The leaves have fallen. Temperatures are dropping. And snow is in the air… at least for some of us. The holiday season is here!

It’s a time of celebration, celebrating successes and accomplishments. A time to pause and reflect on the past, reflecting on how well you and your team performed.

But with the holiday season in full force, that also means the new year is on the horizon.

Soon there will be new goals to focus on — individually and as a team. However, before you set your plans for the new year in stone, you’ll need to review your data from the past year. Then you can make important decisions that will positively impact your practice in the coming year.

Luckily, we’ve already done the hard work for you.

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Why Dental Intelligence?

Dental Intelligence helps over 10,000 dental practices intelligently shape their futures, which gives us unprecedented insight into what makes a dental practice as successful as it can be. 

After running reports and looking at data from over 10,000 practices across the last couple of years, we discovered two critical things the top 10% of practices had in common.

Let’s look at what we found:  

1. The top 10% of practices increased patient growth from 18% to 41% (23% increase)

AND

2. They increased their average restorative $ presented per exam from $2,162 to $3,294. 

So let’s break these numbers down and see the story they tell us.‍

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Increased Patient Growth

The top 10% of practices increased patient growth from 18% to 41% (23% increase).

What could be causing this?

In short, it’s a clear testimony that these practices can remain stable during unstable times. They have the resources to endure what other practices can’t, and all of dentistry has been doing a lot of enduring the last few years. 

One study of the pandemic’s impact indicated 75.9% of practices experienced closures, with a “significantly higher percentage in the private sector than in the non-private sector.” 

Another study showed the top 10% of practices actually improved their performance from 2019 to 2020.

These findings suggest the highest-performing practices may have been able to weather the storm, reinvest in their facilities, and expand in 2020, whereas other practices closed or merely subsisted instead of significantly growing. 

As a result, the top 10% would have been able to win patients displaced by the closures of other offices. This, combined with continual growth investment, may have served as a springboard for continued expansion in 2021. 

There’s also a small chance that some of this increase is artificially inflated. Since remote work is becoming commonplace, patients are freer to relocate. If this is the case, they could be listed as active patients at their old practice while also being listed as a new patient at another practice. It won’t be possible to know for sure until relocated patients are deactivated at their old practices — usually after 18 months. 

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Increased Average Restorative $ Presented Per Exam

The top 10% of practices increased their average restorative $ presented per exam from $2,162 to $3,294. 

That’s a difference of $1,132 presented per exam, an increase of 52.35%.

Thankfully, this dramatic increase isn’t exclusive to only the top 10%. The average practice saw the same figure increase by 38.57%, and even the bottom 10% of practices achieved a 34.29% increase.

‍What could be causing this?

Part of the increase could be attributed to economics. Mid 2020-mid 2021 was one of the best economies in recent memory in terms of investment values. That economic bump could have led to patients voluntarily seeking elective procedures like cosmetics, since their portfolios looked healthy. 

But a strong economy would only be part of a possible explanation. There’s also an X factor to consider — Zoom meetings. 

Remote work is more common than ever, meaning more people are on video calls all day, every day. They’re looking at themselves via webcam for 8 hours, 5 days a week. They see imperfections in their smiles, they’re constantly reminded of those insecurities, and they have a solution — cosmetic dentistry. 

The home improvement industry saw record increases in 2020 because everyone was stuck looking at their four walls all day, every day. The same school of thought should apply to aesthetic improvements to their own appearance as well.

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Getting the Data You Need!

So now that we’ve reviewed the most noticeable findings from our study, you might wonder, how does my practice compare to the top 10%?

Not sure how to calculate these numbers? No sweat. You can get a free Growth Report and see all the production, collections, and many other metrics so you can make decisions to intelligently shape the future of your practice. One quick sync with your practice management software will give you access to accurate, real time benchmarks from your practice’s data so you can see how you stack up. Request your free Growth Report today.