Annual Practice Growth Strategies – Does Your Medical Practice Need One?
An annual practice assessment is vital because it can be the lifeblood for any practice. It helps to maintain a competitive advantage, improve staff tenure, and improve financial checks and balances. It also helps the owners stay focused on the goal of maintaining financial health and profitability for the practice going forward.
This annual assessment can be compared to an annual patient check-up. It is often the key way to spot and identify any concerns before they become a problem. Just as a patient check-up checks on the health of the patient’s body, this assessment checks the true health and well-being of your medical practice.
Social Media Solutions for Doctors provides this information as part of our consultation service and practice development program for doctors and other medical practitioners. Our clients pay a nominal fee to receive this, as well as using our mobile website design services and social media services to help grow the practice profitability.
Suggested Weekly Topics Checklist
The Annual Practice Assessment: How Does It Work?
The annual practice assessment is a vital tool that can be used to identify problems and unhealthy trends, such as:
- Customer service or patient care issues or concerns
- Compliance issues with state or other regulatory bodies
- Financial irregularities, such as embezzlement
The assessment can also be used as a tool to discover, promote, and encourage healthy trends, staff promotions, or new hire needs in your practice. You will also be able to confirm:
- Growth and development opportunities inside and outside of your practice
- Staff training and development needs
- Promotional opportunities for new and existing products and services
- Discussion and measurement of the return on your marketing investments and brand building
- Making additional enhancements to your practice or group marketing campaigns to ensure the furthest reach and highest yields for new patient acquisition
The ability to measure and monitor your practice performance is key to longevity and financial practice success.
How to Gauge the Health of Your Practice
You must be able to:
- Identify how many leads your marketing efforts produce each week.
- How many of those leads are converted by your staff to actual consultations (a 24-month history review is recommended).
- How many of those consultations are now actual paying clients?
The Measure of Success
A conversion rate (CR) rule of thumb is to have no less than a 55% closure rate for all email leads and phone call inquiries. For consultation closure conversion (CCC), there should be a rate of no less than 80% closure for face-to-face consultations to clients becoming paying patients.
- How much revenue was generated by that effort for the week?
- How many upsells with patient financing offers and acceptance occurred for the week?
Your EMR, accountant, practice manager, and office staff should be required to provide you with the necessary updates from the tools and reports generated on a weekly basis. You must know what your closing ratio is for leads, calls, etc.
You can then use the information provided to set your goal and growth targets. Monthly budgets should grow by no less than 15% above the prior month or over what you did last year. Break up your goals in daily, weekly, monthly increments to ensure annual growth.
Tools for Success
It is important to use all the tools available to you and that everyone contributes to the success of the practice. Proper management, EHR, and tools like MyMedLeads will ensure significant financial gains for your marketing dollars spent and the continued health and success of your practice.
Weekly Staff Meetings
- Set relevant meeting topics.
- Performance should be measured relative to goals.
- Identify the most consistent patient issues or concerns.
- Use of the post-care programs as a tool for up-sell opportunities.
This copy of our suggested weekly topics checklist will help you stay on task. We recommend using this checklist in your weekly meetings or discussions with your Practice Administrator and Patient Care Coordinator. (If you are not now having weekly meetings with your Practice Manager, you should be. The goal is to help maintain awareness of what goes on with your staff and patients!)
Most importantly, how you treat your staff can be constructive or destructive. Treat your team like you want to be treated. Greet them with a positive attitude daily as they control the lifeline and lifeblood to your practice income.
Remember, if you hired them, get out of the way and let them do their jobs.
Micromanaging your team slows down growth, creates negative energy, and makes for a hostile work environment. You spend forty plus hours per week with your team, make it fun, don’t make it a burden, otherwise, you will experience high turnover, low profits, and slow to no new patient growth. Please read this compelling article: http://businesspaths.net/Articles/12/people-quit-their-boss-not-their-job
Once your practice is back on track, Marketing for Success
Social Media Solutions for Doctors will provide professional assistance and guidance in matters relating to marketing such as Social Media and Website Design and Mobilization. We also suggest that a list of discussion topics for your weekly or monthly Newsletter and Blog be forwarded to your Marketing Director or Marketing Agency on a weekly basis to ensure all topics are being covered and services that you wish to offer are being promoted.
If you determine after reading this Practice Review outline that something needs to be done for your practice. Call Us Today for a review that will include a Practice Assessment, Website Review, Social Media Evaluation, Consultation Closure Review of leads to consults, and consults to paying patients.
We are here to help!