Practice Owners Manual Series, Part 6 - Patient Care Coordinator With Adam Robin

[00:00:00] You know you have a really good front desk person whenever your therapist are coming up to you saying, man they're freaking slamming me. Right? That front desk is slamming my schedule man like,

[00:00:11] God, oh angel up there she just doesn't let up. I'm like, and we're not she's not going to let up either right? It's like that's when you know. You just sit back and smile. That's exactly what

[00:00:20] she's and I'm not taking the foot off the gas. Right? If your job is not necessarily take your foot off the gas, your job is to figure out how to solve the problems that come from that.

[00:00:30] Chaos and all those things like solve those problems keep the schedule full. Welcome! You've entered the Physical Therapy Owners Club podcast where your host, Nathan Shields and other successful PT owners and leaders share their experience and insights on how to build

[00:00:47] successful PT businesses. They'll share the stories of their paths to success and show you how you can also obtain greater freedom and more profits from your business. That's what the PT owners club is all about, greater freedom and more profits. There's plenty of room for you as well

[00:01:03] so come on in and join the club. Hello everybody and welcome back to the next episode in our series of the quintessential bulletproof practice owners manual for success. Hopefully you appreciated the previous episode, took lots of notes, did some homework, now get ready to do some more

[00:01:25] work on your business, get out patent paper and let's go. Hello and welcome back to the, like Adam said, freaking best podcast in the world. Nathan Shields here with my partner Adam Robin. How are

[00:01:38] you doing? Fired up, happy, just excited man. I'm excited about what we're doing. Also hot because it's really hot out here in South Mississippi. It's triple digits today man. Oh geez, nasty. With the humidity that doesn't help. And I'm in Alaska where it's like

[00:01:52] 75 degrees and gorgeous. This is why people come to class. We are smack in the middle of it. I'm inside today, excited to be here. We are halfway through our private practice manual series to create a successful private practice. And up to this point, I think there's been some

[00:02:11] really cool stuff that we've talked about and shared with people. Of course, we didn't cover every single detail and all the minutiae regarding a private practice, but what we've

[00:02:19] done thus far I think would be huge if people took the time. And I think I talked about this either in the first or second podcast to not try to consume and implement everything all at once, but

[00:02:30] don't feel like you have to implement everything from each podcast, but just take one thing. And maybe don't move on to the next thing until you've completed that one thing. Because we're releasing these weekly, people might be listening to them weekly,

[00:02:44] they might start feeling overwhelmed. And so I just want to preface this by saying this is a journey. You don't have to do everything so quickly, but consume it more importantly, implement along the way before you move on to the next thing. Would you add anything

[00:02:57] to that? No, I think, you know, I listened to you and Will Humphrey's talk on Will's new podcast. You guys haven't checked it out. Check out the Will Power podcast. Shout out Will. And he

[00:03:06] said inch by inch, it's a cinch. Yard by yard, it's hard. I'm going to steal that. Let's just, hey, what's the one win we can get in this week? What's the one small win we can have this week? And go back to the time and attention mastery podcast

[00:03:21] and implement some of those principles as you start implementing this stuff into your business. That's why it's there. Yeah. And really not to get too tangential on this topic, because we have some really important stuff to talk about today regarding the

[00:03:32] front desk coordinator, the PCC, right, the patient care coordinator. We are, what I especially found this last week is there's some work that I'm needing to get done. And I have a weekly meetup call with my mastermind group through PPS. And we commit to doing one thing

[00:03:49] each week that we're going to hold ourselves to and report on the next week in our weekly calls. And I found myself because that call was coming up and I had committed to doing that certain

[00:04:00] thing, I found myself making sure it got done before the next call. And if that commitment hadn't been there from the week before, I know I would have just blown it off.

[00:04:09] As we're doing this, I would just say there's a power in the networking. If you have an accountability partner, a coach, you name it, that is huge for pushing these big rocks or even

[00:04:20] the small rocks up the hill to get to where you want to go. I think everybody needs that kind of accountability and to be held to. Agreed. Let's get to it. Part six, patient care coordinator. Like you always say, bring out your piece of paper right up top.

[00:04:36] Part six of the private practice manual series is patient care coordinator, put that up at the top. Thinking about the patient care coordinator, I share this with you before we push record, but

[00:04:47] this person so valuable, I've lost lots of money through them and I've made lots of money through them. They are the face of the clinic. They are the first person that is seen,

[00:04:58] the last person that is seen for that patient as they're coming in and out of the clinic, vital that that experience between patient and that person at the front desk is positive.

