The Challenge
“If we didn’t have Fairly, we’d have to restructure everything. We’d have to reassess how we’re approaching Saturdays, which affects how we approach associates, which affects how we present ourselves to our patients. Fairly is a cornerstone of our practice. So can we sustain this model without you? No.”
-Chris Quon, Business Manager at Heritage Lane Dental.
For years, Heritage Lane Dental believed in the long-term value of expanding hygiene capacity. What held them back wasn’t vision. It was staffing. Like many busy practices, they operated with an underlying scarcity mindset:
What if we book a temp and the patients cancel?
What if we can’t fill the shift?
What if we lose money?
That thinking kept Saturdays limited, hygiene columns constrained, and growth incremental. Then they flipped the model. Instead of asking, “How do we avoid loss?” They started asking, “How do we create more opportunity?”
That shift changed everything.
Before Fairly: Growth Limited by Staffing Uncertainty
Heritage Lane runs a ten-chair office. When one team member is absent, the impact ripples instantly. Finding coverage meant:
- Urgent posts in Facebook groups
- Texting previous temps and hoping for replies
- Asking staff to work overtime
- Building internal rules around notice periods
- Constant stress and unpredictability
There were no guarantees, no compliance certainty, and no real scalability.
Saturdays were the clearest example.
Since 2019, they had attempted to run hygiene Saturdays bi-weekly. But without reliable staffing, they could only support 2–3 hygiene columns per Saturday. That volume wasn’t enough to motivate dentists to consistently give up their Saturdays just to do recall checks.
The long-term strategy made sense. Operationally, it didn’t. So Saturdays would eventually stop.
The Turning Point: Building Saturdays as a Growth Engine
Heritage Lane uses Saturdays strategically.
They schedule 6–7 hygiene columns, each running 60-minute appointments. That’s 36–42 hygiene appointments in a single day.
Every hygiene patient receives either:
- An exam (if due), or
- A visual hygiene check from the dentist
Saturdays aren’t just production days, they are pipeline days: these appointments generate treatment plans that feed directly into the following week’s doctor columns.
The challenge had always been staffing enough hygienists to make the model viable at scale. With Fairly, they solve this challenge.
Starting Q3 2025, instead of operating Saturdays bi-weekly with limited columns, they opened every Saturday, fully staffed.
The result: Hygiene volume scaled from approximately 200 monthly appointments to over 400, more than doubling capacity. And with it, expanding treatment planning, associate satisfaction, and long-term production.
Scarcity vs. Abundance: The Mindset Shift
Previously, the decision framework was defensive: “If we book a temp and patients cancel, we lose money.”
Now, it’s mathematical and strategic:
- A full hygiene shift is 7.5 hours.
- Patient attrition averages 36%.
- That still leaves roughly 5 patients per shift.
- Those 5 patients represent approximately $3,700 in production per temp shift.
Even when cancellations happen, the upside still outweighs the risk.
While 36% of patients will cancel on a given day, even in a worst-case scenario where all but one cancel, that single patient may need significant treatment, such as a root canal, which can cover the value of the entire shift.
On other days, lighter schedules bring unexpected advantages. Fewer patients can mean more time with those who do arrive, giving doctors the opportunity to build stronger relationships and deliver a more attentive experience. Keeping appointments instead of rescheduling them also keeps patients satisfied, loyal, and far less likely to leave negative Google reviews.
Ultimately, Heritage Lane Dental also knows that even one completed appointment in a day can cover the cost of the temp, making proactive staffing a calculated and confident decision.
By adopting an abundance mindset, they found that committing to a full schedule consistently led to positive outcomes, both in patient care and in overall revenue.
Instead of trying to prevent loss, they embraced:
- More hygienists = more opportunity.
- More opportunity = more treatment.
- More treatment = more growth.
The stress of “Will this temp pay off?” disappeared and they now book the temp on Fairly, confident that the work will follow. Any occasional losses are more than outweighed by the upside.
Reliability Made Scaling Possible
What made this operationally realistic wasn’t just access to temps, it was reliability, compliance, and the elimination of administrative burden.
Previously:
- It could take a week to secure coverage.
- Messages went unanswered.
- Verifications were unclear.
- Compliance risk lingered.
Now:
- Shifts often fill within 1–2 hours.
- Posting a shift on Fairly just 24 hours in advance is often enough to secure coverage.
- Temps are verified.
- Everything is CRA compliant.
For the first time, staffing became predictable enough to embed into long-term strategy. Fairly went from being “an option” to becoming operational infrastructure.
Unlocking Evening and Off-Hour Growth
Their patient base consists largely of working families with insurance, people who tend to work 9–5, but permanent staff prefer 9–5 schedules.
Fairly allows Heritage Lane to bridge that gap:
- Evening shifts
- Extended weekday hours
- Full-scale Saturdays
Without needing to restructure their permanent team. Growth no longer requires convincing staff to change lifestyles, it only requires posting a shift.
Admin Burden Eliminated
Before, the process of working with a temp was overwhelming. Beyond the process to find and hire a temp, there was also the burden of:
- Manually creating invoices for the temps (who often did not create their own invoices)
- Tracking and verifying hours
- Tracking rates
- Collecting legal names, phone numbers, and emails
- Coordinating e-transfers
- Chasing signatures
- Issuing tax documents
- Answering “When am I getting paid?” texts
It consumed 2–3 hours per day, often bleeding into evenings and lunch breaks. Even sleep was affected from the stress!
All of this friction discouraged scaling.
Now:
- Fairly generate invoices and paystubs automatically.
- Hours are tracked in-platform.
- Payroll is handled automatically.
- CRA compliance is ensured.
- Temps are paid properly and quickly.
- Admin time is completely eliminated.
The operational friction that once limited ambition is gone.
What Happens If We Don’t Have Fairly?
The response from Chris Quon, Business Manager at Heritage Lane Dental, is immediate:
“We’d have to restructure everything. We’d have to reassess how we’re approaching Saturdays, which affects how we approach associates, which affects how we present ourselves to our patients. Fairly is a cornerstone of our practice. So can we sustain this model without you? No.”
Saturdays would need reassessment. Associate positioning would change. Patient scheduling strategy would shift.
Fairly is no longer a convenience tool. It’s a cornerstone of their business model.
The Bigger Lesson
Heritage Lane always believed the demand was there but what they lacked was the infrastructure to support bold scheduling decisions.
The difference between 200 and 400+ monthly hygiene appointments wasn’t marketing, it wasn’t a new location, and it wasn’t a rebrand.
It was a mindset shift, supported by reliable staffing and compliant payroll infrastructure.
They stopped asking: “How do we avoid loss?”
And started asking: “How do we create more capacity?”
Once capacity was unlocked, growth followed.
