You already know how to do great dentistry. That part? You’ve got it. But running a dental practice is a two-part job—and the second part doesn’t come with a residency. The business side of your practice has blind spots. Not the kind you can feel or even notice on a busy Tuesday. These are quiet, invisible gaps that compound over time, draining your revenue while you’re focused on the things you went to school for.
Your schedule is a vital component to your practice’s success, and tracking your Cancellation/No-Show Percentage will help you protect it. This metric is simple to define — it measures the percentage of scheduled appointments that are either cancelled or missed entirely. That simplicity must not undercut its
Your Ordering Process Is Costing You More Than Money Everyone wants to save money on dental supplies. That part is obvious. But here’s the question most practice owners never think to ask: how much time are you and your team actually spending on purchasing? Because the real cost isn’t always on the invoice.
Dentists are not firefighters, so you shouldn’t be running around trying to put out fires all over the practice. If everything feels urgent in the practice, it’s because it’s running on reaction instead of intention, and when that’s the case, nothing gets improved. You don’t need a firefighter — you need a system!
No one teaches you how to run a dental practice. You spend years mastering the clinical side—and then you open your doors and realize the business side is a completely different discipline. That’s exactly where Bourbonnais Family Dental found themselves.
How you utilize your schedule is one of the keys to a great practice, because when it’s full, everything is better. Tracking your Capacity Percentage will inform you of the percentage of available clinical time that is actually used for patient care, which tells you how efficiently you’re using your time.
Every Day, You’re Marketing. The Question Is What. Every day in your dental practice, you’re selling something. It’s not just dentistry. It’s you. It’s your team. It’s the feeling a patient gets from the moment they walk in the door to the moment they leave. The best part? It doesn’t cost a thing. The worst part? You might not realize how much is already being communicated.
Most dentists would love nothing more than to focus on clinical dentistry, but that’s not possible. As a result, it can be difficult at times to focus on those things outside the clinical dentistry sphere, which can make running the practice extremely tiring. When you’re putting out fire after fire caused by
Ever look into a mirror that’s covered in dust, smudged, clouded, or dirty? You can still make out your reflection, but it’s distorted and unclear. The details start to get fuzzy. And if you’re trying to get a clear picture of what you actually look like? That’s a problem.
Having a full schedule is crucial, and one way to ensure that is to focus on your Pre-Appointment Percentage. It refers to the percentage of active patients who leave your office with a future appointment already scheduled, and you can calculate it by dividing the number of active patients who are scheduled for a
