You may recall in my blog last month, I discussed the importance of knowing and understanding your KPI’s (key performance indicators) in order to truly understand what is driving your practice. The unfortunate reality is that many dentists know little about KPI’s other than their top-line revenue.
It is important to know how your revenue stats. But if that is the only KPI you know, then you really do not understand how you created that revenue and what you need to do to increase it. Similarly, you have no idea how much of that revenue is going toward expenses that keep your office running and whether those are good investments or not.
At the recent New Dentist Bootcamp put on by CIDE – Canadian Integration by Dental Education, I received an important reminder of this reality from Vic Jindal of the Jindal Financial Group. Vic is a financial advisor with a tremendous background in advising dental clients. He knows his dental stuff! And he knows that dentists often fail to understand the important of KPI’s beyond revenue.
Picking that one KPI you consider to be the most important is a challenge. In reality, they are ALL important because they all shed such light on vital aspects of your practice. That being said, I do want to focus on one of my personal favourites…your rate of case acceptance.
If you are asking why this would be one of my favourites, I would have to concede that is a fair question. How does one really decide that one statistic is more important than another?
For me, rate of case acceptance is so important because it really demonstrates a dentist’s ability to connect with their patients. When you understand the power of connection and the level of trust that flows from it, you are truly on the path to developing a practice that builds its profitability on putting patient care where it should be…your TOP priority!
Most dentists have no idea how they perform in the area of case acceptance. They simply assume they are excellent. In their minds, patients always accept their treatment recommendations. Afterall, patients rarely decline their treatment recommendations…at least not to their faces. So when they actually look at the numbers on their practice management software, they are stunned to discover the extent to which patients have not scheduled treatment.
And the first thing many dentists tend to do is blame the admin team! How could they have allowed such a willing patient to escape the office without a scheduled appointment?
The truth is there is little the admin team can do about it because the patient they were dealing with was not truly on board with your recommendations. So if you truly want to see an improvement in that number, you first need to be aware of that number. Then you have to ask yourself what you need to do to improve on it.
The better your case presentation skills, the better care you will be able to provide to your patients. And it does not hurt that as your patients receive better care, you will become more profitable!
About the Author
Shawn Peers is the President of Dental Peers.
