From the desk of STAC Bizness Solutions CEO, Shawna Aho

The principles behind winning in business and winning in sport are similar in many ways.

Take tennis, for example. If you’ve ever watched a match on television, you’ll know that along with all the hitting, running and grunting there are a lot of numbers involved.

And we’re not just talking about the score here. Each player’s performance can be measured in other ways—percentage of first serves in, points won at the net, number of unforced errors on forehand versus backhand, and so on.

But while the statisticians may love all those details, everyone else is just interested in the score, right?

You might not be interested. But the players certainly are.

Admittedly they may not know the percentages down to the decimal place. But they’ll know if they’re making too many mistakes at the net or wasting their first serves. And they’ll change their game accordingly—by staying at the baseline or slowing down their first serves a bit—to fix the problem.

Yes, the score is important. After all, the players obviously want to win. But the only way the players can actually change their winning percentage is to change how they play.

And it’s the same when you’re running a dental practice. Your practice may actually have several scores—number of new patients gained, revenue generated, etc. But while they’re a great way to keep track of how your practice is doing, you can’t do much about them once they’re available.

They are—quite literally—history.

Indicators such as last month’s revenue or last quarter’s profit reflect what has already happened. By the time these numbers are in, it may be too late to correct course.

They’re what we call “lag indicators” (or sometimes “results KPIs”). And apart from putting them in your reports and sharing them with your stakeholders, there’s not much else you can do with them.

What SHOULD you focus on?

What you should be more interested in are the things you can change. These are what we call “lead indicators” (or sometimes “activity KPIs”) and can lead to improved results for your lag indicators (your score). Focusing on leading indicators, rather than relying solely on lagging indicators, helps a dental practice anticipate challenges and seize growth opportunities before problems arise.

For example:

If you want to increase the revenue your practice generates, you might want to measure things such as:

• New Patient Inquiries: The number of calls, emails, or online requests for initial appointments. 
• New Patient Conversion Rate: The percentage of new patient inquiries that lead to scheduled appointments, indicating how effectively the practice attracts and converts potential patients into revenue-generating visits.
• Treatment Acceptance Rate: The percentage of recommended treatments that patients agree to.
• Chair Utilization Percentage: How efficiently appointment slots are filled, ensuring high productivity and maximizing revenue opportunities throughout the day.

If your goal is to increase your practice’s profitability, you might want to measure:

• Staff Productivity Rates: Tracking revenue generated per staff member or per hour signals operational efficiency, ensuring that each team member contributes to higher profit potential.
• Collections Efficiency: Monitoring how quickly and reliably the practice collects on billed services ensures steady cash flow and protects profit levels.
• High-Margin Treatment Mix: Keeping an eye on the percentage of revenue coming from more profitable treatments guides strategy toward higher-profit services.
• Appointment Scheduling Efficiency: Ensuring that prime appointment slots are consistently filled with revenue-generating procedures helps maximize profit. 

Once you know what your leading indicators are, you can tweak them to see how much they affect your lag indicators.

For example, dentists can positively impact patient treatment acceptance by clearly explaining the benefits of recommended procedures in simple, understandable terms and offering flexible financing options that fit patients’ budget. Building trust through a warm, empathetic approach and ensuring that staff and systems are streamlined to support patient decision-making can also encourage higher treatment acceptance.

The beauty of focusing on your leading indicators is that when you improve them, then your lagging indicators—the scoreboard—will improve as a natural flow-on effect.

And lead indicators are things you can control this month. This week. Today. With measurement of your practice’s performance in these areas you can refine your activities and feel a greater sense of control in ‘improving the scoreboard’.

Wrapping it up…

Lead and lag indicators are both vital measures of how your practice is doing. But by looking after the lead indicators you’ll be keeping your eye on the ball when it really matters, rather than looking at the scoreboard of what has already happened.

Ask yourself, what lead indicators are you focusing on improving this month? How are you looking at that data? Do you have real-time dashboards and weekly or even daily reports on these lead indicators?

If not, we should talk. We can set up lead indicator tracking for you which is the surest way we know to improve your practice’s scoreboard!

Until next time…