Physio practices collect and store huge volumes of routine data and billing information. But despite having access to all this valuable information, most practices don’t actively use their physio practice data. Physio practice data can give you insights into how your practice is performing, are you on track to achieve your short & long term goals? The answer lays in the data. Monitoring your data over time will start showing trends & patterns that show us about different aspects like:
- Patient decisions – What type of patient are you attracting to your practice. Affordability of your rates and medical aid reimbursement. This helps you establish a clearer target group for your current and future patient base.
- Practice management decisions – data is valuable in helping you identify revenue cycles and how your marketing must be changed to limit the drop in seasonal cycles. Time management and much much more.
- Clinical care decisions – Your physio practice data can help you recognize seasonal and diagnostic trends within your practice like in summer time athletic injuries are common, opposed to winter-sport injuries in mid June to July.
Why Analyze your Practice Data
Merely staring at the data with a blank expression on your face will only show you the effect of your actions. When you drill down into the details, you’ll be surprised what the data can tell you. Its like looking at art, some people just see a pretty picture. Others see specific strokes, finer lines and intricate detail that changes a simple picture into a masterpiece.
Just like art, there are techniques and tools to use to get a desired result. Business is the same. First we must establish Which data is relevant and do we want to measure to give us information about a specific topic.
Physio practice data tells a story of how things happen in your practice. It’s your story. Better practice management is only possible when we have your information available to us to make better decisions. We must know where we are coming form to understand where you’re heading. Then we change the process to control the outcome.
Practice Data that is accurate and provided within context gives practices the capability to optimize therapist planning to determine the best operating hours to maximize revenue. That same data can also be used to manage your stock and revenue collections better.
How does a small Physio practice get a handle on using their practice data
It’s important to partner with a practice management solution that doesn’t only give you low-level reports. A good practice data report should show your month-on-month trends with metrics and stats in the form of KPI’s. Even a dashboard that will give an overview of each aspect of your practice.
They should do this regardless of the size of the practice because every practice needs to have a good handle on their practice information. Whether you are a small or large practice, the principles stay the same. You must know how much cash is available, what is the expected income for the coming months.
Our practice billing system is able to not only give you a clear picture of your practice’s financial health, but we are able to justify where to spend your money. We consider our clients as partners in your physio practice. We want so see you grow and succeed.
What story the data tells
Different sets of data, tells a different story. Here are some examples of how we can use your physio practice data to understand your practice better.
Practice management:
Appointment volume trends on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, this tells us how you are using your available time. Taking the total available time, divided by the actual patient volume determines your capacity level. The benchmark capacity is set at 85 – 95% Capacity, even if you are booked 2 weeks in advance this shows the actual efficiency of your physiotherapist.
Be wary if you are running out of time at the end of the day to service your patients because you may end up with a capacity more than 100% which indicates that your therapist are working overtime to get to all the patients. This is a good problem to have, but you or your therapist may burnout if its not addressed.
Running at less than 85% capacity justifies further investigation of front desk booking conversion, practitioner time management other factors why the patient load is less than ideal.
Clinical perspective
A reports on the most frequent diagnosis codes used by your physiotherapist tells about the layout of the reasons why patients consults your practice. This information confirms how effective your marketing strategy is at targeting those types of patients. Are these in line with what you in-vision for your practice and the types of conditions you specialize in.
If your spread of ICD-10 codes are shoulder related, but you prefer to treat foot and ankle injuries, best you look at where these patients are funneling from and address your marketing strategy.
Seasonal trends show you when to boost your marketing for a particular condition. Like arthritis flares that increase in volume when the weather changes drastically. This allows you to be proactive, plan and prepare for the next episode.
Patient component
we need to consider aspects such as age demographic
Conclusion
So it’s not just about having the data, it’s about using your physio practice data to improve your efficiency. Partner with a practice management solution and billing company like us that’s able to decipher what your practice data is telling us, especially if you don’t have the skills.
We are here to help you improve on what you already have without spending thousand of rands on projects that may fail.
Physio Billing is a billing company that understand & interpret your physio practice data to help you make better business decisions. By us we’ll be able to help you translate your data into actionable insight that you can use.