What makes top dental practices successful? Survey reveals some helpful insights

While there’s a lot of noise out there about how to improve your practice, Sikka Software went right to the source – their dentist members – to ask them what they do to guide their practices to success.

“We conducted this survey because we realized there was a need for simplified comparative understanding of how dentists can better their practice performance, along with how they compare against their professional associates,” said Vijay Sikka, CEO of Sikka Software. More than 10,000 active opt-in practices took the survey to identify the top criteria behind their success.

“What we found are the key metrics driving both the quality of care and financial performance for the entire industry,” Sikka continued. They are currently sharing the results and more with their customers at the Greater New York Dental Meeting.

One of the benefits of using Sikka Software is that the company shares its Success Score, which is a vehicle that the company developed to allow a health-care professional to simply login to their Sikka account and immediately see where they rank and ultimately how they can improve.

“By targeting the 10 areas that we know matter most to the health-care professionals that we serve, we've built the Success Score around metrics that our users care about,” Sikka explained. “Simply put, we think it's good information for our users because we asked. By gathering a diverse array of feedback from our users we were able to thoughtfully implement the Success Score to provide business visibility most relevant to dentists. In addition to the what, the Success Score also gives them the how. In other words, we give them actionable insights to improve their practice.”

Sample best practices include:
• Successful practices should have 100% of new patients undergo comprehensive exams
• Collections, a metric of office managers, should be 100% of the adjusted production: an increase or decrease from that amount indicates either missed payment collection opportunities or over-collection, which can result in time-intensive refunds
• Practices should minimize their ratio of total no shows to total patient appointments, a metric that indicates how well the team is educating patients on the importance of appointments to their good health (the target number should be under 1%)
• 50% of a practice’s existing patients should refer at least one or more patients to the practice during their patient “lifetime” to build a solid word-of-mouth campaign
• Fees should be aligned with how dentists practice, such as their style and frequency, with factors taken into account such as differences in production goals and overhead costs

“The bottom line is that our goal, as the practice optimizer company, is to provide our users with tools that allow them to immediately understand the health and performance of their practice(s),” Sikka said. “We then guide them down the path of how to improve, which ultimately results in improved patient care and more free time for the health-care professional and office staff.”

To find out all 10 of the reasons dentists believe their practices are successful, access the Success Report at sikkasoft.com/sikka-success-report/.