[00:05:09] And they hold a lot of keys to your success. Yeah, man. They're the face of the company, face of the company like on the phone, phone, the emails, the scheduling, the collecting the money. I mean, there's just so much such an important relationship, so much that

[00:05:26] it's got its own little section in the manuals, its own section. It's really, really important. And the other thing that, and I don't know about you, Nathan, but my experience has been that whole position was very, very foreign to me as a practice. Like I didn't

[00:05:42] know anything about like that stuff. Like I just knew how to be a PT, right? I found myself like, Hey, can you just get that done for me? She would just kind of like when I say she,

[00:05:54] I mean, she as my PCC would just be like all the stuff I didn't want to do. I'll just give to her. You know what I mean? They didn't really understand like what her role was

[00:06:03] and how to utilize that position effectively, how to create some synergies between that front desk and the back end of practice too. Yeah, the initial owner of the clinic, me back in the day,

[00:06:13] was like, I just need someone to answer phones. Can you just answer that? And just assuming they knew what to say and that they were positive and they came across well and that

[00:06:22] they had the best interest of the company in mind and were actually trying to get people on the schedule instead of taking all the excuses and saying, okay, we'll just cancel that. It took

[00:06:31] a long time, many years, maybe over a decade before I finally figured out, oh, I need to kind of train them and tell them what to do and not just assume that they know what to do. And it's a

[00:06:41] lot more than just answering the phone. Oh yeah, a lot of money going in and out of that place too. So much right off very top of the sheet underneath patient care coordinator on your blank

[00:06:51] sheet. Start with avatar. Yeah, I like it. Who is this person? Who is the golden child? What is that avatar to you and your clinic? Yes, I would say my practice, but I'll also

[00:07:03] say that it's probably pretty typical in most clinics. You kind of want that person who is a social butterfly. People got to be a pupil person. They almost could be a marketer. You know what I mean? They almost could be a good marketing person, right?

[00:07:19] They have a lot of relationships in the community. They're active in the church. They might have a couple kids that are in the high school, they're there. They have some influence in some of the community groups and the community clubs. They're very, very social.

[00:07:33] And they've got some exposure to physical therapy. Ideally, my opinion is they've had some positive exposure to physical therapy and recognize the benefits of it. Absolutely. Not only that, they have some really valuable relationships with people in

[00:07:46] the community, right? Other business owners. That's important. If you can kind of picture, it's like they could almost be a marketer. That's the type of person I'm looking for. And when we're talking about avatar, we're talking about the ideal picture of what that

[00:07:58] person is like and maybe they don't check all the boxes, but if we're going to look for ideals, let's start from the very top, like set our sights on the very ideal person as we're making this avatar. Yeah, they've got some grown kids. They've got some exposure to

[00:08:12] physical therapy. They are a people person. As we're doing those working interviews, one of those things is we're going to ask that person that we're interviewing who might be a potential patient care coordinator to make some phone calls. They better not be afraid of getting

[00:08:26] on the phone at any given time and like talking to a stranger and be very comfortable in that space. And to the same degree, they've got to be very comfortable, even more comfortable asking for money. You cannot have them hemming and hawing and being like, oh,

[00:08:41] I'm so sorry that I have to collect this from you. My best patient coordinators were like, no, this is what you owe. This is your plan. It's not my plan. This is what you chose or

[00:08:51] what you got at your work and we do the work so we deserve the money. They almost have a little bit of a bulldogish mentality as far as collections. Yeah, I would say bigger than just collections

[00:09:03] like just life. Like in the interview, you really want that person who comes in and owns the room, maybe a little bossy, but not like demanding, not like in an aggressive way,

[00:09:14] but just kind of like, hey, welcome to the show. Like motherly. Right? Like, hey, I'm going to take care of this. Like, hey, this is, I got you. I don't need direction. Like I'm going

[00:09:23] to take care of this. Like I'm in charge here asking for money, making sure people are getting rescheduled when they don't really want to. Oh yeah. Like not afraid to say, listen, you can't cancel. That's not good for you. Yeah. Not on my schedule. This is my schedule.

