Her Story
About Lauren
I started in dentistry really young, when I was just starting out, and worked my way from a registered dental assistant to the front office, where I was doing claims and seeing how the front office works with payments and treatment plans, and working with the patients and their financial situations. My husband works in the cattle industry and the horse industry, and when we were moving to a remote area in Texas, I thought this working-from-home deal seemed really too good to be true. I had also worked a little bit in the horse industry, so learning the logistics of all of that and the customer service that I could bring to these dental offices across the United States was something I was really looking forward to. Now I work as a success consultant for eASIST Dental Solutions, where I've been for almost 4 years. I work remotely from home and bill patients for dental offices across the country. I currently have 22 different offices that I work with within the company. I organize my offices from East Coast to West Coast, and I review schedules, balances, talk to patients, and have meetings. Some of my proudest moments include passing my registered dental assistant exam in California 21 years ago, receiving several customer service awards over the years, and going to Canada in 2018 to do a digital smile design residency, which is typically something front staff or even assistants don't get to do.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Lauren
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Definitely manage your home and work-life balance. Working from home, you know, sometimes it's hard to step away from the computer. I get in a flow where I just want to sit here and work, and it's like I've been sitting here for a long time, I need to get up and take a break and stop. And just always pause and kind of look at things from all angles. Dentistry can be really emotionally tiring. You know, patients are emotionally tired from having to deal with pain, and finances, and their teeth, and having to see that, and then seeing the dental side of it, well, they should have taken care of it, but they may not have had money, so kind of taking a step back and looking at all angles. And the home-work-life balance. At first, I felt guilty in the middle of the day. I'd be like, well, I'm done with my work, I can go to the grocery store, and then I felt guilty like I should be working, but I was done with everything and good to go, so I've definitely figured out how to work my way through that.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Right now, dentistry is kind of battling a little bit of the change in AI, artificial intelligence. AI is trying to take over human responsibilities, but I'm not sure that they can really take over the customer service provided when you get talking to an actual human. So moving with that flow of change and figuring out where our spot is, using AI also to our advantage, but having it backed by a human is really something we are looking at and how dentistry is changing. I get a lot of emails from patients, and it's obviously written by some sort of AI. They just fire back with the AI emails or something to say, so kind of learning to navigate those waters is something that we definitely have to keep on our toes about.
Keep Exploring
More Influential Women · Texas
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.