Our previous article discussed the essential ingredients of an employee appraisal. In our opinion, employee reviews are over complicated with lengthy appraisals that are subjective instead of objective. In order to create an objective appraisal void of grey areas, we recommend using 1-2 employee quarterly objectives; using the categories “Above Expectations”, “Meets Expectations”, and “Below Expectations”; provide written descriptions of expectations; limit the appraisal to ten or less items; and use a point system. We provided a link to our example of an objective employee appraisal.
Our poll asked “Who Fills Out Employee Performance Appraisals in Your Practice?” The options were “Employee”, “Office Manager”, or “Owner”. Over 70% said the office manager, almost 30% said the owner, and of the participants, none said the employee. Since the appraisal should be objective, the responses of the employee should match the responses of the practice owner or practice manager.
The focus of today’s article will be on the importance of having a reporting system that is independent from your medical or dental system (i.e. Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Advanced MD, Modernizing Medicine, Athena, etc.). These software systems will generate reports for you, but they will not aggregate or trend the data in a meaningful way. For instance, many times the new patient analysis is inaccurate because it does not include reactivated patients, patients that are not 9920x, or referral sources which is important for marketing purposes. We also recommend tracking primary KPIs (key performance indicators) that the software is not (but should be) tracking.
Even if the software has an “ok” reporting solution, there are at least four main reasons on why it is still important to have an isolated reporting system. One, the practice may switch from one medical/dental system to another every few years. Two, system updates within the same system may not be backwards compatible. Three, the system may have a limit on years of history it will provide to reduce the stress on the servers. Four, the new or improved system, may not count the data in the same way as before or in the same way you want to as already mentioned with new patients. All of these result in loss of important historical data. In order to remember your past and to plan for the future, historical reports need to be kept. If you know that in the past the month of September is not usually a month where you meet production goals, you can better prepare to keep with schedule full or plan to work more days in preceding or succeeding months to make up for the lost revenue.
In order to have a valuable reporting system, we recommend it be:
Simple:
- Tracking KPIs should be simple for your practice manager to do.They should be able to go in at the end of every day and enter less then 10 easy to find numbers.
- The reporting system should generate easy to read reports.
- The practice manager may need to delegate certain tasks such as the tracking of new patients. For this reason, the system should be easy to train new people on.
Separate:
- Since medical/dental systems are limited in what they track, your reporting environment needs to be detached from the transaction system.
- There are several reasons why you may lose history if you are solely reliant on your medical/dental software.
Easy to Access:
- Since the reporting system will need to be used every day, it should be easy to access.
Useful:
- The system should generate real time reports that show you where you are with your goals every day.
- The system should show trends based on historical data. The more history, the better.
Accurate:
- The system should provide precise analysis and filter out useless information.
Since medical/dental systems are so limited in the data they can provide, we recommend tracking important daily numbers in the Doctors CFO KPI Tracker. This is one small part of our Doctors MBA program which provides you with the tools you need to run a successful practice. By entering a few simple and easy to find numbers every day, it will give you an in depth mini analysis that can help your practice plan for upcoming days, months, and years. Doctors MBA also provides you with a ‘Salary and Raise Planner’, ‘New Patient Tracker’, and ‘Pricing Calculator’.
To participate in our poll this week, please subscribe to our mailing list and follow us on Instagram. “Is Your Practice Using a Reporting System Separate From Your Medical/Dental System?”
The reason we are publishing these articles is so that your office can increase its success. We appreciate your feedback on how we can help you more and love it when you pass these articles along to other practice owners and office managers.
Developing a management report is not easy and Doctors CFO currently has a robust model for most practice types that is customized for our monthly and bi-monthly clients. If you have questions on how this model applies to your practice or you are interested in applying the Doctors CFO model in your practice, via one of our annual, bi-monthly or monthly assessments, please contact us.
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