[00:09:36] Right. Right. Listen, you need to be coming in three times a week. You can't just cancel and show up once this week and think you're going to get better and be able to say it like that in a very

[00:09:46] motherly, like jovial way and talk to them like, you guys, you need this. The other thing that I like to look at is somebody who can keep those spoiled brat clinicians in check too.

[00:09:58] Not afraid to talk to them. Hey, you're going to see 50 this week. I'm scheduling 60 to you. And like you're doing this, right? It's somebody who owns that front office. This is my

[00:10:08] schedule. This is my office. This is my domain and I'm going to take control of it. How do you find that kind of person? My favorite place to buy clothes is Buckle. You ever been to that clothing

[00:10:16] store? Yeah. My wife loves it. I love Buckle, man. And when you go there, those people are there. They're like salesmen. That's a different experience. Right. Like, hey, Mr. Shields, come on here. You want to hold if you're like, you're going up the sunglasses case and you

[00:10:31] try to, you're kind of just peeking in the sunglasses. They're like, oh, hey, they're open in the case for you. They're here. Put these on. Like they're very sales oriented people. Yeah. And very nice about it. And very nice. Very, very nice. Right? Like they have a

[00:10:42] commission based mindset. I like to recruit inside Buckle for my front desk people. Wait, you're kidding. You're like you're stealing from Buckle. Like, no, not necessarily. But like if I see people, I'm like, Hey, what are you doing? But like that's the type of mentality.

[00:10:59] And if you haven't been to Buckle, go to Buckle this weekend and you can find out really quickly. You're looking at or another thing is a really, really good waiter or waitress, somebody who's

[00:11:08] like, this is my table. Everybody here is going to get served at a high level. And I'm going to earn my commission at this table. Those are the two places that I see. It's like, Hey, that's the type of person I want work in the front desk.

[00:11:21] We've actually not for the patient care coordinator position, but we have recruited people from someone who really stood out at an Arby's that was right next to our clinic and there's another person that really stood out at the subway that was near our clinic.

[00:11:33] These weren't your traditional teenager, like what do you want type of employees? They really stood out. So I know what you're talking about. It's like, I want to tip this person. I really enjoyed my time here. Yeah, you made this a different experience. Yeah. And here's the thing,

[00:11:48] none of that has anything to do with CPT codes or medical office experience, authorization. Don't care. All that stuff can be trained or delegated to somebody overseas. Another way that we've found people is just networking through either through patients.

[00:12:06] I don't think we ever hired a past patient. Maybe we did. We were kind of leery of hiring past patients unless they'd been discharged quite a while ago, but networking like, Hey guys, talking to your team, talking to patients. This is our avatar of what we're looking for.

[00:12:21] If you know someone that's a great people person looking for some work that is would fit in our practice, everyone they've been to your clinic, they know the culture. They know the type of people

[00:12:31] that fit in there. Is there anyone out there that's really motherly, that's really familial, that wants to bring everyone together and is happy when they talk to people and are able to solve

[00:12:41] problems on the fly very easily and do so in a very kind and loving manner where do you know anyone like that? Another great way of finding people is to just tap into the network.

[00:12:52] Yeah, it was definitely harder to find people through the ads that we'd placed for PCC because I think I shared with us on the podcast in the past, but we used to do group interviews

[00:13:01] on a monthly basis whether we were hiring or not. It was to replace the technicians that we had and the patient care coordinator positions because those are the positions that had more churn and were likely to give us one or two weeks notice or just not show up.

[00:13:16] And we never wanted to be in that position ever again. So we did monthly interviews, group interviews, invited people to come, 15 people would say, yeah, I'll show up at that

[00:13:24] day and time, seven or eight would show up and we'd have a group interview. You can talk to me about that some other time, but that's where we would also find PCCs. That's beautiful. I wrote that down. I might start doing that in my practice.

[00:13:38] It was like, I won't get into details, but that was just another way. I thought I'd throw that out there. Yes, it's just important to get clear. Personality is important in that position.

