Become a data-driven practice to boost your revenue. To learn more, listen to the podcast or read a transcript of the audio.
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Hygiene production makes up around 30% of a practice’s production, so it benefits you to make sure you’re properly tracking it! To learn more, listen to the podcast or read a transcript of the audio.
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On July 27th, 2018 Sikka Software held a partner summit on the future of our industry. We spoke about how Artificial Intelligence can help Dentists, Veterinarians, Optometrists, Audiologists, Chiropractors, Oral Surgeons, Orthodontists and others run their practice more efficiently while also achieving their goals.
You can read more about The Self Driving Practice and Vijay Sikka’s vision of the future on DrBicuspid.
It’s always an excellent idea for dentists and team members to know what numbers are making an impact on their practice’s bottom line and to have some numbers from across the U.S. that they can use as a comparison to see how well, or not so well, they’re really doing.
As IgniteDA co-founder Kevin Henry often reminds dentists and team members during our monthly webinars, you aren’t just running a practice, you’re actually running a small business. Knowing your numbers is a key part of keeping that business successful.
Sikka Software has just compiled data from more than 13,000 dental practices throughout the U.S. in more than 70 different categories within the practice. In this two-part series, I’ve looked at 10 key metrics and boiled down the nationwide averages for the last seven years. Part 1 will examine aspects of hygiene, preventive, and doctor production along with the number of active patients.
Let’s look at those five numbers, what the seven-year trends are indicating, and what the numbers might be telling us.
Hygiene production
Let’s look at both scheduled and net hygiene production.
| Hygiene scheduled production per month | |
| 2010 | $9,571.11 |
| 2011 | $9,719.78 |
| 2012 | $9,089.40 |
| 2013 | $9,217.99 |
| 2014 | $9,385.04 |
| 2015 | $9,743.48 |
| 2016 | $10,081.50 |
| 2017 | $10,614.23 |
Hygiene scheduling numbers have gone up the last three years. That’s a good sign that patients are starting to understand once again the importance of those six-month checkups.
How is your practice communicating the importance of these checkups to your patients? How are you making sure your hygiene appointments are actually scheduling their next appointments before they leave the practice?
| Hygiene net production per hour | |
| 2010 | $77.40 |
| 2011 | $70.14 |
| 2012 | $58.58 |
| 2013 | $62.14 |
| 2014 | $62.27 |
| 2015 | $61.32 |
| 2016 | $63.61 |
| 2017 | $61.99 |
Following up on the points suggested after monthly hygiene scheduled production, 2017’s numbers dipped a bit from 2016, which had reached their highest points since 2011. While there isn’t a lot of difference over the last five years, it’s still a marked drop from earlier in the decade when the average was above $70 per hour.
Are you giving your hygienists enough time with every patient to provide optimal care while in the chair?
| Doctor net production per hour | |
| 2010 | $251.31 |
| 2011 | $233.43 |
| 2012 | $191.35 |
| 2013 | $191.66 |
| 2014 | $195.04 |
| 2015 | $205.57 |
| 2016 | $216.24 |
| 2017 | $222.69 |
After a sharp drop between 2011 and 2012, doctor net production continues its upward climb. That’s good news for every dentist out there, but there is still work to be done to get back to levels from earlier in the decade.
Much of these numbers are dependent on the effectiveness of your case presentation skills. How are you ensuring your patients come back to your practice for the treatment they need? Are you asking the right questions and giving them reasons to schedule, such as the availability of third-party financing?
| Active patients (visited a practice in last 18 months) |
|
| 2010 | 2,194.4 |
| 2011 | 2,206.9 |
| 2012 | 2,213.5 |
| 2013 | 2,231.5 |
| 2014 | 2,251.9 |
| 2015 | 2,335.3 |
| 2016 | 2,403.8 |
| 2017 | 2,161.8 |
Many practices like to make sure their patients see them every six months. How are you ensuring your active patients stay active?
We often hear doctors bragging about their new patient numbers, but make sure you’re treating your existing patient base like the kings and queens they are. Without repeat customers and raving fans, it’s tough for any business of any kind, including your dental practice, to grow and prosper.
Preventive production
| Preventive production per month | |
| 2010 | $14,199.35 |
| 2011 | $14,480.12 |
| 2012 | $14,686.31 |
| 2013 | $15,039.14 |
| 2014 | $15,648.33 |
| 2015 | $16,405.55 |
| 2016 | $16,494.62 |
| 2017 | $16,287.67 |
Taking information from 17 different codes, we were able to look at exactly how much production comes from preventive procedures in an average month. Many dental practices pride themselves on being “preventive.” How are you making sure your practice is doing this?
