When our practices aren’t doing well, we might get the feeling there are so many things we need to do to fix the problem. We go into panic mode and when we panic, our brains simply just shut down.
This means we can’t think straight, and we might become anxious and feel the whole world is crumbling down on us. When this happens, just stop what you are doing, breathe deeply, and start writing. Write down what you think needs to be done. Don’t put any emotion into this list, just write everything down. This is just a plain brain dump.
Now, let’s look at how things are not that bad and with just a few tweaks, your practice will be thriving again. I’m going to simplify things at first and then I am going to make it even simpler.
Let’s say your collections are down 10%. You are bringing in $90,000 in a month but you need to $100,000 to pay all the bills plus bring home a salary. How do you get the extra 10k and also make sure you continue to hit the mark or surpass it every month?
Figure Out Your PVR
The first thing you need to do is figure out your PVR, per-visit-revenue. Divide the total money collected over the total number of patient visits from the last six months. Yes, include all follow-ups. Let’s say this number is $120. This also means, using the above numbers, you saw 750 patients in a month.
Now, what happens if you can increase your PVR to $130? Meaning just an extra $10 per patient. That makes your collections $97,500. You are almost there. Now, how about if you increase your visits by 15 in a month, or 4 a week, to 765 a month? You have now increased your collections to over $100,000 per month.
Let’s take this a little bit further. You have figured out that a new patient visit is worth $450 to the practice. This is just for the first visit. On the average, you see 80 new patients a month. Just by focusing on getting more new patients (and keeping them too), you increased the number of monthly new patients to 90, which is about two a month. You also kept the total number of patient visits at 750 and your PVR is now $134. Your new monthly collections will be over the 100K mark. In this scenario, you are working the same but making more.
Let’s simplify this. You need to increase one, two, or three things. Meaning your PVR, new patients, and/or total visits. If you focus simply on getting more patients, you will end up exhausted and probably burned-out. The goal is to make more, while working less.
Here is a list to help you tweak your systems in order to increase your PVR.
- Collect all monies due at the time of service. Meaning deductibles, co-payments, co-insurances, and past balances.
- Learn to get better at selling your services, especially non-covered ones. Using the above scenario, if you just get 2-3 more patients to purchase your orthotics, you will hit your goal. This is how simple this is.
- Make sure your billing team is right on point. They should be making calls to the insurance companies and to patients.
- Missed opportunities. Do you ask about that BAB, big-ass bunion, they have? Is their chronic ingrown due to a severely over-pronated foot type where orthotics or a good pair of shoes might help?
- This brings to the point, are you providing DME or are you worried about the same and similar? If same and similar is bothering you, just speak to your state association representative, or ask people from the AAPPM how they handle this.
- Add an additional key staff member. One of the major problems doctors have is they are understaffed. Even though there is an additional expense, you will be able to see more, make more, without doing more.
The above list is only a small sample of what can be done, but it will handle most cases. When it comes to getting more new patients, just do one thing immediately. Ask your patients who do they know that might have a foot or ankle issue and that you would love to see more people just like them.
As you can see, just some simple tweaks, nothing major, can make a huge difference in your practice. It can also turn anxiety into peacefulness.
