Guarantee your cash flow and your sanity; spot check your FA's.
There's no worse feeling than watching your Accounts Receivable column gain weight. If you've struggled with collections during the tougher economy and you're not using a validated Financial Agreement form, you've got a great opportunity to make significant changes in the way you get paid by implementing one. If you already use a form that's court admissible, be sure it's being used with every eligible patient. Most of my clients set a floor limit for a written, signed FA that's in the neighborhood of a major procedure. That way, you won't be adding an extra step to hygiene appointments or one or two surface filling appointments, but you will have a legal fallback position for the costliest of the services you provide. Randomly pull your paper charts (if you have those) and look to be sure written FA forms are stored until the patient's balance is paid off. They can be shredded once that milestone has been reached. Charts without signed FA's signify that your admin team needs more support to implement them. Find out what the holdup is and collaborate on making Financial Agreements a priority. If you have digital charts, I still recommend holding on to paper versions of your signed FA. I know, I know, you're ready for the digital age, but, in litigation, the judge may not be. Valid paper documents leave no question of the patient's understanding or consent should you get into court action. File those in a file cabinet somewhere, in reverse order, and shred them as they are paid. You'll be glad you did. 

Twice a year, check your hygiene recare effectiveness.
Most of the practices that come to me looking for help are missing the majority of their hygiene opportunity. It's the driver of the business, so giving your hygiene department a regular check-up is urgent. To evaluate how you're doing, start by getting an accurate count of your active patients. You can do this in Dentrix by going to the Office Manager, and choosing the Analysis button from the menu. Choose "Practice"; then click on "Reports". Uncheck every option on the pop-up box but "Patient Summary". Batch or print this. Your correct patient count will be listed at the top of the page. If you multiply that number by two, you'll have how many hygiene appointments are possible in a year's time in your office. Obviously, not every one of your patients will come back twice per calendar year, but if you improve your hygiene retention rates, your business *will* prosper. Divide your possible number of appointments by your total number of 00120's performed (the periodic exam) and you'll have a good idea of what percentage of your patients are being served in hygiene. (You can find these in the same window of Dentrix, by choosing "Production Summary" and unchecking the "By Category" box. You'll get a detail of every procedure performed in the date range you enter.) If your number is smaller than 75%, it's time to ramp up your preappointing and reactivation efforts. Like, yesterday!