resume, who knows their software, especially in the current environment where one of the things that a lot of people are saying

[3:17] is that there's a bit of a labor shortage out there. They tend to grab somebody fairly quickly without doing much background investigation at all. DSOs do a better job of that background investigation. And we'll talk in a few minutes about what that might consist of.

[3:37] But people still slip through the cracks. And we've been involved in a number of cases where we're working for a DSO doing an investigation on somebody who turns out to be a serial embezzler. And what I mean by a serial embezzler is, of course, they've done it somewhere else before.

[3:57] And they managed to navigate their way through the scrutiny that the DSO applied at the time of hiring and get a job that they just never should have had. And Amber and Wendy both have their share of horror stories on this. And we'll likely get them to talk about it in a minute.

[4:16] But let's start from the position that DSOs do a better job of screening people before they hire them than owner-operated practices do. But there's still room for improvement. Great. So let's start with this topic of serial embezzlers.

[4:34] You're identifying that as somebody who's done this activity before in the past, as well as other high-risk people. And the general, or I should say, one of the tools that can be used as a background check. So can you guys walk us through what that should look like

[4:54] and what things you should be willing to forgive somebody from their past versus not? From start to finish, because when you get a background check, there's a lot of different ways or options that you can select of what types of information you're looking for.

[5:09] So could you walk us through, teach everybody how to really use this background check effectively if you don't mind? Absolutely. And thank you, because you drew out, I think, one of the terminological mistakes that people make.

[5:26] I mean, when a lot of people hear the words background check, what they're thinking of is what I would refer to as a criminal record check. And that, to me, is a subset of what should happen before you hire somebody. In other words, criminal records check is part of it.

[5:44] One of my pet peeves is that dental practices tend to hire people without drug testing. And to put it into context, I mean, Ken, you and I were at the same conference last week in a very nice hotel. And I will guarantee you that I could not

[5:59] get a job in that hotel without a drug test. And yet virtually every solo practice and a whole lot of DSOs hire people without drug testing them. The difference between that hotel and your DSO is your DSO has prescription pads in every operator.

[6:23] So in a business where dentists have the ability to dispense controlled substances, it makes no sense to me whatsoever that we don't drug test applicants. And what else? So we want to.

[6:37] So we should be doing a drug test. And then what else? What what are all the other elements that we should be considering when trying to do a comprehensive background check? Wendy, what would be the next thing you'd want to look at?

[6:53] I actually think one of the most important things is something that is so, so easy to do. And it's called for more employers. And ironically, we find that a lot of our a lot of the cases with our clients, they actually don't do that because someone presents before them

[7:17] and they look like the total package. They're well spoken. They know the lingo. They know how to file insurance or they know how to do collections. They know how to work the software.

[7:30] And so you just assume that what they're telling you is the truth when in actuality, a quick call to a former employer would reveal that that person would never in a million years, hell no, be hired again at that same office. Yeah. And, you know, former employer check is part of it.

[7:55] And again, DSOs, we will acknowledge, generally do this better than solo practices, but some mistakes still get made. And one of the big mistakes is whoever's doing this will kind of do it mechanically. They will call the phone number that the applicant supplied

[8:10] for them. And what that means is that you may end up unknowingly talking to the applicant's uncle, who is pretending to be the former employer. So one easy takeaway here for the audience is when you make those calls, find the phone numbers independently.

[8:32] And if somebody says that they work for Sunshine Dental in Glendale, Arizona, Google is really cheap to use. Go online, find the number independently, and call it. And then you know you're speaking with the actual former employer and not some disposable cell phone. And what about some of the common challenges with this?

[8:51] So an employee might say something like, hey, please don't call my employer. They don't know I'm looking. Or there are lots of these excuses. Walk us through how you still get what you need out of the process.

