As a dental office Coach with Accelerate My Practice, Inc. (AMP) there are many things my fellow Coaches and I research when we visit dental offices all around the country. One item that is very important is what we call the “Perio Percentage.”
The Perio Percentage, simply put, is the number of periodontal procedures (scaling and root planing, periodontal maintenance, etc.) expressed as a portion of the overall amount of hygiene procedures. Mathematically, we will calculate a fraction, where the numerator is the amount of periodontal procedures and the denominator is the total amount of hygiene procedures.
Let's say in a certain month, a hygienist sees 120 hygiene patients. Of those 120 visits, 95 of them are adult prophylaxis and 25 are periodontal in nature as described above. In this example, the Perio Percentage would be 25/120 or 20.8%.
According to the CDC, in the general population about 47% of adults over 30 years of age have some sort of periodontal disease. That number climbs to over 70% in adults over 65 years of age. Per our research at AMP, in a healthy practice, the Perio Percentage is a minimum of 30%. In an office that serves an older demographic, it should approach or exceed 40%.
A nice high Perio Percentage really means two things: first, and most importantly, we are providing excellent care for our periodontally involved patients. Second, our production will be higher on an hourly basis since the fees for periodontal procedures tend to be higher than that of standard adult prophylaxis. And that’s without any increase in overhead. So, everybody wins!
If your percentage is too low, it's likely due to one of two things.
I will discuss both of these factors and how we can improve our Perio Percentage in future blogs.
