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Several of the consultants here at Silkin Management Group have been writing about various ways to measure productivity in a health care office. You can see what has been written by visiting some of Silkin’s other blog sites including: How do you Measure the Productivity of all Areas of an Office?, More on Measuring Productivity, and Here’s More Ideas on Measuring Productivity. I was invited to put my “two cents” worth on this subject since it is such an important aspect of the management of any business.

As has been discussed, the first thing you need to do with any area or job position is to determine exactly what the product that area or job should be producing. This may take some figuring out by carefully inspecting the job or area in terms of what you really need coming out of the area. Previous blog articles discussed this concept in terms of a receptionist and treatment plan presentations. I’d like to present what Silkin Management Group has found very workable for the management of the collection area of a health care office.

What is the product we’d expect out of this area? How about:

Patient fees collected in a timely manner.

It seems like that would be an excellent product for the collection area to accomplish. If it accomplished this product regularly, the income of the office should be in good shape with very low receivables.

Now, how would one best measure that so one could actually manage the area by a metric? There are several stats that would give you a good measurement of how the area is doing:

• Total collections received.
• Total accounts receivables over thirty days. (Graphed as a reverse graph with zero at the top.)
• Percent of collections to services.

Needless to say, one would have to use some “smarts” when looking at the second statistical graph as it would also to be compared to the production in an office. Obviously if the office’s production was rising, the total receivables would likely be rising too, so a comparative analysis would have to be made. The third statistic above helps with this.

The third statistic is based upon a formula that we’ve worked out that compares several month’s collections to several month’s worth of services, with a time factor built in depending upon the type of practice, how much insurance is used and some other factors.

There are a variety of stats we help our Silkin Management Group clients with so that they can easily and properly manage their practice. The information above gives you more data about one area. I hope it is helpful.

If you are interested in any management help with your practice or business, feel free to contact us at info@silkinmanagementgroup.com or visit our website: silkinmanagementgroup.com

Best regards,
Dave McKevitt
Consultant
Silkin Management Group