A fellow SW consultant forwarded me an article in Orthopundit.com this past week that illustrated data pertaining to case fees, case acceptance and treatment conversion. The article was written by Dr. Jamie Reynolds, an orthodontist and co-founder of OrthoFi. It gained some great attention because 2 orthodontists and friends of mine also mentioned the article to me. I encourage others to check it out.

My favorite note was the mention of Treatment Recommended Conversion or as he abbreviated, TRC. This is something that Straight Wire consultants primarily use in our TC Coaching and consulting services, but find it to be such an uncommon metric due to the more widely used Case Acceptance Rate.

Case Acceptance Rate. Most practice management software and consultants analyze the outcomes of the month’s consultations by Starts/Exams. This is the most common way we find TCs evaluating their performance or “conversion rate”. It is a very simple way to get a broad idea the office’s productivity, but I would debate that it is an inaccurate representation of your TC’s performance and require our client offices to get more specific.

Treatment Recommended Conversion. There are multiple ways to look at this idea, so let’s start with the formula Starts/Recommended Treatment, as mentioned in the Orthopundit.com article.  The top three thoughts that come to mind and in discussions with our TCs are:

·         Do I take my Case Acceptance Rate and remove the OBS patients from the number of exams?

·         Remove OBS and those needing to see a specialist before we can start treatment (Interdisciplinary)?

·         Do I count Scheduled Starts or Starts only?

The way we at Straight Wire Consulting explain it, is that the objective is to see how many of the convertible patients accepted treatment after the TC’s presentation. That’s what is going to evaluate whether the TC needs coaching or not. Are there patients capable of getting treatment choosing not to? The best way to determine this is by taking Starts & Starts Scheduled/Exams – OBS. In this formula, the OBS patients are removed because they are not ready for treatment and are not given a fee presentation. However, those patients needing to see a specialist (like an oral surgeon or periodontist or even their dentist for a cleaning) prior to starting the ortho treatment still count as treatment recommended because a fee is likely presented and therefore are just a “delayed start.” In many cases they become a Start within the month. Your treatment coordinator should be watching her new patients’ statuses and changing them as they move through the process accordingly.

This is a much better representation of how many convertible patients are converting into patients of the practice. The average should be 85%, obviously higher in the summer months. Anything less than that would benefit greatly from coaching.