Episode 127 | Tracking New Metrics for the New Year

Hey, everyone, I hope you’re having a great day. Today. I wanted to talk today about a topic that I always review right around this time. And that is metrics, we’re coming at the end of the year. So every end of the year, I start to look at some of the metrics that I’m tracking in my own group practice. I look to see if the metrics that I’m tracking are accurately tracking the way they need to, if they are the type of metrics that I want to continue to track, and if there’s any new things that I want to start looking at.

So it’s a great time now for all of you to look at the metrics that you are tracking to make sure that they’re working for you.

And if you’re not tracking anything now to start reflecting on if it’s important for you and your group practice.

To start that, I want to start by mentioning that I have a really amazing administrative and owner dashboard, two different dashboards in the Exchange membership site in the documents section. So if you’re wanting a template of an administrative dashboard that feeds directly into a group practice dashboard, all through Google Sheets, you can go in there and grab it.

But today I want to talk about one piece of the admin dashboard that I have to talk a little bit about how important and valuable this piece can be. And I think it’s something that a lot of people forget to really pay attention to. That is the inquiry log. I call it a call log. Because back when I first started to track metrics, the main way people were contacting us was by calling and now it’s obviously much more robust, and people are calling emailing, filling out Google Forms or filling out the online schedulers that a lot of EHRs have. So there’s a lot of different ways that people can enquire. So I call it a call log. But for the sake of this, let’s think inquiry log.

There’s a lot of information that you can gather, or that your admin can gather from the inquiry, part of the client’s journey.

And I think a lot of people forget about how much they can they can get from that information. So one of the things that we can track right is how many inquiries we’re getting. That’s an obvious one, a lot of us are tracking that to see if we need to market more. But it’s very basic. And there’s so much more that we can do beyond just tracking how many calls or emails or forms are being filled out. There’s more that we can do.

What we can track just beyond that, and it’s part of the inquiry process, is how many of those calls are actually converting or how many of those inquiries are actually converting. That is a matter of having a system that not only tracks when someone’s calling, but then if that person actually schedules an intake appointment. And there’s an easy way to do to do that in Google sheets or any other tracking system, but it can help you see your conversions so that you can understand if there’s an issue with how many referrals you’re actually getting or how many new calls you’re getting, or if it’s an issue with converting those callers or those inquiries, into clients.

Then even more deeply into that is tracking those people that schedule the intake appointment, and see if they actually attend that first appointment, because there’s always a drop off of some amount of people who scheduled it and take and never show up.

And knowing that percentage can help you see, oh, you know, we get a good amount of new inquiries, we convert a good amount of new inquiries into scheduled appointments. But I’m noticing that a larger portion of larger percentage that I may be thought of intakes that are scheduled actually don’t show up. And that’ll give you a piece of information that you can use to see:

Is there a gap in your process between when they’re scheduled, and when they show up, whether that’s adding, you know, maybe an email that confirms their appointment, or if it means having a clinician call and say, welcome, I’m excited to meet you, you know, next Tuesday or tomorrow, at so and so time I look forward to it, or some way to grab their attention one more time before that appointment time so that it reduces the no show or initial intake, no shows.

There’s that much information that you can track just in the initial call through right before their first appointment. But then there’s some other things that you can gather.

So if you’re interested, let’s say in tracking their method of payment, so maybe you want to see, you know, what percentage of people that we scheduled or that call, and you can track the separately by people who actually schedule and come to an appointment or by just people who inquire are taking, you know, have BlueCross insurance or are looking for a reduced rate, or out of pocket rate that is a sliding scale.

Right? You can track those those things so that you can see, you know, of all the inquiries, we get the the highest number of clients that schedule, take Medicare, we accept Medicare, and they take Medicare, I’m using this as an example. Right?

That piece of data can help you see what your business is actually comprised of when it financially right, because insurance or self pay or reduced rate, or sliding scale, those are all important metrics for you to know you know, what percentage of your business is actually taking a reduced rate. A lot of times I hear from group practice owners is that they have a policy that let’s say says they each clinician can have 10% of their caseload be a reduced rate.

But when they actually look at it, they see the clinicians are accepting a whole lot more, right. And so having a system that tracks what percentage of inquiries or what percentage of actual intakes are, this insurance, or that insurance or out of pocket, can help us see what you know, your new clients are really comprised of when it comes to what they what insurance or not, they have.

Then another final piece of data, just in this increase section is tracking the reason for not scheduling, I find this to be really valuable, and something I didn’t track up until maybe two years ago.

And this can be easily done. In the same process when your intake person or your receptionist is inputting, you know, so and so called they wanted an appointment, but they decided not to schedule an appointment for whatever reason to have a cell in your spreadsheet that has a reason for not scheduling an appointment. Whether it’s because of availability, whether it’s because there’s a specialty that isn’t available in your practice that they’re looking for, whether it’s because you don’t accept an insurance that they were wanting to use, or whatever other common reasons are out there.

By tracking this, it can help give you data for what might possibly be a good next move. So we use this information to track if we if specialty is an issue or if availability is an issue, it lets us know, if I’m in the space to want to grow.

This data is telling me it sounds like a great idea and a great time to start to grow.

Because availability is the number one reason why clients aren’t able to schedule you don’t you don’t have enough clinicians with available appointments. If it’s let’s say, insurance, right? It gives you information. Maybe it’s not, you know, maybe adding insurance isn’t something that you want to do, but it at least gives you a piece of feedback that says Well, the reason why those people aren’t converting or 25% of colors isn’t converting is because they’re wanting insurance.

It’s a good piece of information to have doesn’t mean you have to do anything with it. And again, for instance, with specialty, and you can go a little deeper and write specialty. Then with each client say they were looking for someone that was an eating disorder specialist, and this one was looking for someone who specializes in sex therapy or whatever.

And the more micro you get with it, the more you’ll be able to see, wow, you know, 20% of new columns who don’t convert to clients who don’t end up scheduling, they were looking for a sex therapist, does that is that in line with the vision of our practice? Are we multi specialty practice, and having a sex therapist might be a good next move, when it comes to hiring the next therapist. It gives you a piece of valuable information. And so looking at your inquiry log, and going a little bit deeper, beyond just tracking how many calls you’re actually getting, but seeing possibly how many what percentage is actually converting into an intake appointment.

Okay, and of those intake appointments? What percentage is actually converting and showing up to that first session and becoming a client being what method of payment is common, whether it’s self pay reduced rate or specific insurances, just so that you know, what your clients are comprised of when it comes to all the methods of payment that you accept? And finally, reason for not scheduling? Why is it that you have x percentage of people that aren’t actually converting to clients and are not scheduling an appointment, that information can give you an idea on a possible next move. And at the very least, it gives you data that’s important.

So I hope that’s helpful. And like I mentioned, if you’re not tracking any metrics, I have in the Exchange membership site, an administrative dashboard that your admin are filling out as they’re putting new clients into the call log.

It tracks things like client feedback, specialties, referrals, retention, total sessions per month by location, clinician averages, all that stuff, and then automatically transfers, just the metrics themselves into an owner dashboard that you can look at and get a pulse on the health of your business without having to do much work. If you’re looking for that, join in the Exchange membership and you can pop in there and grab that along with almost 100 other documents and hundreds of videos. So I hope to see you in there.

Maureen Werrbach 

Thanks for listening to the group practice exchange podcast. Like what you heard? Give us five stars on whatever platform you’re listening from. Need extra support? Join The Exchange a membership community just for group practice owners with monthly office hours live webinars and a library of trainings ready for you to dive into. visit WWW dot members dot the group practice exchange dot com forward slash exchange. See you next week.