Simon Palmer, December 2011 - When dentists talk about how busy they are it is not uncommon to hear them talking about how far into the future they are booked. They also seem to use this metric as a comparison of their busyness to another dentists (as in “I’m only booked 2 weeks out but the other dentist in the practice is booked 4 weeks out”).

It seems like the further into the future you are booked, the better off you are in a Dentist’s mind (the way Dentists talk about it reminds me of how kids talk about how many friends they have on Facebook). I have even had some dentists proudly tell me that they are so busy they turn away all new patients.

But what is the booked-ahead-metric actually telling us? Is it a good comparison tool between two dentists? Is being booked far ahead an asset to a practice? What is it about being booked ahead that makes a dentist feel secure? And what is it that we really want to know?

Is this a good comparison tool between two dentists?
Let’s say we have two dentists both saying that they are booked out for a month ahead.

1. Are they talking about the same number of patients?
Probably not because:
- Each dentist needs a different number of patients per day. Some dentists I know have a full book with 8-10 patients per day, others seem to need 20-30 per day. It depends upon the time spent communicating with each patient, the treatments they are doing and their philosophy of diagnosis.
- Booking single or multiple appointments can skew a comparison. If a patient needs comprehensive treatment some dentists would book that patient in for all their appointments at once while others will only book one appointment at a time.
Each of these means that if two dentists are each booked ahead one month they could be talking about very different numbers of patients.

2. Are they talking about the same levels of gross production?
Probably not because:
- One dentist could be doing comprehensive treatments on each patient and the other doing patch and fill or emergency .
- Even if both dentists were seeing the exact same number of patients and doing the exact same treatments they could still have very different fee schedules.

3. Are they even talking about the same number of hours filled with bookings?
Maybe not because: different dentists have a different number of patient hours per week.

What is it about being booked ahead that makes a Dentist feel secure? What is it that Dentists really want to know?
While I am not sure how comparable it is as a metric, there is no doubt that being booked ahead makes a dentist feel secure, it gives them a time into the future in which they know there is predictable work and money coming in.

Is being booked far ahead an asset to a practice?
If you put the choice to any dentist between two practices of the extremes of busy-ness there is no doubt that everyone would take the practice that is booked far into the future instead of the quiet practice. However this logic doesn’t follow when we aren’t at the extremes.

Firstly, being booked out well into the future can be stressful. It means they have to ‘squeeze’ patients in regularly in order to feel they are servicing their community. Often this means working after hours or during lunch for fear of making a patients wait many weeks in pain, or for a necessary procedure.

Secondly, there comes a saturation point with busy-ness where patients who aren’t able to make an appointment will turn to another dentist for their treatment. Busy-ness can become a liability to a practice if this is happening on a regular basis. Rather than bragging about how far ahead their practice is booked, they should be realising the potential value of their practice that is being lost and taking steps to harness it.

The fine balance that each dentist needs to come to is between having this security and growing the business because the more peace of mind you have the greater the chance that you will be turning patients away.

What should be done if your practice is being booked out too far into the future?
There are several steps that could be done to harness excess busy-ness:
1. If the practice has excess time or space in the practice that they aren’t utilising they could hire another dentist to work for them take some of the load.
2. If the practice doesnt have the excess space they can either renovate or extend the operating hours of the practice and hire another dentist.
3. If the practice doesn’t want to renovate or work extended hours they can consider hiring a dentist and work a split shift
(as discussed in our article titled The Sologroup model).
4. Many practices will purposefully reserve spaces in their appointment book for new patients and emergencies who call so that the practice isn’t turning away new patients at any stage.