Healthcare businesses are always outwardly-focused – and usually time-poor. Offering quality care takes time, and most find that there’s just not enough hours in the day.

Being able to stand back and assess your practice operations objectively probably gets prioritised somewhere between keeping up with journal publications and organising the staff Christmas party. Don’t beat yourself up though – when it comes to healthcare businesses, Kennas have your back.

Increasing business confidence

As the leader, the measure of confidence you radiate will be the cue that your staff responds to. Confidence builds more confidence, and it’s a valid business strategy. But as Earl Stevens once said,

“Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions.”

You know intuitively that measuring and monitoring business success is important, so here’s a quick reminder of key intrinsic confidence-builders you can consider. If these quantitative and qualitative questions are a good fit for your practice, pick out your preferred half dozen and use them to monitor on-going performance and to boost all-round confidence.

Time management measures

• Percentage of time for each consultation
• Ratio of on-time vs late starting appointments
• Average appointment time
• Patients per professional per hour

Customer measures

• Total numbers per day / week / month /year
• New patient numbers
• Patient satisfaction score
• Cancellations and no-shows
• New patient to return patient conversion rate

Employee measures

• Expenses per professional / staff per year
• Employee satisfaction score

Financial measures

• Gross fees per health professional per year
• Gross profit per patient
• Average fees per patient
• Wages to fees ratio
• Private to bulk billing ratio
• Average cost per hour of opening
• Net profit per patient

Making it happen

It looks like a serious amount of effort to pull out this data regularly. It can be. Or, you can make use of the analytic features of your practice management software and involve your financial back-up team at Kennas – we can set up (or show your team how to set up) accounting systems to produce many of these answers automatically. With our many decades of helping businesses achieve financial success, we’ll also offer advice on any aspect of choosing and using relevant performance indicators.

Of course, your expectations need to be realistic and based on a clear understanding of your external and internal environment (cue the SWOT analysis). But celebrating growth and making plans as a team to improve or change a trend are the best morale builders you can have. Watch your people’s confidence levels improve – better business outcomes won’t be far behind.

We’re ready to help. Call us today to set up your best time to talk it through.