Know Your Numbers

Your dental practice, like any other business, needs to know and understand its numbers.

Monitoring Key Performance Indicators such as revenue, fixed and direct costs, patient acquisition (and attrition!) and your treatment plan acceptance rate will provide a clear picture of your practice’s financial health and operational efficiency.

Without tracking these numbers, decision-making becomes guesswork potentially leading to inefficiencies, reduced profitability, or even business stagnation.

Understanding revenue (and the likely Average Daily Yield of the surgeries) and your profitability helps a practice allocate resources more effectively, so that expenses like supplies and marketing are properly managed.

Monitoring patient acquisition and equally retention metrics helps identify growth opportunities, allowing the practice to focus on improving and enhancing patient satisfaction and engagement.

Knowing important numbers such as the average production per patient, the lifetime value of a patient, and appointment scheduling efficiency enables a practice to identify areas where improvements can be made. For example, high cancellation rates or low case acceptance measured against benchmarks may indicate issues with patient communication or treatment planning where training can be provided.

By regularly monitoring KPIs, a dental practice can make informed decisions, forecast future growth, and identify early warning signs of problems. "Knowing your numbers" is about having control and clarity in running a practice efficiently and profitably, leading to both financial and clinical success.