Bob Conte When asked the question, “How is your practice doing?” many dentists will respond “good or OK or fine”; But how are you gauging how well your practice is performing? The most accurate measurement of productivity for the clinical team is Provider Hourly Production. It is not monthly or yearly gross production. It is how much each doctor and hygienist is producing every hour they are treating patients in the practice.
Yearly gross is far too broad a metric to use as a gauge of success. If your production is up 3% over last year, what does this mean? Have you worked more days? Did you add staff? Did your fees increase? Did your insurance carriers raise their reimbursements? (The latter is unlikely). Or, were you actually more profitable? It is hard to say without tracking your hourly production daily.
This is very easy to set up on a networked Excel document. Have each provider track their own daily production. Your assistants can track the doctor’s numbers. This is simply daily gross production/clinical hours worked. At the end of each month have each provider print out a monthly report and review with the team.
Now that you have a grasp of how each clinical provider is performing, you can set goals. If one hygienist is consistently producing 25% less hourly than the rest of the department, it’s time to identify why. If it is your desire to grow your practice you need the numbers to identify areas for growth. If you are looking to add an associate or a partner because you feel like you are too busy, you owe it to yourself to find out just how busy you actually are. The difference between a $500/hr. dentist and a $1200/hr. dentist is not always reflected in how hard they are working.
CEREC ties into this well for newer users. One of the intangibles CEREC offers is greater efficiency. Single-visit dentistry, no return visit, no temporaries to fall out, greater patient satisfaction, increased referrals, more emergency visits turned into profitable crowns etc. We have all heard this and live it day to day, but how does it affect your bottom line? Track the numbers! You’ll see that your new investment is helping your bottom line well beyond the fact that your lab bill has disappeared.
