One thing that all high-growth and successful chiropractic practices have in common – they know their numbers. When we talk about numbers, it’s not about chiropractic profit and loss statements. It’s the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that dictate your business in the right direction. When a chiropractic practice continues running its business without knowing important KPIs, it could result in the loss of huge opportunities.
The metrics practice owners use most often to monitor their growth and predict results, include total payments, patient visits, the number of patient no-shows, and missed appointments, and more. But what’s that one KPI that can help you direct practice to growth and success?
What’s the #1 Revenue Metric for Chiropractic Practices
There is one revenue metric that can tell the entire story. What it is?
Average Reimbursement Per Encounter
The average reimbursement rate per encounter represents the average amount your practice collects from each patient visit. This metric helps you determine if your practice is bringing in the right dollars for each patient encounter.
Calculation
Total Reimbursement÷Number of Encounters in a Given Time Period For instance, in the last 60 days, total reimbursement is $80,000 and the number of encounters is 900
$80,000/900 = $89 per encounter over the past 60 day
What You Should Avoid?
Never calculate the average reimbursement per encounter for all payers together. Calculate the average reimbursement amount paid by each payer for each patient encounter. If your chiropractic EHR and billing software help you generate payer-specific payment reports, this could help you determine the total payments made by the payer for all submitted claims and identify the reimbursement rate for each patient visit, specific to that payer.
How much money do you make per visit? Is this number increasing or decreasing? If this number is decreasing, can you identify why? Though the average reimbursement per encounter fluctuates according to the type of patients you treat and the treatments you provide, it’s important to know the reasons if the number is decreasing over time. Determine what is the industry average and see if your price points match the chiropractic industry standards and the geographical area you’re located in.
Evaluate Your Statistics
Evaluating the statistics over time is important. If your practice is seeing more patients but collecting less money, outdated software, coding accuracies, and billing processes could be taking a bite out of your income. If the number of patients you’re seeing in a week decreases over time, patient retention and acquisition strategies need to be strengthened.
How to Increase Insurance Reimbursements
• Approximately 80% of all claims contain errors, and because of strict regulations followed by insurance companies, they’ll likely be rejected. Ensure getting your claims right the first time.
• Minimize coding errors. ICD-10codes are updated frequently and so do CPT codes. The most common coding errors happened when providers don’t follow the updated codes or use incorrect or mismatched codes. Always double-check codes before submitting a claim.
• Minimizing errors in a claim can reduce the occurrence of rejections and denials, but if they do occur, be sure to handle them as quickly as possible. Appealing denied claims or resubmitting corrected claims can take weeks, so try to expedite the claim editing process.
• Know when to outsource your chiropractic billing process. Chiropractic billing companies like zHealth have dedicated coders and billing specialists who pay attention to detail, resulting in faster claim submission and more revenue.
How to Increase the Number of Patients
• Chiropractic EHR software plays an important role in patient satisfaction. If your patient is more digitally savvy, start using EHR to provide the ease of online appointment scheduling and an online patient intake portal to drive patient satisfaction.
• Increasing patient retention by 5% can lead to an increase in profits by 25-95%. Start using patient recall software like Patient Plus to retain more patients.
• Offer convenience to patients. Having access to chiropractic software will allow you to provide your patients with an easy-to-use online appointment scheduling tool. You can send automated appointment reminders and they can fill their intake forms from the comfort of their homes. There are many easy methods to get more patients. Check it here.
• Better patient experience means happy and satisfied patients. If they are happy with your service and practice, they will come back and refer their friends and family.
Your Future Profits Are Waiting!
Now that you know what is the number #1 revenue metric you need to track and monitor, how are you going to do it? Simple. Identify the problems and start using chiropractic software. Our zHealth Chiropractic Software can provide you with revenue figures over whatever period you set with a few clicks. Click here to get a free demo.
