The evolution of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in dentistry, and certainly as part of practice management, today sees them encompass not just financial, but also clinical and performance-related measurements of success or failure, allowing a team to function as efficiently as possible.
In my practice, we measure almost everything – once you start measuring systems, it become a little addictive and the control you feel is certainly a comfort blanket you will not want to let go of. Engaging the whole team in various forms of KPIs allows them to manage themselves. There is hardly any point in using KPI’s and not sharing the relevant information with those who are part of the performance, unless of course you have superpowers to do every job in the practice.
So, the starting point is: what to measure? Every practice will be slightly different depending on what your business plan, strategies and end goals are.
I started small: ensuring that you know where you are month to month financially is a must, also looking at your chair/surgery analysis, and diary availability will provide a host of answers to allow you to tweek and plan marketing/recalls or admin duties, such as recalls and appointment reminders.
The following certainly won’t be a ‘to-do’ list for everybody, but will give you some ideas to build your own KPI dashboards on. I have basically four different types.
Income Centred: clinical hourly rates, overheads, plan patients, private patients, UDA’s. Measuring the chair times of individual performers combined with their gross earning (before or after variables such as lab fees. Either is fine, as long as you keep your measurements consistent)
Patient centred: How many patients missed their appointments, and who with, and what time? What type of patients are you attracting? What is the average wait times for different lengths of appointments, how long were patients kept waiting? Recall percentages and diary problems can be managed very easily by setting targets and goals for the whole team to work to.
Marketing Centred: how many new patients have you seen. What the demographic? How many new patient enquiries were there? What was the referral source? How many had a TCO appointment and were then converted to treatment take-up, and how much income did that individual conversion create? Combining this with referral source should enable you eventually to work out what your return of investment was on your different marketing platforms.
Workforce related: we use a dental software system that gives me a clear picture of which employees are performing well, or if there are any skills gaps to address. The average length of patient enquiries they are taking compared with conversion rates is a great indicator of which employees are working best on reception when it comes to taking those important new patient enquiries. Software combined with a clever phone system allows this to be done very easily.
Using KPIs as part of your appraisal/ performance reviews can really help to keep staff motivated and efficient, or in some cases highlight that maybe a change of role is needed.
A few years ago, I definitely considered myself a bit of a KPI geek. Nowadays, with more and more of my fellow PMs adopting the systems and seeing the benefits, I feel it is becoming a foolproof way to run a successful dental practice and team, and to provide excellent patient care both clinically and in terms of customer service. As a PM, providing your team and practice owners with a simple dashboard of what’s happening within the practice allows them to feel confident that everything is under control, and that everyone and every system is being carefully monitored.