How your HYG department can increase practice profitability

Although the Hygiene department is typically the lifeblood of a general dental practice, not all dental practices are recognizing its potential to enhance practice profitability. For us, this is a travesty to your overall goals of business ownership! 

Your Hygiene department CAN be profitable. The dental industry standards in America believe that they can produce approximately 30% of your overall practice revenue. While some dental practices who are not tracking hygiene revenue can find themselves sitting below 20%, many are at or well above the industry standard. We know it can be done and we have a few simple tricks to help you get there!

First and foremost remember that information is only as good as you make it. Meaning that if you’re not getting good information and putting good information into your dental software, you’re likely not getting good information OUT of it. Check your fee schedules and your insurance tables to ensure the most accurate information you possibly can.

Outside of that, use these tips to help hygiene increase your practice profitability easily:

• Schedule what’s due. If you didn’t do a series of x-rays today, you know the patient is likely due for them next time. Be smart and pre-schedule the right codes now to ensure they get done later!
•  Always check your x-rays frequencies. Many practices miss FMX and Panoramic films for years not realizing the last time it was taken; create a system including how frequently you’d like to see this done and train your team to utilize it!
• Get a fluoride brand and system you can stand behind!
• Sealants at any age. Covered by insurance or not, a sealant is far less costly than a filling or crown down the road when the tooth has decayed! If you’re seeing teeth worthy of sealants to protect from decay, off a sealant! (yes, even to your adult patients!)
• Products you believe in. Are there toothbrushes, pastes, rinses, gum or any other dental product that you believe people should be using? Why not sell it in your practice for typically a fraction of store cost and added benefit to your patients?!
• Always track your stats! Anything we pay attention to becomes important to us and when it’s important and top of mind, we create lasting changes! When you track your hygiene departments stats and create goals around them, you WILL see positive results!

Pick something from the list above that you’re not already doing and implement it today! Let’s see what the results are in 6 weeks and if there’s a second item to implement, do it then!

We are happy to help you in your practice ownership journey so feel free to reach out with questions, any time! Send us an email at [email protected] or schedule a FREE Strategy Call.

If you are looking for more tips and tricks, make sure to listen to our podcast.