[00:13:46] You should have on that first bullet point is the avatar. Who do we want in here? Maybe you can write a quick story about this person or you can bullet point some criteria that you would

[00:13:58] want to see during an interview or during a working interview or some just interactions. Stick to that because if you do that, then you got 80% to 90% of it right. Higher the right person and you're almost there. Yeah, if you're doing that avatar exercise really

[00:14:14] well, you have an idea of what age range they're in, what kind of demographic they're coming from, they even give them a name. This is Bob. This is Sally. The team says, hey, we're looking for

[00:14:26] the next Sally. We're looking for the next Bob. Then when you say that, everyone knows exactly what you're talking about. We're looking for this next person and all of that's encapsulated

[00:14:36] in that avatar. What do we want to see when they come in for the working interview? What do we want to find out? What do you want to feel when we are going to take them through the interview

[00:14:45] process outside of just, do they align with our values? I think that's just understood at this point. We've talked enough about that that they're going to align with the values and agree with them. Beyond that, how are we feeling? How are they acting? What kind of actions are

[00:14:59] they showing? Tell us that this person would be super successful in this position. Yep. Totally, man. Once you get that right and then going into bullet point number two is we've got to get clear on what exactly are the roles and responsibilities of that position.

[00:15:15] And not just for this position, but all positions in the company having a very detailed job description, something that outlines like here's the success criteria. Here's the key roles and responsibilities. Here's how we measure how well you're performing in this role.

[00:15:30] KPIs. KPIs and here's some of the criteria to qualify for the position. Having that documented is really, really important. Yeah. If you take it a step further, that's all good in job description. And I'll reference back to my conversations with Sean Miller probably about three or four

[00:15:46] years ago on the podcast where we talked about building out a job. He called it a playbook. If you have a position on a team in sports, there's a playbook of all the plays. This

[00:15:56] is how we run our offense. This is how we run our defense. He would create a playbook for each position in the company. And the first part of that was the job description.

[00:16:04] And then the second part of that was, here's how you answer the phone. Here's how you collect money. Here's how you bring in an initial valuation person. And more of the detail gets laid into

[00:16:14] the playbook. But start with the job description first. Like what do you want to see? What are their key roles and responsibilities in their KPIs? Like you said, then you can start building out the playbook after that. Absolutely, man.

[00:16:25] Having that job description is clear because I made the mistake in the beginning of not being clear on what the responsibility was. Totally. And it's a huge underutilization of a really big asset, one of the most important assets you have in the company. They're not really there

[00:16:41] to do authorizations. They do that, but that's not why they're there, right? They're not there to do authorizations or to like run reports or to verify insurances, verify insurance. And that stuff, what they're really there to do is keep the schedule slammed.

[00:17:00] A number one. Full. Like not a gap in the schedule. That's their primary product. And then I think a secondary product would be collecting over-the-counter collections, making sure everybody's scheduled in every time slot. And then number two, collecting every single thing over the counter

[00:17:15] 100% of the time. Right. I would be interested if I could go back in time and ask my previous patient care coordinators, what do you think your main job is? Bring it all down,

[00:17:25] fill it all down to one thing. What is your main responsibility? I wonder what they would say. If those who are listening, it might be a good exercise. Talk to your front desk person,

[00:17:36] your patient care coordinator and say, what is your main job? If you did nothing else, what is the one thing that you have to do to do this job well? I'd be interested to

[00:17:46] hear what they say, but you and I have had enough experience that we'll tell you what they should say. And that is keep the schedule full, get patients to come in when they're supposed to come in

[00:17:56] all the time and pay for their services every time they come across the clinic. That should probably be documented pretty clearly on the job description. Right. This is what you do here. Yeah. This is your job. Everything else is accessory to it.

[00:18:11] Very clear. This is what you do here. Going back to the avatar, that's why having a sales mentality is so important in that front desk because it's a sales position. You're selling people on their arrival. You're selling people on the retention. You're selling people

[00:18:27] on the services. Those initial phone calls from patients who are like, hey, I got a referral or hey, do you take my insurance? Sales mode's got us kick in right then.