Part of that includes taking the word “watch” out of your clinical vocabulary. Make sure you’re doing what’s in the best interest of your patient, even if your schedule seems a bit crazed at the moment. If patients need a procedure, use your communication skills to help them understand the reasoning behind it and that you are putting their health above all else.
Part 2 of this series will discuss gross production per assistant, monthly periodic exams, and more.
Alitta Boechler is the director of digital marketing at Sikka Software. You can email her at alitta.boechler@sikkasoftware.com. Get a head start on 2018 with a free 10-procedure fee survey for your ZIP code from the app Practice Mobilizer at www.practicemobilizer.com. The full fee survey with more than 600 procedures for three ZIP codes can be purchased at store.sikkasoft.com.
This article was originally published July 18, 2018, in DrBicuspid. You can view the original article here.
For the first time, Sikka Software will be releasing its latest data on dental practices around the country for the year 2017.
What was the average gross production for the dentist and hygienist? What were the average number of new patients per practice? How about the average AR carried before and after 90 days? These questions and more will be answered and dissected.
Join Kevin Henry and Dayna Johnson on July 17 as we unveil this critical information!
Watch the webinar here.
When I’m working with a dental practice, I want to see the big picture, the 37,000-foot view of the practice, so I can see where to start a conversation. Numbers tell a story, such as what systems need tweaking and where the practice is excelling.
I visited a practice in Washington state recently, and it had been several years since I’d worked with them. The doctor had hired a couple of new team members and he thought it was a good time for me to do some team training. I started with the Practice Advisor Report in his Dentrix software to see where the training should take us. He had never looked at this report, so I gave him a rundown on what it would reveal. One of the numbers was his office’s patient retention.
“Do you know how wide open your back door is?” I asked him. He said, “No one leaves our office without scheduling their next recare visit. I can guarantee you that.” These were his exact words, so I was excited to see what the numbers would tell us. The mood went from excitement to horror in a matter of minutes when he realized the patient retention number was only 76%. Not only that, I had to break the news that only 66% of his hygiene patients were pre-scheduling their next visits.
This was a big eye-opener for him, and he knew we had a lot of work to do. Now you might be asking, “How does she know the numbers were right?” or “What is she using for measurement?” I define patient retention as what percentage of the active patient base is returning for their recare visits within a certain period of time (12 months, 18 months, etc.).
How do your numbers compare?
Do you know how your numbers stack up? Here are the average numbers for patient recall according to Sikka Software’s data collection from more than 13,000 dental practices across the US during a recent seven-year stretch.
2010 – 89.59%
2011 – 89.98%
2012 – 90%
2013 – 89.88%
2014 – 89.77%
2015 – 90.57%
2016 – 91.28%
In a perfect world we want to see patient retention at 100%, right? In reality, we have to account for patients moving out of state, patients dying, and patients who leave for other reasons. It is the “other reasons” that we want to reduce to a minimum. In a general practice, we want to see this percentage number in the high 80s. The highest I’ve seen patient retention is 96% and the lowest is 66%.
If your practice has a patient retention below 85%, I suggest you look at the systems regarding how your team follows up with patients who are not scheduled for their hygiene visits. What reports are you using to find patients who are not scheduled, and what is your protocol for checking in with them? Are you using software to reach out to patients via text message and email? It’s important to have a systematic approach to following up with unscheduled patients and to create a system that integrates both automated and manual reminders. The automated system will reach about 40%-60% of your patients, and many of those will delete the message. You’ll need to pick up the phone and make some calls if you want to see your patient retention percentage in the high 80s or low 90s.
It’s up to you if you want to run your business based on a gut feeling, or run it based on black and white numbers. The practice discussed in this article will never make assumptions about the health of the practice again. The doctor learned his lesson and is now including the entire team in monitoring the practice numbers.
Note: Now is a great time to connect with your patients and ask for referrals. Use the secure video communication and messaging capability of the app Practice Mobilizer at practicemobilizer.com. If you want a full-scale retention analysis and ROI calculation, visit Practice Optimizer, which works with more than 96% of practice management software, at sikkasoft.com/DentalPOPremium.
During her career managing a practice on Whidbey Island in Washington state, Dayna Johnson started training and consulting with other dental practices around the region and found it to be her life’s work. Now with more than 25 years of experience in the dental industry, Dayna helps clients develop standardized protocols for all practice management systems. She’s the founder of Novonee–the premier Dentrix online community, and she helps cultivate Dentrix superusers all over the country. Reach her at dayna@novonee.com.
