Why Do We Need Data-Driven Stats To Grow Your Chiropractic Business
On a scale of one to five, five being the highest, how confident are you in making data-driven decisions for your practice? If you're anything less than a four, I’m here to help you gain that certainty of a five as quickly as possible.
If you're anything less than a five, it's not your fault. I get it. You went to school to become a doctor, you love patient care, and there's nothing better than helping patients move from pain to out of pain and transition into a lifestyle of health and wellness that you've always wanted to deliver.
But what if there was a way that you could grow your practice without sacrificing patient care and make the whole patient experience even better?
Here's the reality — if you can't confidently make data-driven decisions in your practice, you will be shocked at how much money and revenue opportunities are slipping through the cracks.
So, I'm going to show you three data-driven points to focus on so you can crush your data-driven decision-making, and scale your practice.
One of the most amazing things about building The Data-Driven Practice and BlueIQ is the amount of data that we now have streaming in from thousands of practices.
The data tells the story, and we can see across our industry that so many clinics are literally letting thousands of dollars slip through the cracks every week. In fact, the average practice, depending on its size, is missing out on $5K - $10K a week.
So I want to help you with these three data-driven points that will change everything for you. The first one is what we call Net New Patients.
1. Net New Patients
It's ‘net’ because it's a calculation of the number of new patients coming in, and then it's taking an effect on the number of patients that are slipping through the proverbial back door, the patients who are going inactive.
We spend so much money on marketing to bring patients in the front door, but we forget that it's four times easier to reactivate a patient than go after new ones. And there are many ways to reactivate these patients.
Our software, BlueIQ, tracks those patients through a period of time. And at 12 months, if they have not come back into the practice, and they don't have a next appointment, it’s highly unlikely that the patient is coming back to your practice.
So we track this for you, and we use this formula to give us what's called that net new patient number.
Let’s look at an example from a practice that had 75 new patient exams — not leads but actual new patient exams come in the front door. But the BlueIQ software picked up 106 patients going inactive that same month giving us a net new patient number of -31.
It’s painful to see your practice shrink with the amazing work you're doing and the incredible life-changing services that you're providing for them. So how do we close that back door? Where should your focus be? What processes could you put into place that would help a patient stay more active in your practice, fully understanding the life-saving services and quality-of-life-boosting services you provide?
We could guess what our patients want, but through the power of data, we are able to ask, receive, and analyze data.
One of the things that you could do for your practice right now is build a Google Form, and you're going to email it out to a list of your patients who are going inactive. BlueIQ creates that list so you can simply download that, or you can go into your patient management system and export that list.
So we want to create an email where we can give them a link asking them why they decided to leave. Here are five simple questions that will tell you a lot about their patient experience:
Did we meet or exceed your expectations for the primary reason why you came in to see us? If we didn't, then we have to work on our patient experience, or we've got to reframe that patient experience of why we didn't meet their expectations.
On a scale of one to five, five being the highest, what level of value did you receive from our practice? Data-driven docs are all about building value for their patients. The more value you deliver for your patients, the longer the retention you're going to have.
Are your health concerns now resolved? Most people are used to healthcare being something you plug into when you're sick or in crisis. They don't truly understand it. But if your patient education systems are working, then you've transitioned them from focusing on symptoms and moved them to focus on their overall well-being. They understand that your services are the fundamental cornerstone of great healthcare.
On a scale of one to ten, how likely are you to refer us to your friends and family? This is your net promoter score, the most fundamental, and most important metric of a business in understanding if we’re meeting and exceeding patient expectations. Are your promoters 8’s, 9’s, and 10’s? We count the number of responses for 8’s, 9’s, and 10’s, and we subtract the ones that reported 1’s through 5’s, which are your detractors.
So as an example, when you take 50 people that gave you 8’s, 9’s, and 10’s, and you had 10 people gave you 1’s through 5’s, that would be an 80% net promoter score. That’s how well you're doing meeting and exceeding the expectations of your patients.
Would you be interested in services that would help keep your health optimized? This is you gathering data. Is this a patient that wants to be reached out to? Can we offer them additional services?
