3 Strategies to Grow Without Adding More Chairs

Dentists love to think about growing their practices, and one of the most obvious ways to do so is to add more chairs. After all, more chairs mean more patient volume, more revenue, fewer scheduling bottlenecks, and more space for additional providers, right? Well, not quite. Ultimately, adding more chairs can mean more patients, but also more stress and more chaos, especially if your practice isn’t ready. Having more patients isn’t necessarily a good thing, so instead focus on improving your efficiency and profitability!

1. Maximize Existing Chair Utilization

Instead of focusing on what you don’t have, maximize what you do! It’s not always evident to dentists, but I find that the underutilization of a practice’s existing chairs is a bigger profit killer than not having enough chairs. However, by tracking capacity and analyzing the average chair downtime, you can eliminate any inefficiencies you find! 

A surefire way to make sure your existing chairs are as efficient as possible is to work on your scheduling systems and prioritize block scheduling. In doing so, you’re ensuring that your prime time slots are filled with high-value procedures.

Finally, make an effort to focus on your existing patients! Instead of adding new chairs in an effort to get new patients, invest your time and energy on reactivating inactive patients and retaining your existing ones.

2. Address Profitability Gaps

One of the biggest hurdles to growth is the money that leaves a business. There are several gaps where money naturally flows out of your practice, and we address them here. Learning to shore up these gaps will ensure that the maximum amount of money stays in the practice, increasing your profitability without the need to add anything new. 

One of the biggest of these gaps is the revenue that’s lost to insurance adjustments, as the write-off percentage is often in the 30-45% range. That’s an incredible amount of lost profit, and if you think about it in terms of time, like Kirk does, “you’re working one out of every three days for free.” Insurance dependence is a serious roadblock, but with our free PPO Roadmap, you can learn how to decrease it!

It's also crucial to ensure that you’re collecting the maximum amount—we recommend that practices collect 99-100% of their net production. There are a few strategies you can implement to get started today:

• Enter your full fee in the ledger to make write-off assessments accurate
• Implement same-day collections to improve your cash flow

3. Avoid Unnecessary Overhead

Dentists like to focus on expansion as something that brings in money, but expansion requires an investment. More chairs mean more money for equipment, construction, and additional staffing, so that expansion can often create more overhead than profit. Additionally, it can impact your team’s efficiency by spreading them too thin. Doing so runs the risk of serious problems like burnout, and a reduced quality of patient care. Instead of undertaking this physical expansion, evaluate your practice’s efficiency and ask yourself if adding more chairs will truly add more profit.

Remember, you want your practice to be Better, not Bigger! More chairs may seem like growth, but in the long-term, focusing on the optimization of your existing chairs and understanding your financial gaps will lead to much more sustainable results. 

To learn more about ACT and how we can help you build a Better Practice and a Better Life, reach out to Gina!

Tune in next time and learn the secrets to maintaining trust in your practice!