If I tell a doctor that a friend has a good practice – and he grosses Rs. 50,000 a day, most doctors will not know how to react.

Why?

Correctly so. Is this a private clinic or a big hospital? What are the relative numbers? What was it last week? Last month? Last year?

However the sad part is that most doctors may not know enough about their own business too! Why simply because they do not know what parameters to measure.

Let us take a quick ride through a simple 2-3 doctors kind of a practice – say like a dentistry with 3 chairs, and 6 doctors working from 8am to 10pm.

1. How many POTENTIAL patients walked in: Very few doctors actually measure this, if at all. When you are located in one place for a very long time, chances are you will have walk ins. Knowing how many people walk in every day, what questions do they ask, and what makes them decide on whether to come again is a very important thing for the practice to do. If you are not doing it, start TODAY. Now.

2. The potential walk in to conversion ratio: Out of 100 people who walked in how many actually became patients? Are you happy with this? How many got converted last week? How was it last month? If you do not have data capture tools, data analytic tools are useless.

3. Once you have the ratios see what the boy/ girl at the reception is telling the potential patients! Some training could be useful. Does the front desk receptionist multi task? does the walk in potential patient feel neglected? Should you have a doctor attend to the prospect within 5 minutes or 3 minutes? Are people in a hurry or are they relaxed?

4. What is the average billing per patient? what is the trend over a period of time?

5. What kind of patients spend more? Is there a potential of attracting more patients of that kind?

6. How many patients give you a referral? Have you ASKED patients for a referral? Is your staff trained to take a feedback? Does the feedback form have space for referrals? Do they speak of you highly in their circles? If a man is coming to you for dentistry why are his family members not coming? his parents? wife? children? Is that a message?

All the above questions can be measured…..you need patience and a nice part time clerk to do this. I am sure there is some nice software which will process it and give you nice crisp reports. I have not done any research on that!

A simple book and excel sheet is not a bad place to make a start….