Practice Analysis

Medical facilities conduct practice analysis in order to measure their business growth within a given period of time, usually a year. The challenge in making the correct practice analysis is measuring the right variables and indicators. When performing a practice analysis, three “mores” should always be looked into, and these are: More Business, More Efficiency, and More Satisfaction. These three inter-related outcomes provide the basis for efficient practice analysis.More Business More business is always the end-game for growth. But just because growth is needed on the business end of a medical facility, top-line growth does not always translate to profitable growth, or even long-term growth. To assess clearly the top-line performance, these business volume indicators must be looked at.

• Exams versus Charges. Evaluating exams versus charges will actually measure the true trends that affect the success of your business instead of measuring the number of exams alone. They show the areas where a facility should focus its energies more. Exams versus charges should be broken down by modality, location and procedure.
• Schedule Planned versus Actual. How long does a procedure actually take? A medical facility should always measure the number of minutes consumed by each procedure. This will show if there is any time wasted that could have led to lost opportunities. The facility should also take into consideration missed appointments when measuring time wasted.
• Referring physician trends. Another indicator that can reveal the actual growth of a medical facility is the number of referrals. Identifying the top referrals as well as the low referrals can help a facility figure out how to gain more of their business. Looking at the referral physician trends can also show real-time patterns that can indicate whether the referral is switching to a competitor or not.
• Referrals by market segment. This is a measure of how well the medical facility is doing in capturing its referral population or its segment of the market against its market goals. If target market goals are consistently being reached, then it means that the facility is ready to expand to a bigger market.

More Efficiency

Increasing levels of efficiency is also vital to the bottom-line success of a medical facility. The speed and accuracy by which reimbursement claims are made and how services are performed greatly affects efficiency in operations. These are the indicators that must be looked at to improve efficiency.

• Employee efficiency. Employee efficiency refers to the time it takes for each member of the staff to do their assigned tasks. Any changes in employee efficiency can show which people in the staff are doing their jobs correctly and which ones need more training.
• Productivity volume trends. These trends give insight on business outputs: which procedure, modality, tech, radiologist or whatever is pulling in more business to the medical facility. It can help predict which resources can be added profitably.
• Unfinished exams. Unfinished exams lower the efficiency of the medical facility. Looking at the reasons why exams are cancelled – no-shows or aborted exams – can reveal factors that require improvement.
• Receivables. Looking at the receivables shows how quickly the medical facility is getting paid for its service and what happens to the cash flow in case of delays. Shortening or totally eliminating delays in payment can lead to growth in the bottom line.

More Satisfaction

Having more patients come to a medical facility and to build patient loyalty is the most important factor for preserving and growing future business. To achieve this, it is essential that levels of patient satisfaction are continually raised. Here are the indicators that measure levels of patient satisfaction.

• Patient time. The length of time that passes between the moment the patient checks in and the moment the procedure for which the patient came is completed counts a lot in patient experience. How much waiting time does the patient spend and on which step of the process is the waiting time spent? Improving the operations in the medical facility to reduce waiting time greatly improves patient experience.
• Referring physician time. How long does it take for the clinical reports to reach the referring physician? Looking at the Ordered to Report as well as Patient Visit to Report, overall and by modality, can identify areas for shortening the time it takes for reports to be handed over to the referring physician.

Finding indicators that will measure and maintain the growth of the business of a medical facility all depends on the goals that the facility has set for itself. The indicators listed here are not the only ones that they can look at.How Braintree Can Help Braintree is well-positioned to develop reports that a medical facility may need without incurring any additional costs. Also, with the use of the BMW Platform Practice Analysis interface, automating the monitoring becomes easy. Braintree’s medical software application is designed to give the most efficient method of pulling data, to track and report that data, and to communicate issues needed to facilitate decision-making. Most importantly, all the tracking and reporting of data can be done in real time to allow immediate response to any disturbing variances.