How to Track What Actually Matters in Your Dental Practice [Template]
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should guide your most important decisions. But they only work when they’re tailored to your unique goals, not pulled from a default dashboard or copied from industry benchmarks that don’t reflect your reality.
Let’s break down how to identify the right KPIs for your dental practice and turn them into tools you can actually use to grow.
Why Custom KPIs Matter
Every dental practice is different. You serve a different patient population, run a different team structure, and have different business goals than the practice down the street.
That’s why off-the-shelf benchmarks or generic dashboards often fall short. They show you what’s possible. But they don’t show you what’s relevant.
For example:
- A new practice focused on patient growth might track new patient acquisition and phone call conversion rate.
- A multi-location group with full schedules might shift toward metrics like production per visit or hygiene reactivation efficiency.
- A pediatric office may focus more on recall rates and average family value than treatment acceptance percentages.
When you define what success looks like for your team—and then track progress toward that definition—you turn data into action.
Step 1: Start with Your Practice Goals
Before picking KPIs, clarify what you want to accomplish. Not this year. This quarter.
Set specific, measurable goals across different areas of the practice:
- Operations: Reduce missed calls by 30% over the next 90 days.
- Production: Improve same-day treatment acceptance by $10,000 per month.
- Patient Engagement: Increase hygiene reappointment rate to 85%.
These aren’t aspirational dreams. They’re short-term targets you can track and improve. Once your goals are clear, the right KPIs become obvious.
Step 2: Pick 3–5 Core Metrics That Drive Outcomes
There’s a big difference between “interesting” data and “impactful” data. Focus only on KPIs that give you insight and control—numbers that help you identify opportunities and take action quickly.
Here are sample KPIs by category:
Operational Efficiency
- Missed calls per day: How many patients aren’t reaching your team when they call?
- Voicemail volume: Are patients giving up and leaving messages—ones your team might miss?
- Answer rate by time of day: Do you need more coverage at certain hours?
Patient Engagement
- Treatment acceptance rate: How many patients say yes to care?
- Unscheduled treatment value: What’s sitting in the charts, waiting to be rebooked?
- Hygiene reappointment rate: Are you retaining patients or letting them fall off the schedule?
Team Performance
- Call conversion rate: How often do front desk teams turn inbound calls into booked appointments?
- Same-day treatment conversion: Are you maximizing revenue per visit?
- Follow-up lag time: How quickly is your team reaching out after a missed opportunity?
If a number doesn’t tie directly to a decision you can make or an action you can take, it’s probably just noise.
Step 3: Add Context and Trends
Numbers don’t mean much in isolation. Always look at KPIs over time and across teams.
Track each KPI:
- Weekly or monthly to spot patterns
- By provider, team member, or location
- Against benchmarks or internal targets
For example:
If your treatment acceptance rate is 52%, that’s not good or bad on its own. But if it dropped from 60% the month before, and you lost $14,000 in production as a result, now it’s a red flag—and a starting point for action.
You can then dig into causes: Are patients unclear about treatment plans? Is the front desk failing to follow up? Did insurance coverage change?
KPIs should spark curiosity, not just sit on a dashboard.
Step 4: Make KPIs Visible and Shared
You don’t need a high-tech dashboard to make KPIs work. But you do need visibility.
- Post weekly KPIs in your team room or communication platform
- Review them during weekly huddles to create accountability
- Celebrate wins, even small ones, to build momentum
When your team sees what matters—and how their actions contribute to progress—they’re more engaged. More invested. More consistent.
Step 5: Tie KPIs to Action Plans
Tracking is step one. Improvement comes from action.
Every KPI should have a related initiative. If hygiene reappointment is low, your team might:
- Add visual prompts in the treatment room
- Follow up with same-day texts after missed appointments
- Create incentives for patients who book in advance
If your voicemail volume is high, maybe it’s time to:
- Add coverage during peak hours
- Use AI-powered tools to automatically text back missed calls
- Create a backup process for same-day follow-up
KPIs should tell a story. Your job is to write the next chapter.
Bottom Line
Your data can work harder for you, but only if you focus on the right numbers.
When you define success by your own goals and customize your KPIs to reflect them, you make better decisions, coach your team more effectively, and create a more intentional, high-performing practice.
Less noise. More clarity. That’s the power of tracking what matters.
Ready to build out your KPIs and start tracking what really matters? We created a template to get you started.
Use it to discover what performance indicators to track, and to measure and report on progress.
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The Reality: Pet Parents Don’t Wait
Today’s veterinary clients expect quick answers and frictionless scheduling. Multiple studies show:
- 24%–28% of all calls to the average veterinary clinic go unanswered—that’s as many as 1 out of every 4 potential appointments lost, especially during busy times or after hours.
- 85% of callers will not call back if you miss their call, and most won’t leave a voicemail—they’ll call a competitor instead.
- Most clinics rely heavily on phone calls: over 90% of appointments are still scheduled over the phone in many practices.
“Even two missed calls a day can mean 40 lost opportunities a month—and most are gone for good.”
The Hidden Cost of Missed Calls
The cost of even a single missed call adds up fast. Here’s what the numbers look like across real clinics:
- The average small business loses about $126,000 annually due to missed calls—not a small number.
- For each new client lost, the potential value can exceed $10,000 over the pet's lifetime, considering long-term and preventive care.
- Up to 60% of calls go unanswered during the busiest hours if staff are stretched thin.
- Clinics with inefficient phone systems miss out on over $100,000 of recoverable revenue every year—often a conservative estimate.
Pressure on Staff and Practice Reputation
- Staff shortage and multitasking make it almost impossible to answer every call—causing stress and missed connections.
