It’s a new year. And while you may think that now is the time for you and your optometric practice to sit back and recover from the strenuous holiday season, there’re still patients to be seen, claims to be submitted, and metrics to be measured.
In order to compete with online retailers, you need to challenge your optometric practice to grow in 2018. While goal setting can give you the encouragement to push ahead, if the goal isn’t based on past measurements, then there’s no way to know if your goal is attainable, or if it’s enough to grow your practice.
Below are the year-end metrics your optometric practice should measure to facilitate goal planning and growth
3 Year-end Optometric Practice Performance Measurements
Gross Revenue Per Patient
Measuring the amount of money that you receive from the average patient will give you insight into ways you can increase your practice profits. To calculate your gross revenue per patient, use this formula:
Gross Revenue Per Patient = Gross Revenue / Number of Patients
The eyecare industry average for gross revenue per patient is $300. If you didn’t meet that metric in 2017 or if you’d like to try and surpass that in 2018, consider increasing the product sales or adding a high-grossing specialty to earn more profit.
Expense Rate to Revenue
In order to make money, you have to spend money. But if you’re not seeing a return on your investment or if you’re spending more money than you made, then you could be setting your practice up for failure. Creating a profit and loss statement will help you track your practice’s revenue and identify areas where you can cut back in 2018 to increase your practice profits.
Measure your expense rate to revenue rate using this equation:
Expense Rate to Revenue = Expense / Revenue x 100
New Patient Growth Per Year
How many new patients did you get last year? Growing your patient count by 8-10% is the industry benchmark, but by trying creative marketing techniques and encouraging patients to leave online reviews, you should be able to exceed those metrics in 2018.
Before you set your 2018 new patient goal, figure out your new patient growth rate in 2017 with this formula:
New Patient Growth = (Number of Patients In 2017 - Number of Patients In 2016) / Number of Patients in 2016 x 100
Learn the other benchmarks and formulas to measure your optometric practice success in 2017 and uncover tips for improving those metrics in 2018 by downloading the ebook “8 Benchmarks ODs Need To Monitor In Their Practice.”