When you begin surveying your patient base and getting this kind of information back from them, you now have data to shape your messaging. You can create additional services that can meet and exceed their expectations for the things that they're looking for because improving the patient experience is so important to the overall success of your practice.
2. Reappointment Rate
This data point needs to be tracked because it revolutionizes practices. When a patient comes into your practice, they're counting on your expertise to guide them on how often they should come back for a visit.
Have you created some bad habits by allowing patients to dictate when they should come back? I mean, if we’re really talking about true healthcare, shouldn’t we be giving them some guidance? Like, is it best for them to visit once a month, twice a month, or maybe just once every six months for optimal health?
And then of course, if there's a new injury or aggravation, they should have clear steps to take to get back to your acute level of care.
So the reappointment rate or recare rate is the number of patients that you saw in a day and then checking out how many of them already have their next appointment lined up. This is what we call building your future production. This is a key concept in building your services.
Reappointment rate allows you to build that and also reduces the workload on the front desk. There's nothing worse than the front desk coming in at the beginning of the day, they pull up the day’s schedule, and there are just holes everywhere. Imagine how much more productive and profitable your practice could be if those were filled with high-value appointments.
Reappointment rate is powerful, and the average practice should be between 88% to 90% reappointment rate. Sure, there will be exceptions like patients without a care plan or those from out of town, but for the majority of your patients, it should be crystal clear when you'd like to see them again. Their next appointment should be locked in, leading to a high reappointment rate among your patient base.
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3. Case Acceptance
This powerful metric is talked a lot about in our industry, but I want to break it down even more for you. Case acceptance is where a new patient comes in, and they go through your exam and report of findings process. By now, I hope most of you are keeping an eye on that conversion from the report of findings to the start rate - the patients who accepted care and are moving forward.
Tracking that helps you see just how strong your processes are at ensuring a patient understands their diagnosis, understands the necessary treatment to heal that diagnosis, and all the tissues involved in that.
Plus, it provides insight into the anticipated outcomes and what life will look like post-treatment. That’s treatment planning, and we're tenaciously committed to achieving that 75% to 85% accepted rate, starting from the report of findings to the treatment plan.
But we need to back up a little bit and break down each step in this process. This is going to be slightly different for every practice based on how you bring new patients in. You might have a “day zero” where you're doing consultations and screenings. Then comes “day one” where that's the full exam, followed by “day two” when you deliver the report of findings.
Tracking case acceptance is essentially the process of completing a report of findings before embarking on their journey toward care. But let's look at every step. We want to break it down and see every step of your process. That's what we call a conversion dashboard.
A conversion dashboard starts with a lead that is scheduled. That lead, depending on your process, could be coming in for a new patient exam or coming in for that “day zero” screening. We want to track how many leads we’ve scheduled and how many of them will actually show up.
We track the kept appointment percentage, we track the number of patients that completed the screening visit, and then we track the conversion rate - what percentage of those patients went to your next step.
If you do a flow chart of each step of your process, it's really easy for our team to turn that into a beautiful data dashboard. And when you and your team see that data flow, you can easily see any conversion hiccups.
Is it a conversion weakness when it comes to showing up for that first appointment? Or maybe it’s the transition to the next step. Maybe the barrier is too much for them due to the price point or the time commitment.
We can see that data and begin talking through the processes that are in place. When your team can see that data, they get excited about engaging in the strategy behind it. They’re eager to work with you to identify what we could do better.
Whether we add this or change that, the data will quickly reflect these adjustments, giving you immediate feedback on the effectiveness of these new processes.
Tracking these three key metrics is the secret of the highest-performing practices. It will give you certainty in the processes that you're putting and building in place for your practice. And guess what? Your team will notice your unwavering commitment to improvement, boosting their confidence in following your lead.
This is what a data-driven community is all about, and I am here to give you all of this in our wonderful free Facebook group called The Data-Driven Practice. It’s a community where you will find other docs who have so much to offer you, support you, and lift you to the practice of your dreams. I look forward to seeing you there.
