Why do you need to keep statistics in your practice? The reason is because it’s the best way to know what’s going on in your practice.
You require a new patient to fill out paperwork, ask questions during a consultation and exam, to find out what’s going on with their health? You should track the health of your practice too.
Along with tracking the health of your practice, keeping stats will…
The statistics below are 7 areas you should review monthly. In fact, it won’t hurt to review weekly if you really want to determine how your practice is doing.
#1. Number of new patients
A new patient is anyone who comes in and completes an exam. Only count them as a new patient when they’ve paid you for the first visit or they’re a free exam but they’ve scheduled to come back.
Do not include persons that come in for a free consultation and leave.
#2. Average number of visits a new patient stays
This is often referred to as your “retention” or “PVA”. PVA stands for “patient visit average.”
To measure it for a full month, take all your visits that month and divide it by the number of new patients you had during the same month.
#3. Average dollars collected per patient
To figure this you take your total collections for the month, and divide it by the number of new patients you had during that month.
#4. Conversion rate of new patients to care
To find this number, take the number of patients who started care during a month, then divide by the total new patients you had that month.
#5. Case average
Case average is a number that represents how much money that patient will generate over time in your practice. Take your collections for the month (or quarterly, yearly) and divide by the number of new patients during the month. Or, take your PVA times your $/visit. So take #2 and #3 above and multiply them together.
#6. ROI for your marketing
ROI stands for “return on investment.” To figure it, simply take the amount of income (gross collections) your marketing brought back to your practice and divide it by what you spent on that marketing.
To accurately measure your ROI, ask the patient (either on your intake forms or verbally) where they heard about your office. Using your software, track the new patient sources. Regularly go back and update the ROI, because it will keep increasing as the patient (or insurance) pays for their care over time.
Also, measure every type of advertising and marketing you do…newspaper ads, yellow pages, internet leads, sending $5 Starbucks cards to new patients with a stick letter, website costs, direct mail, money mailers, etc, etc.
#7. Net profit
To figure your net profit, take your total collections minus your overhead and personal perks backed out. If you have a car through your office, pay your health insurance, etc, back all that out to get a real picture.
And take out your salary too. You want to find out how much your practice brings in for you overall and compare it to previous months and years. You can add back your salary and perks later for accounting and tax purposes.
Below are additional stats that are necessary to keep so you can calculate the numbers in the top 7. These others, like collections and charges, tell you a lot about the health of your practice.
- visits
- charges
- overall collections
- collections by insurance
- % of money collected compared to charged
- dollars charged per service
- Money spent on marketing
- number of conversions
- new patient sources
Last but not least…create a weekly and monthly spreadsheet listing all of the stats is this article. Once you have this formatted it will only take minutes per day for you or your staff to enter the numbers at the end of each day.
