The Truth About Production

The truth about production is simple. If practice production is at the right level, your practice will always be fine. There are many ways to define success for dental practices, but an increase in production every year will virtually guarantee a successful practice and career. Production is the driving force behind scheduling, patient volume, dental insurance participation, and many other factors. Understanding and achieving the right production levels ensures that these other areas are operating, efficiently, and effectively.

Production is dependent on many components. Let’s take an example of two practices that are very geographically close to each other in the same community. These practices have the same number of staff and chairs and similar operating hours and insurance participation. This real-life scenario occurs frequently and in most circumstances one practice will have higher production than the other by 30% to 100%. The question becomes why one practice with a similar profile performs much better in production than another. How can one practice with a similar profile have significantly higher patient volume? Once again, the answer comes down to practice systems, operations, and efficiency. Production is not magical. It is based on the design of the day-to-day operations of the practice, the training of the team, and the ability of the team and doctor to conduct those operations. One practice can easily manage a much higher volume than a practice where the systems and operations are not well-defined or well-understood.