The Most Misleading Statistic in Dentistry

I am a numbers guy, in that I believe in tracking performance in the practice with concrete data. Knowing your numbers is a big part of being a successful leader in any business. But there are times when numbers don’t tell the whole story.

For example, I am always wary when I hear about a practice with a stellar case acceptance rate. That’s because a high case acceptance rate can actually be an indicator of some troublesome approaches to case presentation. In fact, it is probably the most misleading statistic in dental practice management.

Sure, it sounds good to be able to say that a substantial percentage of patients are saying yes to treatment that is presented, but the question remains: What kind of treatment is being presented? To what exactly are they saying yes?

A dentist with a high acceptance rate could be diagnosing and presenting the same kind of dentistry they did 30 years ago, because they simply don’t see the real possibilities when they look in the patient’s mouth. Or maybe they do see it, but they don’t present fully to most patients because they don’t know how to create the right value or because they are prejudging and presenting those more sophisticated treatment plans only to those few patients they think will accept.

I hate to say it, but these dentists are fooling themselves with numbers. The high acceptance rate they boast is often not an accurate reflection of their abilities or of the quality of care their patients are getting. Of course your acceptance rate is going to look good, as long as you only present what you know has a good chance of being accepted.

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Growth-minded dentists understand this intuitively. They know that they should expect to have good acceptance on their bread-and-butter, everyday cases. But they also understand that there are special “growth cases” and it doesn’t make sense to track them by lumping them in with the rest. (For more on this idea of “threshold-based” tracking, see this earlier article.)

The bottom line is that a truly committed dentist will have a comprehensive plan for each patient, and they don’t mind hearing a lot of noes in the course of presenting those plans. They realize that it only takes a few yeses on those major cases to make a big difference – to the practice and in the lives of the patients who ultimately accept.

These dentists are not concerned about how all those noes might affect their overall case acceptance percentage. That’s because they have their eyes on a more meaningful goal: providing the best possible care to the most patients possible.

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