[9:07] And that is a great example of the kind of roadblock you can run into. And it could be one of two things. Either this is a legitimate request or this person was fired three weeks ago and pretending that they're still working

[9:24] and trying to come up with a reason to prevent a conversation between you and somebody that they know is going to go badly. So here's what I would do. And Amber probably has some ideas on this one as well. What I would say to that employee is, look, I get it.

[9:42] And we certainly would not want to put you in an awkward position with your current employer. But I'm going to tell you that it is our DSO's policy that we call all former employers. But in deference to your position, I'm quite prepared to put that off to the end of the process.

[10:02] In other words, that'll be the last thing we do after we've already told you, subject to that phone call, you have the job.

[10:11] Yes, I definitely agree on that, Dave. I mean, sometimes you can save it until you're ready to make the offer and that person has to agree to allow that to happen. Another thing in my experience is just because it's in writing

[10:25] doesn't necessarily mean it's true. So a lot of people will like to spice up their resume. We all want a little cayenne pepper in our life, but shouldn't come from reading a person's resume. So that's one thing I always really verify what is on the resume is valid and true.

[10:43] One of my experiences is if someone comes in and they say they have a license for dental assisting, dental hygiene, even being a dentist, check other states as well, because you'll be interested to see what you find sometimes when you research what other states have you lived in

[11:02] and you start looking through the history of their license and maybe why they're no longer licensed or in that state and they've moved to your state and spiced up their resume to try to seal the deal with you. Let me if I could pick up on one thing that Amber said

[11:18] and just amplify it. Paper in 2021 is not worth the paper, it's printed on. So sometimes applicants will come to you with a glowing reference letter written by their former employer. What you do with that glowing reference letter

[11:35] came as you tear it up and throw it in the garbage and then you pick up the phone and call that employer because it is so easy to forge a reference letter. I mean, there was a time back 35 years ago, forgery was kind of a high skilled activity. You had to use some pretty expensive equipment

[11:53] in order to forge a reference letter. Now anybody with a laser printer can pull the former employer's logo off the internet and paste that onto a word file or a publisher file that they're using and they have a very convincing looking reference letter.

[12:16] What I wouldn't mind doing though, if you're okay with it is I'm gonna show you a couple of resumes on the screen and these two resumes are actually from the same person. In one case, she's applying to an ortho practice and she's presenting a resume that looks like she has worked in ortho

[12:38] much for a whole adult life. The other resume, and I'll put them up on the screen. So this is the same person applying for two jobs and she's using different first names but the same last name.

[12:56] We know it's the same person because the four numbers are the same but the resume on the left is what she used to apply to ortho practices and the resume on the right is what she was using for general dental practices.

[13:15] Interesting. So for those that are just listening in on the podcast, there's vast differences. Yeah, but like you said, same phone number. Yeah. Same phone number, same,

[13:31] some of the details are the same. Now, these were also accompanied by a glowing reference letter purportedly written by a consultant who I can tell you with some certainty doesn't exist.

[13:49] So a few things come out of this as Amber says, we can't believe something simply because it's on paper and what's nice. Yeah. And we should never accept any reference letter. You know, just use the darn phone,

[14:06] call the person and hear it from the horse's mouth. And in that perspective, the other challenge with calling on references is and this is if they're legitimate, if they're not legitimate, you're probably gonna get the phone

[14:22] picked up right away and it's far too convenient. And a lot of information. Yeah. But to the degree, you're really trying to do your due diligence

[14:31] and trying to get through. If it's, you know, the CEO of a company or if it's the dentist of the last dental practice they worked at, these are people that often don't take phone calls or they have, they have screeners

[14:42] and they have gatekeepers keeping, you know, people from calling in any tips or tricks on how to get past those gatekeepers and how to get to the folks who have been decision makers and would know, you know, substantial information

[14:54] about the prospective employee. Yeah, I'll say two things here. First of all, a lot of DSOs, especially larger ones have pretty rigid policies about what they will say about a former employer and a former employee.

