All business need to focus on their key performance indicators (or KPIs) if they ever hope to increase their business. However, for different styles of business there are, of course, different styles of KPIs.
For dental practices in particular, here’s some of the KPIs to track to ensure the best for your business.
Cancellations
While our initial response to cancellations may be “there isn’t much we can do to fix the issue,” but this isn’t always correct. While there may not be a perfect day where everyone shows up, we can prepare for our average cancellations and project our income for the day based on real numbers, instead of “pie-in-the-sky” numbers. Track cancellations and no shows and then use this data when inputting for your projected income. This way, you can increase scheduling as well, because you’ll know how many show on average and how many do not.
Additionally, this way you can monitor specific patients who continue to cancel and reevaluate as needed.
Admin Production
People preach customer service as a way to increase business, but for a dental doctor the best way to ensure you’re reaching a great customer service level starts in the office, and not in the chair. There needs to be an efficient and productive manager running the schedule, greetings, insurance calls, and a multitude of other things that keep an office running. One good office administrator should be expected to handle a practice by themselves for up to 21 patient visits in a day. Any more than that should definitely increase in admin so that patients never suffer.
Scheduling and Time
Many people are losing trust in the healthcare system because of the lack of time that their doctors give them individually, but also doctors need to make sure that they are not overspending time with their patients because too much time with one means a possible loss for another. This is a part of dental practice KPIs that is the hardest to fill and monitor because of this necessary balance. The first place to start is timing yourself for each procedure you make. Begin with scheduling less patients and not rushing them, decide what information they need and what information a nurse could assist with, and then build your practice after you’ve collected the sufficient amount of scheduling data.
Debt Collection
Debt collection is a KPI that is certainly not unique to a dental office, and the best way of preventing this issue is also not unique: plan ahead. While it seems simple, this also relates back to a solid office team because it requires people who can ask the right questions, use no pressure techniques, and get payment plans or dental options that are actually within the budget of the individual customer. Ask new patients or patients coming in for costly procedures to come in early so that your office team can spend dedicated time covering financial options thoroughly, then it’ll save you time on the back end for collection calls.