Achieving and Managing Growth
Background
During PracticeLight’s 24-month research and development stage, members of our team discussed the challenges of building a successful specialty healthcare practice with over 250 clinic owners and managers. “Achieving and Managing Growth” was a recurring theme throughout those early conversations. The material we’ve presented here is distilled from the day-to-day experiences of medical professionals and administrators who are responsible for the performance of their businesses.
What’s Hard About Growth?
The individuals who advised us about PracticeLight’s initial design didn’t see growth itself as a problem. They saw “smart growth” as a problem. These professionals recognized that decisions about market positioning as well as service and payer mix have long-term consequences for a practice’s growth rate and profitability. Of course these same decisions also have consequences for the amount of business complexity that an owner and his team will need to manage down the road. So smart growth is about expanding clinic revenue at the right pace and in the right ways (there is more than one “right way” after all).
But having a well-conceived growth plan is just the beginning—you also need to execute and manage it over time. This is where having feedback loops attached to your growth plan is critical. If you don’t have a way to measure your results at the right level of detail, then you have no way to know whether your plan’s assumptions and expectations are translating into reality. In short, you won’t really understand what’s driving the changes to your revenue line. So you won’t understand what’s working, what’s not, or why. Even worse, you’ll probably also discover that a revenue plan without feedback loops is a revenue plan without much accountability. Where there are no specific goals or effective ways to measure progress, it’s hard for anyone to direct efforts effectively or take responsibility for business outcomes. Most practice owners and managers with whom we spoke clearly understood that every growth plan comes with its own risks. However, almost no one felt as though his or her clinic had the basic planning and performance information they needed to manage those risks.
Understanding the Challenges
Our discussions with private practice owners and managers revealed that relatively few had fact-based forecasts or goals for basic revenue-related items (invoiced dollars, visits, unique patients, etc.) or tracked them consistently. Most also lacked the more specific information they would need to make confident decisions about their clinic’s positioning as well as service and payer mix. And there was broad agreement that virtually no reliable benchmarks existed for evaluating a clinic’s revenue performance in a detailed or timely way.
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“Growth is something we hope for but not something we plan for or manage. We don’t spend any time at all tracking or analyzing the numbers until our bookkeeper meets with me at the end of the month. I’d definitely need better, more up-to-date information to manage it any more actively than that.” |
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“We want to grow, but our trap is that tinkering with clinic operations or cutting costs always seems so much easier than doing anything meaningful on the revenue side. What I need are good baselines and a more reliable way to estimate our ROI from doing something different. Right now, I don’t have either one.” |
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“I don’t have any idea how quickly a practice like ours could or should be growing. But I know I’d like us to be much more consistent. Our marketing is on-again, off-again, so our sales fluctuate a lot more than they should. What I need is a more structured program or process that I can manage as part of my day-to-day.” |
Owner and Manager Priorities
Practice owners and managers urged us to develop planning and measurement tools that would make it easier for Members to manage revenue performance. But our discussions also highlighted the fact that revenue performance can’t just be about growth. It has to be about smart growth—increasing profitable revenue along with month-to-month consistency and underlying quality. We’ve kept these ideas in mind as we’ve worked to provide Members with a simple way to understand their basic revenue and service profile.
“Provide us with frequent revenue updates so that we can make the right adjustments to hit our forecasts.”
“Make it easier for us to understand the real economics of acquiring and retaining patients.”
“Help us distinguish our revenue performance from background trends.”
“Show us how service and payer mix might be affecting our growth rates.”
“Tell us how well we’re using our service capacity to generate revenue.”
How PracticeLight Can Help
PracticeLight was designed from the ground up to help you see practice performance the way you want to see it. From the data collection process to the metrics we report and the way we display data, our approach helps Members achieve and manage growth by showing them what’s really happening inside their clinics and giving them the tools to understand it better. And while we’re doing that, PracticeLight also helps Members develop important internal management disciplines that serve them well as their businesses grow and evolve.
| Achieving and Managing Growth. | |
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Powerful Business Insights. Performance metrics, benchmarks, and analysis tools help you see your practice in a new light. |
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Flexible Services. Solutions that can be tailored to your own information requirements help you get what you need the way you need it. |
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Simple, Secure Process. Common sense approaches to collecting data, managing access and providing support help make it easier to do the right thing for your business. |
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Affordable Pricing. Low-cost memberships with just-in-time access to expanded services help you invest in your practice’s future without affecting your cash flow. |
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Easy to Get Started. Web-based services that don’t require any new technology and let you use your existing systems help you start by building on what you already have. |
Check out our complete Overview and Highlights for more detailed information about PracticeLight’s performance management and benchmarking services.
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Join PracticeLight |
Read About More Reasons Members Use PracticeLight
Achieving and Managing Growth
Attracting and Retaining the Right Patients for Your Practice
Improving Profitability
Making Fact-Based Management Decisions
Setting Goals and Focusing Your Team on Performance
Taking Better Control of Your Practice
Working Smarter Instead of Harder
We offer both Members and non-Members opportunities to participate in events that feature PracticeLight’s performance management and benchmarking work.
