The Strongest KPIs For YOUR Practice

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are a powerful tool. They provide concrete numbers for your practice, showing what's working well, but also clear-cut areas for improvement. Tiff and Kristy break down how and where to use KPIs, plus interpretation, growth factors, and more. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello Dental A Team listeners. I am back here with one of your favorites I know she's one of your favorites because we get some massive kudos and massive reviews and feedback on Miss Kristy and I've got her here today to pick her brain on a couple of different Topics and this one we are diving right in you guys I'm super excited for this topic and for what's to come Kristy you work really really really hard with your clients on finding the metrics that are actually going to push their needle. And something that I think you key in very easily on is that missing, I said earlier, like a puzzle piece. And you're able to see the picture, the big picture, and then narrow it down into pieces that are going to move ⁓ incrementally, right? We always look for the things that are gonna, a small change that can make a massive difference. And you're really good at keying into those pieces. Now, Earlier we were recording a podcast and we talking about this massive growth that a platinum client of yours had experienced this year. We're recording this in 2025. It'll release in 2026. So this year they had experienced this incredible growth. And we talked about some of the systems that they had used, handoffs and block scheduling and financial menus, all of the different things that you guys were able to implement lasers, kind of all the things. DAT Kristy (01:02) Thank The Dental A Team (01:16) But when it comes to, we can implement things and this I think is what happens when practices come to us. The practices come to us, Kristy, and they say, teach me systems, right? I need systems. We're like, gosh, you have systems. You just don't know if the systems are working or not, right? You wouldn't have gotten this far. You wouldn't be calling down on a team if there were no systems. So we just have to key in on the systems that you have and figure out why, if they are working or not and if they're not, why they're not working. Now, Kristy. DAT Kristy (01:30) Thank The Dental A Team (01:45) The word KPI or the acronym KPI, key performance indicators, I think can be daunting and confusing, very confusing. So help us to simplify today. How do you go about choosing the right KPIs? And what are some of your favorite overarching KPIs for practices to use? DAT Kristy (02:06) Yeah. I love that you say that Tiff, because KPIs, you know me, I do love the numbers because the numbers don't lie, right? And they start to tell a story. They don't tell this whole story, but it lets us see what's working well and be able to celebrate with our teams, you know, what is going good. And it also lets us ⁓ dive into maybe areas where there's opportunity for sure. And I always like to say there's lead and lag measures. And so I like to look at both, you know, to your point, probably my top ones, obviously everybody knows production, collection. ⁓ And I also like to say, don't get hung up just on percentages. Also look at the numbers too, right? It's both. And then also case acceptance. dollars diagnosed, dollars accepted, and your percentage accepted. ⁓ And to that point, your re-care and even new patient numbers too. The Dental A Team (03:14) I totally agree with you. I'd love that you said don't pay attention just to the percentage. I think both are equally as important. And I think what you mean by that, I can surmise, is we'll take diagnosis for an example, something we talked about in the other podcast we recorded for your Platinum client was that they were able to increase their case acceptance, but you started tracking and looking at what their diagnosis amount was. So if we strictly look at, and I love this one because I love when practices come in and they make it really easy for us and they're like, gosh, I have a really high case acceptance. have 87 % case acceptance, but my schedule isn't full. I'm not hitting production goals. And we're like, heck yeah, slam dunk, this one's easy. We're not diagnosing enough. So I think that's the differentiating space that you're talking about, the percentage versus the dollar amount, because we can have really high case acceptance of a small dollar amount. So if we're not looking at both of those simultaneously and seeing are we diagnosing enough dollars to get to the production and collections that we want and then also getting the case acceptance? Is that what you're meaning there by that KPI? And how would you separate those KPIs for someone tracking them that's trying to maybe get to that next level of production? DAT Kristy (04...