One of the top ways to increase practice production is setting a daily goal. This is not a new concept, but it’s often not handled properly by many dental practices. A daily goal is a key factor in establishing the scheduling system and, as you know, systems are the key to dental practice success.
The starting point of implementing a daily goal process is to establish an annual production goal. We suggest that most practices set a goal to increase production in the next 12 months at approximately 18%. Almost every practice has a 30%–50% growth potential over three years, and many practices can achieve 18% growth by establishing it as an annual goal, then improving or implementing systems to make it happen.
More "Practice Production, Prioritized":
- Practice production, prioritized: The one-day rule for overdue patients
- Practice production, prioritized: Finding the right hire, despite staffing challenges
- Practice production, prioritized: Retaining current staff
Once a practice has established its annual production goal for the next 12 months, it can then break that down into a daily goal for what needs to be produced by dentists and/or hygienists in the practice. To make the daily goal an effective target, the practice needs to hold a morning meeting and make it a priority to review the daily goal results from the previous day and the expectations for the current day and to determine whether the practice is on, above, or below target, based on scheduled appointments.
Let’s look at a hypothetical example where the practice determines in the morning meeting that it is $1,000 below the daily goal for that day. This is where documented, proven, step-by-step systems come into play. Since this has been discussed in the morning meeting, everyone in the practice knows that the team needs to identify an additional $1,000 of production to be on-target for the daily goal.
Opportunities for achieving this could include the dentist identifying additional treatment for a patient, or a hygienist identifying potential treatment for a hygiene patient that had not been previously diagnosed and motivating the patient to have treatment, conveniently, while they are in the office that day. The concept of same-day treatment works very well as a convenience factor for patients as long as the schedule has the flexibility to accommodate them. There are other options to increase production for that day, such as accommodating emergencies, which usually have an extremely high case acceptance rate. And always remember that the front desk staff should track the $1,000 deficit throughout the day and determine at what point it has been made up or if additional production is necessary.
Remember, merely creating a daily goal is not sufficient. Your practice needs a plan for how you will identify additional treatment when you’ve fallen short, based around scheduling protocols that maintain relatively stable production (without extreme highs and lows) all year long.
Editor's note: This article appeared in the May 2022 print edition of Dental Economics magazine. Dentists in North America are eligible for a complimentary print subscription. Sign up here.
