Running a dental practice without a few core metrics is like driving at night with the headlights off. You can still move forward, but you don’t really know where you’re headed, and you won’t see the potholes until you hit them. Track the right numbers and everything changes. Stress goes down. Decisions get clearer. Growth becomes something you can plan for instead of constantly reacting to it.
These four KPIs belong on every practice owner’s dashboard. They’re simple, practical, and directly tied to marketing, scheduling, and hiring decisions. No fluff. Just numbers that actually matter.
KPI 1 - New Patients Scheduled (monthly)
This is the most basic pulse check in your practice: how many new patients were scheduled this month? The key word here is scheduled, not necessarily seen. If a patient books in September for an October appointment, that counts in September.
Why this matters:
- Clarity over guesswork. Many owners estimate this number and end up planning around the wrong assumptions.
- Schedule capacity insight. If hygiene or restorative blocks squeeze out new patient openings, your numbers drop even when marketing is working.
- Trend spotting. Month-to-month tracking reveals seasonality, dips, or sudden spikes so you can act early.
Practical targets and tips:
- Aim to schedule most new patients within one week, two weeks at the latest in most markets.
- Pull this number directly from your scheduling system at month-end, not from memory.
- If new patient numbers fall while marketing spend stays steady, look at appointment availability before changing ad strategy.
Sustained new patient demand often comes from long-term visibility, especially through channels like SEO for dentists, where results compound over time instead of spiking and disappearing.
KPI 2 - New Patient Production (monthly)
New patient production measures the revenue generated from new patients during their initial visit. This is the number most practices look at first.
Why this matters:
- It shows immediate cash flow from new patient intake.
- It highlights how well first appointments convert into treatment.
The mistake is stopping here. Evaluating marketing purely on first-visit production is too shortsighted. Most patients return for hygiene, restorative care, or larger treatment over the next 6 to 12 months.
Track this KPI monthly, but always review it alongside longer-term production. This is the core issue behind why so many practices misjudge performance, something we break down further in why short-term marketing fails in dental practices.
KPI 3 - Total Production (monthly)
Total production includes everything: new patients, returning patients, hygiene, restorative, and larger cases. This is the clearest indicator of overall practice health.
Why this matters:
- It allows you to calculate average revenue per patient.
- It shows how new patient growth actually impacts the business, not just the first visit.
Example:
You spend $100 to acquire a new patient.
Their first visit produces $200.
Over 12 months, that same patient generates $1,200 in total production.
That $100 acquisition cost looks very different when viewed through total production. This is why paid channels like Google Ads for dentists can appear expensive early but become highly profitable over time when tracked correctly.
KPI 4 - Cost to Acquire a New Patient (CAC)
CAC tells you how much it truly costs to get a new patient into the chair. This is not cost per click or cost per lead. It’s cost per scheduled, and ideally seen, patient.
Simple formula:
Total marketing spend for the period
÷
Number of new patients scheduled or seen
Example:
$3,000 monthly marketing spend
30 new patients
CAC = $100
Important notes on attribution:
- Attribution is never perfect. Patients come from ads, referrals, reviews, community presence, and repetition.
- Patient experience and referrals are marketing. Everything contributes to acquisition.
- Start with a holistic CAC before trying to break things down by channel.
When you combine CAC with average revenue per patient, you can reverse engineer growth. If you want 10 more new patients per month, multiply your CAC by 10. That gives you a realistic budget, then you plan scheduling and staffing around it.
Everything is marketing.
Your website, ads, reviews, referrals, and in-office experience all work together. That long-term, connected view of growth is the foundation of how practices scale with clarity, and it’s the philosophy behind the work we do at Crimson Media Group.
Monthly KPI Dashboard - What to Track
- New patients scheduled (monthly)
- New patient production (monthly)
- Total practice production (monthly)
- Cost to acquire a new patient (CAC)
- Average revenue per patient (monthly and annualized)
- New patient scheduling lead time (days or weeks)
Action Plan: How to Put These KPIs to Work
- Build a simple monthly report from your practice management system.
- Compare new patient demand to scheduling capacity before changing marketing.
- Calculate CAC over a 6 to 12 month window to avoid short-term distortions.
- Estimate 12-month revenue per new patient using total production data.
- Reverse engineer growth: desired new patients × CAC = required budget.
- Review monthly and adjust steadily, not emotionally.
Wrap-Up
Knowing these four KPIs, new patients scheduled, new patient production, total production, and cost to acquire a new patient, turns guesswork into a plan. These numbers reduce stress, clarify marketing performance, and give you control over growth.
Start tracking them this month. Small improvements compound quickly, and clarity around your numbers makes every decision easier, hiring, advertising, and how you shape your schedule. That clarity is freedom.