How do you measure performance? For athletes, timing their mile run, number of points, and other metrics allow them to identify what they do well and areas they can improve in. In a dental practice, what metrics do you need to know to discover how you’re doing? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) for your dental billing you should keep track of consistently? Here are some of the main ones to measure on a regular basis.
Patient Retention Rate
Although new patients can open up new opportunities for revenue, you shouldn’t forget patients you already have. Some move away or aren’t considered active patients anymore, but if you have others who simply haven’t come in a while, you should be aware of who is inactive and how many there are. When you follow up with them, you can optimize your patient base and bring in money you’ve already spent to acquire them.
Percentage of Kept and Missed Appointments
Trends in kept or missed appointments can reveal patterns of errors to be corrected. If you know how many patients keep and miss their appointments and when, you may identify how you can adapt and try to change these trends.
Collections
The success of your business depends on how efficiently and effectively you collect fees from patients and insurance companies. By keeping a close eye on your collections, you can accurately know how financially healthy your business really is. You can make smarter business decisions like bringing on an associate, hiring more support staff, acquiring new technology, or expanding the office with renovations.
Revenue per Patient Visit
Calculating how much revenue the average patient visit brings you can reveal if you are performing enough of the more advanced services you want to be profitable. If the revenue per patient visit is low, you can focus your marketing efforts on the services you would like to do more, hopefully bringing in those more lucrative cases.
Cash Acceptance Rate
About half of the average dental office’s revenue comes from dental insurance payments, but is that the case for your business? Understanding where your cash flow originates can give you insight about which insurance companies you should select or whether you actually need to be in-network at all or be completely fee for service.
New Patient Rate
Unless a dental practice is already engrained into an established, never-changing community, new patients will always matter. Expanding your patient base can enable you to grow your business and be even more financially successful.
Perhaps, these measures seem excessive to track, but knowing these numbers can provide insights and proof of your practice’s performance you can’t get any other way. If the idea of recording these key performance indicators feels overwhelming or unnecessary, consider working with a service company who can help you understand all this data and know how you can build an even better practice.
About Dental Support Specialties
Dental Support Specialties has a team of dental industry experts. Without disturbing your in-office team’s workflow, we can perform audits, handle dental billing and insurance verification, and do other administrative tasks. Unlike an individual practice, we always have employees available to serve our clients, which means you’ll have coverage even when your team takes time off. To learn more about our company, reach out to us here.