Written by DTC Miami
Created 02/25/2018
Increasing new patient treatment plans is crucial to the success of a dental practice. What do statistics say about patient acceptance rates? What can dental offices do to increase their case acceptance?
Measuring Patient Case Acceptance
Ideally, a dental practice should be monitoring production rates and new patient treatment plans. Many dental offices struggle in measuring patient case acceptance, but achieve it by following certain steps and tips. The first question to ask and answer is what are the financial goals for the office? How much is each case closing at? How much money is entering within the month? Many dentists will answer this differently. Once your team understands the goals for growth, track these goals for a month to determine where your practice stands. According to Dental Economics, “In Dentrix, … [financial goals are] easily tracked in the Practice Advisor.”(1). Determining the production and new patient treatment allows you to implement new techniques to continue to grow.
What are average case acceptance rates?
According to Dental Economics, “Based on data from thousands of dental offices, average case acceptance is 50% to 60% for patients of record and 25% to 35% for new patients. The practice goal should be greater than 80% for patients of record and between 50% to 75% for new patients.”(2). While the practice appears busy with work, factors like what type of cases are being treated, payment plans and other aspects affect the case acceptance rates. Every dentist wants to have high case acceptance rates for a successful practice.
How to increase case acceptance rates?
There are many tips, techniques and articles that answer this question. For example, Dental Speakers Bureau states, “Start by having the patients commit to their values, goals, and objectives for dental treatment.” (3). How to execute that is a bit more challenging? Other sources say, “Team involvement” and “Training” (4). Training is probably one of the best ways to increase patient case acceptance. Why? Gathering your dental office team to discuss case acceptance can be grueling because the office needs to continue working to obtain those goals. However, once you delegate time with your dental team to understand case acceptance, higher goals are attainable. Role playing patient behavior with your team places them in more real life scenarios to better manage patient decision making. By training, patient case acceptance will change for the better within your practice.