This Formula Will Boost Your Dental Office’s Bottom Line

In the competitive world of dental practices, it’s crucial to find ways to increase production and profitability.

While reducing overhead costs can have some impact on your bottom line, the true potential for substantial growth lies in maximizing production.

When I was a dental consultant, I used this formula to boost many dental offices’ production and production per hour:

Production = Appointments x Production per appointment.

By focusing on increasing the number of appointments and improving production per appointment, you can unlock new levels of success for your dental practice.

Let’s explore practical strategies that can help you achieve these goals, while highlighting industry benchmarks to gauge your performance.

Increase the number of appointments

Boosting production begins with increasing the number of appointments.

One effective approach is to re-appoint every patient who comes in for a doctor or hygiene appointment. This simple step can significantly impact your practice’s success.

Evaluate your re-appointment rate and compare it to the top 10% of practices that achieve an impressive 93% re-appointment rate.

In contrast, the bottom 10% only reach 63%.

Assess where your practice stands and set specific systems and goals for your front desk and hygiene teams.

Utilize verbiage that emphasizes the importance of scheduling the next appointment, encouraging patients to return.

To further enhance production, focus on reactivating patients who haven’t visited your office recently.

Nurture inactive patients through reactivation efforts such as phone calls, nurture emails, and text campaigns.

The top 10% of practices achieve a remarkable 22% net growth of patients, while the bottom 10% experience a concerning -8% growth rate.

Understanding your net growth will help you evaluate your practice’s trajectory and consider potential options such as adding an associate to accommodate growth or implementing strategies to retain existing patients.

Improve treatment acceptance

Enhancing treatment acceptance is crucial for increasing production and profitability.

Evaluate your practice’s treatment acceptance rate, comparing it to the top-performing practices that achieve a competitive 59% acceptance rate.

In contrast, the bottom 10% struggle with a mere 24% acceptance rate.

To improve treatment acceptance, adopt a whole-team approach where your treatment coordinator and the whole team has a chance to actively listen to the doctor’s presentation.

This will ensure consistent messaging across all team members, increasing patient acceptance of proposed treatments and ultimately driving production.

Reduce no-shows and cancellations

No-shows and cancellations can significantly hinder your productivity and profitability.

Assess your practice’s no-show or cancellation rate to gain insight into areas for improvement.

The top 10% of practices maintain a remarkable 1% rate, while the bottom 10% suffer from a concerning 25% rate.

Consider the impact of such cancellations: the bottom 10% effectively lose one full week of their schedule each month.

Implementing systems such as reminder calls and educating patients about the importance of keeping appointments can help reduce cancellations, preserve margins, and achieve break-even faster.

And when it comes to reminder calls, here’s a languaging tweak to use to help reduce your no-shows and cancellations. Check out the video:

Minimizing these disruptions is vital for maintaining a profitable practice.

 

Increase production per appointment

Efficiency plays a crucial role in your dental office’s success.

Analyze the average production per patient visit, as it reflects how efficiently you provide care.

Aim for higher production per appointment, prioritizing quality treatment over simply increasing the number of patients seen.

A higher value signifies that you accomplish more per patient, positively impacting both your practice’s profitability and the quality of life for your patients.

Here are 4 ways to increase your production per appointment:

1. Analyze office fees

To optimize profitability, analyze your office fees and assess where you stand compared to industry benchmarks.

Determine whether an adjustment to your UCR (Usual, Customary, and Reasonable) fees is warranted.

2. Evaluate insurance participation

Additionally, evaluate the profit margins associated with different procedures and carefully consider the financial sense of participating with certain insurance plans.

Some plans may prove unprofitable, prompting a reevaluation of your participation.

3. Consider high-ticket services

Explore opportunities to add high-ticket services to your offerings, catering to patients seeking premium dental solutions. This diversification can contribute to increased production and profitability.

4. Boost Hygiene department productivity

The hygiene department plays a vital role in your practice’s production.

Monitor the percentage of hygiene patients who have scheduled appointments, aiming for a Hygiene Pre-Appointment Percentage of 65% or higher.

This metric helps minimize patient attrition and saves thousands of dollars annually on recall attempts.

Attracting new patients is important, but retaining existing patients through scheduled appointments is equally critical.

Invest time, money, and effort into maintaining a high hygiene pre-appointment rate for sustained growth and profitability.

Optimize collection processes

Streamlining your collection processes is essential for maintaining a healthy cash flow.

Establish clear policies for Accounts Receivable (AR) and take proactive measures to decrease the number of days in AR.

Promptly settle unresolved insurance claims and address overdue accounts.

By managing collections efficiently, you can ensure a steady revenue stream and maximize your practice’s profitability.

Boosting production and profitability is comprehensive

Boosting your dental office’s production and profitability requires a comprehensive approach.

You can maximize your practice’s potential by:

• Implementing strategies to increase the number of appointments
• Improving treatment acceptance
• Reducing no-shows and cancellations
• Optimizing fees and insurance participation
• Enhancing hygiene department productivity
• Streamlining collection processes

We see a lot of dentists come from different stages of their practice journey, whether they’re:

• Buying an older practice
• Expanding to different locations
• Leveling up their brand
• Want to become the expert in high-ticket dentistry

What that means how to maximize your production that works for your office is going to look different from other doctors.

So it’s crucial you create a strategic plan to quickly grow and reach your goals.

Being in dental marketing since 1999, we’ve seen what separates the elite dental practices from mediocre ones.

So we created a free marketing course: Strategic Revenue Bootcamp.

It hands you the 6-step blueprint to:

• Speed up practice growth
• Generate a steady flow of high-quality patients
• Stop you from wasting valuable marketing dollars

Take advantage of educational opportunities like the Strategic Revenue Bootcamp to acquire the knowledge and tools necessary for success.

It’s 100% free to register and is only 1 hour of your time.