Medical Practice Benchmarks a Solo Doctor Must Know
Many doctors don’t know the key Medical Practice Benchmarks that ensure their practice is healthy financially.
In many cases, physicians who own their own solo medical practice are just waiting until the end of the year to know if they breaking even or not.
However with a few simple Medical Practice Benchmarks in place, any doctor can easily track if they are on course for a successful year.
Here a some important Medical Practice Benchmarks for doctors to measure their financial success, and patient satisfaction levels that ensure the medical practice is functioning well.
New Patients per Day or per Week
When a doctor is attracting new patients to his or her practice, they are probably doing well with marketing and visibility. There is no absolute rule as to how many new patients should be visiting (it varies greatly from solo practice to specialist to urgent care). But typically, there should be some development of new patients each week. A good rule of thumb can be 10–25% depending upon your desire to grow. So if you have the average amount of 2500 patients of record, and you open the practice 5 days a week, this means you should have 2–3 new patients each day.
New Patient Referrals per Quarter
The second measure of patient satisfaction would be how many patients are referring. This means patients referring other patients to your clinic, not patients you are referring out. Any medical referral is based upon needs of the individual, meaning patients don’t just decide to visit the same day a person refers. Still, having some sort of measurement around this, perhaps once a quarter is a great starting point.
If you have patients referring family and friends in the same vicinity, that is a great indicator of their satisfaction and trust with your practice service.
Net Revenue Collection percentage by Month
To calculate your Revenue Collection rate, you can divide the sum of all gross billings against actual funds collected. Some funds will take more than 30–60 days to be collected, so you may need to ask a book keeper to review these numbers after end of month.
According to a 2012 article by Medscape, “You should have a collection rate of 97% or greater to ensure a healthy bottom line”
Expense percentage by Month or by Quarter
According to American Academy of Family Physicians “Most practices keep an eye on the amount of money they’re collecting each month, but they don’t necessarily look at that figure in relation to other metrics. It’s more telling to track collections as a percentage of charges. A collections-to-charges ratio between 50% and 80% is typical.”
Tracking these medical practice benchmarks does take consistency and regular review by the physician. The more accurate data a doctor has the better they can pinpoint problem areas and improve. Taking the time to look at medical practice benchmarks also give you an objective view of how you are performing and can help to grow your peace of mind.
