Compliant AF Podcast

What if dentistry's biggest workforce problem isn't here yet?

What if more dental assistants decide temping is a better career path than waiting around for raises? Or, what if someone actually succeeds in organizing unions in dentistry? In this episode of the Compliant AF Podcast, Kara Kelley and Amy Wood are joined by labor relations expert Katie Tanner to explore the "dental dystopia" many practice owners hope never becomes reali...

“We’ve always done it this way” sounds harmless… until the audit letter arrives, the employee turns whistleblower, or the wrong provider name on a claim form becomes a much bigger problem than anyone expected.

In this episode of Compliant AF, Amy Wood and Kara Kelley are joined again by Rick Garofolo of The Dental Practice Mechanics for Part 2 of their conve...

Employee dental benefits sound simple… until insurance fraud, wage and hour issues, HIPAA, PPO contracts, and surprise audits slip into the operatory.

In this episode of Compliant AF, Amy Wood and Kara Kelley are joined by Rick Garofolo - CEO of The Dental Practice Mechanic and founder of the Dental Billing & Business Academy - to unpack more dental compliance myths that just refuse to die. From “we just waiv...

Mobile dentistry and teledentistry are growing fast - and so are the ways practices can accidentally create compliance problems on wheels (or Wi-Fi).

In this episode of the Compliant AF Podcast, Kara Kelley and Amy Wood dig into what really changes when you take healthcare out of a controlled environment and drop it into vans, schools, nursing homes, living rooms, and video calls. Because the moment you lose the four walls, you als...

Multi-location growth sounds like a flex - until payroll, policies, and penalties enter the chat.

In this episode of Compliant AF, Amy Wood and Kara Kelley are joined by Alan Twigg of Bent Ericksen & Associates to unpack the real-world compliance landmines that show up when dental practices expand into multiple locations, multiple states, or simply start hiring remote employees.  We're breaking down the biggest compliance...

Buying or selling a practice comes with costs that don’t show up on a balance sheet. Beyond the purchase price, transitions often uncover compliance gaps, misclassified employees, outdated policies, vendor risks, and benefit promises that quietly inflate the true cost of the deal. In this episode of the Compliant AF Podcast, Kara Kelley (Clinical HR) and Amy Wood (Copper Penny Consulting) break down the hidden HR, HIPAA, and ...

The end of one year and the start of another is when compliance gaps show up fast- and get expensive just as quickly.

In this episode, Kara Kelley and Amy Wood share their HR and HIPAA/cybersecurity checklists every dental and medical practice should be tackling before January (or early in the new year). From HR audits and payroll reviews to HIPAA risk assessments, access controls, passwords, and backups, this conversation focuses ...

Employee embezzlement doesn’t start with a million-dollar theft. For most busy practice owners, it starts when clinical demands crowd out oversight, reports stop getting reviewed (if they were in the first place), and safeguards never get built.

In this episode, Kara Kelley and Amy Wood are joined by Susan Gunn, CFE, a fraud expert who’s seen a clear uptick in embezzlement in 2024–2025 as practices returned to &ld...

AI is everywhere - your phone system, your vendors, your practice management stack, even your hiring process. But when the buzzwords collide with HIPAA, HR, and real-world operations in a dental or healthcare practice? That’s where things get messy.

In Part 2 of our Q4 Compliance Buzzword Extravaganza, Amy and Kara break down what’s actually happening behind the scenes with AI tools, VoIP systems, transcription service...

OSHA and infection control aren’t “nice to haves” – they’re literally the difference between safe care and “we just made the news.” In this episode, Kara and Amy sit down with OSHA and infection control badass Deanna Otts-Whitfield, RDH, MS, CIC, CDIPC, to talk about all the dirty things happening in real dental practices – and what it actually takes to keep patients and teams safe.

D...

Leading a dental or healthcare practice during the holidays means PTO questions, bonus decisions, holiday logistics, and a long-avoided Windows 11 upgrade all hitting at once - because of course they do. In this Compliant AF episode, Kara Kelley (Clinical HR) and Amy Wood (Copper Penny Consulting) break down the end-of-year issues that send practice leaders into a spiral - holiday pay, employee furloughs, bonus compliance, handbook...

Dental documentation isn’t just “paperwork.” It’s your clinical defense, your reimbursement justification, and the only voice you’ll have when no one remembers what actually happened five years from now.

In this episode, Kara Kelley and Amy Wood sit down with Dilaine Gloege, CDA, CPC — one of dentistry’s leading authorities on documentation, coding, billing, payer audits, and cross-coding &...

In this premiere episode of the Compliant AF Podcast, hosts Amy Wood and Kara Kelley finally hit record on the conversations they’ve been having for years - about healthcare compliance, the dumpster fires they’ve helped put out, and why "check-the-box" compliance just isn’t cutting it anymore.

Get to know your hosts as they share the origin stories behind their weirdly specific careers in HIPAA/cybersecurity ...