Divergent Dental Knowledge Base

Many times the reports Divergent Dental Provides you are different from those provided by your PMS Software is because of the way we represent your NET Production. More often, this is due to any adjustments. What we provide on our reports is a true-NET production value. We define Net-Production as that production which you intend to collect at some point in the future. That is to say, Net production is the amount produced after all adjustments, write-offs, and discounts are posted to any account. Most dental practice management software has their default production reports to only provide you with a gross production number or provide a pseudo-net production which may or may not include all write-offs, discounts, and adjustments. It is important to remember that true NET production must only be considered after all potential adjustments.

There are also times when production numbers differ from our reports to your PMS due to how your office is utilizing the practice management software. If appointments aren't being posted within the software as the developers have envisioned, this could affect the outcome of your reports built into your software and will report to our tools differently as well. This could make one feel like their reports are incorrect, when it's potentially a point of confusion on how to utilize the practice management software itself. Remember, our reports are only generated by data that is input by your office and team. We don't enter or change any data, simply read your database for statistics. We provide a singular version of the truth that is your data.

What's the difference in the Scheduled vs Net Production on my Dashboard? This is simple - and it can fluctuate depending on how you are posting and completing appointments in your practice management software. In Short - NET production is that production that you have generated after all adjustments and write-offs have been made, Production you intend to collect on at some point. Scheduled Production is any that you have left on the books for the day (that is NOT completed or posted to an account ledger) or for the week or month, depending on which time field you are looking at. This is production that is yet to be completed. Think of it as Future Production.

Income is calculated simply as all the payments posted to your software in the particular time frame you're observing. We don't count adjustments as income, but instead are adjusted off of production. This is how we can account for a more-true version of Net Production.

You'll recall the email you were sent upon installation of our software. The default goal set for your practice is 5% increase over the last 12 rolling months. If your numbers are consistently in the Green or Red at the top of your Daily Dashboard report, you may want to decide to change your monthly goals. Your goals should be realistic yet ambitious, attainable yet driving the team to improve.

Currently, there is no customer portal to log in to to alter your profile settings and your goal settings. You'll have to get in touch with our support team. To do so, you can fill out this form or you can email us to update your monthly goals. Remember, the default goal is 5% over the last 12 months of statistics (production, collection, new patients, etc).

This is a question we get asked a lot. You should change your goals to an attainable number that is meaningful to your practice. That's a vague answer, but what is the point of setting goals that are unattainable or unsustainable for growth? Many practice consultants, management firms, dental practice authors, and other great-minded individuals have varying views on goals and goal-setting for dental practices.

The default goal settings for Divergent Dental's reports is 5% growth over the last 12 months of numbers. Our data has shown that 5% is a reasonable amount of growth to sustain over a long period of time for the overall health of your practice.

You should change your goal to a number that is attainable for the practice to meet as well as a number that sustains a pattern for long-term growth over the course of your year. It may mean looking at production per hour, or collections for the month. Put some serious consideration into what your goals for your business should be and feel that you can discuss with us if you need a little insight as to what your goals should be. Remember, we are Divergent Dental Resources, and are more than just pdf reports in your email.

New patients are reported once they have been in for a scheduled appointment as a new patient and have had at least one procedure completed on their account. New patients aren't considered in reports until they have that first appointment completed within your practice management software.

Treatment is basically any procedure code with the exception of hygiene or diagnostic codes.
We exclude the codes beginning with D0XXX and D1XXX. This encompasses all of the exam, diagnostic, and radiographic codes as well as all of the standard Hygiene-type codes. Procedure codes D4341 and D4342 are NOT excluded as they tend have fees comparable to other treatment codes and typically take more time to perform than your simple D1110 or D4910. We have this separation to differentiate those codes that would fall under 'Doctor' production and thus provide a more accurate representation of treatment presented, scheduled, etc.

Treatment Acceptance is the percentage of all patients who were seen who had at least one newly treatment planned procedure and have either scheduled at least one procedure on a future appointment or have completed at least one procedure.

Treatment acceptance can seem low for a few reasons. We'll look at some of the most common here:
-Appointment scheduling procedures: Many times, the way appointments are scheduled leads to some discrepancy and concern into treatment case acceptance rates. If procedures are newly treatment planned but appointments scheduled without corresponding codes in the appointment, there is no way for us to know what that next appointment is scheduled for unless there's a code in the appointment that matches one of the newly planned treatment procedures.
-Treatment additions after the fact: We have worked with a number of offices that schedule first and add procedures later. That is, once they're done seeing their patient, they schedule their next treatment and as time permits, they add to their treatment plans as the day progresses. At times, this can happen after our software has already synchronized with your database and uploaded to our reporting software. Everything is put into the PMS correctly, but timing has become a factor and the data is just a little late to the party. In most circumstances, our data synchronizes after you've closed for the day. There are some offices that are open later than the standard 9-5 shifts, and this tends to occur more frequently with those offices.

At this time, treatment presented, treatment acceptance, and fees acceptance are available as part of your Monthly KPI report. If you have questions or suggestions on the matter, please submit a support request if you would like to have your reports altered to reflect these statistics. (Additional charges may apply for report customization.)

At this time, there is no good means to track who scheduled treatment. The way that the practice management software have their data tables set up, we could track by who is logged into the computer at the time the appointment is made, like you would see in an audit-trail report. There is not data field that tracks which team-member presents or enters treatment into your PMS software besides the user logged in at the time of entry. You could request a feature to be added with a support form which can be submitted here.

This is the percentage of patients who were seen who have another appointment scheduled or completed on a future date after their first appointment date.
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. For more statistics on recall rescheduling rates, please refer to your monthly KPI reports.

We determine broken appointments with a few different methods:

We search the ledger for the Broken Appointment Codes: D9986 (missed appt) and D9987 (cancelled appt). By breaking the appointment in Open Dental with the broken appointment tools, these codes get added, depending on which type of broken appointment is chosen.

We also comb through the communications logs and notes as well as the account ledger entries for keywords. These keywords include words like 'Cancelled,' 'Broken,' 'Failed,' 'Missed,' etc. If these keywords appear in a log the same day that person has a scheduled appointment, we will count that appointment as a failed or broken appointment.

Providers that no longer have Production or Income (collections) assigned to them will cease to show up on reports as soon as any time-frames for the specific reports are reached. Daily Dashboards will show any providers with production/income for the current month. Weekly Recap Reports will show any providers with Production/Income for the previous week, though the averages will reflect on the previous 12-rolling months.

The Monthly KPI report is the main report this question is most often asked about. Monthly KPI reports will stop presenting providers that are no longer with the practice once they 'fall off the end' of the report when they no longer have production or income assigned to them. So in this report, it could take 11 months for a provider that has just left the practice to stop showing up on those reports. We do this to keep the data complete. Providers that left last month may not have an impact on your daily numbers moving forward, but they do have an impact on your numbers in the rear-view, your previous 12 months.

The best way to ensure that providers that no longer practice there stop showing on your reports as soon as possible, is to keep a close eye on the production and income data assigned. If you're still posting production and payments to those providers, they will continue to show on your reports until you cease doing so.