16
Critical Measures of
Your Practice Growth
As healthcare continues to evolve toward the "totally digital practice," one of the marvels of this technology is the ability to harness vast amounts of information in remarkable new ways. This week, we’ll look at some of the critical numbers you should be tracking to direct your practice growth. Along the way, you will see how SpectraSoft Appointments™ can act as the data hub that collects and organizes all the information you will need.
It would take hours to track these statistics on a computer spreadsheet or an old-fashioned paper and pencil; but using the Reports feature in Appointments,™ you’ll find the entire process takes as little as 15 minutes.
Let’s start with a few important measures of your overall practice growth and profitability.
1. Patient visits. The most obvious indicator of your practice growth is the number of patients you see each month. Enter last month’s patient total in your spreadsheet. If you are a SpectraSoft Appointments™ user, simply click on Reports > Statistical Reports > Company Totals to get this number under the "Total Clients" column. (By reviewing this each month, you can immediately identify any drop in patient traffic and take corrective action.
2. New patients. New patients are the lifeblood of any successful practice, so you will want to track that your pipeline of new patients is growing steadily each month. In the Company Totals report (see above) refer to "Clients Scheduled" under the "New Clients" column.
Referrals
If your practice relies on referrals for most of its business, these critical measures are perhaps the most important indicators of the direction your practice is heading.
3. Total physician referrals. By tracking your referrals each month, you will know quickly if there is a problem with your referrer network. Appointments™ not only tracks your referrals, but breaks down the number of referrals you receive from each physician, so that you can instantly tell if there is a sudden dropoff that you may need to address with a phone call or note. To track your physician referrals click on Reports > Referral Patterns > Primary Physician.
4. Percent of referred visits by primary physician. Whether you’re considering a referral follow-up program or simply putting together your Christmas gift list, it’s important to know just how valuable each referral source is to you. Perhaps the best measure of this is the percentage of patient visits generated by each of your referrers. In the Primary Physician referral report (see above) refer to the Total Appointments percentage column.
5. Total referrals by source. Even professional marketers often find it difficult to track the results of advertising and other marketing methods. Luckily, Apppintments™ makes this analysis a breeze. You can see exactly how many patients and visits were generated by each of your marketing methods by clicking on Reports > Referral Patterns > Referral Source.
6. "Physician Dependence Ratio." Perhaps your goal is to reduce your dependence on referrers through other marketing methods. If so, you can track the percent of all your appointments that were generated by referring physicians. Simply compare the number of visits for the month generated by referring physicians (from the Primary Physician referral report, see #3 above) to your total number of visits for the month (from your Company Totals, see #1 above).
7. Referrals by zip code. By mapping your referrals by zip code, you can quickly identify the areas in your community where you need to find a referrer. You can find a local zip code map in many yellow page books, or you can get a list of zip codes within a given radius of your locations at http://zip.langenberg.com. To track the number of your referred patients by zip code, click on Reports > Referral Patterns > Zip Code.
Nature of Practice
Now that you know the state of your referrals, what can you tell potential referrers that will encourage them to choose you? Demonstrating a unique, statistical understanding of your practice – including the types of cases you see most often and the outcomes you achieve – is a powerful way to gain the confidence of potential referrers. For example, "Yeah, we do a lot of whiplash cases," is not nearly as impressive as "Yes, 57% of the cases we handle involve whiplash, and we’ve discharged 60% of these patients in five visits or less."
8. Number of diagnoses. This report shows you how many cases of a given type you handled. To access these numbers for your practice as a whole, click on Reports > Statistical Reports > Diagnosis Summary. (Note: To get a breakdown of diagnoses by practitioner, click on Reports > Statistical Reports > Diagnosis Usage.)
9. Average visits per diagnosis. You can track how many visits were required to discharge patients with a given diagnosis by clicking on Reports > Statistical Reports > Outcome Summary.
Cancellations and No-Shows
Every cancellation and no-show represents lost revenue for your practice. However, it’s important to understand the difference between a cancellation and a no-show, and the methods that can reduce each of these numbers. Appointments™ makes this easy by tracking cancels and no-shows separately, along with the patients’ stated reasons for each.
10. Percentage of cancellations and no-shows. You can track both of these statistics in the Company Totals Report (see #1 above). It is not unusual for a practice to have a combined cancel/no-show rate of 15%, although this can vary dramatically based on many variables, including type of practice, patient demographics and the quality of the reminder program a practice has in place.
11. Cancel/no-show ratio. If this ratio is low (few cancels, many no-shows), this may indicate that you need to work harder at your appointment reminder program (see last week’s article on implementing an effective appointment reminder campaign). If your cancel/no-show ratio is high (many cancels, few no-shows), you may be making it too easy for patients to cancel. Consider reducing mentions in your patient communications about how to cancel, or tightening your cancellation policy to charge fees for last-minute cancels.
12. Reasons for cancellation. You can track the reasons why patients cancel their appointments with the Cancellation Summary (Reports > Statistical Reports > Cancellation Summary). This may help you identify certain corrective measures such as creating a letter or brochure to reduce fear of a procedure, or adopting patient-friendly equipment and treatment methods. You can also determine if a certain practitioner in your practiuce is experiencing higher-than-normal absentee rates by clicking on Reports > Statistical Reports > Resource Summary.
13. Reasons for no-show. Many people ask why Appointments™ requires the "reason" field to be filled in for no-shows, when the patient is not there to give a reason. This is done to encourage an immediate follow-up call to the patient. You may not get an accurate answer from the patient (usually an "I forgot") but you will increase the likelihood of rebooking the patient and getting them back on their prescribed regimen.
One way to quickly increase practice revenue is to get a better return on your investment in staff and equipment. Again, Appointments™ makes this very easy.
14. Relative productivity of staff. You can compare the productivity of your practitioners and techs by with the Resource Summary (see #12 above). Then consider incentives, closer supervision or other solutions to bring slower-producing staff up to speed. (The Resource Summary also lets you track the usage of rooms and equipment, and may help you find under-utilized resources that can be emphasized in your future marketing.
15. Average wait time. Wait times are a key factor in patient satisfaction and a good measure of overall office productivity. You can track this statistic by clicking on Reports > Statistical Reports > Arrived vs Seen Comparison. If patients are consistently experiencing long waits, you should consider either increasing the length of your appointment time slots (Preferences > System > Time Slot Length) or investing in new staff, incentives and/or equipment that will allow you to treat patients faster.
16. Late arrivals. The Arrived vs Seen Comparison (see #15 above) also lets you track late patients. Late arrivals can drag down office productivity. Consistently high "late rates" are another indication that you may need to work harder on your appointment reminder campaign.
Conclusion
As you track each of these measures for a few months, you will quickly gain a much better understanding of your practice. You will have the added insight you need to justify new hires or equipment investments…implement new patient communication programs…or institute corrective staff policies. Let us know how you’re doing and if this article was helpful by emailing PMN at newsletter@ssoft.com.