[15:09] And that's all fine. The mistake we should never make though is to assume that everybody else has the same policies we do. In other words, sometimes people won't ask a question because their own policies would not allow it

[15:20] to be answered. And I can tell you categorically when you're calling a solo dentist somewhere they have no policies whatsoever about what they'll say. So don't censor yourself as part of the process. If you do encounter reluctance from,

[15:39] especially from a solo dentist, the easiest way to get around it is to just make a very simple statement. You understand that because you are refusing to answer this question that this applicant may be denied employment

[15:50] at our practice. And what they hear when you make that statement is, okay, there's a lawsuit coming. When this employee doesn't get the job and she asks why, which under the Fair Credit Reporting Act

[16:06] she's entitled to, the answer is going to be, well, because your former employer refused to talk to us. So that statement tends to make people a little bit more forthcoming or a little bit more prepared to return your phone call.

[16:21] Okay, so I want you to say it one more time just so everybody listening in how to phrase this statement. You are saying this to the gatekeeper or if you get the former employer, let's assume it's a dentist who's on the phone

[16:37] and they just say, I'm not saying anything. What we refer to as Velcro lip syndrome, then what you say to them is, you realize that by not answering my questions, the result may be that this person is denied employment. Very good.

[16:57] That's an old investigator's trick to get information out of people. I like it. That's very effective. Amber and Wendy, really interested in your perspective around

[17:11] how to effectively work through the gatekeepers and what types of questions you want to ask once you get there to, again, really try to assess the credibility of this prospective employee. Definitely.

[17:27] One of the main things I like to ask, I mean, it's pretty simple, would you hire this person again? I mean, that's a very open statement that no one should be afraid to ask. But a lot of doctors are afraid to ask that question.

[17:41] The other thing is, definitely, the great thing about DSO is you guys have management that helps in this process, but they're definitely, you know, two heads are better than one. So the more people who are in the process

[17:54] and making sure those questions are asked is definitely key. But I think that's one of the main questions for me is blanket statement, would you hire this person again? Simple yes or no question.

[18:06] Yeah, it's really the equivalent of a net promoter score in dentistry where we would reach out to a patient and say, how likely are you to refer this service or this dental practice to your family and friends? Very similar. Two beautiful things about that question.

[18:25] Sorry, Wendy. I just want to run with that one for a minute. Two great things about the question. The first is that anything other than an enthusiastic yes means no. If you ask somebody, would you rehire this person?

[18:40] And there's sort of three seconds of silence. That says a lot. The second thing about that question is everybody's scared when they're being phoned and asked about a former employee about being sued. Probably far more scared than they need to be.

[18:58] First of all, employers giving good faith, former employers giving good faith references in most states have what's called qualified privilege. In other words, they're allowed to do that without any real risk of being sued. But even in those states,

[19:14] this question isn't about the past. You're not asking, did this person steal from you or did this person light your office on fire? What you're asking is, would you hire them again? So it's not really actionable. It's not a question about the past.

[19:28] It's about what you plan to do in the future. Sorry, Wendy. Oh, I'm just going to say one of the things that I think is important is to not give the answers to someone. I'm just going to say one of the things that I think is important

[19:46] is to not give the answers to someone. For example, say, did this person work for you from, you know, May of 19 until June of 20? Just ask the open-ended question and let the other person respond because that's how you're going to find gaps if someone has maybe done a stretch of times on their

[20:10] own. And then ask them who they worked for before they came to work for you and who, to your knowledge, who did they go to work for after? If you're not the immediate, if they're not the immediate past employer.

[20:25] And then, you know, I'm a forensic auditor. So my job is just to ask questions. And a lot of times I don't get the answer to it or I don't get the answer that I want. Or sometimes I get, I don't know. But we referred to that before when David said,

[20:41] don't just assume that people aren't going to ask you or aren't going to answer your questions. Hey, you know what? If they don't answer your specific questions, okay, just move on to the next and stick with the four that are the standard questions, right?

