McDonalds knows the cost of a sesame seed on every bun they sell, yet when you ask a dentist what their case acceptance rate/monthly breakeven amount/recall retention rate of their practice is, most have no clue. With 2021 having come to a close, now is a great time to sit down over a cold beer or a stiff whiskey and start making some spreadsheets to understand the numbers in the business you are running.
Dr. Eric Hans is a private practice pediatric dentist with nearly 25 years of business experience. We have a great conversation about important KPIs (key performance indicators) that dentists should be watching in their practice. Dr. Hans really emphasized in our discussion that building a strong relationship with both your team and the patients in your practice is the foundation to why we need KPIs in the first place.
This was a challenging topic to cover because it can be so broad, but we did a nice job touching on most aspects of it. Everybody knows that a practice owner should monitor production, collection, new patient numbers, overhead, A/R, etc. But many KPIs go a lot deeper than these numbers and are critical for keeping a pulse on how things are going in your practice.
Some of the things we talk about in our conversation:
- Tracking your hygiene department, daily hygiene numbers, and restorative to hygiene ratios
- Breakeven costs and when are you losing money to do dentistry
- Production on GA/sedation days vs clinic days
- Setting goals and how often to track them
- Monitoring new patient flow, age of your patient population, and knowing how to expand your capacity
- Watching your P&L, and when is it ok for your overhead to be higher
