Of course, all dentists want to have profitable practices. After all, the more profitable the practice, the more money there is to pay expenses, invest in improvements to the practice and give yourself a raise. Production is a key performance indicator (KPI) that is essential to practice profits. Your overall or gross production per day, your production by the provider, your production by code by the provider, and the percentage of collections representing the net collections from all production are all key to healthy production stats. Having a working knowledge of the relationship between production and collections is critical to practice success.
Dental production is a dental practice's expected revenue in a given time frame. If desired, it can be measured by time units breaking down to production per hour or minute. The usual production sources are dental clinical services performed by dentists and dental hygienists and additional income streams from take-home products such as fluoride gels, electric toothbrushes, antiseptic rinses, teeth bleaching products, etc. Production numbers vary daily and are affected by many different variables in your practice, including your schedule and the efficiency of your team members. Team and scheduling correctly can mean the difference between making or losing thousands of dollars. Evaluating the management of the team and how well you maximize each appointment time slot in your schedule leads to better production. Total production can be broken down to individual production by the provider. Allowing you to see how much revenue each dentist and dental hygienist generates. The remainder of the team are not "producers" but are support staff in critical areas of production success. Production creates revenue, which ultimately makes income. The appropriate fees for services and products are integral to revenue generation–fees that represent the practice demographic and keep pace with rising costs and inflation. Most dentists like to review their scheduled production per day at the beginning of their day to see the flow and identify an opportunity in the schedule to create more production. Gross production is the total of the amounts charged to patients recorded on their ledgers. The charges for gross production originate from the dentist's standard fee schedule (not the PPO insurance fee schedule). Gross production is subject to office discounts, write-offs, and network insurance adjustments that will lower production totals. For instance, one practice may offer a free whitening product if the patient schedules their next two maintenance appointments. The whitening product will be charged out but then adjusted off production as a “promo” adjustment. Or an office charges 110.00 for a D1110 but is in the network (PPO) to accept 90.00 and must adjust off 20.00. Gross production: 110.00 Net production: 90.00= Net collections: 90.00
Production creates a revenue cycle which builds cash, which makes income. Dentistry is a business that has obligations to creditors and it’s practice expenses. The end line to production is the collection of what you have provided as services and products. Any practice with achieved production goals, revenue, currency, and income for the owner(s) will be successful and able to maintain that success.
Net production is the amount of production that can be collected after any write-offs, discounts, or adjustments are tallied. It is the anticipated "net collection," assuming all of it is collected. Gross production and gross collections numbers are essential to know, but these numbers need to pay the bills. What pays the bills are net production and net collections.
The first step to meeting your production goals is to set realistic growth goals for the year. Use the production-by-provider reports generated by the practice software to see in what code categories you are producing the most revenue. For instance, you might find the average of your 2021 and 2022 revenue and develop a growth goal of 15% to 18%. Where can you improve these numbers? Can you expand your services with new skills or offer extended hours to accommodate your working demographic?
Increasing production is more complex than booking another crown in your daily schedule. It involves every aspect of your practice. Many factors for increasing production include scheduling for production (scheduling with a goal in mind), having enough qualified staff to provide services, presenting treatment plans that result in appointments, insurance billing management, and financial policies that support cash flow. Once you have established your annual goal, you can set your daily production goal. Daily production goal comes from each day(hours) the practice is open to produce dentistry every month divided into the annual goal. The goal can be set up in the appointment book of the dental software and can calculate scheduled treatment as long as each procedure is entered by code from the fee schedule. After setting your goal, you must now accomplish the goal. Outsourcing dental insurance and patient billing is a proven method to achieve higher production and net collections. Statistics prove that hiring dental billing specialists, such as those on the eAssist Dental Billing platform, to work behind the scenes as team members will improve your productivity and collections. Having a dedicated team enhances productivity and lowers costs. Using eAssist frees up time for your business team to interface with patients instead of talking to insurance companies, verifying coverage, and stressing over appeal letters. eAssist can also fill your schedule, work on your recall, and do your accounting as additional services. For example, the data team at eAssist Dental Billing pulled some stats demonstrating improvement made to the average practice’s production with the following numbers.
That’s around a $50k increase in net production for the average dental office after outsourcing their dental billing through eAssist! The year is still young, and there is time to set up proven systems of success to take your production and collections to a new level of reward.
To get started, schedule a no-obligation consultation. Contact an eAssist business development specialist today!