Key Performance Indicators, also known as KPIs are factors that a business considers to be critical to its success. The KPIs will differ depending on the business. A dental practice may for example include patients per day and revenue per patient day amongst its KPIs. A school may focus on the graduation rates of its students.

For KPIs to be successful, they must be:

• measurable;
• critical to the practice’s success;
• reflect the practice’s goals; and
• the data (to measure KPIs) must be available on a timely basis.

A KPI should be compared with a realistic and practical target that you will aim to achieve. For example if your practice had a KPI of increasing the number of new patients, you need to compare the growth against a target to determine if the level of growth is acceptable. A target in this example, may be 20 new patients in the next three months.

If at the end of three months the number of new patients is above 20 this may reflect that:

• the practice is growing.

If less than 20 new patients were gained this may reflect that:

• the practice is not growing as intended;
• the target may not have been realistic; or
• there may be other exceptional circumstances.

Care must be taken not to view the KPIs in isolation. The results should be analysed by looking at the bigger picture. For example a specialist practice may have one KPI as ‘to reduce the waiting period for patients to three working days over the next two months’. While the actual result indicates that the average waiting period has remained at five working days during the period, this was a result of a few patients that needed significantly longer than average consultations. Although the target has not been met, this was a result of factors outside the control of the practice. Accordingly a pure focus on the numbers alone may not be appropriate under all circumstances.

See our article on Relevant KPI's for dental practice.