To Be Successful, Track Your Numbers
FEATURE
Keeping Good Data Is Essential for Building a Successful Practice
Nancy Singleton
If someone were to ask you how many new patients visited your office last month, would you know? How about what you spent in marketing to acquire each patient? Would your staff know these numbers? If you and your staff aren’t on top of the numbers game, you aren’t going to be as successful in your practice as you could be. Keeping track of numbers in your business is like checking the numbers on your car’s dashboard to see if you need to slow down, get gas, or change the oil. When you check the temperature (a number!) outside, you know whether to wear a jacket, sandals, hat, or to bring an umbrella. Numbers matter! They help a business detennine which steps to take to be successful. So, while you may be inclined to take an emotional approach to evaluating your practice, be sure to take an objective look through the data as well.
The “Why”
In the early twentieth century, sociologist Elton Mayo conducted a series of experiments at Hawthorne Works, a Western Electric factory outside of Chicago. While the initial purpose of the experiments was to study the effect of the physical working conditions on productivity, he found that the workers’ productivity went up, simply by virtue of being observed. Think about that! Your numbers will go up precisely because you are paying attention to them. If employees know that their work is being monitored, their work will improve. This is known as the Hawthorne effect.
What to Know
There are basic numbers you need to know to be successful in your practice. The most important among them is the cost of your overhead. Knowing what you need to make each month to cover expenses is the first thing you need to do to keep your practice afloat. I’ll assume that this number is something with which you are familiar, since you must pay these bills regularly. Let’s talk about some of the other data that can detennine what you bring in each month (we will use data per month here, but you can certainly track data in other intervals that are useful, such as weekly, quarterly, and yearly). You can improve these numbers by tracking them.
Consider the following:
Number of office visits each month - How many people visit your office each month for one or more of the services you offer?
Division of income - How much do you make in cash versus insurance payments?
Dollar amount of services - How much do you collect from services rendered each month?
Services per visit - How much do you collect in services per visit? Figure out how much you’ve collected in services and divide this by the number of visits.
New patients - How many people do you see each month that are new to your practice?
Needed new patients - How many new patients do you need every month to ensure continued growth?
Collections - What is your total income each month? This can include cash, credit, insurance payments, or any other form of payment income.
Collections per visit - How much do you collect per visit? Calculate this by dividing the amount of collections by the number of visits.
PVA (patient visit average) - How well are you retaining patients? Divide your total number of visits by your number of new patients. This number should increase over time if you are continually marketing to attract new leads.
Case average - How much do patients spend in the time they are receiving treatment in your clinic? This is known as the “lifetime value of a patient.” Calculate this by dividing the collections amount by the number of new patients during your selected period.
Cost-per-visit - Divide your total monthly overhead by the number of office visits.
Kept appointments - What percentage of scheduled appointments did your patients keep?
New leads - How many prospective patients leads did you acquire? Where did those leads come from? Here, the staff should be able to gather some information, such as name, phone number, address, and which service the potential patient is interested in receiving. Even when people do not make an appointment, they should remain a “lead” that should be followed up by staff.
Converted leads - How many of the new leads were converted into patients?
Reactivated patients - Make sure that patients who cancel appointments, do not make a follow-up appointment when leaving, or fail to show up for an appointment do not fall by the wayside. Keep track of those people (and the number of patients who do that), so that staff can continually reach out to them to encourage wellness care.
A Couple of Reminders
Set goals and share them with your staff. I cannot emphasize that enough! You need to set goals to ensure that you’re able to cover your expenses and make the profit that you desire. Based on what we know about the Hawthorne effect, we know that tracking your numbers (and making sure your staff knows that these numbers are being tracked) can make a big difference to your level of success. When your staff knows that they’re being monitored, their performance will improve. They’ll want those numbers to go up! Because they are being observed, they will make more reminder calls, work harder to convert new leads into patients, and help you reach your goals.
This Is a Business
Though you became a chiropractor to help people and not to crunch numbers, you need to remember that a successful business is the vehicle you use in order to help patients. If your practice is thriving, you can help a lot of people; if your business fails, you help nobody. Thus, you need to collect data. If anything in your practice is worth doing, it’s also worth tracking. To be successful, figure out where your money comes from. See which insurance companies pay regularly. Figure out which ads provide a return on your investment, and where you should probably stop wasting money. Decide what is working for your practice and what needs attention. At first, you may find that tracking numbers takes a little work (and may even be painful, if the numbers are low), but over time, you’ll see how tracking the data helps grow your practice.
Nancy Singleton is a 1989 graduate of the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic Assistants. She has been consulting and helping doctors grow their practices for more than 25 years. She and her husband, Dr. Todd Singleton, teach chiropractors how to implement multiple cash systems into their existing practices. For more information, call 801-917-0900, e-mail contact'p SingletonSystems, com, or visit www.ArticlesByNa.ncySingleton, com.
