Medenta Business Development Manager, Lesley Turner, encourages dental practice owners and managers to take a proactive look at the inner workings of their business to keep everything running smoothly and profitably.
Just like clinical equipment needs regular servicing, the operational side of your practice also benefits from routine maintenance. Reviewing your finances, systems, team, compliance, and patient journey can reveal untapped opportunities and highlight potential profit leaks.
Why not use this high‑level health check to help identify where improvements could boost your revenue and overall business performance?
1. Financial and pricing review: are your fees working hard enough?
Evaluate your fee structure
Are your prices competitive locally while still delivering a healthy margin? Benchmarking nearby practices is essential. However, cheapest doesn’t automatically mean best as patients also weigh value, experience, and trust when making a choice.
Assess your treatment mix
Do you offer a strong and varied range of profitable treatments such as implants, Invisalign and cosmetic options? If not, what’s blocking you? Is it room availability, training gaps, or low demand? Once you’ve identified the reason, you can deal with it.
Also look at how many treatment plans each clinician is generating. If someone is under‑prescribing, then you could be missing out on opportunities for more income.
Monitor margins
Some treatments may be using more materials or chair time than they’re worth. Reviewing profitability per service helps you spot where you may need to make some adjustments to your pricing.
Keep an eye on discounts
Small, frequent discounts can eat into profits very quickly. Ensure any price reductions are offered for a good reason to avoid the risk of it becoming a habit.
Strengthen payment processes
Do unpaid invoices or slow payers affect your cash flow? Review any bad debt you may have, chase outstanding balances, and ensure you explain clearly any finance options, such as Medenta, you offer.
Check your patient finance is working as hard as it can… Patient finance can be a powerful driver of treatment acceptance, but only if the terms you offer genuinely work for your patients. A quick review of your finance setup can unlock hidden revenue: even a small adjustment to the repayment period — such as offering 0% finance over a slightly longer term — can dramatically increase affordability and help more patients say yes to the treatment they want or need. Look at your current plan uptake, repayment durations, and whether your team consistently offers finance at key points in the patient journey. Ensuring your finance options are clearly understood, easy to access and aligned with patient expectations can make a significant difference to your overall conversion rates.
Also check how many treatment plans are open without a future appointment as this often suggests gaps in patient communication or the lack of an effective follow‑up policy.
2. Operational efficiency: Is your day structured for profit?
Diary optimisation
Empty slots usually point to a weak recall system or inconsistent follow‑up protocols. Maximising your appointment diary is one of the simplest ways to increase revenue without needing extra resources.
Track cancellations and no‑shows
Patients who did not attend/ failed to attend (DNAs/FTAs)are silent profit drainers. Having a clear cancellation policy, taking deposits for appointments and treatments, and automated reminders can reduce them and help increase profit.
Maximise hygienist and therapist time
Are you delegating effectively to your hygienists and therapists so you free up dentists to carry out higher‑value treatments? Ensuring clinicians work to their full scope of practise increases productivity and profitability.
Review lab and material costs
Have you compared supplier prices recently? While it’s good to maintain strong relationships with trusted suppliers, carrying out periodic checks ensure you aren’t overpaying.
Assess staff productivity
Do you have the right staff available at the right time to meet patient demand? Do your opening hours make sense for your patients? For example: does opening on Saturday truly pay for itself?
3. Patient and marketing health check: are you growing and retaining effectively?
Track new patient numbers
Do you know where your new patients come from? Is it Google, word‑of‑mouth, social media, or online chat tools? Find out so you can optimise the source. If you use a chatbot, ensure it’s monitored properly so potential patients don’t get lost in the system.
Measure patient retention
Do patients return after their first appointment? Analysing drop‑off points helps you strengthen your patient journey and communication so you can retain more of them.
Evaluate marketing ROI
Clicks or impressions tell you how many people saw or interacted with your marketing, but what they don’t tell you is if those people become patients. That’s why focusing on revenue generated (actual new patient, treatment accepted, long-term value) is far more meaningful. Instead of focusing on the surface-level engagement, focus your spending on channels that attract committed, long‑term patients.
Monitor treatment plan conversion
If acceptance rates are low, identify whether cost, clarity (are you explaining things well enough?), or confidence is the barrier. A Treatment Coordinator (TCO) can often increase acceptance significantly and have a positive effect upon the bottom line.
Make finance a consistent part of the patient journey To maximise treatment acceptance, finance needs to be woven into the patient journey — not mentioned as an afterthought. This means ensuring your team understands when and how they can reference finance in line with your FCA permissions, whether that’s signposting availability in the surgery, using supportive language during treatment presentations, or ensuring it appears clearly within treatment plans and follow‑up communications. When finance is introduced naturally and compliantly at the right touchpoints, patients feel more informed and empowered to move forward. Consistency is key: the more routinely finance is referenced, the more normal and helpful it feels to patients.
4. HR and team management: is your team driving your practice forward?
Staff cost vs. revenue
Staff costs have risen spectacularly over the past couple of years so it’s even more important now than ever to make sure you have the right people in the right places. Are your clinicians delivering for you? Compare revenue per clinician or surgery to ensure staffing levels align with productivity.
Associate productivity
You’re aiming to run a sustainable business, so fair pay must still be commercially viable. Check whether your associates are maximising their surgery time and generating appropriate returns.
Training and development
Investing in upskilling, especially in areas such as communication, patient experience, and treatment acceptance can produce a strong return and is usually worth the investment.
Strengthen morale and culture
A positive culture has a direct impact on your patients’ experience as well as your team’s. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” according to the author and Management Consultant, Peter Drucker. Make sure you communicate your vision or purpose to your team often, so they understand the ‘why’ of what they do.
5. Competitor insight and market positioning: how do you compare?
Are you still retaining your patients? If patients are leaving, try to find out the reasons why. Is it pricing, customer service, or something else? This is where follow‑up calls can reveal valuable insights that will help you address areas you may need to improve.
Gather regular patient feedback
Well‑designed surveys help you understand what matters most to your patients. Once you have gathered the data it’s essential you act on what they tell you.
6. Legal and tax review: are you set up efficiently?
Check your tax position
Are you making full use of any available allowances and reliefs? A conversation with your accountant could reveal opportunities to structure your practice in a more tax‑efficient way.
Think of your practice as you would a patient: without regular check‑ups and preventative care, hidden problems can escalate. By routinely reviewing these key areas, you can strengthen your profitability, improve efficiency, and build a practice that’s resilient, competitive, and ready for the future.
About Lesley
Lesley Turner has been a Business Development Manager at Medenta for 9 years. She has worked in dentistry for many years, including 10 years as a practice manager, during which time she won a Practice Manager of the Year Award. As a previous end user of Medenta, Lesley is well-placed to understand our customers’ needs and can empathise with practices’ patient finance requirements.