[20:57] But attempt it, just pepper them with questions and see if they'll answer. A couple of sobering statistics can for the audience. The first is that roughly 70 million Americans. So that's one in four adults has a criminal record. And yet, you know, some of your,

[21:17] some of your peers hire without finding out if that's the case. Now, personally, I think that not every criminal record would stop me from hiring somebody. So the person who had a marijuana conviction 15 years ago in a state where marijuana is now legal, probably isn't going to get denied the job

[21:35] because of that as far as I'm concerned. But I should make that decision knowing what's in the past. The other issue with hiring is there's information out there in readily accessible places. For example, a lot of people will hire somebody without having a look at their social networking activity.

[21:57] And we can learn a lot about somebody. Sorry, and I just want to come back to something Wendy was talking about, which is one of the big dangers with the resume and one of the purposes of the question that she was suggesting is what's called the hidden job. So I work for Dr. A for three years,

[22:19] and either I'm not stealing or I am, and he doesn't catch me. So I work for Dr. A for three years, and either I'm not stealing or I am, and he doesn't catch me. And I leave his office and I go to work for DSOB for six months. And they catch me and bezzling and they fire me.

[22:40] And now I'm applying at your platform. I'm okay with you talking to Dr. A because he thinks I'm great. What I don't want you to do is call DSOB because if you do, they're going to say, hmm, don't. So I need to hide that six months that I worked for DSOB somehow. And one of the ways this is really what Wendy was getting at was

[23:04] I stretched the dates that I worked for Dr. A. So I actually worked for him for three years, but on the resume it says three years and six months. And if you're a little bit casual about date of employment, or as Wendy says, if you prompt Dr. A and you say, David says he worked for you from this date to that date,

[23:25] then we're all equally lazy and we'll probably just say, that sounds about right. So what Wendy's saying is don't do that. Just ask them the question. What was the start date? What was the end date?

[23:38] And then if somebody's stretching resumes, you'll know. And this one's kind of top of mind for Wendy, because a case she worked on several years ago, had a serial embezzler who did exactly that. She made a whole... She worked for the victim, Wendy.

[23:57] I'm thinking for around three years. When she was applying for her next job after we caught her and fired her, she made the job with the person we worked with completely disappear like that. And got away with it.

[24:12] We chased her through three different offices. And she finally, I mean, she didn't serve jail time, but she did end up making restitution of a large amount. Yeah. That always makes me happy. Yeah.

[24:33] Wendy was about to whip her cape out there. I think. Captain forensic auditor. If I can for a second, I'd like to go down kind of a different path. And maybe Ken and Dave,

[24:48] you can help me with this because I have a client at the moment and we're struggling with this issue. And that it was a solo private practice owner who sold to a DSO. So the DSO inherited all of the employees from the prior practice owner.

[25:11] And about six months into the DSO tenure, one of the employees, thank God, started asking questions and started, you know, saying, I see there aren't contracts in the computer. I see that our cash is off or deposits are off. So my question is, is there an effective way to screen out current employees

[25:39] or to screen current employees when you're in that transition period from where you're changing from private practice to DSO? Do you guys get what I'm saying? Yeah. You don't want to like make the employees feel like their jobs are at risk because that's the last that you don't want.

[25:59] You don't want a mass exodus of employees from practice that you've just in essence acquired or affiliated with. But what you're asking is, is there a way to run a due diligence process around their background and those sorts of things? Is that right?

[26:14] Yes. David, what do you think on that one? I think that should be, when you're when you're affiliating with the practice, I think that should be part of the the workup. You know, we need to look at the employees at some level.

[26:29] And, you know, especially Ken, if the former employer didn't or the dentist you're about to affiliate with didn't really do that. So if there was no scrutiny of these people coming in the door, with that person, goodness knows what what skeletons might exist.

