Goal Driven and Team Managed

Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Sometimes you think things are worse than they are.

But then again, sometimes you think things are going better than they are. And then,

BANG! Poop hits the fan!

What is the best way to determine how your business is doing?

Your Chiropractic Healthcare Scoreboard

Your numbers are the best indicator of your performance. They are your scoreboard. They are your Google Maps, dashboard, and your altimeter as you take your business off the runway and up towards your goals.

In our consulting work, we too often see major management changes driven by a minor error, hearsay, or emotion. This can have devastating long-term results.

On the other hand, improvements that show up on the stats can be ignored if no one is watching them.

One chiropractic office we worked with continued to see an increase in new patients referred from a local gym. But amidst the busyness of the daily patient care, they hadn’t noticed. Since we closely monitored their numbers, I saw this increase in new patients from a local business on their New Patient Tracker. After discussing this with the doctor and manager, they finally took action to strengthen this valuable relationship.

Having a scoreboard can help your team be more engaged in the business. A great example is keeping a line graph of the percentage of kept appointments. This helps the front desk team manage themselves by objectively showing how they are doing in keeping patients on track.

You can miss the good things — as well as the coming crash. Numbers help you predict what needs fixing before things get ugly and what needs reinforcement to keep the good times going.

Ultimately, statistics tell you if you are moving toward your goals — or away from them.

Unfortunately, most offices do not consistently keep track of their numbers in such a way as to easily review them or their trends.

As a result, business owners do not get the information they need to manage their businesses properly. Software can spit out reports that can help, but they are not enough. And usually only partly used, if at all.

Tips for Using Your Scoreboard

• Key numbers. Monitor week-to-date and month-to-date numbers, especially new patients, visits, charges, and collections.
• Line charts. We use monthly line graphs plotted over 1-2 years. This is the visual that clearly and simply shows the truth – are you headed up or down? This is the first thing I look at when checking any performance indicator.

• Percentages. Use percentages, such as visits per new patient, to gauge how long your patients stay with you.
• This year to last year. You should be able to compare this year-to-date with last year-to-date.
• New patients. Track the sources of your new patients as well as the types of new patients.
• Weekly reports. Have someone in your office give you a daily, or at least a weekly and monthly, statistical report.
• Individual providers. If you have multiple providers, they should have a complete package of their performance indicators so they can better manage their performance.

I can’t recommend a more valuable management tool for managing your business profitably.

Your analytics scoreboard will help you—and your team—navigate toward your goals.

Stay Goal Driven,

Ed