Many dental offices and DSOs have gone digital, using dental software to manage patient records, appointment scheduling, billing, and more. These practice management platforms (PMS) also allow providers to collect vast amounts of data about their patients and operations — which can be a treasure trove of insights to help improve your revenue and patient care through analytics.
So what does dental analytics entail, and what key performance indicators (KPIs) should you track to improve profitability? What technology should you look for in an analytics provider? Let’s see how you can get the most insights out of your data.
What is Dental Analytics, and Why Do You Need It?
Dental analytics uses data from electronic health records (EHR) to help you optimize treatment plans, identify follow-up care and production opportunities, improve patient experience, and deliver better treatment outcomes.
You can also leverage operational data to improve resource allocation based on patient volume, optimize supply chain management, streamline processes like billing and invoicing, and ultimately boost your bottom line.
How Data Warehouse Improves Analytics and Reporting
You may already be pulling reports from your dental practice management software, so why do you need a data warehouse? These in-app reports only utilize the information available on the platform. They can't give you the complete picture to inform accurate decision-making if you have data from other sources.
On the other hand, a data warehouse serves as a centralized location where you can aggregate and standardize data from multiple sources to support comprehensive and accurate reporting.
A data warehouse also stores information in a way that allows you to use business intelligence (BI) tools such as Power BI and Tableau to leverage historic data for trend reporting. Additionally, you can automate data ingestion and report generation to eliminate error-prone manual processes while ensuring the efficient distribution of timely insights to the appropriate stakeholders.
Top Dental Analytics KPIs to Track
Your data warehouse and BI tool should help you quickly and accurately analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) to improve operational efficiency and profitability based on your business model and objectives.
Besides basic metrics such as practice production and collections, you should track case acceptance, average production per patient, retention and attrition rates, hygiene reappointment rates, operational overhead, and percentage of currently scheduled active patients.
A data warehouse allows you to pull data from multiple sources and build models to track these KPIs. You can also leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to connect the dots, identify trends, and stay ahead of the game.
What Technology Do You Need For Dental Analytics?
The tech stack your dental analytics provider uses can make a big difference in helping you connect the dots and leverage timely data insights to drive profitability. Here’s what to look for:
- A multi-tenant, cloud-based architecture that can support a standardized taxonomy for data collection, curation, and processing.
- Seamless integration with your PMS to generate real-time insights across multiple locations.
- A tech stack that can grow with your practice, for example, a data warehouse built on Google BigQuery can scale up to handle petabytes of data.
- The architecture and capabilities to aggregate data from disparate sources (e.g., HR, lab, and other vendor systems.)
- Integration with popular BI tools and the ability to generate different reports (e.g., executive, managerial, operational) for different stakeholders.
- AI capabilities (e.g., BigQuery) to enable analysts to develop ML models across multiple locations with large data sets using SQL Analytics.
- A secure infrastructure such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP) supported by 24/7 monitoring by a dedicated security team to stay HIPAA-compliant.
Based on these criteria, tab32 developed the Open Data Warehouse™ (ODW) to help dental practices and DSOs leverage data insights. You can improve cost efficiency and support real-time decision-making at a never-seen-before scale to increase profitability and improve patient outcomes.
This modern solution focuses on data standardization to make all types of data, from clinical to billing, easily accessible and interoperable. We build ODW on top of GCP and use BigQuery to make it ML-ready. Plus, the platform is monitored by our security team 24/7/365 to ensure that your data is safe with us.
Learn more and request a demo to discover the power of dental analytics.
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