Written by Amr Alian

After working with thousands of dental offices, I found out that a lot of them focus only on their clinical success without any attention to their business success. That was my main driver to create these benchmarks and targets that will help dentists monitor their progress and office performance. These benchmarks will allow you to check your office’s PULSE at any time. The benchmarks are broken down into Financial and Managerial Pulse.

Financial Pulse: The financial PULSE should help dentists monitor their overhead, profitability, and improve EBIDTA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) an acronym that we recently started to hear more often after the DSO (Dental Service Organization) started to approach dental offices. One of the most important aspects here is understanding the % of every dollar dentists can retain after paying everyone.

Managerial Pulse: The managerial pulse is important to incentivize your staff, track their performance, and making sure that your return on investment is high (training, marketing, new equipment). That will start once you know the answers for the following (industry averages listed):

• Do you know your treatment acceptance rate? 65-70%

• Do you know your HYG/Doctor production %? 25/75% 

• Do you know your target AR% of production? 85%

• Do you know your recall rate? 85%

• How many new patients per month and your acquisition cost? Varies based per office type / $300 for every new patient.

• Do you know your average collection per hour and per day? Varies based per office type.

Because many dentists do not pay attention to the above benchmarks, it will lead to the following facts:

• Less than 10% of Dentists will be able to Retire at 65.

• Almost 70% of the Dentists are overpaying taxes by an average of $15K- $25K.

• Practice value will represent between 25%-60% of Dentists retirement assets.

• Only 15% of Dentists run an efficient office.

About the Author

Amr Alian is the Managing Partner and Co-founder of Synergy Consultants & CPAs LLC. He has been advising Dentists and Medical doctors for over 10 years. Amr has a well-rounded expertise advising Dentists, and believes it is a privilege to serve Dentistry and Medical Doctors. Amr's experience includes business and financial planning, transition planning, practice management, and practice valuation. As a Dental CPA, he has assisted dentists with practice acquisitions, start-ups, operational analysis, and associate contract analysis. He is an active speaker and presenter at dental associations and study groups on topics such as dental practice management, transition planning, choosing a Dental CPA, obtaining financing, embezzlement, and practice startups.

Amr received his undergraduate in Accounting, shortly after he finished his MBA from Old Dominion University. He also completed an Executive Education Certificate in Finance from Cornell University and is a licensed CPA in the state of Virginia.

For more information contact Mr. Alian at alian@isynergycpa.com.