October at a glance

We ask every new patient how they heard of you at the first visit and the front desk records it in Open Dental. 15 of 41 cost nothing: they found the Google listing on their own. The 11 from ads cost $250 each on average, which is fine against a first-year value of about $900 per new patient. Referrals from patients are the ones to protect; they accept treatment more often than anyone else.

October had five Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays but only four of the other days, so Thursday looks bigger than it really is; per day, Monday is the fullest at 56 appointments. Friday runs at 30 a day and Saturday mornings at 11. Those two yellow bars are where another 40 to 60 appointments a month can go before anyone needs to work longer hours.

Anything above 85% is full; below 60% is a chair earning less than it costs. Op 5 is the Friday-and-Saturday hygiene chair, which is why it is lower, and Op 6 is kept open for same-day emergencies on purpose. If Op 5 climbs past 85% after the recall campaign, it is time to talk about a fourth hygienist.

Three o’clock is the after-school rush: parents bringing children in for cleanings and sealants. It tells us when to staff the front desk heaviest, when not to schedule long crown appointments, and when the phones need two people. If the peak moves, the schedule moves with it.

A missed call from a new patient is usually a lost one; they ring the next practice on the list. Roughly a third of missed calls are new patients, so 186 missed calls is about 60 people who could have booked. The missed-call text and the same-day call-back recover most of them. The Monday problem is staffing: two people on the desk from 8 to 10 a.m. would fix it.

Texts beat emails fifteen to one for getting someone back in the chair, so the email is now the reminder and the text is the ask. One in eight people we ask for a review leaves one, which is normal; the trick is asking within an hour of the visit, while they are still pleased. 84% of reminders get a “C” back, and those appointments almost never no-show.

Six dollars in ten come through PPO plans, which is why a slow insurer shows up in your bank account within weeks. Financing is small but it is the reason three of the four implant cases went ahead; offering it at the consult rather than at checkout is what moved the approval rate from 64% to 79%.

Lab fees going up is good news in disguise: more crowns and implants were made. Supplies rose with the extra hygiene days. Overtime fell because the Saturday hygienist is now scheduled rather than called in. We cancelled an unused scheduling tool that duplicated NexHealth.

Under 30 days is normal; insurers take three to four weeks. Anything past 60 days needs a phone call, and past 90 is at risk of being written off. The bookkeeper works the over-60 list every Tuesday. $5,400 came in this month that way.

Google decides whether someone finds you; Yelp and Healthgrades decide whether they trust you once they have. Yelp is the lowest because it hides reviews from people who rarely post, which is most happy patients. We do not ask for Yelp reviews (Yelp penalises that); we ask for Google and let the rest follow.

Google shows the owner's reply right under the review, and people read it. A quick, warm answer to a 2-star review does more for you than ten more 5-star ones. We draft every reply; anything below four stars comes to you first before it goes out.