[00:18:36] Hey, this is what we're going to provide for you. This is what we need from you and this is what it's going to cost and we need to collect that. It's a sales position. Hey everybody, we finally did it. Finally, we're doing our first in-person event,

[00:18:54] the Private Practice Honors Club First Ever In-Person Conference, September 20th and 21st in Clearwater Beach, Florida. Adam and I are super excited. Really can't wait to finally meet you in person. This entire time I've been preaching,

[00:19:06] reach out, step out, network and I can now provide that to you. Not just virtually or via podcast but in person. We'll have speakers that speak on leadership and growth. We'll answer questions to your current issues. We'll provide you opportunity to network with like-minded individuals

[00:19:21] and obviously gain inspiration and energy from being in the room with the same people. You'll be able to literally reach out, step out and network all in one weekend. This is September 20th and 21st at the Hyatt at Clearwater Beach, Florida. I would

[00:19:34] really love to see you there. In order to register, go to ppoclubevents.com, ppoclubevents.com and register to sign up for the event. Also, early bird registration ends July 31st. So to get a discount on the registration fees, make sure you sign up, get your room between

[00:19:52] now and July 31st. Otherwise, prices will go up. So go to ppoclubevents.com. Thank you to all of you who have listened for so many years. I would love to finally meet you in person.

[00:20:19] I highly recommend and I've had debills of front office guru on the podcast at least three, four, five times over the last number of years. We've talked about very specific aspects of this patient care coordinator position and I highly recommend you go back and listen to those.

[00:20:36] She also will do a free consult for you and just let her know that you came to her through Nathan and Adam of the physical therapy owners club because she'll talk to you about what she's able to do to help you out in this regard as well.

[00:20:49] Yeah, I'll give a shout out work with the for about seven months and she really helped transform that front desk and build out that role. And now we've built it out and scaled it across three clinics. It's great. Really good job.

[00:20:59] Yeah. And speaking of job description, the cool thing about what you said and relating it back to the avatar, what we get from the avatar goes back to what is most important in the job

[00:21:09] description. I mean, they kind of play off of each other. We say all these things about what the avatar is. Well, we know what the avatar is because we know what a successful person

[00:21:18] is who really lives out that job description to a T. And they do it because it's fun. Oh, they love it. Not because they have to necessarily be trained on it and there is some training, but it's like

[00:21:31] it's their natural instinct. They get a lot of energy from communicating and holding people accountable and taking care of people. It's what they do naturally. Yeah. As we were talking about the avatar, these people tend to decide to go a certain

[00:21:43] direction because it's natural to them. And occasionally you have to turn them a little bit. You have to train them over because they're like, and they're okay with it typically. Hey,

[00:21:52] I know you're doing it this way. I just want to tell you this is how we do it. And like, oh, if that's how you, oh, sure. Yeah. I would be happy to do it that way. Right? Is that what

[00:21:59] you found as well? They tend to maybe overstep their bounds a little bit and need a little correction sometimes, but you're kind of okay with it. You're like, oh, cool. That's awesome.

[00:22:08] You know, you have a really good front desk person whenever your therapist are coming up to you saying, man, they're freaking slamming me. Right? That front desk is slamming my schedule, man. Like,

[00:22:20] God, oh angel up there. She just doesn't let up. I'm like, and we're not, she's not going to let up either. Right? It's like that's when you know. You just sit back and smile. That's exactly

[00:22:29] what she's, and I'm not taking the foot off the gas. Right? If your job is not necessarily take your foot off the gas, your job is to figure out how to solve the problems that come from that.

[00:22:39] Chaos and all those things like solve those problems, keep the schedule full. Yeah. For those of you who are listening, especially if you're newer or older PT owners, you might be thinking, and this was me. It was like, what does a job description

[00:22:51] even look like? How do I start from scratch? But you have something that you'd be willing to offer, right? To give them some guidance. I do. We just feel like throwing out bones

[00:23:00] today. Here's the criteria. Number one, you have to join the Facebook group. If you're not on Facebook, just appease me and join the Facebook group. It's private practice owners club. Join that Facebook

[00:23:10] group. Find me. My name is Adam Robin and shoot me a DM and just let me know like, hey, I'd love to get a copy of that PCC job description and I'll send it over to you.

[00:23:20] You can take that. You can use it. You can copy it and paste it right into your practice, right into your owner's manual, or you can maybe put your logo on the top, change up a few words. And now you have perfectly documented job description that

[00:23:30] you can use for the rest of your practice's history. And the beauty of that so valuable is it's not just the PCC job description, but you can use that structure for all your other positions. Correct.

