Economics of Dental Specialties: Prosthodontics, Implantology, and Orthodontics
Category: Marketing and Management
Instructor(s): Aleksey Snegirev
Course structure: Lessons: 3 lessons | Duration: 57 min
Course overview
The clinic can be profitable overall, but at the same time one of the service lines can reduce the clinic's overall efficiency. Without analysis by service line this is practically impossible to see. This course will teach how to calculate the marginability of each service line — orthopedics, implantation, therapy, surgery and orthodontics — and make justified management decisions: what to develop, where to adjust prices, and which processes require optimization.
Learning objectives:
— Understand why the clinic's aggregate profit does not reflect the real efficiency of individual service lines
— Learn to calculate revenue and marginability for each clinic service line
— Understand the differences between direct and indirect costs when analyzing service lines
— Master the methodology for calculating marginability of service lines: orthopedics, implantation, orthodontics, therapy and surgery
— Learn to interpret results and understand which margin indicators are normal for different service lines
— Understand how to make management decisions based on the economics of service lines: develop, optimize or redistribute resources
— Analyze the impact of the physician wage fund on the marginability of a service line and determine a fair level of remuneration
— Obtain a practical tool for regular monitoring of the economics of service lines in the clinic.
The course is built on the analysis of real financial indicators of dental clinics. Participants will go from analyzing the overall profit and loss report (P&L) to a detailed analysis of the economics of individual service lines. They will learn to correctly allocate revenue, direct costs and the wage fund between orthopedics, implantation, therapy, surgery and other service lines.
Within the training typical situations will be considered when a busy and in-demand service line turns out to be low-margin or even unprofitable, as well as ways to identify causes and increase its efficiency.
What you will learn
- Calculate service-line marginability from clinic MIS data to reveal hidden profitability issues.
- Allocate revenue, direct costs, and physician wage fund accurately across dental service lines.
- Apply industry margin benchmarks and material/lab accounting methods to evaluate performance.
- Use a decision matrix and four financial checks to optimize FOT and departmental economics.
Course lessons
Lesson 1. Profitability split: why headline figures lie and how to calculate channel margins
We will begin by debunking the dangerous myth that if a clinic is in the black, all of its departments operate effectively. You will understand why aggregated reports hide "black holes," and will break down 4 critically important decisions that cannot be made without analytics by service line. You will learn to extract correct data from the MIS, separate margin from profitability, and correctly tie physicians' salaries to specific clinic revenue items.
— The owner's main illusion: why the clinic's total profit "lies" and hides losses
— Service-line economics as the basis for making precise managerial decisions
— 4 strategic decisions that become obvious only when analyzing the business by service line
— Clarifying concepts: marginal profit versus net profitability
— Step-by-step formula: how to correctly calculate the margin of a specific service line
— Working with data: exporting net revenue by service line (money collected) from the MIS
— Methodology for allocating the payroll fund (FOT) of physicians to specific medical service lines.
Lesson 2. Margin map: accounting for materials, labs, and industry standards
The second lesson is entirely devoted to precise expense allocation. You will learn how to correctly account for materials: write them off from inventory in real time or count them based on actual purchases, and how to correctly allocate invoices from dental laboratories. We will analyze a real monthly margin table and identify the difference between margin in percent and in rubles. The main point: you will receive strict industry margin standards for each service line and will be able to instantly assess how well your clinic's indicators correspond to a healthy business.
— Consumable materials in the structure of a service line: 2 effective accounting methods (write-off from inventory vs accounting by purchases)
— Dental laboratory: features of accounting and methodology for directly allocating expenses to prosthodontics and orthodontics
— Practicum: analysis of a real example of a monthly margin table by service line
— Metrics pitfall: why margin in percent and margin in rubles are two absolutely different issues
— Industry standards and margin benchmarks for key medical service lines
— Case analysis: review of a demonstration margin table by service lines and reading hidden signals.
Lesson 3. Management matrix: optimizing payroll and four essential cross-checks
The final lesson translates analytics into the realm of strict managerial actions. You will receive 3 concrete levers for changing the situation in outpatient departments and learn what payroll standards should be for different specialists. We will examine in detail a KPI-based compensation model that motivates doctors to work for the overall effectiveness of the department through control of norm-hours and internal referrals to colleagues. In conclusion you will build a decision matrix for your clinic and master 4 mandatory indicator checks (revenue, margin, payroll and their dynamics) that will protect your business from million-level losses.
— 3 main levers influencing the department’s economics: from simple tactical actions to complex strategic changes
— Direct dependence: how the payroll of a specific doctor affects the final margin of the entire department
— Strict payroll standards by medical specializations
— Evolution of motivation systems: 4 models of doctors’ compensation and the vector of their development
— Transition to a KPI model: implementation of 3 key indicators (norm-hours, conversion “first -> repeat”, percentage of referrals from the department to adjacent specialists)
— Construction of a decision matrix for each department in the clinic
— The manager’s financial shield: 4 regular checks that save millions (revenue, margin %, payroll %, dynamics).