[26:45] And, you know, a criminal record check and probably a few other things would would be a great idea. I mean, obviously, if you can approach these employees as new hires, you know, they're they're sort of joining your DSO as opposed to as to use Wendy's words,

[27:05] you're inheriting them without, you know, without really any any option as to whether you do that or not. That's going to be a better approach. Some things will be problematic. I mean, I'm not sure you can, you know, I'm not sure drug testing these people, for example,

[27:21] is something you really want to do. But I mean, to me, it's unfortunate because a forensic audit before the practice was purchased would have brought this to light. I mean, it was very, it wasn't a very clever theft. Very, very simple.

[27:39] So forensic audit would have caught it before the purchase. But then also, you know, I just have to give the particular DSO that purchase the practice. I mean, I've got to give them accolades because they had an employee in the office who came forward and we talked about this the last time we four met.

[28:07] There was another employee who came forward in private and said, I'm seeing issues. I can't put my finger on it, but there's something wrong here. And, you know, thank God they did a forensic audit, you know, after, but it was about six, like I said, about six months into their tenure.

[28:30] If they hadn't, God only knows how long this would have gone on. This woman worked for the other doctor for 25 years. Right. And I would like to add to that, Wendy, just from my experience being in the clinical side and working, you know, in a DSO environment plus a sole owner environment.

[28:48] And a lot of times employees are more comfortable to come forward in the DSO world because they know there's more comprehensive management and systems in place. So they feel a little more safeguarded. Right. So they're not just dealing with talking to the one doctor by

[29:04] themselves and then a lot of chaos breaks loose. Kind of like we've talked about, you know, we need, you need that safe whistleblower policy. But in my experience looking in and being in the clinical side and the administrative administrative side, a lot of employees maybe knew something was going on.

[29:24] However, once they had that comfort level because there's more management and systems in place, they're a little more likely to come forward and share that information. Yeah. It's like there's a larger upline.

[29:36] Right. Right. They feel more comfortable. Right. There's been a rain cloud, but now the umbrella is bigger. And they're like, okay, I'm good.

[29:43] I feel better. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I can tell you that, you know, in our, in our history of running our business, we have had a few instances where a practice manager,

[29:55] someone has started to take cash and or do some things like that. And in all but one instance, the way we found out about it was because of another employee. And I do think it is really the benefit of the DSO structure and having really good HR systems and policies and communicating them regularly.

[30:16] So they feel like, Hey, there's no, no retaliation. And then in our organization, we even have our 1-800 number or toll free line where people can call anonymously and their identity, they know their identity will be protected. And so some of those types of things create a little bit more

[30:36] comfort for somebody who might feel like, Hey, I'm going to be the tattle tail here, but they know it's the right thing to do. That is a huge advantage. This is a real problem in solo practices. If you look at the statistics,

[30:55] if we look at all industries, dentistry and everybody else, about 43% of fraud comes to light because of a whistleblower. When you narrow the focus to just dentistry, that number goes down to 9%. And I think as exactly as Amber said,

[31:16] it's hard for somebody in a solo practice to feel like they can report on one of their coworkers and have it not come to light that they were the rat. Whereas with the DSO, I think you have a little more ability to offer people some promise of anonymity.

[31:37] Yeah. And ultimately it's going to be one of the places. You were at the Dicama conference and heard a lot about this, David, but culture, culture, culture and investing in culture is so critical. And so to the degree everybody can think about their culture

[31:51] and make sure one of those core tenants is around honesty or personal responsibility or integrity. And then backing that core value up with an actual process and system that protects people and allows them to submit things anonymously and those kinds of things. To the degree that's built into the culture,

[32:15] it's even going to be more effective as opposed to if somebody feels like they're acting independent and they're not sure if they will get in trouble or not for what they're doing. If the culture very clearly calls out that you need to be, everybody needs to be honest in the workplace, then the grounds are set and the percentage is probably

[32:36] better. David, I'm sure you don't have the statistic, but I bet within your statistic you'd find those who have at least one core value dedicated to being honest, doing the right thing, making decisions based on what's best for the patient and the company and those kinds of things.

