Park Column — Hygiene Visits / Hygienist-Day

SGA West · 56 live offices · FTE-normalized (visits ÷ hygienist days worked), from the PBI · vs a non-Park-Column baseline
Source: Gen4 PBI · May 2026 vs 2025 & YTD Jan–May · pulled 2026-06-10

On the FTE-correct metric — hygiene visits per hygienist per day — Park Column GP offices improved +1.9% YTD while comparable non-Park-Column offices slipped −0.6%: a +2.5pp relative edge. Encouraging, but attribution isn’t clean — the offices using the column most didn’t improve more than the dormant ones.

What this tells us

  • Normalize by hygienist, and a modest edge appears. Visits per hygienist-day (Nathan’s SGA East metric) strips out headcount — an office that added a 4th hygienist no longer looks busier just for it. On that basis Park Column GP rose +1.9% YTD vs the control’s −0.6%, a +2.5pp gap. May was roughly flat (−0.4pp).
  • Why this beats the per-office view. Measured per operating day, both cohorts rose ~+2.7% — but part of that was just more hygienists working. Per hygienist-day, the control actually declined slightly, so the rollout offices got more out of each hygienist relative to baseline.
  • But usage doesn’t explain the edge. If the column caused it, heavy reporters should lead. They don’t: regular reporters +1.2% YTD, occasional +0.2%, and dormant offices +5.4% — the highest. Correlation between usage and improvement is −0.14 (slightly negative). So the +2.5pp isn’t clearly the column at work.
  • The comparator is imperfect. Control offices run much higher absolute productivity (~7.9 vs ~5.9 visits/hygienist-day), so they’re a different population. The year-over-year change is the fair comparison, but a same-ROD matched-pairs cut would tighten it.
  • Net read. Cautiously positive on a per-FTE basis YTD, not yet a clean causal win. To confirm: drive consistent daily use, then re-measure; and get appointment-level (CDT) data to isolate the slots the column actually recovered — the gap SGA East flagged too.

The fuller picture

What the Park Column is meant to do. When an appointment isn’t confirmed ~24 hours out, the office moves it into a “park” column and backfills the freed slot — the goal is to stop losing hygiene chair time to broken appointments. If it works, a rollout office should get more completed hygiene visits out of each hygienist day than an office without the column.

Why per-hygienist, and why a baseline. Earlier we divided by office operating days, but that inflates the instant an office adds a hygienist (more visits spread over the same ~20 days). The correct normalization — and the one SGA East uses — is visits per hygienist-day: completed hygiene visits ÷ hygienist days worked. We then compared the 47 Park Column GP offices against the 24 Active GP West offices that never rolled out the column, same periods, as a difference-in-differences.

What we found. Per hygienist-day, Park Column GP went 5.83 → 5.94 YTD (+1.9%) while the control went 7.93 → 7.88 (−0.6%) — a +2.5pp relative edge; May was −0.4pp (flat). But splitting the rollout offices by how much they report shows no dose-response: regular +1.2%, occasional +0.2%, dormant +5.4%, correlation −0.14. A real column effect should show up most in the heavy users; here it doesn’t.

How to read it honestly. The +2.5pp YTD edge is genuine in the data but can’t be cleanly pinned on the column: usage doesn’t track improvement, and the control runs a structurally higher baseline (~7.9 vs ~5.9 visits/hygienist-day), so the two groups aren’t matched. Read the year-over-year change, not the levels. Without CDT-level appointment data we still can’t isolate the specific appointments the column recovered.

Bottom line. On the FTE-correct metric, Park Column offices edged the baseline by +2.5pp YTD — a more hopeful read than the per-office view — but the lack of any usage dose-response keeps it short of proof. Confirm it with consistent daily use plus appointment-level data, and a same-ROD matched control.

GP cohort — hygiene visits/hygienist-day, year over year

47 Park Column GP offices. Gray = last year (2025), gold = this year (2026). Volume-weighted (Σ hygiene visits ÷ Σ hygienist days worked). Bars from zero — change is modest (~2% YTD).

Park Column vs baseline — did rollout offices outpace everyone else?

47 Park Column GP offices vs 24 comparable non-Park-Column Active GP West offices. Same metric, same periods. Gray = last year (2025), gold = this year (2026).