- Missed calls undermine trust and satisfaction: Negative client experiences can damage reputation and result in poor online reviews.
- Nearly 80% of veterinary negligence cases have a communication element—a missed call or message can become a risk factor.
AI-Powered Call Recovery: A Fast Fix
Hiring more people isn’t always feasible, and traditional answering services can be costly and inconsistent. That’s why a growing number of clinics are turning to AI call recovery tools.
How AI Solutions Like “Aimee” Help
- Answer every call, 24/7—including lunch breaks, after hours, or staff busy moments.
- Follow up automatically: Proactively return missed calls and even convert voicemails into bookings, no staff action needed.
- Book in real time: AI assistants can access your scheduling software and confirm appointments on the spot, reducing the phone tag cycle.
- Improve efficiency: One clinic cut missed calls from 25% to under 2% and reduced admin training time by 80%, thanks to AI.
- High ROI: Many practices see an additional $100,000+ in recovered revenue per year, per location.
Results You Can Measure
- 60% reduction in missed calls after system upgrades or implementing AI.
- AI-driven clinics typically recover 20% more appointments and boost client satisfaction by 15%.
- Fewer no-shows: AI receptionists can minimize the “no-show” rate, preventing $50,000+ per year in wasted slots for an average veterinarian.
- Transparent data: Call analytics reveal when, why, and how calls are being missed, so practices can act quickly.
The Bottom Line
Your phones are still the #1 gateway to more appointments, happier clients, and a thriving business. But the cost of missed calls is steeper than most realize, impacting revenue, reputation, and staff wellbeing. AI-assisted solutions now give clinics a simple way to make sure every call is answered, every opportunity is captured, and every pet parent is cared for.
This ebook aims to help DSOs navigate portfolio expansion in 2025/2026 with confidence and data-driven insights. The global dental services market reached $457.5 billion in 2023 and is forecast to exceed $788.8 billion by 2033, growing at a 5.6% CAGR.
U.S. dental spend alone rose to $174 billion in 2023, up 2.5% from theprevious year.Cosmetic, preventive, and tech-enabled care are now essential growth drivers—not fringe services.Meanwhile, DSOs are absorbing more practices than ever. With scale comes complexity, and expectations of operational maturity.
Consolidation is up, but so is competition. Patients are acting more like empowered consumers than passive recipients. They have options, tools, and review platforms at their fingertips. They are not loyal by default.
DSOs must evolve from acquisition engines to experience-driven organizations.
Revenue growth will increasingly depend on your ability to:
- Deliver consistent patient journeys across every location
- Enable performance from the front desk to the executive suite
- Use automation to drive both efficiency and personalization
- Build a brand that earns loyalty, beyond price or proximity
Where will growth come from in 2025 and 2026? Download our e-book to find out.
The dental industry is consolidating, but market shifts are changing the rules for those rolling up practices looking to package and exit.
Consolidation now requires integration across a portfolio to drive the enterprise value needed to move that portfolio to a private equity sponsor.
Five years ago, an operator could get away with packaging up 25–50 practices and turning them over to PE to integrate and optimize. As is typically the case, PE learns that EBITDA growth is in the operations, and operations is hard, therefore shifting the onus to the operator to create value in the portfolio before entertaining the transaction.
Now, dental operators must be adept at integration across people, process, and technology. No small feat—but to make investors whole, it’s the only way.
As an institutional investor in B2B vertical SaaS, I see the dental industry going through a common tech consolidation cycle.
Core systems lead the charge, in this case, Practice Management Software (PMS) becomes the technology backbone of the practice. Then smaller tech solutions flood the market to fill the gaps in the core solution. The stack starts to bloat, raising costs and complexity.
As in other industries, the tech leaders in the space do a great job of influencing process in the form of “best practices.” The best of them build armies of raving fans (power users) who become the mouthpiece in the practice for the adoption of new solutions. That’s great for the software company—but not always for the business. When an operator decides to roll up practices, this problem compounds, as you now have conflicting opinions about the right solution moving forward.
The next phase is tech consolidation, which typically looks like a series of M&A transactions led by the system-of-record tech (PMS), trying to roll up smaller solutions into their platform to acquire customers, transition them to their core, and generate the perception of a fully integrated solution. There are varying degrees of success here. But the reality is, most companies are not going to acquire the best-of-breed solutions—those are expensive transactions. And just like the DSOs rolling up practices, tech companies are building enterprise value for their investors. The result is often a half-baked solution that isn’t much more than a customer grab.
So, what’s the solution?
First, look at best-of-breed solutions focused on delivering tangible ROI for your portfolio, those that facilitate the consolidation of people and process through a seamless technology experience.
Second, examine their partner ecosystem. The best companies create deep partnerships that bring together the best of the best across specialized use cases. These partnerships go beyond tech integration. They extend into go-to-market strategy, deploying a value-based model that highlights the levers they can pull in your portfolio, the outcomes of pulling them, and the roadmap to get there. These partnerships often lead to M&A transactions that create outsized outcomes for both stakeholders and customers.
DSOs are at a crossroads when it comes to delivering enterprise value to their investment partners. The only path forward is an integrated portfolio, built on solutions that drive revenue, production, and efficiency across the enterprise—setting the standard for people, process, and technology.
As an investor and operator in Peerlogic, our charge is to serve 1 million patients through our AI-first solutions and deliver $1 billion in incremental revenue for dental practices. We do this through a truly integrated, value-first solution—one focused on meeting the DSO market where they are: building integrated portfolios that deliver enterprise value at the next turn.
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