[00:23:40] It's four or five positions that you have in your company. If you are really starting from scratch and don't know where to start as you're building out a job description, for any position, use this one and then build the others out. And if Adam is

[00:23:53] so inclined to be so generous, he might even share some of those with you as well. But he might ask a little more. Yeah, I might have to get an email address or something from

[00:24:01] there. You got to give me something. Yeah, exactly, right? There's some value in that because that's where I was. I was like, where do I even start? It's just like 1A, 1B, and am I covering everything? This will give you that comprehensively at least for the PCC

[00:24:14] position. That's right. But at the top of that job description, one of the first things you're going to talk about is KPIs, not the first thing because we're going to talk about your purpose and your responsibilities. But somewhere in there, the third, fourth thing is

[00:24:28] going to be the statistics by which we measure your success and the key performance indicators, the KPIs that are most important to this position. Speaking of that, we talked about avatar, build out a job description, what's most important. Now, the third thing on your list

[00:24:44] as you're taking notes is what are some of the KPIs and where would you start them off? I would tell you that there are six primary KPIs for the front desk. I'm just going to give them

[00:24:54] to you. How about that? I'll just give them to you. This is section C of the Patient Care Coordinator section of your manual. This is section, this section is called Key Performance Indicators for

[00:25:04] the Front Desk Roll for the PCC Roll. There are six key performance indicators. Number one is an indicator, is a metric that all positions share in my company. And it's going to be

[00:25:14] total visits. We want to make sure that position is very focused on how do I increase the volume inside this practice? Not only like everybody has a little role to play with that metric,

[00:25:27] what are some of the things that they need to do to increase the total visits? Get them scheduled, make sure to get them rescheduled, right? The evals to come in, all the things that are

[00:25:36] important to that role. So total visit. If the evals to schedule out the full plan of care at the first visit. Just get visits on the calendar. Get them on the calendar. People to come in three times a week versus one time a week, like they're supposed to

[00:25:47] per plan of care. Yeah, all that stuff. Don't let them reschedule or don't let them cancel reschedule within the same week. These are all parts of that first one to get visits up, right? That's right. Even better if you're a savvy owner, maybe they have an indication

[00:26:03] of what your breakeven number is for the week. And it's like, hey, we don't go below this number. And so it's important, let them have that internal temperature gauge week by week so that they can channel their efforts accordingly. That they know if we're getting anywhere near this

[00:26:18] number then red line should be going off. Yeah, you want to know where they stand on the scoreboard. It's one thing to just keep pushing the number up, but whatever that number is that a good number?

[00:26:29] I remember that was a light bulb moment for me. I told the provider one time, we're going to be at 125 visits this next week, which was super low for us. And she looked at me during the headlights. And this is someone who had double digit years

[00:26:40] of experience in the PT industry. And she looked at me like, what does that mean? Good. Because I'm losing money. She didn't ask that, but her eyes told me that. That means we're losing money. And I'm about to have a heart attack,

[00:26:53] letting your team know this is where we need to hit in order to be happy that we're making a... Things are good. You can keep your jobs and I can make a profit and we can keep this

[00:27:03] place open. Yeah, that's important. And part of this and hopefully I'm not jumping too far ahead, utilization is that underneath this first KPI or is that a separate KPI? I don't necessarily think in order of importance. I think they're all important,

[00:27:15] but yes, schedule utilization. Is that what you're talking about? Or is it... Yes, maybe there's 200 slots for all the providers to fill during the course of a week if they do their normal schedule. What percentage of those are filled? That's

[00:27:27] utilization. And I think that's a huge one that a lot of owners, I know I didn't measure it and track it, but in talking to Eric Miller in the past, your greatest loss, your greatest financial loss comes from the visits that you're not seeing. So if all your

[00:27:41] clinicians added together could see 200 visits in a week and you're at 150, you're at 75% utilization and that's not good. There's 25% of that is missing and you're missing that financial capacity to be fulfilled. Yeah, we want that number ideally to be mid-80s and above all the time.

[00:28:03] All the time. That's when you know you're doing a good job. I think that one that's coupled with that would be the arrival rate. Sure. You have 200 visits scheduled and you know, arrival rate schedule utilization, maybe they're both what... But there's some

[00:28:17] slight differences there, but the important thing is how well are we communicating the value of what we do and how well are we holding people accountable to making sure they're keeping their appointments. Because when they show up, everybody wins. Patient gets better, clinic

[00:28:32] makes more money, everybody wins. We want to make you like our metric is 90% or above, 90% arrival rates every single week. Oh, arrival rate, yes. Arrival rate. I would say industry average is much lower than that. Yeah.

