What time is it?  It is New Year’s time.  It’s resolution time.  How many of you made resolutions?  Maybe they are not resolutions but are goals.  Some of you say resolutions and/or goal setting doesn’t work. 

What I say to that is, you are correct.  Do you know why they don’t work?  It’s because you don’t have an action plan to make it work.  So, you want to make a million dollars this year.  Say it all you want, but without an action plan, you won’t know how to get there.

How do you develop an action plan?

  1. Write down your end goal, to collect $1 million.
  2. Figure out the number of patient visits, total collections, total charges, total new patients, and you’re per visit value (PVV) for the practice from last year.  Then do the same for each doctor in your office.
  3. Make sure your goal is SMART (specific, measureable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound).
  4. To bring in more money, you need to either see more patients, or increase your PVV, or better yet, do both.  Let’s say your PVV was $100, can you get it to $110 or even $120?  Ask yourself what service you can add to get you there?  Are you following your protocols or do you even have written protocols?  If not, that is where you need to begin.
  5. Now if you increase your PVV and keep the same number of patient visits, what does that come out to in regards of your new income?  What happens if you increase total visits by 5 or 10 percent?  Do you have the capacity to do this?  Meaning, do you have enough office space or enough staff to handle this increase?  What can happen if you add another medical assistant to help out?  Can you increase your production, thus increasing collections?
  6. Another way to increase your income is to figure out the number of new patients you had last year.  Say, it was 500.  Now figure out what a new patient is worth.  In order to do this, take the total collections you earned last year and divide that by the total number of new patients you have seen over the same time period.  Now figure out how many new patients this year to attain your goal by knowing what a new patient is worth.  Now add more services to each new patient as well to make your goal realistic.

So, what time is it?  It’s action plan time.

Want to learn how to manage the big numbers you need to know to grow your business? Join the Top Practices Practice Management Institute today! 

Post A Comment