At Vantage Clinical Solutions, we recently published a number of free practice management tools intended for use by private practice owners and managers. 

The tools are simplified for quick and easy use and focus on 5 areas of practice management that we commonly address with our clients: the startup process, budgeting, productivity, breakeven analysis, and strategy. 

More detailed versions of the tools are available for purchase and Vantage offers a selection of consulting and management services that work hand-in-hand with the online toolbox in order to help private practices navigate our healthcare economy both efficiently and profitably.

So, check ‘em out and let us know what you think!

It’s easy to be productive with a full schedule.  As long as your office is booked solid and patients are showing up for appointments, there’s never a trouble when it comes to staying busy.  Just buckle up and get busy.

It’s trickier though when the schedule lightens up a bit.  Many aspects of healthcare are cyclical, and while it’s easy to for a caseload to diminish a bit here and there, it’s not as easy to flex your schedule so that you and your staff remain busy (er, “productive”)…that is, if productivity is measured solely on the number of patients seen.

Though revenues wane when there are less patients walking through the door, remember that the growth of a practice takes work, and the mental energy that it applied to patients on a busy day can (and should) be applied toward your practice on a lighter day.  Having a plan for slow days is important, and will allow you to quickly make the adaptation when dictated by your schedule.

This post by Dr. Schoor at the Independent Urologist Blog makes important mention of this, as well as a number of tasks to perform during your slower days.

While busy is great, an occasional slow is ok too; as long as it is only every so often. Here’s what to do on a slow day so that you can stay productive and proactive.

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.