Many dentists would like to have their practices perform better, but don’t really know where to get started. The likelihood is that your training was strong in the clinical arena, but you may not have had much business leadership training.
One of the key things you can do to see the performance of your practice improve is to start measuring key performance indicators. If you don’t know where you are you can’t set any realistic, measurable goals for future growth. In fact, if you aren’t setting goals that are measurable you aren’t really setting goals at all. You’re just wishing.
So what should you measure?
I recommend these three metrics as a bare minimum to get started:
- Production (after adjustments, not gross)
- Collection (and what percentage of production you are collecting)
- New Patients
You don’t have to have a sophisticated setup to get started. Just make a spreadsheet and track these three numbers daily. You’ll also want to see what the totals are per month. Over time, you’ll be able to get a realistic picture of what your practice can produce and have some solid measurement numbers on which you can implement business management principles.
There are a lot of other key performance indicators you should be measuring, but we’ll discuss those in future posts.