Portions of this article are reprinted from an article previously published by this author in Henry Schein's Animal Health Solutions and recently republished by VetAdvantage. To see the full article, click here.
‘What gets measured gets done’. To find areas that need improvement, and to monitor the impact of changes you make in your practice, you need to measure a few key performance indicators. Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) can help drive improvements in both the quality of medicine and the quality of the business. This summary will provide an overview of what are KPI’s, why a veterinarian would use them, and recommendations for how to use them. Where should you start?
The most commonly used KPI in veterinary practice is probably the monitoring of total revenues of the practice. This remains one of the most important KPI’s in a veterinary practice, but it is incomplete in its ability to diagnose the health of a veterinary practice. A more complete priority list might include:
Total revenues
Number of invoices or transactions
Cost of labor or payroll expenses
Cost of professional services (drugs and medical supplies, lab expenses, food and bedding, etc)
Number of new clients
Number of new patients
Total expenses
Accounts receivable
How should I monitor these KPI's?
Keep it simple, capture and monitor these data monthly. Add them to a chart, similar to the Data Dashboard at IsMyPracticeHealthy.com, which shows these data in Trailing 12 or Rolling 12-month average format. Each data point in these charts represents 12 months of data, so all seasonality is effectively removed. The trends you see are real and allow you to identify negative and positive trends early. For more instructions on using a data dashboard and Key Performance Indicators, go the the Data Input page at IsMyPracticeHealthy.com.
