Divergent Dental Knowledge Base

Here's what your Morning Huddle typically looks like.

Morning Huddle Key Practice Metrics

This Practice Metrics section summarizes a handful of key metrics that are useful for the whole practice to be aware of. They are grouped into the following date ranges (rows):
Previous business day, Current day, Current week, Current month, and Current Year.
This gives the entire team a sense of how successful the practice is, from a business point-of-view.

There are eight columns of data to observe. Let's delve into those metrics:

This is your Net Production. The amount produced for completed procedures after write-offs and/or adjustments. Remember, Divergent Dental always accounts for adjustments and write-offs on the procedure date, not the payment date. We want to present Net Production as a metric of what you intend to collect in the future. This is the amount you should be expecting to collect from a combination of all patient and insurance payments with the appropriate adjustments already applied.

This is the total of the NET production PLUS the amount still on the appointment-book that is yet to be completed. This is basically what you're expecting to make tomorrow, this week, this month, and this year. If you look at today's date, for example, the NET should say $0, but the TOTAL should read what today's scheduled NET production is. This number should match the sum of the providers column on the upper left corner if you add them all together. This is a good barometer of how your week and month should end up if nothing else changes. Now we all know that the schedule changes sometimes by the hour, but at least you have some forecasting metrics to go on for the week and the month.

This is all total payments posted to the practice for the appropriate time period; patient portion, insurance payments, with all adjustments made. Often this is termed as Collections, but this is not the same as collections. Income has no bearing on your production. It's simply the payments processed for that time period.

This is the total fees for any newly treatment planned procedures added to a patient’s chart/treatment plan module for the corresponding time period. We refer to this often as Newly Planned Treatment. Treatment does not include radiographic, diagnostic, or preventative procedure codes. Once treatment is entered into a treatment plan, it will appear as part of this week, month, or year's Total.

CaseFees is the percentage of fees from the newly treatment planned procedures (FeesTP) that have been completed or are attached to a scheduled appointment. Basically, how much of the newly presented treatment fees were actually scheduled on the books. This number also excludes codes that involve hygiene or diagnostic procedures with the exception of Scaling and Root Planing Curetage (ie D4341).

CasePats is referred to as Patient Acceptance or Treatment Acceptance. This metric represents the percentage of patients who were seen who had at least one newly treatment planned procedure and have either scheduled at least one newly-planned procedure on a future appointment or have completed at least one of those newly-planned procedure codes.
For example: if ten patients during the current week have had newly treatment planned procedures added, two of those patients completed at least one procedure the same day and five others scheduled an appointment in the future to complete at least one procedure, that would result in a 70% case acceptance percentage.

ReAppt is the percentage of patients who were seen who have another appointment scheduled or completed on a future date after their first date. This metric does not differentiate between Hygiene and Doctor appointments.
For example, in the current year you might see a patient in January, who came back for another appointment in February, but does not have another appointment scheduled in the future. This one patient’s reappointment percentage in January was 100%, in February was 0%, and a total of 50%. This counts ALL patients seen, not just recall patients.

A patient is counted as a new patient on the first date that they have a completed appointment. The criteria for counting a new patient exist as follows: They have an appointment scheduled, and they have their first completed procedure code on that appoitntment date. The new patient number will not show on the current day they are scheduled.
For example: if you have 4 NPs on November 1st you will not see that counted in the quick stats report until November 2nd if all 4 NPs completed their appointment. If one didn't show up and or didn't have a completed appointment, they will also not show up on the report.

NOTE: False New Patients could be counted if they have a completed procedure code that isn't a true procedure. We have seen some use their software with procedure codes used for things like missed or cancelled appointments, insurance verification issues, screening questions, medical histories, the list goes on. If your practice is using procedure codes for items like this, you'll need to use extreme caution with these codes, as when they are marked as completed, they could trigger false new patient numbers.

This top left section summarizes the scheduled NET production for the day sorted by each provider. These metrics are derived procedure by procedure from the patient's treatment plan, and not the schedule itself. The order is determined by how your providers are ordered in your practice management software (PMS). We have removed all space constraints in this window with our most recent update. The list will populate downwards until all providers are listed.

