A strong finish is as important as a successful launch. This perspective creates necessary energy for your dental practice year-end review.
Putting a “wrap” on the current year helps you tidy up any loose ends while positioning you for the new year ahead. A fourth-quarter evaluation allows you celebrate your wins, learn from your losses, and leverage your momentum for a fresh start.
Three points to review to help position your dental practice for a productive (and profitable) New Year
1 — Check in with your patients
As you dial in on your patients — begin with a “thank-you.” Give focused attention to your regular patients who have been loyal to your practice. Any attention you give to your patients helps keep your practice and services front-of-mind.
And speaking of staying front-of-mind…
- Review your database for patients with unscheduled treatment. Run related reports, send out reminders and, aside from your technology, remember that a phone-call often adds a personal touch.
- Remind patients to use their unused dental insurance benefits before they expire. For those patients with a rollover has (Health savings account), prompt them to use their benefits for any treatment they’ve postponed or delayed.
- Reschedule patients who have cancelled appointments on the books. Even looking ahead to the first quarter of the new year begins the process of filling your schedule for your quarterly scheduling and production goals.
- Reconnect with inactive patients. As they year wraps up and the new year approaches, patients who haven’t scheduled recently could appreciate the connection.
The timing of your patient check-ins could produce an upswing in your scheduling, production, and profitability.
2 — Check in with your dental practice operations
A goal review can easily become lost among the end-of-year activity (holidays included). A thorough review of your achieved, delayed or missed goals helps you hit refresh as you close the current year and move into the next.
- Review your benchmarks. What standards did you meet or exceed in the past year? Where did trends (good or bad) emerge?
- Review your KPIs (key performance indicators). What contributed to meeting, exceeding or missing performance goals? Are there adjustments that need to be made to fees, insurance providers, etc.?
- Renew your energy and that of your team through honest communication. Avoid accusations, learn from your misses and leverage discoveries into new opportunity in the new year.
- Reestablish and reset your goals for the new year. Clean up and review your data base, build on your team’s input and renew your energy around the next era of goal achievement.
Remember: New year…fresh start!
3 — Check in with your team
What you achieved is likely the result of a team effort. As you put a wrap on the current year and welcome another, give your staff the recognition they deserve.
- Celebrate team synergy. The ability to work together, serve patients, meet your KPIs and be profitable is a product of synergy.
- Celebrate your practice’s culture. Acknowledge and affirm the unique vibe that enables you to acquire and retain your patients.
- Celebrate new team members who have joined in the past year. The reality of hiring challenges is good reminder that productive team members are a gift. Honor them!
Forward momentum often builds around a strong finish. Data analytics provides you accurate points of evaluation for what you’ve achieved in the current year and hope to achieve in the months ahead.
The following resources will provide more insight into useful data analysis to set, achieve, and reach your dental practice goals:
Gain Transparency on Your Dental Practice’s Strengths and Weaknesses
How Data-Driven Goals and Strategies Align With Dental Practice Operational Success
Improve your dental practice year-end reviews with proven data analytics tools
The Jarvis Analytics platform helps ensure that you’re tracking the important metrics and staying on track with your goals as your dental practice grows and expands.
Experience Jarvis Analytics in action. Request a demo today!
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