The Department That Determines Your Profit Hygiene is your most reliable source of recurring revenue. It runs on pre- appointments, six-month intervals, and long-term relationships. From a business perspective, that kind of predictability is gold. You don’t have to market constantly to generate it. It’s built into the structure of the practice. And yet, in many offices, hygiene is treated like background noise. It’s assumed to be fine. It’s left alone. It’s expected to sustain itself.
And it performs accordingly, usually well below what it could.
Data from Planet DDS, the ADA Health Policy Institute, and the DentalPost Salary Survey reveal some uncomfortable realities. The average hygienist produces about $1,058 per day. Periodontal disease is the leading basis for dental malpractice litigation, but fewer than half of audited charts contain complete periodontal charting. Two-thirds of hygienists operate without written standards of care. Only about 60% of hygiene patients are scheduled within 12 months of their last preventive visit.
And perhaps most importantly, roughly 60% of doctor production originates in the hygiene chair.
That last point should give you pause.
If more than half of your restorative work is seeded in hygiene, then hygiene isn’t a support department. It’s the feeder system for your entire practice. When hygiene is strong, the whole practice feels it. When hygiene drifts, everything downstream suffers. The Most Expensive Word in Dentistry: ‘Assume’ Most dentists assume hygiene is fine. They assume periodontal diagnosis is consistent. They assume reappointment rates are solid. They assume documentation is complete.
But assumption is not management.
If only 47% of charts contain periodontal charting and perio remains the leading source of malpractice claims, that’s not a small oversight. That’s risk exposure. And if 40% of hygiene patients aren’t
When most practice owners think about increasing patient volume, they default immediately to one conclusion: We need more or better marketing. From there, they dive headfirst into the rabbit hole — new agencies, new websites, and new campaigns — often spending significant time and money before determining whether marketing was truly the constraint. That’s not to say marketing isn’t important. In many cases, it’s part of the solution. But before allocating more dollars externally, you need to step back and take a look at the big picture. We’ve talked before about building a culture of Continuous Improvement (CI) using the Plan-Do-Check- Act framework. Let’s apply this to patient volume. Plan: Understand Current Reality The Plan phase starts with an honest assessment of where you stand today. Before deciding what to change, you need to know exactly where you are and what you have. That means cataloging your current patient volume and identifying the operational factors that either support or undermine growth.
Consider the following examples: •
Answer rate of inbound phone calls (Industry data suggests approximately 35% of calls go unanswered in the average practice.) Conversion rate of new patient calls to scheduled appointments
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No-show rate for initial appointments
Case acceptance rate
Quality and consistency of the patient experience Referral rate from existing patients Percentage of patients pre-appointed and maintained in recall Periodontal diagnosis and treatment compliance, resulting in higher-frequency recall
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Patient retention rate
Measurable return on external marketing efforts
Of the items above, only one directly references external marketing. But each directly impacts patient volume. Continuous Improvement forces you to evaluate the entire system rather than chase the most visible lever. The second part of the Plan phase is deciding which variables you’ll address first. Think of this as your recipe for change, a defined list of initiatives rather than scattered ideas.
6 · DentalGrowthAndExit.com
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