This article was originally posted June 27, 2018, on DentistryIQ. You can view the original article here.
Health advocates and dentists alike are increasingly interested in the connection between oral health and mortality. There are several oral health factors that have been correlated with mortality including the number of missing teeth, subjective mastication function, periodontal disease and oral care habits. Here are a few studies that have examined the connection between oral health and mortality and their results.
Check out our webinar featuring dental expert Kevin Henry in an interview with Sikka Software’s in-house practice workflow expert, Tony Bojorquez, on Hydra. They discuss how Hydra Smartboard guides team members through daily tasks, so nothing is missed! See how each team member has role-specific tasks, can compare the percentage of tasks completed and send HIPAA compliant chat messages. Plus get a special discount code for your first month.
With 16 years in the dental publishing industry, Kevin Henry is the former group editorial director for Dental Products Report and managing editor for Dental Economics. He was recently named as one of the top five influential voices in the industry on Twitter (@kgh23).
Watch the webinar recording here.
For those who couldn’t attend our live session, you can watch this event and all Sikka Webinar recordings at bit.ly/SikkaWebinars
What is your net production per hour? How about for your hygienists? You might have a rough idea of these numbers, but knowing these data can help you pinpoint what’s going right and wrong with your practice.
Most of us in dentistry have certain ideas about how dental hygiene services should be integrated into the practice of dentistry. But preconceived notions are just that, notions. I decided I needed to use facts instead to examine the state of hygiene and dentist production in the U.S.
Hourly production
The average doctor in general practice had gross billings of more than $655,000 per year in 2016, according to data from the ADA’s Health Policy Institute. If you dig a little deeper, you will find that the average practice has gross production of more than $800,000 per year.
Let’s break that down a little further, using data compiled from Sikka Software‘s database of more than 13,000 dental practices in the U.S. The table below shows the average production per dentist and per hygienist per hour per practice over a seven-year period, from 2010 to 2016.
As the numbers show and other experts have noted, there’s been a rebound in net production numbers for both dentists and hygienists, but the industry still lags behind the 2010 and 2011 results.
| Net production per hour for U.S. dentists and hygienists, 2010-2016 | ||
| Year | Hygienist net production/hour ($) | Dentist net production/hour ($) |
| 2010 | $77.40 | $251.31 |
| 2011 | $70.14 | $233.43 |
| 2012 | $58.58 | $191.35 |
| 2013 | $62.14 | $191.66 |
| 2014 | $62.27 | $195.04 |
| 2015 | $61.32 | $205.57 |
| 2016 | $63.61 | $216.24 |
Practice profitability
Most experts agree that the total hygiene department production should be between 25% and 35% of total practice production to be profitable. For the sake of example, let’s use the $800,000 figure cited above as the income needed for a practice to be profitable. Let’s also say your hygiene department needs to produce 25% of that $800,000 ($200,000). Everyone’s situation is different and your exact numbers will likely not be the same, so use this for illustration only.
“Adding more hygiene hours is not always the answer.”
According to Sikka Software, hygienists worked an average of 146.3 hours per month in 2010 and 173.6 hours per month in 2016. That’s quite a jump, showing that many dental practices are understanding the importance of hygiene hours.
Using the monthly figures, hygienist production of $63.61 per hour for almost 174 hours a month totals a little more than $11,000 net production per month per hygienist.
Remember that every practice is different and, while hygiene is often the lifeblood of the practice, numbers will fluctuate in every practice and every state (and cities and regions within those states) will have different fees charged based on their locale and insurance schedules.
The biggest thing for any practice is to look at the numbers and see if your proportions match up. Is hygiene 25% of your practice right now? If it’s more, do other areas need to be boosted? If it’s less, would adding more hygiene hours or even a part-time hygienist help you reach those numbers (weighing expenses in there as well)?
Also remember that adding more hygiene hours is not always the answer. The practice must remember that, to be profitable, the net production per hour must be greater than the provider compensation.
Not only should your hygiene department produce 25% to 30% of production but the hygiene staff should be producing 2.5 times their compensation (salary, benefits, and employment taxes).
Make sure that you’re not just adding hours to add hours. You’re also making sure that those hours will actually be profitable.
David Black, DDS, has more than 40 years of clinical experience along with serving on state and community dental boards. He focuses on speaking and coaching through in-office consultation.
This article was originally published February 28, 2018 on DrBicuspid. You can read the original article here: http://bit.ly/2GRm8GG
Note: Practice Assistant now has predictive inventory! You can now ask your Amazon Echo device about your inventory and order supplies from your preferred vendor. Learn more here: http://bit.ly/Practice_Assistant
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