Important Medical Practice Benchmarks in 2017

Medical Practice Benchmarks are an essential part of running a successful medical office.

Many doctors don’t know if their practices are doing well. In most cases, they are simply stumbling blind, trying to go by feel at the end of the year. The day-to-day responsibilities that come with running a medical office mean that they do not have time to monitor all aspects of their business.

This is why Medical Practice Benchmarks are an important practice management tool.

Healthcare Consulting Firm The Fox Group agrees: “Formal benchmarks can be useful metrics for assessing a practice, as well as for monitoring its ongoing performance.  They can provide not only goals, but can be used as reference points that make it easy to recognize when performance is shifting from norms (good or bad) … triggering the need to determine causes and to act accordingly.”

To help you stay on track, here a 4 simple Medical Practice Benchmarks to measure and ensure you are functioning well.

Volume of New Patients per Day/Week

If you are attracting new patients to your clinic, you are probably doing well with your marketing and visibility. There is no rule as to how many new patients should be visiting (as it varies greatly from family practice to specialist to urgent care). But typically, there should be some development of new patients each week within the clinic. A good rule of thumb can be 10 – 25% depending upon your desire to grow.

Patient Referrals per Quarter

The second measure of patient satisfaction would be how many patients are referring. This means patients referring other patients to your clinic, not patients you are referring out. Obviously any medical referral this is based upon needs of the individual, meaning patients don’t just decided to visit the day a person refers. Still, having some sort of measurement around this, perhaps once a quarter is a great starting point.

If you have patients referring family and friends in the same vicinity, that is a great indicator of their satisfaction and trust with your clinic’s care.

Net Revenue Collection percentage by Month

You can calculate your revenue collection rate by dividing by the sum of all gross billings against actually funds collected. Obviously some funds will take time to be officially collected, so you may need to ask a book keeper to review these numbers after end of month.

According to a 2012 article by Medscape, “You should have a collection rate of 97% or greater to ensure a healthy bottom line. If your net collection rate is lower than 97%, calculate the net collection rate by individual payer to identify whether a particular payer is the culprit. If the net collection rate is generally consistent among all of your payers, investigate your front-end billing processes to determine whether you are submitting clean claims.”


Expense percentage by Month/Quarter

There is an old saying that it’s not how much you make, but how much you keep. This is just as true in a medical clinic as any other business.

According to American Academy of Family Physicians “Most practices keep an eye on the amount of money they’re collecting each month. But they don’t necessarily look at that figure in relation to other metrics. It’s more telling to track collections as a percentage of charges. A collections-to-charges ratio between 50 percent and 80 percent is typical.”

Tracking these numbers does take discipline and regular review. The more accurate data you have the better you can pinpoint weak areas and improve. Taking the time to benchmark also give you an objective view of how you are performing and can help to grow your peace of mind. 


Want to Read More about Medical Practice Benchmarks?

Five Key Benchmarks that could Make or Break your Practice by Medscape
Vital Signs for Assessing a Practice’s Health by AAFP