Practice Management

How to Increase Your Practice’s Profitability with Dashboard Management

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By Peter J. Cass, OD

August 29, 2018

The more you know about your practice’s financial performance, the better you can improve it. For the last few years, my practice has used the dashboard management system, Glimpse, to give us insights into how we can be more efficient and economical to better serve both our patients and profitability.

Easy Access to Data
Most of the data that Glimpse provides is available in my EHR system, but it is time consuming to run the reports, gather the data and compile it for comparison. Also Glimpse includes aggregate data on other practices, which is highly valuable for bench-marking, and not available in my EHR system.

Automated Tracking Capability
The metrics are all tracked automatically by Glimpse. I have access to the web site, and share that access with my office manager.

If you are going to run a successful practice you have to measure and track key performance indicators. Most EHRs can do that, but Glimpse automates the process with the ability to look at even very granular details of the metrics. It is a must-have to achieve a highly performing practice.

Make Changes to Better Serve Patients & Be More Profitable
Tracking our metrics on Glimpse showed us that our spectacle lens sales options were much lower than the national average. We worked with a consultant and changed the way we presented the option to patients. The results were dramatic.

Our sales of anti-reflective lenses have gone from 26.5 percent to 82.5 percent of all lens sales, while photochromatic lens sales have increased from 20.1 percent to 35.5 percent.  Polarization has gone from 5.2 percent to 7.5 percent, and specialty add-ons have gone from 3.4 percent to 17.5 percent.

Before:

After:

Review Daily & Monthly
Daily, I review billed and collected dollars by doctor. Monthly, I dig deeper and look at each area of the practice. The metrics that I most frequently look at by area are:

Reception: Number of complete exams, percentage new patients
Techs: Optomaps, Lipiflows
Optical: Capture rate, pairs of frames sold, lenses sold, percentage of AR, percentage of polycarbonate, percentage of PALs
Contact lens: Revenue per fitting, boxes sold, percentage of annual supply
Doctors: Revenue per patient, revenue per refraction, medical gross, revenue per medical
Insurance: Percentage discounted by contract, percentage written off, accounts receivable

We use this data in our monthly office meetings by displaying it on the big screen in our conference room and go through the important numbers with the staff. While viewing numbers relative to each department (Reception, Technicians, Optical, Contact Lens, Insurance) we ask staff members to summarize what is happening in their departments relative to the metrics displayed on the screen.

Glimpse is great for bench-marking, because it shows the national averages beside each practice measure, so we can see how we are doing in each area compared to other practices. We don’t waste time trying to improve performance in areas where we are doing much better than average. We can instead focus our time and attention on areas where we are below average.

Identify Areas of Needed Improvement
Glimpse definitely helps us find problem areas. It shows us historical data, and shows trends in measures, so we can see when measures are trending up or down. If we see a measure that is trending in the wrong direction we can look into that measure and figure out why it is trending the wrong direction. Glimpse is also useful for tracking utilization of new technologies or product offerings. When we add a technology, such as ERG or LipiFlow, it is easy to track its utilization.

The Tool You Need for Constant Improvement
The technology offered by Glimpse gives us the power we need to consistently track upward in our growth and profitability. It’s become one of my most important practice management tools.

>>Click HERE to demo Glimpse.<<

 

 

Peter J. Cass, OD, is the owner of Beaumont Family Eye Care in Beaumont, Texas, and president of the Texas Optometric Association. To contact: pcassod@gmail.com

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