[32:53] I would imagine that the self-reported or the internally reported is probably even higher in those groups. Absolutely. And Ken, everybody's got honesty written on their piece of paper in terms of core values. Yeah.

[33:08] The real question is, do they behave like it's a core value? Yeah. And do the leaders behave that way? And do they show that they value it? Right. And then another simple thing you can do is a whistleblower

[33:21] reward. So if somebody reports and if that report leads to finding embezzlement, there's some kind of meaningful reward for that. Because the cheapest way you can find embezzlement is to get those people to come forward.

[33:39] If you have people walking around who have suspicions or knowledge and choose to sit on that information, the organizational cost of that is really high, both in dollars and in terms of how everybody perceives your core values. So I want to jump back to the specific hiring element.

[34:02] And we had talked a little bit about, not here, but just in preparation for this discussion around ban the box states. Can you define that term for everyone and help everyone understand? Like, what is that?

[34:16] And how does that impact your ability to do this analysis up front before you hire somebody? Yeah. That's a great topic to deal with. So a number of states in California comes to my mind very quickly as one.

[34:30] They have this legislation called ban the box legislation. And what it means is that you are not allowed as, now let me put that a little bit differently. What it does is it pushes the question of whether or not somebody has a criminal record to the very end of the process.

[34:48] So in California, you cannot ask an applicant whether they have a criminal record until you've already made them a conditional offer of employment. And what that does can is it makes, if you end up not hiring that person, it makes it totally transparent that the sole reason they

[35:06] were not hired was because they had a criminal record. So that's the way the legislation works. So as an employer, I wouldn't be able to ask a question of, Hey, in our process, we do run a criminal background check.

[35:21] Is there anything on there? Is there anything that's going to come up there that would concern what you just said is, is there are some states where you can't do that. You actually have to have the report in hand before you can address it with the prospective employee.

[35:35] It is, it is simply a sequencing question. What, what these states want to make sure of. And let's step back and look at the societal objective. They want to make sure that people with criminal records are given a fair chance to get jobs. Sure.

[35:48] Sure. Now I don't think they had dentistry in mind when they came up with this rule, but they want to make sure that somebody is not denied a job, you know, bagging groceries because they have a criminal record.

[36:02] Or, you know, that there are, there are a lot of positions that these people could have where that question of integrity isn't all that relevant. They just want to make sure that people aren't locked out of those jobs. So they say to the employer, okay,

[36:14] the sequence is you make the employment offer first, then you can deal with the criminal record issue. And if you end up not hiring that person again, it's totally clear that the reason they were not hired was because of the criminal record, because demonstrably five minutes before that criminal

[36:30] record came out, they were a liable candidate. Okay. That's, that's what ban the box says. Now, in dentistry, you're dealing with vulnerable populations. I mean, you, you know,

[36:41] almost every practice treats children. It treats people with, you know, with, with impaired cognitive ability. It deals with seniors. So you are totally within your rights. Not to expose those people to somebody with a criminal past.

[37:01] For me, again, it's, it's more that you have to sequence in a certain way that, oh my gosh, you know, we're going to end up hiring people with, you know, who committed embezzlement last year, and we just can't stop it.

[37:12] That's, that's not at all how it works. But it's an issue that if you are in a ban the box state, you have to be aware of, and you probably have to adapt a little bit of your sequencing. Let's go back to one thing though, that we didn't talk about that we really need to.

