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895: Metric Mondays: Production Per Hour – Miranda Beeson

Do you want a more efficient schedule? There's a way to do it by looking at one number. In this episode of Metric Mondays, Kirk Behrendt brings back Miranda Beeson, ACT’s director of education, to break down production per hour so you can maximize your hours at work with your team. To learn the quickest way to optimize your schedule, listen to Episode 895 of The Best Practices Show!

 

Learn More About Miranda:

Learn More About ACT Dental:

More Helpful Links for a Better Practice & a Better Life:

Episode Resources:

Main Takeaways:

  • Production per hour measures appointment efficiency and schedule optimization.
  • If you have high production per hour, it means your schedule is optimized.
  • Look at your schedule and ask, “Is this the best use of our time?”
  • Maximize your team and your time by delegating what you can.
  • Minimize open time using the Function Accountability Chart.

Quotes:

“This metric, production per hour, is measuring the average production earned for every clinical hour worked. This can also be measured by office, or by department, or provider. So, you can look at, what is the office's production per hour, on average? What is the doctor's? What is the hygienists' production per hour, on average? The difference in this metric and the other is they both measure how effectively you're using your appointments, but this one also adds in the impact of how you're using your schedule and schedule optimization. So, with time being your most limited and expensive resource, when you have a high production per hour, that's going to tell us that you're doing a really great job of maximizing what's happening during your appointments, and your schedule is being optimized to its fullest. You're spending time on the procedures that align with that high-value care.” (3:01—3:59) -Miranda

“The intention of looking at these metrics is actually to allow for you to, over time, build your practice in the other way where you don't have to do as much because the value of what you're doing when you do it is that much higher.” (5:04—5:20) -Miranda

“If you think about a hygiene schedule — and most people think a hygienist works for eight hours a day. In most practices, they're seeing eight patients, one every hour. Now, we'll talk about the difference. And again, service mix, if you're building in some scaling and root planing, perhaps you're seeing a 90-minute or a two-hour new patient visit, and you might only see five patients in a day. But let's assume your eight-hour day as a hygienist, you're seeing eight patients. Most people would think, ‘Well, then your production per hour and your production per visit are always going to be the same.’ But no. When you look at that, that's where the schedule utilization comes into play. If you have a hygienist that can produce . . . $1,000 a day, in an eight-hour day, they're seeing only five patients at $200. So, at five patients, $200 a day, it gets them to $1,000. But if that person is at that much money and they have three cancellations, it's going to actually take it down to $125 per hour. So, their PPV might be $200, but their PPH, production per hour, is only $125. That's when you're able to start to say, what if you didn't have that pitfall of capacity or open time in a hygienist schedule and they were actually able to have the $200 an hour and per visit?  . . . The micro impact of the difference in that $200 versus the $125 really adds up throughout a month or a year. So, the same thing happens with the doctor's schedule. If you have a cancellation that happens in your schedule, automatically, your PPV and your PPH are no longer aligned because the open time in the schedule is no longer utilized, and you can still be doing a really great job of taking advantage of what's happening during your appointments. But if you have that lack in the schedule, you're not optimizing it to its fullest potential anymore.” (5:47—8:05) -Miranda

“One of the best questions is, ‘Is this the best use of our time?’ Are you delegating where you can delegate, and you're being a provider where you have to be a provider, but you're allowing your auxiliary team to perform procedures that they can perform on their own and really taking advantage of the time? When you were just talking about scaling and root planing being next to a high-value procedure, I think about something like clear aligner therapy. Invisalign, if you want to use a name brand. Clear aligner therapy can be a 30-minute scan, and it's sometimes $7,000. In 30 minutes, you can be making $7,000 or producing $7,000, and maybe only $1,800 in 90 minutes for a crown prep. So, it's about how you think about using your time. And then, production per hour is how that averages over a given period of time. So, asking yourself, is this the best use of our time? Are we really maximizing our schedule and our team to be able to perform, fulfill, and optimize not only the services we're providing, but also the schedule itself? So, minimizing open time in the schedule is the biggest piece.” (10:00—11:19) -Miranda

“Use your Function Accountability Chart to determine who is accountable to your schedule optimization. It's great to have somebody on your team who really understands scheduling and how changes and decisions about where appointments are placed in the schedule impacts overall production and optimization.” (11:20—11:39) -Miranda

“You have amazing people around you. Ask them to help you. If you have an assistant that understands and says, ‘Listen, I want to be better. Can you challenge me to be better? Challenge me on how I use my hours, how I talk about dentistry and record data, and give it back to me,’ it's probably going to frustrate you for a little bit, but I promise you that is teamwork at the highest level. They're going to make you better in the moment so that your production per hour is better.” (12:01—12:24) -Kirk

“You have some really awesome team members who totally get the philosophy, the vision, and the values of this practice, and they can do some of that for you — and you can be doing what only you can do, which is producing chairside. So, you do sometimes have to stop and look a little bit outside of yourself and say, ‘Who do I have around me that can help this practice get where it needs to go and help our patients be taken care of in the best way possible?’” (12:46—13:14) -Miranda

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

2:34 Production per hour, explained.

4:30 Production per visit versus production per hour.

9:56 Delegate and minimize open time in your schedule.

13:24 About ACT’s BPA.

Miranda Beeson, MS, BSDH Bio:

Miranda Beeson has over 25 years of clinical dental hygiene, front office, practice administration, and speaking experience. She is enthusiastic about communication and loves helping others find the power that words can bring to their patient interactions and practice dynamics. As a Lead Practice Coach, she is driven to create opportunities to find value in experiences and cultivate new approaches.

Miranda graduated from Old Dominion University, and enjoys spending time with her husband, Chuck, and her children, Trent, Mallory, and Cassidy. Family time is the best time, and is often spent on a golf course, a volleyball court, or spending the day boating at the beach. 
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