Ways to Measure Success in Your Practice: Healthcare KPIs

It’s almost the end of the year. Are the goals for your practice achieved?  If not, maybe it’s time to go back to basics and plan out what went wrong and how to move forward.

Whether you’re setting goals for a new year or catching up on existing ones, it’s crucial to consider healthcare KPIs, key performance indicators that can help you track progress towards better patient outcomes, engagement, and retention. It could be either better patient outcomes, better engagement with your patients, or better patient retention. Perhaps it is increasing the efficiency of your staff, increased revenue or plans of expansion. Setting your goals is never a walk in the park. You need to figure out what your priorities should be to get you from point A to point B. To understand where your practice stands, begin by identifying key healthcare KPIs:

• Total Visit – How many patients am I seeing? 
• Charges per Visit – What are my average charges per visit? 
• Payment per Visit – What am I getting paid per visit on average? 
• A/R (account receivable) – Are my claims getting paid in a timely manner? 

Once you have a baseline understanding of your current status, you can set SMART goals:

• Specific,
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

So how do you do that? When setting SMART goals, consider how healthcare KPIs like capacity, evaluation vs discharges, and conversion rate can provide the data to track whether your goals are on track. 

Key Healthcare KPIs to Track for Practice Growth and Success

• Capacity – What is a reasonable goal of appointments per day for my therapists to see?  
• Evaluations vs Discharges – Am I bringing in more patients than I’m discharging
• Arrival/Cancellation Rate – How do you increase the number of patients who attend their scheduled appointments and improve patient retention? 
• Active Patients without Future Appointments – Are my patients completing their prescribed plan of care and then being discharged appropriately? 
• Weekly Frequency – Are my patients being scheduled for and attending their visits as they are prescribed? 
• Conversion Rate – How do you convert more of my referrals into patients? 

When referring to the metrics, you must assess your team on how they can impact your business. Every member should be responsible for keeping up with the goals set.

For instance, increasing your visit totals can be archived by having satisfied patients who understand their role in their health and feel engaged. 

Increasing retention is often considered a “front desk” metric, so many practices instruct their front desk to set the next appointment up before a patient leaves the office. This is effective but not enough. Your entire staff can help you achieve this goal.  

If the therapist works with the patient at the eval to explain the course of treatment and why they are prescribing the visit frequency and duration that they are, the patient is more likely to feel engaged in their treatment. 

When a patient feels more engaged, they are more likely to attend visits as scheduled.  Your billing staff or third-party biller can impact your patient attendance as well.  If your medical billing team, or a specialized physical therapy billing service, follows up on claims in a timely manner and bills and collects accurately, the patient is less likely to drop out of treatment due to a surprise bill.   

If the clinic management focuses on hiring employees who fit the company culture and are dedicated to making the clinic an inviting and welcoming space, it is more likely that your practice will be successful.  Patients appreciate an office with very little turnover, they feel comfortable when they see the same faces at their appointments.