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Most clinic owners know their monthly revenue and almost nothing else. Revenue is a result, not a lever — by the time it moves, whatever caused it happened weeks ago.
These six numbers are levers. Each one, when it moves, tells you what to do differently.
1. No-show rate
Missed appointments ÷ scheduled appointments. Track it monthly and separately per dentist.
Anything above 10% is worth attention. Above 15% and it is the single most expensive problem in the clinic — an empty chair costs the same as a full one.
A rate that differs sharply between dentists is rarely about their patients. It usually means appointments are being booked too far ahead, or without confirmation.
2. Treatment plan acceptance
Plans accepted ÷ plans presented. Most clinics never measure this, which is odd, because it is where revenue is actually won or lost.
If acceptance is low, the problem is almost never price. It is that the plan was explained verbally in ninety seconds, given as a single total, and never written down. A patient who takes a written plan home discusses it at home.
3. Chair utilisation
Booked hours ÷ available hours. Below 70% means you are paying rent, salaries and equipment leasing on time nobody is using.
Read this one alongside the no-show rate. High utilisation on paper plus a high no-show rate means the real number is much worse than the schedule suggests.
4. Revenue per visit
Total revenue ÷ number of visits. More useful than total revenue because it separates "busier" from "more profitable."
A clinic can grow visits 20% and see revenue per visit fall, which usually means the schedule is filling with short low-value appointments while larger treatment sits unaccepted. That is a treatment-acceptance problem wearing a growth disguise.
5. New patients
Count per month, and where they came from. Ask every new patient how they found you and record the answer — one field, four options: referral, search, social, walk-past.
Without the source, marketing spend is guesswork. With it, you find out within two months which channel actually works in your city.
6. Outstanding balance
Total unpaid, split by age: under 30 days, 30–90, over 90.
The total alone hides the problem. Debt over 90 days rarely gets collected, so a clinic with a stable total but a growing over-90 bucket is quietly getting worse.
How to actually use them
Review all six on the same day each month. Fifteen minutes.
Look at direction, not absolute value. A no-show rate of 12% that was 18% three months ago is a clinic doing well. The same 12% rising from 8% is a problem starting.
Change one thing at a time. If you introduce reminders, a new booking flow and a new price list in the same month, you will not know which one moved the numbers.
The trap
Do not track more than these. Twenty metrics on a dashboard get reviewed once and never again. Six numbers reviewed every month beat twenty reviewed never.
In DOQ these come out of the data you already record — no separate spreadsheet, no double entry.