Vijay Sikka is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sikka Software Corpration. He is a healthcare informatics expert with more than 20 years of software development and quality experience including large scale projects with National Institutes of Health, Glaxo Smith Kline, Roche and UCSF affiliates. Learn more about him and his company at www.sikkasoftware.com.

Vijay Sikka

	Sikka Software is a twelve-year-old company in the dental industry that provides apps to optimize the dental businesses. In this article, Sikka Software President and CEO Vijay Sikka outlines a recent study examining the average patient cost per practice.

	We are noticing in over 13,000 opt-in dental practices in the U.S. that average patient cost per practice is increasing this year compared to any of the past few years. 

More from Sikka Software: Dental fees broken down by geographic region

	This is a very interesting trend and represents more confidence among the dentists in providing better service, facilities, materials and care to the patients. It could also signify maturing of patient quality requirements and better material requirements and dentists complying with that to retain patients.

More from Sikka Software: Current trends in dental implants

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Sikka Software is a twelve-year-old company in the dental industry that provides apps to optimize the dental businesses. In this article, Sikka Software President and CEO Vijay Sikka outlines a recent study examining the average patient cost per practice.

Exploring average patient cost per practice

 reviewed U.S. states and identified those where practices are doing the most number of specific procedures, including 

American Dental Association CDT code book

, these are procedures in the D3000 to D3999 range. Sikka found Nevada, Louisiana, Kentucky, Utah, Alaska and Idaho lead in that group.

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Average endodontics procedure quantity for the last 12 months plotted on U.S. states from more than 12,000 practices:

Distribution of endodontics procedure quantity (data for last 12 months) practices In percentage as compared to total dental practices:

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According to Dictionary.com, orthodontics is defined as follows:

Orthodontics procedure codes are defined in ADA CDT from D8010 to D8999.

When Sikka plotted the state heat map, for orthodontics, it saw some very interesting trends.  Please note the state marked with the gray box is one for which Sikka did not have a representative-enough dataset. Arizona and Louisiana lead in procedures, followed by Michigan, Texas, Nevada, Kansas and New Mexico.

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Average orthodontics procedure quantity for the last 12 months:

Distribution of orthodontics procedure quantity (data for last 12 months) practices In percentage as compared to total dental practices:

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Implants are defined by Dictionary.com as follows:

According to the ADA CDT code book, implant procedure codes are from D6000 to D6199. New Mexico and Oklahoma top this group with Colorado very close behind. 

Related reading: How to increase success of implants through a digital workflow

Average implants procedure quantity for the last 12 months:

Distribution of implants procedure quantity (data for last 12 months) practices In percentage as compared to total dental practices:

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Vijay Sikka is the president and chief executive officer of the 10-year-old Sikka Software Corporation. Under Sikka's leadership, Sikka Software Corporation has become the one of the premier cloud-based business analytics and optimization platform company and a SaaS-based market leader in the dental industry with a growing presence in the U.S. veterinary, optometry and audiology industries. Sikka Software Corporation has 12,250 installations, is experiencing strong growth and will be looking for investments to fund that growth.
	
	Sikka is a healthcare informatics expert with more than 25 years of software development and quality experience, including large-scale projects with National Institutes of Health, Glaxo Smith Kline, Roche and UCSF affiliates. In 1996, Sikka founded IBrain Software, Inc., a business intelligence company that competed with Business Objects, Cognos, etc. and served as IBrain CEO until its acquisition in 1998 by Entigen Corporation, which became part of Roche. In 1999, he co-founded Bodha.com, which later was acquired by Peregrine. Sikka's book, Maximizing ROI in Software Development, was published in 2004 by Taylor and Francis International and is available for purchase from Amazon and other book stores in hardcopy and for eBook readers.  Sikka is a speaker and a continuing education registered provider in California.

 Sikka Software Corporation reviewed U.S. states and identified those where practices are doing the most number of specific procedures, including endodontics, orthodontics and implants.

