One of the most important areas we discuss when evaluating orthodontic software is reports. Does it run good reports? Does it give us all the reports we need? Is software “A” worth more than software “B” based on the quality of its reports? We have all these discussions and base our software purchases heavily on the answers we get, so one can only assume that every orthodontist everywhere is diligently poring over daily, weekly, monthly and yearly reports.
Are you laughing yet?
I’ll bet many of you are, because you know all those excellent reports just pile up on your desk and you rarely, if ever, even glance at them. And, from a consultant’s view, I know that the person in your office running those reports (be it your office manager, financial coordinator or treatment coordinator) probably doesn’t look at them either! That’s a lot of wasted paper and a lot of unused information. Let’s take a look at some of those neglected reports and investigate why it’s so important to give them your full attention.
First are the daily reports. You certainly want to look at what your office produced and collected to keep aware of any trends before they get out of hand, but what you really want to see is the end of day reconciliation report. This will have your production, collections and adjustments on it. You should also be seeing the bank deposit slip and credit card batch receipt. Your office should be closing the day only after the last production has been entered and the last payments have been collected and posted. You should be able to see that the deposit plus the credit card payments matches the daily collections. You should also be reviewing any adjustments from the day to be sure they seem reasonable. If you know Mrs. Jones has no insurance and you haven’t approved any type of discount, you want to question why she had a $500 adjustment posted today. While my most fervent hope is that all your employees are decent, honest people, the sad fact is that embezzlement in dental offices is in the 30+% range and is not likely to get better. A doctor who makes it clear he or she checks the reports every day will not invite temptation.
Your weekly reports actually give you a quick snapshot of how well your scheduling template is working. Did you produce one forth of your goals for the month? If not, what went wrong and how will you plan to catch up next week or in the following weeks? If you were forced to close a chair for a day or two because an assistant was ill, can you add some strategic appointments (or even an additional half day if you ordinarily work a four day week) into next week’s schedule to help get caught up? While we certainly want to review all our statistics at the end of every month, it’s really too late to make a mid course correction when the ship has already sailed.
Next we have the all important monthly reports. You want to start by looking at your production and collection numbers; how did you fare for the month, how does it compare to last month and to the same month of the previous year. If you didn’t do as well as last month, but exceeded the same month last year, you’re fine. You’re weathering the cyclical nature of orthodontics and are improving yearly. This is also where you look at outstanding AR; does your staff need to make better efforts at collections and/or follow-up more closely on insurance claims?
Next area to check is how many new patients you saw this month, and how did that compare to previous months and to the same month last year. You’ll always have slower months, but you don’t want to lose ground from last year. In conjunction with your number of new patients, a very important number to look at is the percentage of exams that actually became treatment starts. Once an office has been functioning for at least a year, any percentage under 50% should be unacceptable……75% to 80% is a good, realistic goal. In the same vein, if you’re seeing plenty of recalls but not starting many cases, this warrants investigation. It may well be that many of the patients are still not ready to start, but it could also be that you’re doing a very cursory recall exam without the enthusiasm you showed at the initial exam. Recalls really are your “money in the bank” and you want to be aware if they’re not returning for treatment.
How many of each type of start did you have for the month? A good blend of Phase I and Comprehensive is great to start a practice but Phase II starts should be coming along after a couple of years as well. If they’re falling off the radar when it’s time for the Phase II recall evaluation, you may not have wowed them in Phase I and this could be an area that needs work.
End of month reports are also great places to look at how many patients missed appointments and how many emergencies you saw. These are both real wasters of productive time and need to be tracked carefully. One last number to review tells you how many days you worked this month and what was your average daily production? This is an important and easy to track goal, and I would encourage you to set your templates so each day has a good mix of exams and production time.
Finally, you have the end of year reports. These are a full capsule description of how the practice did this year. They’re what you need to study to prepare your plan for next year and to evaluate your growth from last year. Where did you lag? That’s where you should be prepared to add some marketing next year. Where were you extremely busy? That’s probably not the best place to plan next year’s vacation. We can learn a lot from our experiences, but only if we pay attention to them.
These are the basic reports that you absolutely should review on a regular basis, but all the current software has so much more to offer that it’s a real waste to have spent all that money and use so little of its capabilities. You can track patients by zip code (where should you be advertising or sending mailers?) or by referring dentist (who should you be taking out for an afternoon of golf this month?) to spend your marketing dollars more productively. You can see how many patients and how much production is coming from your status as a provider for all your insurance companies…..and decide when it’s time to drop the unproductive ones. And even these reports are just a few of what you have available.
In a nutshell, you can track just about everything happening in the practice without ever leaving your desk…..so go get those reports and start reading them!
