How effective is the recall program in your practice? It’s considered one of the lifeblood statistics for every dental practice, but do you know how your practice stacks up against the national average?
When unearthing these numbers, we took data from Sikka Software that has been collected from more than 12,500 dental practices from around the United States.
To find these numbers out we took the number of recalls (patients who had D0120 or D0120.1 procedures in a given month) and divided them by the recall potential (the number of patients who had D0120 or D0150 procedures in the last 6 months, excluding the current month). Then that number was multiplied by 100 to give an accurate percentage.
Let’s take a look at the numbers we discovered:
2010 – 89.59%
2011 – 89.98%
2012 – 90%
2013 – 89.88%
2014 – 89.77%
2015 – 90.57%
2016 – 91.28%
While the numbers are very close over the last seven years, it’s a good sign that the highest numbers have come over the last two years with 2016 being the high-water mark.
Kim Stevens, RDH, BS, MBA, OM, of the Mid-West Institute of Orofacial Myology, believes that the economic recession of 2008 played a big role in setting the stage for the growing numbers seen in years since then.
“Since the economy fell apart in 2008, practice management and consulting for dental practices seemed to explode onto the scene,” Stevens said. “Dental hygiene became a business department within dental practices. It was ‘shape up or ship out’ conditions. People quickly learned the hygiene department feeds the practice and if it is not tended to properly the practice will fail. Practices either grow or fail, they do not coast.”
Stevens says that the new way of looking at a practice as a business opened the door for new technology to come into the dental industry as well.
“Companies like RevenueWell, Solutionreach, Lighthouse 360, and others are now very widely utilized for the purposes of keeping up on recalls and appointment confirmations,” she said.
With technology available to help practices, Stevens and other experts believes that recall numbers will continue to climb. However, economic issues like what happened a decade ago could set things back to lower levels.
So what do dental practices need to do to insulate themselves against their numbers slipping?
First, learn what your practice’s recall numbers are and see if there are certain demographic areas of your patient base where numbers are more problematic than others. Second, see if current technology from the companies listed above could not only help boost your recall rates but also take some of the stress off your current team members. Third, conduct an internal survey of your patients to see if there might be a reason why those who aren’t coming back to the practice are staying away. It might be a great chance to discover a problem you didn’t even know you had.
Note: Want to learn more about what Sikka Software can do for your practice? Practice Mobilizer is the free app that lets you send HIPAA-compliant video messages, track patient arrival times, provides zip code specific fee data and more. Click here. Link to www.practicemobilizer.com.
This article was originally published July 27, 2017 on DrBicuspid. You can view the original article here: http://bit.ly/2vNqCt1
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