Your daily office routine: Time for a change?
By John Hayes, Jr., DC

Most practices begin with some semblance of a daily routine. As your practice grows, you make procedural adjustments until you feel you have a functional office routine.

Just because you eventually find a routine that seems to work doesn’t mean you should assume further tinkering wouldn’t improve your practice. Some profitable practices operate in a state of near chaos. Imagine what they could achieve with better processes in place!

To achieve your goal of having the practice of your dreams, examine your office routines to eliminate nonvalue-added procedures.

1. Identify where you want to be. Even if you did not write a plan for the current year at the beginning of the year, it is not too late. It is never too late to establish your goals. Look ahead at least one quarter — if not a year.

Do not attempt to strategize during office hours between patient appointments. This type of planning cannot be done with interruptions. Pursue your purpose when you are relaxed and completely focused. Schedule a few days away from the office to draw your map.

2. Assess your statistics from the past six to 12 months. See what trends show up. Just a few questions to consider:

• How many new patients do you see each week? Is this number steady, or do the statistics show peaks and valleys in new patient visits?

• Is patient flow even, rising, or falling? Is your practice affected by the seasons?

• What is your patient visit average (PVA)?

• How much are you collecting on your billings to insurance companies? How much are you writing off?

• What percentage of your revenues comes from cash? Insurance? Medicare? Workers’ comp? Retail sales?

(Note: If you haven’t kept statistics, make that a top priority in your new plan. Without knowing your current status, you cannot plan for improvements.)

3. Recognize causes of problem areas. Deviations from the norm and downward trends indicate problem areas. Explore reasons why these problems are occurring.

Some things to think about:

• Patient retention. Although new patient recruitment often takes center stage in marketing, the lack of new patients is not always the most serious problem in a practice. If you are getting new patients in the door, but they aren’t coming back, your second visit procedures may need a makeover.

• Marketing. If you are failing to attract new patients, carefully analyze your marketing efforts. Are you consistently doing promotions, such as outside speaking engagements and health fairs?

Are you advertising steadily? Don’t evaluate the effectiveness of advertising based on “We tried that once and it didn’t work.” One-shot advertising does not work; advertising is not magic.

Consistency is key in advertising. Run affordable ads designed to build your practice.

• Assess what is going well. Take another look at your trend lines. Which areas seem to be improving? You want to understand why improvements occur, just as much as you want to understand the causes of problems. Understanding “why” lets you build on what you are doing well.

For example: If you notice an improvement in reactivations after you send out a patient newsletter, consider what results you might achieve by sending out an e-newsletter in addition to traditional newsletter mailings.

Take the step-by-step process in all practice processes. The result will be continuous improvement, which leads to improved profitability.

John Hayes, Jr., DC, founder of Perfect Practice Web, is an experienced practitioner who actively works in the chiropractic, medical, dental, and physical therapy communities. He can be reached by phone at 781-659-7989, by e-mail at info@PerfectPracticeWeb.com, or through the Web site, www.perfectpracticeweb.com.