Look at these four key performance indicators for the past 12 months so you can make plans for the new year.
Updated 6/30/20
As the year winds down, it’s a great time to review the past 12 months, determine how well your practice has been performing, and make plans for improvement. Front and center in this review should be your Dentrix Practice Advisor Report.
The Practice Advisor Report can be printed from your Dentrix software and contains information on several key performance indicators (KPIs)—important metrics that show how well your practice is doing. KPIs identified in the Practice Advisor Report can help you evaluate your current workflow and identify possible areas of improvement.
Below is a list of the top KPIs you should be paying attention to when reviewing your Practice Advisor Report.
KPI 1: Active Patients in Continuing Care
Your active patient base directly affects your production. Avoid shrinking numbers (and profits) by following up on patients who are overdue for hygiene visits, ensuring they are set up for future continuing care appointments and tracking where new patients are coming from. When you focus on making sure patients are scheduled for return hygiene visits, you can maintain and increase your active patient base and ensure continual growth of your practice.
One tip is to track the percentage of patients who schedule their next hygiene appointment BEFORE they leave the practice. This helps you keep your schedule full as well as ensure you have consistent patient traffic throughout the year.
KPI 2: Production
Determining who is doing the work, what the work is and how much revenue your practice can expect from each can highlight the difference between “being busy” and “making money.” Use your Daily Huddle—a quick, 15–minute daily stand–up meeting for all of your team members—to review KPIs and set goals.
Focus on key areas such as where to fit in emergencies, who is due for major X–rays, when to follow up on unscheduled treatment plans, and who should contact patients about unscheduled continuing care, to name just a few.
KPI 3: Accounts Receivable Management
With the right reports, you can see which claims have aged over 30 days, the percentage of your practice’s daily collections that are received over the counter and the A/R–to–production ratio.
With Dentrix Pay, you can set up patients on payment plans with an autopay solution. And using Dentrix eClaims means that insurance claims should rarely age over 30 days and most should be paid within two weeks.
KPI 4: Schedule Optimization
One of the top concerns of dental practices today is filling holes in the schedule. Properly setting up your appointment book can have a significant effect on key metrics that give you a snapshot of your practice’s success, including average hourly production, unfilled/scheduled hours, number of broken appointments and more.
Tools such as Perfect Day Scheduling, Kiosk and Questionnaires, Patient Engage, and Insurance Manager can help you streamline the process of optimizing your schedule.
Get Advice Based on Your KPIs
No one wants inefficiencies to kill profits in the new year and beyond. Ensuring your team is using Dentrix correctly and uniformly will ensure you not only have reliable data to make sound business decisions, but you also have efficiencies that add to your bottom line–all while continuing to offer great patient care.
The Dentrix Profitability Coaching Program was created to help dental offices maximize best practices through the proper and more in-depth use of Dentrix.
Right now, you can schedule a free 30-minute Practice Advisor assessment with a Dentrix Profitability Coach who will review and analyze your Dentrix Practice Advisor Report with you. In this 30–minute phone session, the coach will identify your practice’s strengths and opportunities and can discuss a customized plan that can put you on the path to greater productivity and efficiency. And have a very prosperous and happy new year!
Learn More
Visit www.dentrix.com/products/dentrix-profitability-coaching to learn more about Profitability Coaching and sign up for your free Practice Advisor assessment.
Read Master the Metrics that Matter for more insights into improving your KPIs.
By Tammy Barker, Senior Product Manager
Originally Published in the Dentrix eNewsletter, December 2016
