With the first quarter of 2019 over, it’s time to take a small step back from your patients and put a bit of focus on your optometric practice. Using this time to assess your practice performance to uncover new strengths and potential weaknesses can help you develop strategies to keep your patient count high, increase your practice profit, and improve frame sales.
To help you meet your practice goals for 2019, we’ve listed three important equations to measure your practice success in the first quarter. Keep reading to uncover your strengths and weaknesses.
How To Measure Your First Quarter Optometric Practice Success in 2019
New Patient Growth
In our ebook, 8 Benchmarks ODs Need to Monitor in Their Practice, we listed new patient growth per year as one of the important measurements. While it’s accurate that you need to see an 8 to 10 percent growth on your patient base year-over-year, you’re probably not going to hit that number if you don’t monitor the growth quarterly.
To adapt the equation for a quarterly review, take the number of patients this quarter and subtract it from the number of patients in the previous quarter. Next, divide that number by the number of patients in the previous quarter. Finally, multiply by 100. The result will provide you with your patient growth rate for the quarter. When you have that number, analyze it against your yearly goal to determine if you need to adjust your marketing strategies to get new patients in the door.
Optical Capture Rate
Frame and contact lens sales can be a large contributor to your practice profits, so you should keep a close eye on this metric.
To calculate your optical capture rate, divide the number of patients who filled their prescriptions at your practice by the number of patients who were given a prescription. Then, multiply that number by 100 to get your optical capture rate.
If you’re finding that your patients won’t purchase your optical dispensing products, consider adjusting your prices, changing patient education strategies, or realigning your inventory to meet community needs.
Expense Rate to Revenue
Unless you’re taking a chance on some new strategies that’ll pay off in the long run, spending more than you’re bringing in is a bad sign. If you’re not taking a look at your profit and loss statements on a monthly basis, start analyzing them quarterly then graduate to monthly measurements.
Finding your expense rate to revenue is as easy as dividing your quarterly expense by the revenue and multiplying that by 100.
When your practice is spending more than it’s bringing in, it’s time to tighten your practice’s belt to help cut costs by:
- Making a budget
- Evaluating cost of ownership on your purchases
- Maximizing staff efficiency
For more tips and equations to monitor your optometric practice success, download the ebook, 8 Benchmarks ODs Need to Monitor in Their Practice.
