RCM Process BENCHMARKING

See how your practice compares

Use our RCM process assessment to determine how efficient your billing practices are and to learn actionable ways to improve.

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RCM BENCHMARKING

What is dental RCM benchmarking?

Dental RCM (revenue cycle management) benchmarking is the practice of measuring how efficiently a practice or DSO converts completed treatment into collected revenue. It then compares those numbers against what similar-sized organizations achieve. It's the difference between assuming your billing process is fine and actually knowing where cash is getting stuck: in aging claims, in patient balances that never get collected, or in manual work that ties up staff hours without moving the needle on collections.

Most practices track production and collections at a high level, but few break down where revenue cycle friction actually lives. A benchmarking assessment is built to surface this.

The metrics that actually predict RCM health

A handful of KPIs tell you almost everything about the health of a dental revenue cycle:

  • Days in A/R — the average time it takes to convert a completed procedure into collected cash. Lower is better; sustained increases usually point to breakdowns in claims follow-up or patient billing.
  • Net collection rate — the percentage of collectible revenue (after contractual write-offs) that actually gets collected, a more honest efficiency measure than gross collections.
  • Aging A/R over 90 days — the share of outstanding balances that have gone stale and become dramatically harder to collect.
  • Cost to collect — the staff time and overhead spent per dollar collected. High-maturity practices spend a fraction of what low-maturity practices spend to collect the same revenue.
  • First-pass claim acceptance rate — the percentage of insurance claims paid without rework, which otherwise drains front-office capacity.
  • Patient-responsibility collection rate — how much of what patients (not insurance) owe actually gets collected, and how long it takes.

How Pearly's assessment works

  1. Share your current process. A quick intake on your patient RCM process.
  2. Get a maturity read. Pearly's RCM Maturity Model places your practice on a spectrum from largely manual, reactive billing to fully automated, proactive revenue cycle operations.
  3. Walk through it live. Upon request, a Pearly RCM expert can then review your results and points to the specific, actionable changes most likely to move your numbers.
What counts as a good days-in-A/R number for a dental practice?
It varies by practice size and payer mix, but generally, the lower and more stable your days in A/R, the healthier your revenue cycle. Practices with heavy manual billing processes tend to run meaningfully higher than practices with automated balance qualification and patient billing.
How is RCM maturity actually measured?
Pearly's RCM Maturity Model evaluates a practice or DSO across the core revenue cycle functions — patient billing, payment plans, and collections workflows — and places it on a spectrum from reactive/manual to proactive/automated based on how those functions run today.
Is the benchmarking assessment actually free?
Yes — there's no cost and no obligation. It's designed to give you a clear read on your billing efficiency whether or not you ever move forward with Pearly.
How long does the assessment take?
The initial intake takes a few minutes; the full walkthrough with a product expert is typically a 20–30 minute call.
Is this assessment only for DSOs, or does it work for single-location practices too?
Both. The underlying metrics — days in A/R, net collection rate, aging A/R — apply the same way whether you're a single practice or a 100-location DSO; only the benchmarks you're compared against adjust for scale.