When I was leading a team of physical therapists in a healthcare organization I remember how much my team hated when we would discuss the “P” word (productivity). We all knew it was important, but the nuts and bolts of calculating and monitoring productivity was a turnoff, as we were all just interested in making our patients better, not in the bottom line of the organization.

I would spend a lot of my time preparing for meetings that would discuss productivity planning out the correct language around the topic, every effort put forward toward ensuring that the team could understand how it was measured, and why it was important.

Now, as a healthcare consultant to private practices, I work mostly with practice owners and managers. Productivity is well understood, and the importance is known. We will often discuss that the challenge in healthcare is striking the balance between a productive work environment that supports a healthy bottom line for a practice, and one in which quality experience is achieved by all patients who enter the door.

The following article from Medical Economics approaches the subject of productivity in healthcare practices, how productivity is calculated, and which formula may be best based on your individual practice.

When you judge a baseball hitter’s output, what numbers do you study? Hits? Runs? Runs batted in? Batting average? Slugging percentage?

Likewise, you have your choice of stats for defining physician output.

For soloists, productivity is easy to describe—see enough patients and render enough services to meet overhead and provide you with a desirable income. In a group, however, splitting revenue is often complicated and contentious, because somebody’s bound to think that the yardstick for productivity is unfair.

If you’re sizing up a job offer or you’re a partner in a group that’s fighting over income, you need to understand how various productivity measures affect compensation. We’ve developed this primer to bring you up to speed and help you negotiate the best possible terms.

Tags: productivity

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 8:16 am and is filed under Management, Physical Therapy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.