Hygiene production makes up around 30% of a practice’s production, so it benefits you to make sure you’re properly tracking it! To learn more, listen to the podcast or read a transcript of the audio.
Hi, everyone. Welcome back the to the Sikka Software Podcast. Here at Sikka, we are passionate about bringing you tools and solutions that benefit your patients and your practice. Today we are going to talk about how to make your practice more profitable by monitoring your hygiene performance.
Hygiene is often the lifeblood of a dental practice. Most experts agree that the total hygiene department production should be between 25% and 35% of total practice production in order for the practice to be profitable. Nowadays, dental hygiene is more like a business department within dental practices. Many providers believe that a practice may fail if its hygiene department is not tended to properly.
Hygiene production is important not only because it makes up around 30% production of a practice, but also because it provides stable revenue long term through patients’ reappointments. According to Sikka’s 2016 study from more than 12,500 dental practices nationwide, the number of patients seen by a hygiene department in a practice on average per month was 79, and the patients reappointed on average per month was around 47. This means reappointed patients represented nearly 60% of overall visiting patients, and actually many doctors expected the number to have been even higher. It is therefore not hard to draw the conclusion that keeping your patients coming back to your hygienists should be one of your practice’s priorities. And your hygienists should be motivated to take the responsibility to bring patients back.
In order to make your hygiene department a more profitable source for your practice, you should keep monitoring your hygiene performance. For Sikka Practice Optimizer users, we offer the Hygienist Morning Report exclusively for hygiene teams to boost their efficiency in management. Every morning you receive the report via e-mail, and it tells you what you are going to do that day and how your last working day performed across different modules. On one hand, you will get a clear direction for a typical working day after viewing the modules like “Today’s appointments hours,” “Today’s appointment details,” “Today’s pending treatment plans,” and “Today’s patients last visit details from the report.” On the other hand, modules for last working day performance help you understand how hygiene teams are contributing to the continued success of practices. For example, “Number of Patients Rescheduled” and “% of Re-Appointment” are key indicators to check whether your hygienists are doing their best to bring every single patient back. Modules like “Last Working Day-Provider Scheduled Production” and “Number of Procedures by Provider” help you to know each provider’s workload and how much each of them is contributing to the hygiene production versus the hygiene production as a whole.
Monitoring daily hygiene performance takes a bit of extra effort, but it can reward you and your patients with benefits in the long run. When the hygienists are aware of your practice objectives, are empowered with a clear to-do plan, and are able to execute that plan, your whole practice becomes healthier with more active patients.
The Hygienist Morning Report is available on our Practice Optimizer, and if you don’t have Practice Optimizer, we encourage you to consider registering for it at sikkasoft.com. Thanks for tuning into the Sikka Software Podcast where we give you tips and strategies to improve your practice’s performance. Until next time.