Running a physical therapy clinic requires a lot of hard work and while you might be an awesome therapist, unless you are keeping track of business metrics and completing monthly, quarterly and annually reporting then your practice will not be successful. Since business, specifically reporting, is not something that many physical therapy schools focus on, here are some metrics and reports you will want to keep track of in your clinic:
1. Clinical Productivity
Why It Matters: No matter where you work, productivity for every therapist tends to be the single most important metric measured each week. The reason being is that by calculating clinical productivity for each therapist, it allows you to see how efficient everyone is being or if time management improvements can be made within the clinic. HelloNote allows you to track productivity, per each physical therapist, directly within their EMR system, all with the click of a button each week! If you are not using a documentation software, such as HelloNote, then to manually track this, productivity is determined by the number of “billable” activities a therapist completes in a work week divided by the number of hours that therapist worked that week.
2. Net Revenue Per Month
Why It Matters: Net revenue refers to the amount of money you collect each month rather than the amount you billed for. By keeping track of this metric, you are able to see how well your billing processes are doing and predict the net revenue of your clinic for future months. This also helps you to see where your company is headed, as far as growth, or if there are any unexpected rises or falls in a particular month. HelloNote allows you to complete an in-depth analysis of your clinic’s revenue each month, quarter and annually so that you can visually see how well your clinic is performing.
3. Cancellation Percentage
Why It Matters: As we have previously discussed in some of our blog posts, cancellations play a huge role in not only a therapist’s productivity, but also the productivity and successfulness of the clinic as a whole. Determining your clinic’s cancellation percentage each day, week, and month is critical to knowing how your clinic can improve and to see if any trends are occurring with specific patients and/or therapists. According to some sites, a good percentage to strive for is under 10%. If your cancellation percentage is above that, then you might need to dive deeper to determine specifics about the percentage.
4. Referral Metrics
Why It Matters: Especially in a private practice physical therapy business, referrals play a huge role in how well or poorly your business is doing. With that being said, it only makes sense that you would want to keep track of where you are receiving your referrals from and also what percentage of your referrals are converting into patients at your clinic. Here are 2 referral metrics you should be concerned about:
- Referral Source: By keeping track of the total number of referrals you are receiving, it is easier for you to be able to distinguish which of your marketing efforts are most effective. One of the best ways to do this is to keep track of the sources that send the most patients your way, with something as simple as a question of “Who referred you? Or where did you find us at?” on the initial paperwork.
- Conversion Percentage: A second metric you should be concerned about is your conversion percentage. Conversion percentage refers to the percentage of patients who become actual patients at your practice. While referrals are great and all, if the individuals being referred are not turning into patients at your clinic, then you are losing out on revenue.
5. Billing Metrics
Why It Matters: In the therapy world, billing is the thing that no one enjoys doing and it is often what must be addressed the most often because of the specific requirements from insurance companies which can often result in claims being denied. When assessing the efficiency of your billing processes and number of claims being paid, there are a few metrics and reports you should focus on. These include:
- Days in Receivable Outstanding (DRO): This measures the average amount of time required to collect charges from the financially responsible party, whether that be the insurance company or individual. As one article notes, this is important because the sooner you get paid, the more the payment is worth! Ideally you want your DRO at less than 35 days and if anything is in your 50+ days bucket, then that needs to be more closely looked at as it is cause for concern.
- Denial Rate: This metric is HUGE and will tell you the percentage of claims that are rejected by payors, more specifically insurance companies. Not only does this metric directly affect your cash flow, but it also shows if documentation standards for insurance companies are being met. If they are not, then there is a higher chance the claim will be denied which is something you can then address at your clinic and work towards improving!
Owning a clinic is already a lot of work and when you throw in reporting and metrics to determine how well your business is doing, it can seem like the work of being a practice owner is never ending. One way to avoid the additional headache of completing manual reporting is through having an EMR documentation system that generates the reports for you, such as HelloNote. All you have to do is select the metrics and/or report you want to generate, click submit and it is automatically generated! Regardless of if you prefer graphs, charts, or numerical data, HelloNote offers it all!
To learn more about how HelloNote can help you, reach out to our team here for your free
walkthrough: https://hellonote.com/#contact
References:
https://nydnrehab.com/blog/how-to-benefit-from-collecting-physical-therapy-metrics/
https://blog.fyzicalfranchise.com/business-metrics-you-should-track-in-a-physical-therapy-business
https://www.lbmc.com/blog/financial-metrics-physician-practice/
https://blog.therapydia.com/top-15-physical-therapy-clinic-metrics/