It can’t be said often enough that setting goals are necessary to have growth in your office. If you don’t have a map of where you are going you will have a very difficult time getting there. Set your goals, define the steps you need to get there and start working on them! Have your plan for 2022 in place long before January 1, 2022.
When setting your goals, you will need to look at current production, current space capacity, your current results compared to industry norms as well as any resources you and your team may need to achieve the goals. This may seem like an overwhelming task but setting goals that may not be within your ability will be frustrating and ultimately fruitless. Always be sure that you are measuring what is important to your practice and your goals by looking at industry norms and seeing how your practice stacks up against others in the province.
The industry norms that you want to meet or exceed are:
- 7% to 10% open time in hygiene chairs, this number has changed and is dependent on how you track the current fallow time in your chairs.
- Owners should have 5% or less open time in their chairs and associates will likely have 8% open time in their chairs.
- Hygiene billing per hour for scaling, polish and fluoride codes should be $190 to $210 per hour if following the guidelines from the ODA and CDHO.
- Treatment acceptance should be measured and not a gut feeling. Looking for 80% acceptance from the first time that treatment is diagnosed is the goal.
- In your hygiene chairs you will want to measure that you have 80% retention of your hygiene patients within their diagnosed time intervals.
- New patient growth needs to be greater than the number of patients being inactivated in your practice
- You may also want to look at the value of a new patient to the office and if your current marketing strategies need to be changed.
Be specific when choosing your goals, having an overall production goal without a plan of how you will achieve that is akin to going on a treasure hunt for gold without a map. Choose your goal and then plan the steps you need to achieve the goal. This will include communicating your goals to your team, providing any training your team may need to meet the challenge, creating small goals along the way and celebrating when you achieve them.
Communicating your goals to your team in a way that is meaningful to them is essential in this process. A team member doesn’t want to know that you are looking to grow your practice by 10% from $1.5 million to $1.65 million, they are only going to look at it as they are working harder for the owner to take home more money. If the same goal is presented in terms of industry norms and where your practice may not be meeting industry norms this will help them understand the reason for the change and provide them with specifics needed for change. An example of this would be to decrease hygiene open time you may need to add three patients a week to your schedule. This is a goal that will make sense to your team.
All of this can be dizzying when added to your chairside time with patients. Calling for a complimentary consultation with me is the first step to getting your practice goals on track for 2022.
