The Executive Suite: Using key performance indicators to manage your medical practice

Thursday, January 13, 2022

Using key performance indicators to manage your medical practice

It is essential to know your key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify areas for growth and determine where to make adjustments. KPIs are “any metric of measurement that illustrates the status or progress of a particular operation or effort.” These are important numbers to keep an eye on.

KPIs can reflect financial growth, patient acquisition and retention numbers for today’s private healthcare practices, and marketing gains for particular channels (such as the practice website) or campaigns. While other practices will identify success using some of the same metrics, it’s essential to choose the KPIs that matter most to your unique business and align with your specific goals. Regardless of which KPIs a practice selects, having a single dashboard to track all of those relevant KPIs is a tremendous advantage.

Below are three prime KPIs that can help spell success for your practice.

Operational metrics

Relying exclusively on new patient growth is short-sighted. Managing a well-run practice is also essential for good business; while operating an efficient practice can go far in reducing costs, practitioners should also measure that efficiency.

Evaluating the four operational KPIs below and adopting digital tools at your office can improve performance by saving staff time, reducing no-shows, and making it easy for patients to book or reschedule appointments. Consider the following measurements to help ensure your practice is a well-oiled, efficient machine:

Staffing metrics (patient-to-staff ratio and provider-to-staff ratio)
Patient wait time
No-show rate/Number of missed appointments
Percentage of patients who don’t book follow-up appointments

Patient acquisition and retention metrics

In addition to maintaining your established patient base, the surest way to operate a thriving practice is by attracting new patients and making sure they keep coming back. With an eye on patient volume, lead conversion, new patients, and overall patient satisfaction, you can get a clear line of sight to how you're performing (and meeting growth goals) if you consider the following:

Total number of patients (year-over-year)
New patient appointments (by the total number, per location, or per-provider-per-month)
Number of return patient appointments per month
Percentage of website visitors who convert into a new patient appointment
Patient satisfaction scores/rates
Patient attrition rates

Marketing metrics will help grow a practice

Most medical marketing strategies are designed to drive new patient volume. However, as detailed above, a keen eye on overall practice success also supports patient retention. Both require tracking the effectiveness and return on investment for your various marketing strategies. These five KPIs focus on marketing initiatives and help set the stage for growth:

Search engine rankings/position
Social media metrics (including the number of followers and number and type of engagements for each social media channel)
Website performance (page views, demographics, conversion rates)
Website traffic (including the number of new and returning visitors)
Patient review volume, frequency, and average star rating

How a practice growth platform can help improve KPIs

Consistent patient growth is a neon sign of a thriving healthcare practice, but the question remains: How do you get there? Once you decide which KPIs to track, you can create a practice performance scorecard to record and monitor how you are tracking against your goals.

An easier and more insightful option is accessing a practice growth dashboard, an integral aspect of a practice growth platform. All critical metric information is collected and monitored in one easy-to-use platform—incoming patient leads, new patient conversion rates, website performance, search engine optimization (SEO), or online reputation insights. With this convenient access, healthcare practices can make smarter operational and marketing decisions. Remember, you're in the business of healing and healthcare—but you are running a business.