Posts

George Konold

Physical Therapy Software Embedded Analytics

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Worms

Can of Worms

What do the numbers mean to you and your practice?

Opening your own practice means opening a whole new can of worms. That’s because there are so many elements that they don’t teach you about in school: aspects of running a business that you’re left to learn on the fly — all while attempting to provide quality care for your patients.

One of the most critical components of achieving practice success is making sense of the numbers. There are numbers everywhere, from revenue to no-shows, from patient visits to accounts receivable. When you first start to look at them, it can almost seem like you’re staring at signs in a foreign language, hoping that the context might shed some light on what they mean. Practice management software can help, but until you know what numbers are most important to your practice — and how they signify growth or, conversely, difficulties — you’re still left wading through a mess of mathematical gobbledygook.

Fortunately, there are analytics — tools to help you make sense of the data — available, and the best software solutions, such as bestPT, embed those tools into the program so that they’re easily and immediately accessible. Offering a visual presentation of the numbers, these analytics finally make it possible for you to interpret and understand the numbers that drive your practice. Examples include:

Radar chart — Visually resembling a spiderweb, the radar chart shows multiple variables on axes starting from the same point, radiating outward like spokes on a wheel. The length of the spoke is proportional to the magnitude of the data. This allows you to examine the correlation of values — say, accounts receivable and NFAs — that aren’t otherwise measured in comparable units.

RadarChart

Trend report — A trend report presents data on a traditional line graph, thereby allowing you to see the peaks and valleys of your information — and the inter-relation of different data sets — over time.

graphs

Histogram — With a histogram, you can choose three charts to show you a graphical representation of a single area of your practice over a given time period (weekly/monthly), depending on the selection. This allows you to gauge how your practice is doing comparatively for a set amount of time.

PaymentHistogram

Dashboard — A dashboard is an organized presentation of the numbers, so you can get an at-a-glance picture of where your practice stands on collections and outstanding work. bestPT, for example, can show you failed claims, AR > 120 and outstanding tasks — or “tickets” — on a single screen through its homescreen dashboard.

Dashboard

Billing Stats Report — This type of report allows you to view claims by date of service. The report can then be broken down in a number of different ways, depending on what you’re looking for (customizable by practice). The Billing Stats Report, or BSR, is very useful for digging into problems.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to determine which numbers provide the best snapshot of practice success; however, analytics are the tools that help bring that snapshot into focus.

What do the numbers mean to you and your practice?

George Konold

Physical Therapy Software | Control your practice workflow with Radar

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physical therapy software_radar_practice_managementIs the chaos in your physical therapy practice driving you nuts? You can take control of your practice workflow and build your dream practice.

Managing a physical therapy practice is a balancing act, though. Spending too much time on managing your staff and all the different aspects of your practice hurts your profitability. In terms of long-term profitability your practice can only grow or die. But practice growth is not possible without effective task management and an optimized workflow.

Tasks that are not done are forgotten and affect your entire practice negatively while your patients suffer. You can blame your insufficiently trained staff, but no one can perform consistently and effectively when relying exclusively on his memory. Most physical therapy software systems don’t solve this problem since they are not configured to track a provider’s unique workflow. Tracking multiple  Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at the same time is especially difficult for a busy and growing practice.

The Radar provides you with a snapshot of multiple Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) right on your cloud-based bestPT software home page so that you can see the big picture in one glance with the option to drill down into individual stats. In fact, each user can drill down into any portion of the Radar to access details about workflow for improved accountability and teamwork. This helps analyze any under-performing areas so that any of your staff members can take corrective actions to ensure your practice’s consistent cash flow. For example, bestPT customers use Radar to control their practice workflow with a centralized organization of tasks. Since data collection of tasks is automated by bestPT physical therapy software, they can track their staff’s task completion and increase accountability.

You may not want to use any new tools or spend time learning new skills, but effective workflow management requires training and a physical therapy software system that provides ease-of-use. No PT has time to dig up and analyze complex data in the form of difficult and boring text to compare various KPIs.

Contact your SPOC to configure your Radar so it displays Ticket backlogs and Ticket workbenches among the other KPIs. Then monitor the workflow daily and drill into the numbers to see who is struggling with any tasks. To further simplify practice workflow you can also make a checklist for any repetitive tasks.

Eldad De-Medonsa, PhD

Physical Therapy Billing | Monthly Health Check

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physical therapy billing: kpi

By Thomas Champine

Just like there are Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for your patients to improve, we have defined the KPIs for your practice. Your physical therapy practice’s financial health is reviewed and assessed at every Monthly Health Check (MHC) that you have with your SPOC. Charges, Collections, Visits, No Shows, No Future Appointments and percentage of A/R over 120 days are just a few of the KPIs that are measured, assessed and reviewed by your SPOC with you during the MHC to insure the financial health of your practice.

Has this situation ever happened to you?

You have a patient who comes in once or twice to work with you. You have given them exercises and suggestions on ways to make their pain go away. The patient then becomes non-compliant with their appointments. They don’t reschedule anything. Then, out of the blue, six months later the patient comes to you and asks you “Why am I not getting better?”

Now, let’s take a step back and change the key players

It is the end of the month and you feel exhausted. You have been at work 60+ hours a week and feel like you couldn’t see any more patients then you have. You go and review your physical therapy practice’s financials and something is not right. There just isn’t the amount of money that you expected. You look back at the last six months and panic slightly when you realize that yournumbers have been steadily dropping for the last three months. Why is your practice struggling?

The answer to this question is the same as the answer you would give your patients. We never regularly reviewed our solution to see if it was being effective for you to reach your goals. How do we do this when we are talking about your practice’s financial health?

The Monthly Health Check

Just like there are Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for your patients to improve, we have defined the KPIs for your practice to improve. Your physical therapy practice’s financial health is reviewed and assessed at every Monthly Health Check (MHC) that you have with your SPOC. Charges, Collections, Visits, No Shows, No Future Appointments and % of A/R over 120 days are just a few of the KPI that are measured, assessed and reviewed by your PMC with you during the MHC to insure the financial health of your practice.

As your physical therapy software and practice management solution, we pride ourselves on our ability to improve your practice’s financial health, to relieve your practice’s financial pains and create a better quality of life for you and your practice. We can not do this without you. Just like the patient above, without your input and feedback, we can not assess what is working well and what problems you might have. When is your next MHC?