One of the best and most succinct business observations is: “Without measurement there cannot be performance” From the perspective of our practice experience, this maxim has never been truer than in modern times. Every business, from a modest dental practice to a global multinational, needs to monitor their performance in a timely and efficient manner. A sole practice principal or a board of directors cannot make informed decisions about the allocation of (scarce or limited) business resources without details of the return on investment (ROI) that these resources have yielded, or are expected to yield.
To put this into a dentistry context, no Australian practice principal has unlimited resources coupled with extreme demand for his or her services, and no competing dentists. The number of recent graduates from Australian universities virtually guarantees competition and in a consumer’s market with information widely available to the patient consumer, a dental practice is a business the same as any other. This is the key concept to success in modern practice. Modern practices not only provide an important community health care service, but at their heart has to be a profitable, functioning business. As such a practice principal, the same as a corner store or a large corporate, needs to look at his or her business in terms of an allocation of resources and the potential for this allocation to yield a result.