[00:28:44] 90%. For the successful clinics I know out there, it's 90% above all the time. Going on to the next one, I would say over-the-counter collection percentage. We beat that metric to death over the last year, but it's, are you... Okay. Everybody thinks they're collecting well

[00:29:00] over the counter. Yeah, we're collecting everything. Are you...? If they say no, then that's self-implying that I'm doing a really bad job. Everyone thinks they're doing well because they haven't looked under the hood. That's why.

[00:29:12] It's kind of like driving down the road without a speed, like a speedometer, right? Like not knowing how fast... It's like, yeah, I'm going the speed limit. Are you really? Like do you know that? If I don't look down, I'll never know.

[00:29:25] Right. It's important. You're having this daily metric of what were we projected to collect over-the-counter versus what did we collect? There's $1,000 that should be collected. You should collect $1,000, not 920 because you're not getting that 80 back ever.

[00:29:42] You might get 50 back. Yeah, this includes not just the co-pays for each visit, but it also includes collecting for projected co-insurances. If they've got an 80-20 plan, you collect the 20% the projected 20% at the time of visit. And that's really easy. People try to make,

[00:29:59] well, every visit's different. Yeah, it is, but on average, you collect what? Let's just say your average reimbursement per visit is $100, just to use a nice round number. And they're on an 80-20 plan. I'm going to tell my patient care coordinator that you need to collect

[00:30:15] 20 bucks at every visit, no matter what. As long as their deductible's not been met and all that kind of stuff. You're also collecting co-pays, you're collecting their co-insurances, and you're collecting their deductibles for each visit. Again, it's not hard if they have a $5,000

[00:30:30] deductible that hasn't been met and your average reimbursement rate is $100 a visit, then you collect that $100 on each visit. And if it's a little bit more for your initial evaluations, then just say we collect 125 for initial evaluations and 100 for every subsequent

[00:30:45] visit. Just keep it simple so it's even across the board, don't have to do a lot of math and calculations at the front desk, just do that, right? Every time, start there at least to do

[00:30:56] something. Like I told one of my providers, like I'd rather be cutting checks than chasing balances any day of the week. And if you do this one thing, like if you focused on this

[00:31:08] one thing out of this particular episode and really focused on it, and you said daily reconciliations, daily accountability with a daily tracking sheet of what was supposed to be collected and what was collected and that's turned in every day and reconciled against

[00:31:22] the schedule and the credit card receipts and the checks and the cash all reconciled every day, you do that one thing, really make that so tight. Your revenues will immediately go up 5% to 10%.

[00:31:35] Easily. I can pretty much guarantee your revenues will go up 5% to 10% if you're not already doing that. Easy. And that's with no additional visits, that's no more marketing, that's no more ad spend

[00:31:46] on social media. You name it. If you want a 5% to 10% increase in your revenues right now, you do that one thing and go straight to your bottom line right into your pocket. That's why I feel so confident about what we do and how we help people. It's like

[00:31:58] so easy to help owners find 10%, 15%, 20% more margin in their practice just by improving the operations. And that's just one financial touch point. There's many more. Yeah, it's a really important piece, especially with the climbing reimbursements like you have to collect

[00:32:14] over the counter collections. At the end of the day, what we want to do is give you the control, the owner, the control over the outcome and you can't have control if you're not taking control. Measuring that daily, the last two metrics... I thought we only covered

[00:32:30] two, were there two that I missed? So we did total visits, we did schedule utilization. Utilization, okay. We did arrival rate, we did over the counter collections. Got it. I'm on board with you. So now there's two more and they're both around new patients.

[00:32:44] New patients are the lifeblood of any practice. Assuming that the operations are set, assuming the operations are sound, you will grow to the degree in which you can attract and retain new patients into your practice. There's two things that are important. Number one,

[00:32:56] how many of these referrals that are sitting there on the counter are we transferring into scheduled new patients? Conversion. Conversions. They come in on the fax machine as a piece of paper

[00:33:07] and they convert to a scheduled initial evaluation. And in order to do that, there's a phone call, right? You have to reach out to the new patient, you have to talk to them, you have to find out what their problem is, you have to get some demographic information,

[00:33:19] you have to sell them on the idea that maybe what we do can help them and you have to get them to agree to book an appointment with us. That's a sales process that happens on that first phone

[00:33:29] call. Is that a separate spreadsheet that they have to track, that conversion process? Like here's the referral. Is that something that your team has to fill in? I mean, a lot of these things aren't tracked on EMRs and I have been out of the EMR industry for

[00:33:42] a while because I don't have clinics for some time, but I don't think EMRs are to the point where the potential new client and the scheduled new client is being tracked via the EMR to show that conversion rate. Neither is the daily transactions aboard of the countercollections.

