From Dull to Dynamic: Super Charge Your Dental Practice

Many solo or small dental practices are stuck in one gear: dull. Not in the sense of the work that is done. The work they do is important. In the sense of flat or slow growing revenue. Much of the services rendered are routine - somewhat predictable. Practice costs are unchanging - predicable expenses like salaries, rent, lab fees, and equipment costs. Few practitioners realize that buyers are looking for growing practices. Practices that have upside revenue potential; dynamic practices. To attract anxious buyers ready to bid for your practice, you need to change the dull to dynamic.

Self-Assessment and Awareness

To energize your practice, you need to analyze how the practice is doing. Do an honest self-assessment and then take action.

• Gross Billings and Clients

  • What type of practice do you have? Where are the bulk of your billings coming from?

  • What did you actually collect in client payments over the past 3 years? Is it increasing? Decreasing? Why?

  • How have your assumptions about your target client group changes over the past 3 years? Do they represent the bulk of my practice? If not, why?

  • How many of your clients are within a mile radius of your practice? 3 miles? 5 miles? Has the client distribution by distance changed over time? Why? Has new residential construction affected your client distribution by distance?

  • Have new competitors entered your primary market area? How do you compare to them?

  • Is your practice primarily private pay and out-of-pocket clients? Should you consider accepting government insurance since it was the fastest growing dental client segment in the US in 2024?

  • Is your practice spending too much time on lower-priced services?

  • Can your dental hygienists do more (e.g., more dental cleanings)? Have you asked them? Would adding more hygienists supercharge your billings?

  • Are your client no-shows under 2%? Do you bill no-shows?

    
    

• Operations and Practice Management

  • Has your practice been profitable over the past 3 years? If not, why? Have I spoken with your account about it?

  • Has the practice's Total Expense Ratio ( i.e., total expenses divided by total collections) declined over the past 3 years? If not, what is causing these results?

  • Excluding salaries, has the practice's Total Overhead Ratio (i.e., Total Expenses less salaries divided by total collections) declined over the past 3 years? If not, what is causing these results?

  • Have you recently conducted procedural time studies to assess how the practice are doing?

  • Have you analyzed the productivity of your hygienist employees? If you rank-ordered them by performance, who would lead? Who would lag? Why? What corrective actions can you take? Training? Redefine job roles? Performance improvement plan? Employment termination?

    
    

• Goals and Objectives

  • What are your practice goals for next year and in three years in regards to -

    • Gross Billings,

    • Target Client Group,

    • Number of Support Staff,

    • Hygienists Productivity, and

    • Owner's Salary?

  • What specific steps can you take now to work toward the above goals?

  • Did you write these goals down and share them (as appropriate) with your employees, spouse, and accountant?

  • Did you create calendar meetings with the above groups to periodically report to them on what goals you achieved? (Hint: you should)

  • As you review your results, how have the assumptions you made changed over time? What corrective action should you take?

These are a few suggestions to rev up your gross billing engine and improve productivity.