Sikka Software reviews dental procedures by state

In a recent study by the American Dental Association (ADA), the financial state of the American dental industry appears bleak.

According to the study conducted by ADA’s Health Policy Resources Center, the average annual net income for general practitioners has dropped more than 12% since 2006. The considerable decline in net income, which started several years before the financial crisis in 2008, is highly attributed to the declining utilization of dental care by the adult population.

As a consequence, nearly 40% of all dentists in a national survey from 2011 reported they are “not busy enough.” The declining utilization of dental care, coupled with the austere economic climate, forces dentists to find new ways to improve the financial and clinical performance of their practices.

In an effort to become more cost-efficient, attract new patients, and identify new business opportunities, more and more dentists are implementing Business Intelligence and Data Analytics software solutions in their practices. These tactics have proven to be highly successful in many cases. This data revolution will lead to a greater focus on real-time monitoring of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), business analytics, and national benchmarking.  

Business intelligence and data analytics in the dental industry 

Business intelligence and data analytics solutions, which are used in a multitude of industries, analyze the company’s internal data using tools and techniques such as reporting, performance monitoring, data mining, and benchmarking in an effort to improve decision-making, increase utilization, and identify new business opportunities.

In recent years, the American healthcare industry is increasingly turning to business intelligence and data analytics. As a result, medical organizations have been able to improve clinical quality and effectiveness, reduce healthcare costs, and make more well-informed decisions. Currently, we are observing the same trend in the dental industry as dentists have been able to achieve sustainable financial and clinical improvement by implementing software solutions that extract and analyze data from the clinic’s practice management system (PMS).

The business intelligence and data analytics solutions, which utilizes data from the PMS to provide valuable insights and advice about the clinic’s performance, encompasses tools and techniques such as business analytics, reporting, dashboards, and national benchmarking. For example, these solutions allow the dentist to monitor (in real time) hundreds of different KPIs such as Accounts Receivable, Gross Production, Number of New Patients by Referral Source, and Gross Production per Visit.

Additionally, the solutions provide valuable financial, clinical, and administrative reports such as profit and loss statements, return on investment, trend analysis, recommendations, and procedure analysis. Lastly, dentists are able to do real-time clinical and financial benchmarking with practitioners in other specialties or geographical regions, which could help the clinic to identify areas of improvement.

These business intelligence solutions are also able to greatly improve a clinic’s collections by focusing on areas such as fee optimization, reactivating inactive patients, and minimizing no-shows. For example, these solutions use vital inputs from the clinic such as procedure revenue, frequency, and time units along with external data such as census demographics and cost of living to optimize the fee schedule.

Analytics improve business performance and clinical effectiveness  

In an effort to gain a competitive advantage in today’s dental industry, which is characterized by declining utilization of dental care and a dismal economic climate, dentists are increasingly implementing business intelligence and data analytics solutions. These solutions enhance the clinic’s financial performance and allow dentists to gain control over profit margins, overhead, and performance. For example, research indicates that business intelligence and data analytics solutions can increase a clinic’s revenue by more than $50,000.

In addition to improving the financial performance, business intelligence solutions can also help the clinical performance by allowing the dentist to spend less time on administrative duties and more time treating patients.

Dentists implement Business Intelligence solutions in an effort stay ahead in the ever more competitive dental industry

Performance monitoring, business reporting, data mining, and benchmarking

 Reduce costs, improve decision-making, and increase efficiency

If you are interested in using a business intelligence tool for your practice, you can download Dental Practice Monitorâ¢ for free from Sikka Software. It integrates seamlessly with all major practice practice-management systems and all versions and installs with a few clicks (

) and shows you a basic set of KPIs that you can use immediately.

You can also purchase Sikka Software’s most advanced business intelligence solution called Dental Practice OptimizerÂ® which includes the Fee Optimizer Fee Schedule OptimizerÂ®.



Editor's Note: This article was co-written by Vijay Sikka, CEO Sikka Software and Gustaf Savin, MSc.