Data-driven decision-making for competitive advantage

Suzanne Wilson discusses how the right information can affect real, positive change in your business

As all industries continue to progress toward data management and data-driven decision-making, who are the pioneers, and who are the followers who are working to catch up?

Robust data analysis and data-led decisions are not simply trends. Common sense tells us — and studies show — that practices that adopt data-driven decision-making enjoy clarity, a higher level of output and productivity. Specifically, there are some clear examples of why your orthodontic practice should make use of data, and how insights from this information can affect real, positive change in your business.

Understanding practice data can improve financial health

While tracking your net collections is essential, most practices don’t dive deep enough to gain a true picture of their financial health. Collections are just one part of the equation, and simply tracking data doesn’t help you understand if there are problems. Putting your data to work by leveraging insights from a grouping of data and putting it in a visual format helps you understand the next steps to take and how to ensure health in the short and long term.

For example, if you knew that the industry standard for net collections should be lagging production by 5% to 20%, and you started to see trends that your collections were consistently higher than your net production, you would realize that your practice has a growth problem. Without the visibility to the trend, you may not see the mounting problem from this lagging indicator.

Better practice data can reduce prospective patient attrition

Another critical metric is new patient flow. If you’re keeping an eye on the number of patients coming through your door, that should be good enough, right? Not quite.

Let’s say, in addition to new patients, you begin tracking initial phone calls as “patient adds” to your system. In doing so, you might discover that the number of patients calling to learn more about your practice is only converting to 50% who schedule an exam. This information suggests there may be work to be done on your initial greeting, your intake protocol, marketing messaging, and importantly, your availability for new consults. The concept of this issue is not novel but even more reason to make it easy to see and understand. Marketing spend varies, but if you are spending on the low-end around 3% of top line revenue, and that is only yielding a 50% ratio to exams, you want to be able to see it readily so you can then attack the issue with solutions.

Better practice data can enhance operational efficiency

There’s a chance you’re already measuring some practice metrics, but that doesn’t guarantee the way you collect data is efficient. If you or your staff are manually gathering and inputting performance data into spreadsheets, pulling and sifting through reports, and spending significant time compiling, let alone interpreting the data, these are strong indicators that your practice is not being operationally efficient or effective. Even with robust practice management software in place, orthodontic practices that operate this way are still missing the comprehensive level of analysis necessary for clarity in how their business is performing. Though patient care is top priority — your competition is waiting for the opportunity to eat your lunch. The solution is running your business with a better practice performance data analysis tool.

Save time and increase clarity by automating the process of measuring practice performance information with intuitive visual dashboards. The insights result in ideas and resources focused on improving your practice, shaving time off tasks, creating a better patient experience and team environment, and other operational efficiencies that will truly drive long-term happiness and profitability.

Get the metrics, benchmarks, and reporting you need to compete — and win

No matter the size of your practice, you must harness the power of data to first sustain your success in a competitive market, but how else can you effectively manage without understanding what’s driving and, equally important, what’s dragging your practice? Leveraging data takes out the guesswork and provides facts to build upon. Whether you’re focused on operational insights or industry benchmarks, the right data will augment your approach and help you understand why your practice performs like it does, support you in your efforts to implement the highest priority changes, measure your results, and follow a path of continuous improvement.

This information was provided by Gaidge.