Unlocking Success: 10 Key Recommendations from 7 Months of Accounts Analysis

Anybody who knows me is probably sick of hearing my commentary on the unprecedented increase in requests to "look at my numbers".

You've heard me here and in dental publications - and you have seen me on free webinars - demonstrating how the current economic cycle has changed some of the KPIs in dentistry and damaged both profitability and cash flow.

Blue Peter badge for me - working through my Bank Holiday Monday, to assess 10 sets of numbers, so that I can catch up prior to a big family weekend ahead.

Here are my top 10 recommendations, based on lots of analysis since November last year:

1. Most urgent and important is the review of the individual profitability of every fee-earner in your business;

2. Leading to conversations with those fee-earners around their intentions on the number of clinical days they will deliver and the TARGET average daily production you require, in order that they hit their income target and you hit your business profit target;

3. Followed by a collaborative conversation on how you intend to support them in hitting those targets and how you expect them to help themselves;

4. Then a close and regular monitoring of your Operating Cost Per Utilised Surgery Per Day (OCPUSPD) to ensure that your running costs are not running out of control;

5. Facilitated by accurate calculations on facility utilisation in your clinic, making sure that empty chair time is kept to a minimum;

6. Accompanied by consideration of opening more surgeries, hours and days;

7. And equally close monitoring of your lab and material costs to keep them within acceptable KPI limits;

8. Followed by an upward-only review of your prices for both fee per item and plan (and the confidence to ask for the right increase);

9. Then an acceptance that your wages must increase to competitive levels (for both recruitment and retention);

10. Circling back to the fee-earners that we mentioned earlier, many of whom recognise that there is a temporary clinical labour shortage in the UK and Ireland, that they can demand more (and that the militant social media groups to which they belong are encouraging them to ask for more).

Ignore this list at your peril.