Five Ways to Quickly Increase your Practice Revenue

Whether your practice is collecting $100,000 per year or $10 million per year, you can always use a little more money.  Whether putting it away for your retirement or paying for your kids’ college education, some extra dough always comes in handy.  The best way to get more money in your practice is to grow your practice.  But how do you do that?  Here are a few suggestions:

1. PPOs – Unless you’re a fee-for-service practice collecting $5 million per year without any PPOs, or you’re the only dentist within 30 miles of your office, you should consider taking PPOs.  I know everyone wants to be a fee-for-service practice, but in this day in age, it’s quite difficult.  Many large employers provide some form of dental insurance.  Being a Preferred Provider for those insurance companies whom the employers subscribe to will give you another source of new patients.
2. Additional Services – Do you refer out endo, ortho or oral surgery? If you add those services, you can get approximately a 5% increase in practice production.  There are many courses available where you can learn and hone those skills.  There have also been advances in endo equipment which makes it much easier to perform endo procedures.  Placing implants is another procedure you can add to your repertoire.  Go back and look at how many endo, ortho, oral surgery, and implant cases you referred out.  Those procedures and the corresponding money from those procedures can be yours.
3. Marketing – Having more new patients coming to your practice is a great way to increase your production.  If you’re doing very little marketing, or not doing any, you should consider getting in the game.  The type of marketing depends on the type of practice you have, where you’re located and what kind of patients you want in your practice.  You can consult with a dental marketing expert to get a good idea on which type of marketing is best for you.
4. Where’s the Hygiene? Your hygiene production as a percentage of overall production should be approximately 30%.  That can vary by the type of practice. Emergency clinics or cosmetic practices, for example, will not have much hygiene.  Most general practices should target 30% of total production as hygiene.  You can increase your number by making appointments chairside, incenting your staff to fill the hygiene column and educating yourself with all the information on the internet on how to improve your hygiene numbers.
5. Turn “No” to “Yes” – We’re talking case acceptance.  Your case acceptance should be a fairly high number – 70% to 100% is a good range.  If you’re below that, your treatment diagnosed is walking out the door.  Build rapport with your patients so they trust you.  Work with your team, assistants, hygienists and front desk, to improve case acceptance.  Use the common phrase, “If you were one of my family members, I would suggest you get this procedure done.”  There are several good sources out there on improving case acceptance – books, YouTube videos, consultants, etc.

There are even more ways to improve your bottom line to make your practice more profitable, but if you implement just one of the above 5 items, you can increase your production by 10% or more within a month.  Best of luck in your practice.  As always, we are here to provide free advice or consultation.  Call us anytime – 877-866-6053.