Leveraging Data to Build a Successful Practice
Fuse practice management software enables practice owners to track the most important metrics to ensure a healthy, growing practice
If you graduated with your doctorate in dentistry, ready for practice but not for business, you’re not alone. According to Kathy Brodal, a Patterson Dental analyst and business consultant with 34 years’ experience, approximately 30% of dentists in practice today are unfamiliar with the “numbers” side of their dental practice, making business training an on-the-job learning experience. That’s not ideal, considering that most dentists don’t have a great deal of time to spend mastering business operations.
That’s why it is essential to use a practice management software that will not only make it easier for you and your team to run your business, but that will set you up for growth and success. Fuse from Patterson Dental is a platform that enables you to create seamless operational workflows and drive performance based on key practice insights. The cloud-based software features an intuitive interface, smart screens, and dashboards to easily assess your practice’s performance. In fact, Fuse provides all the key performance indicators (KPIs) you need to measure the health of your practice and gain insights into opportunities for growth.
“A lot of doctors are learning as they go and going by their gut,” says Erin Smith, software product marketing manager for Patterson Dental. “They tend to judge based on a short-term view: I’m busy today, I’m busy tomorrow, business is good. But more important is the long-term view, taking a whole list of different metrics and tying everything together.” That’s where Fuse comes in. “Fuse has a ‘Practice at a Glance’ dashboard,” Erin explains. “It has the key data points to track your business metrics. That’s a standard setup where everyone can start. Then, as they learn more about what they really need to keep an eye on, they can hide certain data points or arrange the widgets in a different order to customize the appearance of that dashboard.”
Find Your Opportunities
With so much data at your fingertips, where should you start to build your business strategy? “Start by finding out your biggest opportunity for growth,” Kathy recommends. “Most of the time, I would say, that’s retention. And Fuse does a great job of tracking that.” One way to monitor retention in Fuse is via the Hygiene Retention widget on the dashboard. If you see that 20% of your patients are consistently leaving without their next appointment, you can review your walkout process to increase the number of patients who leave with a future appointment. It could also be an early indicator of patient satisfaction and could prompt you to re-evaluate the patient experience.
Fuse can also quickly take you beyond the surface to the details—and the resources needed to understand them. “The way Fuse is designed, you can click through a lot of the widgets and data points on the dashboard to get a SmartScreen with the details of why your numbers are the way they are. Then you can put steps in place to correct them,” says Erin.
Metrics to Keep Your Eye On
Seven of the most important KPIs to help a practice grow when monitored with Fuse include the following:
• Retention: 96% of patients leave with a hygiene appointment; 80% scheduled on time
• Collections: 96% to 100% of net production • Accounts receivable (all sources): ≤1 month’s average production
• Case acceptance: 70%
• Hygiene production: 30% to 33% of practice production
• Periodontal production: 30% to 33% of overall hygiene production
• New patients: ≥20/month “When doctors can get all these things together, they’re going to be golden,” Kathy says.
Let the Software Work for You
At the end of the day, Fuse sets you up for success by providing the data you need to run a business without the need for anyone to spend time gathering that data.
“As a dentist, practice owner, business owner, you have a lot of responsibilities,” says Erin. “You should be spending your time acting on the data, not gathering it. That’s where Fuse is a great help. Everything is right there to act on, real-time data, so you don’t have to run a ton of different reports. It’s all just really integrated.”
“Almost all dental offices that don’t have something like Fuse have an office manager who’s pulling all the reports on their software and putting it in a spreadsheet, and taking hours and hours and hours a month to gather data when they could be managing the team or implementing strategies,” Kathy adds. “Fuse can do that for them and save all of that time and effort.”
