4 warnings signs for a failing practice

One of the easiest things to identify from the outside is a struggling practice.  You can look at the numbers and see declines in revenue, new patients, net patient outflows, etc. from month to month and see that things aren’t as they should be.

One of the hardest things to do is to identify that practice while you are in the middle of the storm running the practice.  Oftentimes, an owner will not seek help until it’s way too late.  The last patient has walked out the door and the bank account balance has more numbers after the decimal place than before it.  

Over the years, we’ve heard a number of repeated phrases from owners in denial or with a rather Pollyanna view of the future.  Here are some of them.  If you hear them or find yourself saying them, you might want to review things more closely or seek some further assistance (we’re here to provide that assistance if you wish).

Getting patients to show up: the scheduling solution

We’ve discussed the importance of shortening the time from patient call to appointment in order to improve the rate at which patients show up for appointments.  Without requiring you to read the whole article, let me give you a quick summary.  The prime opportunity to get to show up for a new patient appointment comes within the first 7 days after the call.  After the first 7 days, the chances for a patient to show up fall off and after 14 days, the show up percentage drops precipitously. 

As some evidence of this, I’d like to present the case of an office in a city that shall remain nameless, but is within spitting distance of the happiest place on earth.  In 2013, the office had patients showing up at a nice rate: 72%.  In other words, of every 10 patients that made a new patient appointment, more than 7 of them actually showed up for that appointment.  On average, patients waited 10 days from the time of call to their appointment.  Not a bad rate at all.

In February of this year, things changed.  The show up rate fell from 72% to 50%.  The average wait time from call to appointment ballooned to 25 days.  Of the 148 consultations appointed, 98 of those patients had to wait at least 3 weeks for an appointment.  In this “now” society, 3 weeks leaves plenty of time for a patient to find another option or to fill up their schedule so that a new patient consultation gets pushed back.  Clearly, a result of the drop in show up rate, new patient closings fell off as well.  What happened?