[37:29] One of the most, the most important things when you're screening an applicant is to screen the right person. In other words, you can background check the heck out of me. But if I apply to you using my brother's name instead of mine,

[37:46] it's meaningless. And, you know, this is the kind of thing that doesn't occur to people. And as I say, I think some DSOs are guilty of doing this all very mechanically. So when you interview candidates,

[38:01] one of the things you need to do in the interview is I just need to check three pieces of your ID. So I need a government issued photo ID and a couple of pieces of secondary ID, which could be, you know, a gym membership, a library card, a student card, credit card, anything that has their name on it as far as I'm concerned. The problem that people run into is they rely on the post employment screening process, you know, because when you bring on a new employee, there's that I-9 form that requires identification. The flaw in the logic is,

[38:36] if I get the job with you under my brother's name, then I know that that I-9 is coming. And I'll go, you know, spend $30 and get a fake driver's license so I can give it to you when you ask me for the I-9 verification. On the other hand,

[38:53] most applicants are not expecting it in an interview to have photo ID asked for. So it's your chance to catch people unprepared. And also the multiple pieces of ID thing is something that's not required for the I-9. The I-9 just needs one.

[39:09] So, you know, if somebody's planning on sliding a fake ID by you and you say, okay, and I need a couple of pieces of secondary ID, you have a pretty good chance of catching them unprepared. Interesting. Okay.

[39:22] So let's move that part of the process ahead. And like I say, when somebody's sitting in front of you for an interview, that's the time to do a good throw identification verification. Interesting.

[39:36] I'm bringing that up into the hiring process, not the onboarding process. And I'm going to add one more to that. My son's 19 years old, so he's just become legal drinking age where I live. And, you know,

[39:51] so suddenly he's going to bars and stuff. And it's neat to see how they do this. I mean, one of the things they've asked him, you know, he'll present an ID and they'll say, okay, and now I just need to see your phone. Because everybody has their name on their phone.

[40:06] And, you know, what some of his friends with fake ID have found out is the name on the phone doesn't match the name on the ID. And they can bounce. So we can't be mechanical. This is not something you can delegate to a low level employee.

[40:23] The process of asking the question, you know, what if what they're telling me isn't 100% true, needs to be done at a management level. It needs that you need, you need the, you know, this has to be somebody who would have the authority to hire

[40:38] somebody who asks that basic question, not somebody who wouldn't have that authority level. There's one of my friends says you should never take no from somebody who doesn't have the authority to give you a yes. And I think the exact same principle needs to apply here. Yeah, that's a great point.

[40:56] That's a great point. I would not want a kind of a clerical level employee, for example, doing verification with former employers. Because they just don't have the wisdom to ask the right questions to sense when maybe somebody's holding something back.

[41:16] You know, these are, these are important decisions because you're picking the next face of your platform. And, you know, parts of it can be sort of done at a low level parts of it should not be.

[41:28] All right, so we're going to get to a wrap up now. This has been a fantastic discussion. We'll go, we'll just round Robin here real quick. Amber, any final takeaways for if you think about DS, emerging DSOs or smaller groups that are growing or even, you know, some of the bigger DSOs,

[41:46] any, any parting wisdom or advice you'd like to pass along around this theme of making sure that your hiring process is weeding out potential fraud and other risks. Well, my key thing is always verify. I mean, it's not like blind dating on match.com where you swipe right or swipe left.

[42:05] I mean, make sure what you see is what you get. Just like Dave was saying, verify who you're dealing with. And I want to share kind of a little personal thing why I'm so big into dealing with licenses. I've had in experiences where people say I used to be a dental assistant and then I verify a look for that information and

[42:24] they had interesting jobs that caused them to no longer be a dental assistant, such as, you know, they wanted to handle cash in the practice while they were handling cash and extracurricular activity, which is why they lost their license. So I mean, had I not verified and really looked into that,

[42:40] I would have never known that. So I think that's the biggest thing is spend the time really verifying. Great point. Wendy, how about you? I think it's 100%. I think it's human nature to want to trust someone,

[42:55] to trust other human beings. But somewhere in the back of your mind, you always have to realize and ask yourself, this person that is sitting in front of me could be lying. And just because I want verification of what they're telling me does not mean that I don't trust them.

