Many dentists know what their practice produces each month, but fewer understand how much value their existing patient base generates each year. Annual patient value, or APV, can reveal how efficiently a practice operates, how dependent it is on patient volume, and where opportunities exist to improve profitability without simply adding more patients.
In this episode, Kirk Behrendt talks with Christina Byrne, Director of Coaching at ACT Dental, about how to calculate APV, what the number reveals about your business model, and how comprehensive care, service mix, insurance participation, and patient retention can influence it. Learn how to use APV to evaluate the health of your practice and make incremental improvements over time—listen to Episode 1102 of The Best Practices Show!
Main Takeaways:
- Annual patient value is calculated by dividing collections from the most recent rolling 12 months by the current active patient count.
- APV helps show how efficiently a practice generates collections from its existing patient base.
- A high-volume, low-profit-per-patient model generally requires more patients, appointments, team capacity, and operational infrastructure.
- A lower-volume, higher-profit-per-patient model can allow a practice to spend more time with patients and provide more comprehensive treatment.
- Comprehensive exams, complete treatment planning, periodontal diagnosis, long-term planning, and a broader hygiene service mix can help increase APV.
- Improving APV does not require an immediate jump to a specific benchmark, and practices can set smaller quarter-over-quarter improvement goals.
- APV is an outcome that reflects factors including comprehensive care, case acceptance, service mix, fee strategy, and patient retention.
Episode Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Metric Mondays and annual patient value.
01:00 Christina Byrne joins Kirk to discuss why APV matters.
02:35 How to calculate annual patient value.
03:20 What APV reveals about an existing patient base.
04:50 Why APV can indicate practice efficiency and comprehensive care.
06:50 Production versus the efficiency of the business model.
07:15 High-volume, low-profit-per-patient practices.
09:15 Low-volume, higher-profit-per-patient practices.
11:00 Insurance adjustments and their impact on the business model.
13:00 How write-offs, overhead, and production interact.
14:35 Working backward from a collection goal using APV.
18:02 Comprehensive care strategies that can raise APV.
22:37 How to calculate APV and set incremental goals.
25:00 Business model and KPI analysis resources mentioned in the episode.
25:45 Episode wrap-up
Guest Bio:
Christina Byrne is the Director of Operations at ACT Dental, where she oversees coaching alignment, system development, and operational consistency across practices nationwide. She works closely with dental teams to help them build scalable systems that improve predictability, accountability, and long-term practice performance. In this episode, Christina references ACT Dental resources including the Analyzing Existing Systems document, the master systems checklist, and the systems and checklist support guide available through the Best Practices Association.
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