Practice Management Alert

As a physician or practice manager reviewing your monthly data, you now have a sensitive diagnostic tool in hand. Your benchmarking sheet will warn you if any of your numbers dip below either your historical level or the national average (after adjusting for region and specialty, of course). But what do you do with that information? Keith Borglum, Certified Healthcare Business Consultant at Professional Management & Marketing, offers next steps.

The good news is that, unlike with an untraceable dip in profits, a dip in one of your benchmarks instantly highlights the root cause of lost profitability. For example, “if you depend heavily on inpatient procedures, it might turn out that you had fewer inpatients or surgeries that month,” says Borglum.

And if you’re measuring far below a national average, he advises, you might speak to colleagues in the field or to consultants from your specialty’s trade organization to figure out how you could improve that benchmark shortfall. Perhaps there’s a trend in your industry that you aren’t aware of yet, or a mistake you’ve been making for years that you didn’t know you were making.

You might be facing a collections issue, either on your end or with an individual payer. As a result, you can immediately address the problem with a lackluster staffer or contractor, or with a delinquent payer.

Is there a thief in the house? The final possibility is that you’ve discovered evidence of wrongdoing inside your practice. No one wants to think that one of their employees has been embezzling money or stealing equipment, says Borglum but benchmarking can be one of the fastest ways to identify such a problem. Rather than finding out about a damaging incident after years of trouble, you can use your benchmarking document to recognize and cut out a criminal staffer early in their tenure.