What are Key Performance Indicators and why do you need them for your hygiene department?

Key performance indicators (KPI’s) are monitors that are collected to enable you to measure performance and results.  Some types of businesses only measure finances but when delivering care, working within a team and running a business you need to measure more than finances.

Every dental practice should have monitors for the whole practice.  In this post, we are going to delve deeper into why they are required in the hygiene room. We will also demonstrate how they support a fully functioning and profitable hygiene department.

Before you begin to know which KPI’S to gather, you will need to consider what constitutes a healthy and profitable hygiene department.

Let’s begin by considering the patient

The goal for every patient is to move towards health and support them doing that by screening for disease, conducting risk assessments, developing treatment and/or preventive plans.  It is critical that we deliver individualised care and that means that a hygiene room should have a variety of procedures. 

When you monitor this in detail, you can evaluate the performance of your care and the care that your patient is receiving.

The first stage in doing this is to list the variety of procedures you must have:

• Routine hygiene appointments for a patient with no bone loss
• Periodontal maintenance
• Periodontal treatments
• Initial periodontal assessment
• Direct Access Hygiene
• Fluoride Treatments

The fees for these appointments should be set in accordance with their complexity and not based on time or a one fee fits all.  Monitoring these items will demonstrate that your patients are being attended to according to their periodontal needs. 

It's important to also consider caries prevention, management of erosion and sensitivity.  For example, professional fluoride is a service item that should be an added value and it’s use and uptake monitored.

The next list is adjunctive therapies and screenings such as:

• GBT (if you charge separately, although we don’t recommend that way)
• Genetic/Bacterial testing
• Oral/Systemic Testing
• Tooth Whitening
• Anti-wrinkle injections
• Dermal Filler
• Skin Health Treatments
• Any other service you offer in your hygiene department

These additional service items are what you have invested in as a practice, and should be monitored. This can be done by measuring the number of each procedure carried out each month to see how this service is working.  If you identify a low number of a specific procedure you can then analyse why. 

Every service, of course, is designed to support your patient’s health and wellbeing.  When that is your strongest focus and you have well-designed business systems that support the schedule being fully productive, healthy profits will follow!

Be mindful, if you only measure the finances, you will not see the full picture of how the hygiene room is functioning and will fail to see detail that allows you to make business growth decisions based on health. . You, of course, do need to monitor the finances because, after all, you are a business. When everything is effectively planned, designed, and analysed, the finances can become a simple monitor to determine success in all areas.

So, what business and financial KPI’s should you collect and monitor?

To begin you need to plan the care you provide, you will need to plan your ideal day and set a daily and monthly financial goal.  Your schedule should then be set up to be able to meet that goal and the whole team should be aware and focused to support that.

Here are some of the business and financial monitors that you could add to your KPI’s

• Total monthly production compared to the goal
• Average daily production compared to the goal 
• Individual’s production compared to the goal 
• Number of voids in the schedule
• Next available appointment
• Patient retention rate

We suggest you use some of this information to forecast the schedule for the next month.  E.g., if you have 20 NPs per month, you need 20 NP hygiene appointments and if you see the numbers of NPs increasing or decreasing alter the schedule to ensure you can accommodate all of the patients in a timely manner. Failing this leaves a risk of gaps in the schedule.   If you are left with voids due to last-minute cancellations, it is highly likely the patients do not perceive the value.  It is vital to establish strong communication both in the clinical and front of house areas.  Ultimately your schedule is the best real-time business monitor that you have at your fingertips and getting that set up and run efficiently will support you in meeting all your goals and the KPI’s will mean more to you.

Do you gather KPI's for your hygiene department?

If you aren't sure where to start, we have designed a course to get dental practices to consider their business model and included in that is a template for you to gather KPI's and how to monitor them.