As we discussed in the previous Data Snapshot, periodontal disease is on the rise, and in order to best serve our communities, we must pay attention to the breakdown of hygiene visits. Your Perio Visit Percentage is how you accomplish that, because it measures the percentage of total hygiene visits in a given period that are periodontal therapy or maintenance appointments compared to prophylaxis visits.
It’s an important metric, because it helps you understand how your practice measures up against the periodontal health of the population as a whole. The majority of the general population is healthy, so your ideal ratio should be 60% prophy, 30% periodontal maintenance, and 10% active therapy.
When you see a high perio visit percentage, it indicates that patients are being diagnosed, treated, and maintained for their periodontal health instead of being ignored. On the other hand, a low percentage may suggest underdiagnosis, poor patient follow-through, or the team defaulting to prophy out of habit.
If your perio percentage is low, you can implement some countermeasures to raise it:
- Align as a team on what healthy periodontium looks like.
- Create a decision tree to help calibrate the team — Is the patient healthy? If no, what are you seeing, and what do you need to do?
- Calibrate on cases. Pull 3-5 random cases and reference their health history, X-rays, photos, perio chart, etc., and then have everyone review the cases and come up with their own treatment plans. Then, compare and discuss!
Calibration is key here, because it will help you learn together and identify any gaps in your systems. As your perio visit percentage increases, you’ll see an impact on your patient health outcomes and retention, but it will also improve the profitability of your hygiene department!
