Using patient lifetime value to future-proof your dental practice
Abstract
Dental practices are a small business. Like any other business, they need cash flow management and financial planning to be viable, if not highly profitable. What a lot of practices may not realise is that they are sitting on a treasure trove of data to be used in more ways than plain accounting and financial forecasting. This paper focuses on longitudinal data, such as the timing of each patient's visits and the value of their treatments since joining the practice. It aims to show how such data can be used by practices to understand their patient base and make plans for the future development of the business. There are plenty of business metrics. Here, the focus is on one metric: patient lifetime value (PLV), derived from customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV is well established in retail and other sectors. This paper shows that patient appointment data can be used in methods adapted from CLV via the bespoke concept of PLV. The paper describes different approaches to calculating PLV, the advantages and disadvantages of each approach and the ways in which they can benefit a dental practice.
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Author's Biography
Rosie Pritchett received a bachelor of dental surgery from Queen Mary University of London in 2015. They have worked within a variety of clinical settings since graduation, including periods working abroad in Sweden and Australia. Their current role involves training within community dentistry, providing care to those who are unable to be seen in general dental practice. Rosie is interested in optimising dental practice via the use of data and emerging technologies.
Michail Tomaras is a software team leader with a long background in engineering. He has worked in a variety of industries in the private sector and has broad commercial knowledge. He is very interested in the ways strategy links to process and the long-term evolution of software systems.
Andrea Ahlemeyer-Stubbe is the owner of Data Mining and More, Director of Strategic Analytics at servicepro GmbH and former President of the European Network of Business and Industrial Statistics. She is co-author (with Shirley Coleman) of ‘Monetising Data—How to Uplift Your Business' and ‘A Practical Guide to Data Mining for Business and Industry’, as well as a frequent lecturer at various universities and a speaker at industry conferences.
Shirley Coleman is a business engagement statistician in the School of Maths, Statistics and Physics and a former President of the European Network of Business and Industrial Statistics. She is co-author (with Andrea Ahlemeyer-Stubbe) of ‘Monetising Data—How to Uplift Your Business' and ‘A Practical Guide to Data Mining for Business and Industry’. Her focus is on data science applications and she works with small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in knowledge exchange partnerships.
Citation
Pritchett, Rosie, Tomaras, Michail, Ahlemeyer-Stubbe, Andrea and Coleman, Shirley (2024, September 1). Using patient lifetime value to future-proof your dental practice. In the Applied Marketing Analytics: The Peer-Reviewed Journal, Volume 10, Issue 2. https://doi.org/10.69554/ZHDH9356.
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