[43:17] It just means that I need to verify that what they're saying is actually true. Same goes for, you know, if you're hiring someone, a new employee, current employees, just trust, but verify. Very nice. That's the president Reagan saying, right?

[43:36] Yeah, there is. All right, David, any final words or of advice or counsel? Absolutely. And Ken, as you mentioned, we were both at the DICMA conference last week. How many times in the course of that conference did we hear people on the podium say, you know what?

[43:53] There's a shortage of employees out there right now. It's really hard to find people. I'm thinking that came up eight or 10 times. And in that environment, the temptation is to cut back on what you look at. You know, and I've had a few dentists say to me,

[44:12] you know what? There's no point in verifying whether or not people have criminal records because when I advertise for a position, you know, if I'm lucky, I only get one applicant anyway. So there's no point, you know, it's kind of the, if they have two feet and a heartbeat sort of approach,

[44:27] we'll hire them. And what I say to those dentists is, you know, I understand that you're in a tough position, but you still need to know whether there's something to be concerned about that employee or not. And if you choose to hire them knowing the words,

[44:42] that's fine. But to just kind of not know is a really bad idea. And the other thing I'll say is we need to be interpretive. One of the things that we should check for anybody with front desk responsibility is their credit history. Because money problems like drug problems drive a lot of

[45:04] crime. Now the mere fact that somebody has bad credit doesn't make them unhireable. What it means is now we need to go a little bit deeper and understand why they have bad credit and see if that poses a threat.

[45:18] That becoming one data point that you're looking at amongst many data points in the hiring process. It's one among many, but it's also not a binary thing. So let's compare two scenarios. In scenario one, you're looking at hiring a dental assistant and this person is a single parent and they

[45:35] have a couple of teenage kids and they're not getting any credit from their ex spouse. With what dental assistants make, that person is guaranteed almost to have bad credit and it probably wouldn't bother me. On the other hand, you're looking at hiring somebody for

[45:51] let's say a regional manager position and they have, they live in a big house by the golf course and their husband's a contractor and they have two SUVs in the driveway and they have bad credit that terrifies me. That's somebody who's living really well off borrowed money and when there are other sources of borrowed

[46:13] money dry up and they don't want to adjust their lifestyle, your DSO is next. You're going to be their next bank without knowing about it. So bad credit doesn't mean don't hire. It means understand why the bad credit is there.

[46:30] All great, amazing advice. I can't think, you know, the three of you enough. Let's make sure everybody knows how to get a hold of you. All three of you are in the DSO secrets group. So feel free to engage in a discussion, tag any of these three.

[46:47] And that will give you a chance, like we can get a nice discussion going on whatever topics you want to ask about. And then David, any other ways that are best to reach out to you email or what would you recommend? Absolutely, you can always reach us through our website, which is www.dentalembezzlement.com.

[47:04] And the only trick they're spelling embezzlement right, but if you goof, Google will probably save you. Or you can always call our toll free number, which is 888-398-2327. We work with everybody from solo practices to emerging DSOs

[47:22] to some of the really big ones. So, you know, if you're in the audience and you wonder whether or not we can help you, the answer is yes. And I'd love to have a chat with anybody in the DSO world who wants to lower their risk to getting stolen from.

[47:40] Outstanding. Well, again, thanks to you three. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on again. I'm sure we're going to do this at some point again in the future. The content's fantastic and highly, highly relevant.

[47:54] Some of my key takeaways today are just around, don't shortcut the hiring process, even though it's hard to find employees now because it doesn't mean that, because it's harder to find employees, it doesn't mean that they're all going to be the best ones or that they're not going to come with baggage that you just

[48:11] don't want to introduce to your organization, right? And then some great tips on how to ask questions and how to really drive in and do the verification that Amber was talking about there just a minute ago. Many, many thanks to everyone for joining today. This is a wrap on this episode,

[48:28] which we titled Don't Hire a Problem. So this is a wrap on Don't Hire a Problem. Happy day.