What are Your Critical Numbers?

There are a few key things that every clinic director should know and understand about their own practice. When it is time to make strategic decisions to improve the practice, you need to truly understand the reality of your circumstances. The only way to recognize this critical information is to both track it and report on it regularly. But how do you know what to monitor and report on? This will completely depend on what is important to you. For example, are you focused on revenue, where your patients come from, or how long they stay? For any of these pieces of information, and more, you need a metric (critical number) to help guide your decisions.

The next question is, who will keep track of each individual number? By assigning different critical numbers to different team members, not only do you share the workload, but you create a deeper understanding of that aspect of your business within that person. Each team member then reports regularly (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) on their specific numbers and helps the team as a whole understand not only where the practice currently is, but where you all want it to be.

Here are a few of the key numbers we track in our practice:

Critical Numbers: 
Monthly New Patients, Care Initiation Conversion Percentage, Case Visit Average, Patient Visit Average, Office Visit Average, Overhead Visit Average, Initial Trial Period Retention Percentage, One Year Retention Percentage, Rebooking Percentage, Referral Breakdown (Internal vs Professional vs Existing vs Marketing), Marketing Metrics (Screening to start Ratio for 2 months previous)

Have fun while you build your practice, increase your profits, and enjoy your life!
Dr. Jeff Scholten

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