When evaluating the success of your holistic practice, where do you start? It’s too short-sighted to worry only about keeping the lights on, but planning for the future on a broad, subjective scale can feel intimidating or overwhelming. That’s where tracking top healthcare KPIs can benefit your holistic practice. Healthcare KPI tracking can provide a tangible record of your operations across a variety of categories and aspects.
What Are Healthcare KPIs?
KPIs, also known as Key Performance Indicators, are metrics that can objectively measure various components of your holistic practice over time so you and your team can reflect on how the practice is performing and make educated decisions for the future. There are dozens of potential healthcare KPIs to track at your holistic practice, but try not to feel overwhelmed by the amount of data you’ll be collecting—each facet of your practice can be analyzed and optimized, but it doesn’t have to happen all at once. To start, select a few of the most important metrics that need immediate attention, then expand to measure other aspects of your operations.
Common Healthcare KPI Examples
As mentioned above, there are a variety of healthcare KPIs track that may or may not apply to your particular holistic practice, with categories including:
Operations: These metrics focus on how efficient and effective your practice is at delivering care
Finance: KPIs related to the financial performance of your practice measure the top and bottom line of your practice—your cost of operations and how much is returned
Internal: Metrics relating to your internal operations track staff performance and administrative efficiency
Public health: These KPIs reveal how your practice is impacting your community, whether in terms of child immunization doses, vaccine clinics, or educational seminar attendance numbers
Emergency: In an emergency healthcare environment, it’s crucial to monitor how effectively your patients are receiving care, average wait time, patient mortality rate, and more
Care quality: By keeping tabs on how many providers you have in relation to the number of patients you serve, patient satisfaction survey results, and more, you can evaluate how well your practice is serving your community
Why Are Healthcare KPIs Important for Your Holistic Practice?
It takes a lot of time, energy, and resources to operate an efficient and effective holistic practice. How can you be sure you’re succeeding in every aspect of your practice? Key performance indicators are your best bet to gain a comprehensive insight into your operations, finances, public perception, and more. These figures can help you understand the current status of your practice, observe historical trends, and make informed decisions regarding how to improve or further grow your practice.
The Best Healthcare KPIs and Metrics to Track For Your Holistic Practice Management
There are numerous key performance indicators you should consider tracking when evaluating the performance of your holistic practice; be sure to consider the specificity of your holistic practice, community, and overall operations when outlining which healthcare KPIs to monitor. The following breakdown is a foundational place to start and is by no means a comprehensive list of potential metrics to keep track of:
Patient Experience Metrics
The goal of your practice is to deliver quality care to your patients; after all, your practice can’t sustain itself without them! When measuring patient experience metrics, consider the following factors:
Patient satisfaction: Utilizing patient satisfaction surveys can tremendously benefit your holistic patient care because you can solicit feedback or points of improvement from the very people you’re trying to please: your patients. Plus, by implementing a method of communication regarding their perception of your practice, you demonstrate how important they are to your success. When you establish an objective manner of measuring subjective components of your practice, such as ease of scheduling follow-ups or how comfortable the waiting room is, you can gain valuable insight into your practice’s performance.
Referral mix: This healthcare KPI indicates what type of patients your holistic practice is treating and who referred them to your practice. Tracking this metric helps you understand which patients are finding you from word-of-mouth recommendations, which in turn affirms the success of your holistic practice’s mission of delivering quality care.
No-show patients: It happens. Patients forget appointments or simply ghost your practice and never return your calls or attempts to reschedule. However, when this becomes a pattern at your holistic practice, do your best to get ahead of it and monitor these behaviors. If you find that a significant number of your monthly appointments are no-shows, it might be time to implement a no-show policy to discourage that!
Staff Performance Metrics
Your team is a reflection of your practice and keeps your practice running smoothly for your patients; when gaining insight into your staff performance, consider the following:
Staff-to-Patient Ratio: Do you have dozens of weekly appointments for only a handful of providers at your practice, resulting in faster burnout or longer patient wait times? It’s crucial to consider how much time and attention your providers can give to patients for top quality care. If they’re stretched too thin, it’ll catch up to your practice sooner or later and you’ll have to hire additional staff to manage.
Trainings and Certifications: When working in healthcare, it’s absolutely essential that your staff is HIPAA certified and follows best practices when handling patient information; it’s also beneficial that each member of your team have certifications in their pertinent areas of service.
Mistake Events: This self-explanatory metric simply refers to the frequency and type of mistake or error made, whether administrative, related to medical billing, patient confidentiality, or another type of mistake. This metric can provide insight and help you determine the best course of action to correct the problem, preventing it from becoming an internal pattern.
Medical Billing Metrics
How well do you know the details of your holistic practice’s finances? If you’re only measuring the short-term successes of paying your monthly bills, there’s a lot you’re missing! Dig into the many facets of your financial performance and learn which areas to improve moving forward, including:
Days in Accounts Receivable (A/R): This metric reveals how many payments remain outstanding at your holistic practice, either due to insurance reimbursement processing delays or out-of-pocket services. Ideally, the average time a bill spends in A/R should be about 30-40 days—the less time spent waiting for payment, the better. By tracking this metric, you can identify friction points along the payment cycle, such as billing and coding errors or not following up on claims, and redirect your efforts to streamline this process.
Net Collection Ratio: One key financial metric to monitor is the net collection ratio, which calculates how much potential revenue your practice nets after insurance adjustments are made. While the exact figure will fluctuate from specialty to specialty, aim for collecting about 95% of potential revenue for services, whether by patient payers or submitting clean claims. If this healthcare KPI falls consistently dips below 90% then that tells you something needs to be addressed in your revenue cycle.
New Patient Ratio: You can probably guess which figure this metric tracks; part of overseeing the financial health of your holistic practice is to sustain and grow your practice, which means a certain percentage of your patients are first-time visitors. When monitored over time, this healthcare KPI can help you determine if your holistic practice offers a desired balance of services for the price. Like with many other metrics, the exact figure to aim for can change from specialty to specialty; however, for general wellness practices, new patients can make up about 25% of visits, while specialty care practices could see up to 50% new patients each month.
Transform Your Medical Billing with Holistic Billing Services
By creating a monthly summary sheet to track healthcare KPIs, you can begin to identify and resolve problem areas in your holistic practice that are holding back growth and revenue.
Our experts here at Holistic Billing Services believe our success is your success. From handling medical billing and coding to offering consulting services and much more, our team is dedicated to making it feel like we’re in-house. With a focus on holistic practices, insurance background, and proven consultants, our team can effectively ensure the financial success of clients, allowing your medical practice to focus on what it does best: treat patients.
Our expertise is rooted in professional, technical, and global billing for hospital and stand-alone holistic care practices. To learn more about how outsourced medical billing with Holistic Billing Services can empower your practice, contact us today. We’ll work with you to build a customized solution that meets the specific needs of your practice and allows you to get back to treating patients.