Does using it matter? VpD by reporting intensity

Park Column GP offices split by daily-form submissions (a usage proxy), vs the non-Park-Column control. If the column drove throughput, regular reporters should clearly beat the control — they don’t.
CohortOffices YTD ’25YTD ’26YTD Δ May ’25May ’26May Δ
Office ROD May ’25 May ’26 May Δ YTD ’25 YTD ’26 YTD Δ
Click any row for the full office record. Δ = % change in hygiene visits per hygienist-day (FTE).

Hygiene VpD movement by ROD

Offices with PBI data (GP + perio). Navy bars = YTD ’26; gold line = YTD ’25.
RODOffices May ’25May ’26May Δ YTD ’25YTD ’26YTD Δ
Heidy Riall’s portfolio is entirely periodontics — the Park Column is not actively run there.

The question

Karen asked whether hygiene visits per day actually improved at the 56 SGA West offices that rolled out the Park Column — measured from the PBI, because the offices won’t keep the manual daily form (22% form compliance). This is the SGA West parallel to the SGA East risk-score readout.

Metric definition (FTE-normalized)

Hygiene Visits per Hygienist-Day = completed hygiene visits ÷ hygienist days worked, per office per period.

  • Completed hygiene visits[Completed Visits] filtered to providers where User Type = "HYG".
  • Hygienist days worked[Work Days] filtered to User Type = "HYG": the FTE denominator. This normalizes for headcount — an office that added a hygienist (3 in ’25 → 4 in ’26) no longer looks busier just for the extra body. Matches SGA East’s “Appointments ÷ Days Worked”.
  • Cohort numbers are volume-weighted: Σ visits ÷ Σ hygienist-days across the cohort, not an average of office ratios.
  • Note: an earlier cut divided by office operating days, which inflates when headcount grows — superseded by this per-hygienist metric.

Periods

May 2026 vs May 2025 (last year), and YTD Jan–May 2026 vs YTD Jan–May 2025. Park Column went live Oct/Nov 2025, so YTD captures pre- and post-launch on the 2026 side.

Source

Gen4 / SGA West Power BI dataset (Appointments + Providers + Date), queried directly via Service Principal. 120 West locations available; the 56 live Park Column offices were matched by practice name to the PBI location dimension.

Baseline (control group)

To separate the Park Column from network-wide trends, we ran the identical per-hygienist-day metric for the 27 Active GP West offices that never rolled out the column (24 with usable PBI data) over the same periods. The Park-Column-minus-control gap is a difference-in-differences: if the column worked, rollout offices would beat the control. YTD, Park Column GP rose +1.9% while the control slipped −0.6% — a +2.5pp edge; in May the two were about even (−0.4pp). Caveat: the control runs a higher absolute level (~7.9 vs ~5.9 visits/hygienist-day), so it’s an imperfect comparator — read the change, not the levels.

Usage tiers

Within the 47 GP rollout offices we used the Implementation Tracker’s per-office daily-form submission count as a usage proxy and split into Regular reporters (10+), Occasional (1–9), and Dormant (0). On the per-hygienist-day metric the tiers show no dose-response — regular +1.2%, occasional +0.2%, dormant +5.4% YTD — and the Pearson correlation between submissions and YTD change is −0.14 (slightly negative). A strict “80%+ compliant” split was not usable — only 1 of 56 offices clears that bar. Caveat: submissions imperfectly proxy actual column use; if the column worked, heavy users should lead, and they don’t — which is why the +2.5pp cohort edge can’t be cleanly attributed to the column.

Coverage & exclusions

  • 47 GP offices — the core Park Column cohort; this is the real test.
  • 6 perio offices (Heidy Riall’s portfolio) — shown separately; per Scheduling Optimization, perio teams aren’t actively using the Park Column.
  • 3 offices excluded — no usable PBI hygiene data: MCP Salinas (perio, no completed-visit facts), DDM Bloomington (no facts under this entity — production appears to roll up under DDM Apple Valley), ACR LDC (PBI entity unresolved — “ACR Lawrence” carries no 2025/26 visits).

Read it carefully

Hygiene VpD moves for reasons beyond the Park Column (provider staffing, demand, schedule template). This shows whether throughput moved in the right direction in the rollout offices — it is not a clean attribution of the column alone. Same caveat flagged for SGA East: without CDT-level appointment data we can’t yet prove the office moved the right appointments.