Orthopedic Coding Alert

Monthly benchmarking means your practice can observe granular trends more easily.

A good practice thrives on solid financial data. Current financial data your practice receives is compared to previous data in a process called benchmarking. Benchmarking is a good way for a practice to track its growths and losses and giving your team the tools to navigate financial opportunities. Here are some questions you can ask to improve your practice’s financial operations.

What Are Some Best Practices to Keep Benchmarking Simple?

No matter how complex your operation is, benchmarking can be made simple if you know a few tricks. Whenever your practice starts benchmarking, find categories that offer the most valuable statistics. Many practices stumble into the pitfall of collecting too much data, which can confuse you. Remember, sometimes too much overwhelming information is worse than not having enough.

A good example of keeping benchmarking simple is to keep a consistent monthly schedule. On this regular schedule, your practice can collect seven or eight data points recommended by doctors including patient visits per day, total collections, and normal expenses among others.

This routine can create the habit of entering this data into easily readable reference tables, separated by month. These benchmarking sheets can serve as a quick way to observe trends, especially after a few months of logging the info. Once those trends are identified, your practice’s methods can be adjusted to continue growth or compensate for losses.

How Often Should I Benchmark?

You have to choose the best way to manage your benchmarking schedule. Although monthly data offers valuable insight into your practice, at the very least an annual schedule is advisable. The drawback of an annual review is that much of the data collection is condensed into a single month when it can otherwise be spread out over the course of the year. Yearly benchmarking also means that it will be difficult to see financial trends until late in their lifespan. If you wait too long to address a certain issue, you might find your practice having a difficult time changing its course. Monthly benching yields the best results, but consider quarterly benchmarking if monthly is impossible.

What Is the Best Way to Choose and Compile My Benchmarks?

Choosing benchmarks depends on your practice’s needs. Some practice’s may base their decision making on the total amount of normal expenses while others are concerned with patient count. The important aspect of benchmarking isn’t necessarily what you choose to benchmark, but that you limit your total number of datasets.

Smaller practices mind find a lack of support for benchmarking. Physicians can become too busy to handle the data gathering. Fortunately, benchmarking does not require a sophisticated skillset. Much of the data is already collected during the day-to-day operations so even the newest staff member only needs to find this data and compile it in a benchmarking template. Another reliable method is to make multiple staff members responsible for a single data set each, easing the burden on one person.

Is There a Way to Compare My Practice to Other Practices?

These self-benchmarking practices are only as good as the context of which it is gathered. For example, you may find that your overall daily patient visitation is down for the month of July. You can’t tell if it is something your practice is doing wrong or if the national average of patients drops in this month. So, how can you compare?

The national benchmarking database is where you can see how your practice stands. This resource will identify overall medical trends, providing explanations to sudden changes in certain data groups. An important thing to keep in mind is to adjust your national search to account for your specialty and region. This is the best way to validate the data your practice has gathered.

Where Can I Find the National Databases?

The two most reliable sources are MGMA (Medical Group Management Association) and NSCHBC (National Society of Certified Healthcare Business Consultants). These organizations annually compile their research based on thousands of practices nationwide. They cover many industries and specialities as well.

You have the option of choosing either organization, but know that there are some small differences in their data gathering methods. MGMA keeps high reporting standards, so they specialize in data concerning multi-specialty practices that can pay for the rigorous data collection process. So, while the MGMA offers superior data on multi-specialty practices, MGMA offers less reliable information with specialty and overhead practices.

By contract, the NSCHBC focuses its data gathering on specialty practices. This resource provides better benchmarking for individual specialties. In order to determine the best resource for your practice, consider what your practice has to offer and choose accordingly.

After signing up for their website, you can find these stats here: http://stats.nschbc.org/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=/default.aspx.