Set measurable goals for practice growth with Key Performance Indicators

Some chiropractors may chose the wrong Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to measure the success of their clinics. Among the most frequently used metrics are charge growth, payment growth, patient visit growth, pay per visit, referrals per patient, no-shows, no future appointments, in addition to patient loyalty, and service quality. With this many options to choose from, the question begs just how do you select the right KPI? But first let’s take a look at how not to measure success for your clinic. Two of the most frequent business mistakes made by chiropractic clinic owners and managers when selecting a KPI: Measurement of the wrong thing Focus on the right things but in the wrong order If you make such mistakes, the statistic you rely on to assess your office performance is disconnected from your overall objective. Consequently, your strategic and resource allocation decisions may not support your goal, driving poor decisions and undermining performance. To determine cause and effect productively, always start with two key questions: What’s your objective? What factors help you achieve that objective? If your objective is to increase value per visit, then you know that higher charges may result in higher payments. What procedures can you deliver to maximize your charges? What Point of Sale items can you offer your patients? How much added revenue can you expect from Point of Sale items? If, on the other hand, your objective is to increase the number of visits, then you know that having more new patients will result in more visits. What can you do to increase your exposure to referring doctors and to get your patients to make patient referrals? Can you help organize and participate in community events? Can you stay in touch with your patients via email or use a patient portal? What can you do to instill a sense of expertise and office teamwork in the eyes of your patients? Next, to determine the right metrics, we need to understand the cause-and-effect relationships between your objective and possible actions. If your objective is to improve patient satisfaction you need to understand its sources. If you do not understand what improves patient satisfaction, how can you decide what you need to measure? Intuitively, we rush to explain things, to find an easy cause-and-effect link in every situation. So our intuition makes it too easy for us to assign and measure the wrong cause to an outcome. To be a useful and reliable link between cause and effect, our statistics need to be both persistent and predictive. Persistency means that an outcome of an action is independent of its timing. Predictability means that the value of the cause predicts the value of the effect. Statisticians use the coefficient of correlation to quantify persistence and predictability: the closer the coefficient is to 1 or -1, the more persistent and predictive the link is. The closer the coefficient is to zero, the less related the two parameters are.

Chiropractic Growth Metrics | How to select the right statistics?

Improve your KPI with Genesis Chiropractic Software and improve Practice Management.

Picking the right Key Performance Indicator (KPI) consists of a process that everyone involved in practice management needs to understand in order to effectively track, manage, and modify the cause-and-effect relationships that are critical for your chiropractic clinic’s performance and growth. The metrics practice owners use most often to measure, manage, and predict results, include both quantitative and qualitative aspects. Charges, payments, patient visits, pay per visit, referrals per patient, no-shows, and no future appointments are the most frequently used quantitative KPIs. Qualitative KPIs typically include patient loyalty and service quality. We distinguish four stages for managing your KPIs: Stage 1: Define your main objective This step is essential because it guides your capital allocation.  In a free market system, the most logical objective is creating economic value.  It’s determined by the value of your practice, which is often determined as a one year value of your gross income.  But such a simplistic way to value the practice discounts patient referrals and the growth potential. An alternative way to define the practice value would be to add up the values of all of its patients. It requires a methodology to compute patient’s value, that takes into account an average visit value, average number of visits, number of expected referrals, and loyalty. Stage 2: Develop a theory of cause-and-effect presumably driving the main objective:  Generally, such a theory focuses on sales and costs. For your practice, it should be earnings growth and cash flow growth.  They depend on your patient visit growth, new patient growth, and average pay per visit, as well as non-financial measures, such as patient satisfaction, patient loyalty, and perception of teamwork and expertise.  If you determine that patient satisfaction is indeed persistently and predictively linked to revenue and cash flow growth, then you can start figuring out which specific staff activities drive patient satisfaction. Stage 3: Identify specific activities your staff can perform to help achieve the main objective: Your goal is to maximize your main objective by applying skill to the controllable measures that are linked persistently and predictably to your main objective. So, if you determine that a satisfied patient makes more referrals and that patient satisfaction depends on the perception of teamwork and expertise, then you can use this information to determine specific opportunities and phrases your staff can use to improve your patients’ perception of teamwork and expertise. Stage 4: Evaluate your statistics: The drivers of value change over time and so must our KPIs. For instance if demographics of your patient base is changing or the insurance reimbursement rules are changing, you need to review the drivers of patient satisfaction or the set of physician skills you need in your practice to continue to drive your main objective. As the patient base becomes younger and more digitally savvy, your online patient portal and online patient education become important tools in driving patient satisfaction. By adjusting your selection of KPIs to the changes occurring at your chiropractic clinic you will be able to measure performance and growth more effectively.