Use this report to determine the areas where your practice is doing well and where improvement is needed, based on industry standards and recommendations.
One of my favorite reports in Dentrix is the Practice Advisor Report. It contains so much valuable information about your dental practice including production, collections, scheduling, case acceptance, and more. I suggest that you run this report on a monthly basis to review your practice statistics for the previous month, the current month-to-date, and the year-to-date.
The Practice Advisor Report can also be a great tool for your practice consultant. If you don’t have a practice consultant, this report can serve as a practice consultant because it contains advice on how to improve areas of your practice that might be falling short of the recommended benchmarks.
The Practice Advisor Report includes a range of benchmark recommended statistics. The recommendations vary based on the size of the practice and number of active patients. These recommendations are such a great guide to see if your practice is on track and how it compares to other practices.
Here are some of my favorite parts of the Practice Advisor Report:
Production
Production is broken down by provider type, dentist, and hygienist. You also have the option to view production based on an individual provider. This allows you to see which providers are excelling and which may need to improve.
Case Acceptance
You can also track treatment case acceptance in the Practice Advisor Report. Based on your diagnosed and accepted treatment plans, you can see if those cases are being accepted by patients. Do you need to spend more time educating patients on their recommended treatment? Or if treatment isn’t being accepted due to financial obstacles, do you need to provide more financing options, like CareCredit?
Scheduling
You can view unfilled hours, which allows you to gauge the performance of your scheduling team. Are they filling holes in the schedule? Are they using tools like the ASAP List to fill last minute cancellations? The Practice Advisor Report also provides a value for those unfilled hours, which will show you lost revenue for unscheduled time.
Continuing Care
Continuing Care statistics lets you see the percentage of recall patients seen that have been appointed for their next visit. This allows you to see if the hygienist or hygiene coordinator is successfully able to pre-schedule appointments, which would save time working recall six months down the road.
Collections
You can track your collections efforts including collections compared to production, account aging, and percentage of over-the-counter collections. This allows you to determine if patient estimates are being calculated accurately and if your administrative team is collecting at the time service.
Referrals
There’s a referral analysis, which breaks new patient numbers down based on referral source type, by patient, by doctor, or by marketing source. This allows you to easily track how new patients are being referred and if your marketing budget is being well spent.
The footnotes at the end of the Practice Advisor Report are very helpful. They give you insight on ways to improve areas where your office may not be within the recommended benchmark range.
The Practice Advisor Report can be a very powerful tool to show you the areas in your practice that are doing well, and other areas that may need improvement. You can use it as an objective source to show your staff where your practice should be based on industry standards and recommendations. Whether you work with a Dentrix Coach, a practice consultant, or you use the Practice Advisor Report and footnote recommendation within your practice, it can be a very beneficial tool for your office.
Learn More
For additional information, read the following:
- Understanding Unfilled Hours on the Practice Advisor Report
- Ideas for Increasing Your Case Acceptance Numbers
- Measuring Your Practice’s Financial Health
- Practice Advisor Report
By Charlotte Skaggs
Certified Dentrix Trainer and The Dentrix Office Manager columnist
Charlotte Skaggs is the founder of Vector Dental Consulting LLC, a practice management firm focused on taking offices to the next level. Charlotte co-owned and managed a successful dental practice with her husband for 17 years. She has a unique approach to consulting based on the perspective of a practice owner. Charlotte has been using Dentrix for over 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at [email protected].