This section shows each appointment with more detailed information. It's organized by Operatory, then chronologically, just like your schedule module in your practice management software. There are nine columns of data for each appointment:

OpTime - Operatory abbreviation and scheduled appointment start time. Order is determined by your operatory setup in your practice management software.

NP - Determined by the appointment being marked as a new patient in your practice management software. OR determined if this patient has no completed procedures in their account ledger.

Patient - Last and first name of the patient in the schedule.

DOB - Date of birth of patient.

Age - Current Age of the patient, based on birthdate.

TodaysProcs - All the procedures scheduled for today's appointment. Note: Abbreviation of scheduled procedures may be truncated.

UnschedProcs - These metrics are compiled from the patient's active treatment plan: the count of unscheduled procedures and their total fees. The number in (x) is the number of unscheduled treatment planned procedures. The dollar amount is the total of unscheduled treatment in their treatment plan. These are limited to only treatment procedures. Hygiene procedures will not show up on this list (ie D1110, D1351, etc), with the exception of SRP procedures (D4341). The idea here being another check-point to find treatment to schedule to add to production in the near future or perhaps same day if time allows and to keep patients progressing through their treatment and not missing out on opportunities to schedule and complete that unscheduled treatment.

FamBal - This is the active Family account balance that is 30+ days old, positive or negative.

Misc - There are a few items that could show in this Miscellaneous column:
RecDue - If the patient is scheduled for a non-hygiene appointment and is due for a prophy or perio recall it will be displayed here. This allows the team to schedule that hygiene appointment and get them on the books for a future appointment.
FamDue Similar to RecDue this indicator lets you know if a family member of the patient where this note appears has a Family Member that is Overdue for their Recall exam.
NoEmail, NoCell - Indicates the patient is missing either an email or cell phone from their contact information section.

1. If the patient’s birthday is within a week of the appointment date then the entire row will be in bold. Remembering to say “Happy Birthday” to a patient is an easy way to increase patient satisfaction and long-term retention. Building relationships is important.
2. If there are no procedures attached to an appointment then the TodaysProcs column will highlight yellow to indicate that at least one procedure should be added to the appointment.

There is another section on this huddle report to have a look at exams and radiographs that may be due. This section will denote whether a patient is due based on their recall schedule (set in Open Dental) or their Insurance Plan (based on plan information in open Dental). The goal of this section was to help our Open Dental users keep up with their standards of care, and of course not lose out on the missed production from exams and x-rays.

You can see this section of the report is divided into columns again, like the Huddle report on Page 1. The OP Time, name, and age columns are all pretty evident as to what they represent. The InsCo is the currently active Primary Insurance plan assigned to that patient (if they have one. Consequently, if a patient doesn't have insurance, they won't be present on this portion of the report).
The Next Three Columns identify if the patient is due for any exam, bitewing radiograph, or Panoramic or full mouth series of radiographs:

• Exam: there are several options here for a patient's recall exam. They could show as ExamDUE, which indicates this patient is OVERDUE for their recall exam, or ExamINS, indicating that this patient is due for their exam, according to the information you have listed in their insurance plan. FirstExam would indicate that this patient has not been yet billed for an exam, so you should consider doing an exam.
• BWX: again, there are a few options here, and they are similar to the exam options: BWXDue, indicates that this patient is due for their set of bitewing x-rays, based on your recall schedule. BWXINS, again indicates that based on the insurance information you have in their plan, this patient would be due for a set of BWX according to insurance. FirstBWX would indicate that you do not yet have a set of BWX on file, and you should consider taking their first one.
• PanFMX:The same is true for the PanFMX options. PanFMXDue, indicates that this patient is due for their set of panoramic or full series of x-rays, based on your recall schedule. PanFMXINS, again indicates that based on the insurance information you have in their plan, this patient would be due for a full series or Pan image according to insurance. FirstPanFMX would indicate that you do not yet have a set on file, and you should consider taking their first one.

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