The secret quantitative weapon: call any local prospective dental office and ask the following question, "Hello, this is Mrs. Jones a prospective new patient. I’d like to join a dental practice with demonstrated following. A good friend of mind (that’s me), said a good way to tell this about a dental office is to ask how many new patient inquiries they receive per month. Would you mind sharing with me roughly how many new patient inquiries per month you receive on average?" If they say anything less than 75 or worse say "I don’t know" or get offended by the question… hang up the phone and keep dialing until you find a dental office where their number of new patient inquires per month is greater than 75.
Why are 75 new patient inquiries per month per dental practice an important benchmark for consumers? I believe there are six logical reasons why this metric makes sense to choose your dental office.
1. More Accurate Referral Metric. First, you need a more statistically accurate approach to know if a dentist has lots of positive former patient endorsements. Many online sites attempt to aggregate consumers opinions of dentists (e.g., Google). However, most dentists have less than 2 reviews (if any) – a far cry if we’d like a statistically accurate endorsement. It's also possible to ask a friend for a great dentist, but how statistically accurate is just one individuals opinion? Instead, I recommend using the same metric many dental practice consultants use to initially judge a prospective dentist client – is the dental practices average number of new patient inquires per month greater than 75. This is one the best benchmarks that is more easily attained as a consumer. Many dental practice management consultants have seen dozens of mediocre dental practices that are almost always receiving less than 25 new patients a month. Conversely, the consults in the industry would almost always say one of the leading indicators of the best dental practices is they are consistently receiving 75+ new patients per month. More telling, is a recent Smile Reminder™ survey of dentists released February 17th, 2009 that asked the question;
How many new patient inquires do you average per month? With the following results,
1-25 new patient inquiries 52%
26-50 new patient inquiries 23%
51-75 new patient inquiries 13%
76-100 new patient inquiries 4%
Over 100 new patient inquiries 6%
According to this survey, if a dental practice receives more than 75 new patient inquiries per month, they are in the top 10% of the country in terms of their monthly popularity. Yes, there are other more accurate metrics to determine the viability of a dental practice but none are as ascertainable to the average consumer.
2. Indicates A Less "Pushy" Dental Office. For example, if you visit one dental office where the dentist only sees 15 new patients per month, you can be sure they are either consciously or subconsciously going to be more reliant on each new patient whom visits the practice to accept their treatment plans versus a dentist whom sees 75 new patients per month.
3. Suggests more consumerism attributes exist. Part of the reason why some dental practices are "busier" is they've incorporated service industry best practices we've all come to expect from some Fortune 500 services business. For example, patients appreciate early or late hours of operations, customer satisfaction surveys, online communication, music or TV in each operatory, text messaging appointment reminders, incentive promotions for new prospective customers, and well-trained customer service representatives on the phone. Conversely, slower dental practices typically are trapped in the old era of thinking where doctors leave the office at 2:00PM for a round of golf, it's expected you have to leave a message on an answering machine when you call, and no mechanism is in place for patients to voice their feedback. For example, one Colorado Springs dentist posts their customer satisfaction scores on their website not only as a tool to attract new patients but also an incentive for the staff to keep the customer satisfaction scores high, i.e., they take pride in the higher scores.
4. Implies a dentists "true experience" level. This logic is easily illustrated with an example. For example, compare Dr. XYZ with 6 years of experience whom has consistently seen 75 new patients per month over there career versus Dr. ABC with 18 years of experience whom has only seen 25 new patients per month on average. It’s possible these dentists despite the disparity in years in the trade have the same experience level at crown and bridge dentistry.
5. Signals a dental practice can afford more talented staff. This statement is obvious but it may not be as obvious as to why it matters to you as a consumer. Let me say this, whom do you want being your advocate in dealing with the complexities of submitting and optimizing your insurance benefits? I’ve seen front office employees consistently, albeit unintentionally, provide inflated estimates to patients because they lacked the skill and frankly compensation to care.
6. Capable of affording more proven technology. Again, the logic is apparent but why do you care? Well, digital x-rays nowadays can emit up to 90% less radiation than the old fashioned x-rays. Furthermore, there are more and more advances in dentistry that help save teeth and can be less invasive. For example, laser dentistry, is a new area of dentistry seeing impressive results in managing periodontal disease and helping to avoid more invasive gum surgery.
So next time you schedule a dental appointment, I dare you to pop the question… so on average how many new patients inquiries do you receive each month? You might be disappointed with the answer but at least you’ll be a more informed consumer.