[00:33:58] Has your EMR gotten that far or are these separate spreadsheets that you have to build out for your PCCs? My understanding is that over the counter, they're doing a good job, a much better job at over the countercollections. The EMRs?

[00:34:10] The EMRs. The EMRs are tracking that. They can say, hey, on Tuesday, these are the projected collections and this is what you got and they might be able to run a report.

[00:34:17] Okay. Yep. And you can get a spit out of percentage. Any good EMR should be able to either have that already in there or can custom build that for you. I haven't found any EMR that's

[00:34:28] doing a good job with referral management, but I do know that there are softwares out there that are maybe a little bit detached from your EMR that do this. CRAM of some kind? CRAM or something like that. But in our practice, no. We have a spreadsheet. Every

[00:34:42] time a referral comes in, they have to mark it down as a referral coming in and every time a patient gets scheduled, they have to check the box. And then that has to be consolidated

[00:34:51] at the end of the day. Here's the number. There should be five left over here are the five. So you just do the math. Okay. That's a daily reconciliation as well. Daily reconciliation of all referrals. Got it. Right. Referral conversion is a big piece. Again, 90% or above,

[00:35:05] nine out of 10 referrals are getting booked. Last KPI. And you know what's really cool? When I see an initial evaluation scheduled on my calendar, you know, it's even cooler when they show up. When they actually show up for their appointment. How much is a national average of

[00:35:23] a plan of care? Well, how much is a plan of care worth? I'd say 900 to $1,000. $1,000. If they don't show up, you just lost $1,000 minimum. It'll just cost you $1,000. If you have five evals that don't show up this week, you just lost $5,000 in your

[00:35:37] practice. Big lever, right? We measure new patient arrival rate. Separate from the overall. Separate from the overall arrival rate. What percentage of the new patients are arriving? Because these are people who don't already know, like and trust you, they haven't been educated.

[00:35:53] What's a brand new orientation, a brand new education process that has to take place in order to get that arrival, which takes energy and effort and intention. And sales. And sales that's unlike just a traditional follow up.

[00:36:07] So it needs to be measured as such. The new patient arrival rate is the last one. And you guessed it, 90% are above. That's a pretty amazing job description right there. If you're taking notes and that's what you have on your list of today, those six KPIs, job description,

[00:36:23] and in parentheses, contact Adam to get it. And an avatar. I think that'd be huge. Notice in those six KPIs, we said nothing about authorizations, verifications, what else? A number of other things that people

[00:36:37] answering the phones and that kind of stuff, ordering materials. None of that is high on the list whatsoever. Focusing them on these things and taking those other things off their plate

[00:36:48] would be huge if you can and allow them to focus on that. If they are able to focus on these things, then your practice will be transformed if it hasn't been all that. Transformed. Transformed.

[00:37:01] And that person will be worth anything they ask. If they want $40 an hour, they'll be worth it. There are people out there that are worth it. If they're dialed in like that, you can have an amazing professional at the helm of that ship

[00:37:14] whose man got it dialed in. Yeah, exactly. Bend over backwards for those people. That's right. It's pretty simple. You have your practice owner's manual at the top. You've described your avatar. You're going to build some recruiting and onboarding

[00:37:27] and orientation around the type of person you're looking for. Get clear on that. Number two, build out a job description. Join the Facebook group DME. I'll give you mine. And then number three, building out a system of tracking the performance of that role

[00:37:44] via the six KPIs. Total visits, arrival rate, referral conversions, new patient arrival rate over the counter collection and schedule utilization. You do that. That equals happy owner, happy patients, money in the bank. Everybody's winning.

[00:37:57] As it pertains to this particular topic, if you want to delve deeper, you're having issues. Number one, the first thing I'd recommend you do is reach out to D-Bills at Front Office Guru. And I think it's frontofficegurus.com. That's rather simple.

[00:38:11] Or if you punch in Google, you should be able to find it pretty quickly and get a free consult with her. Also, other homework you could do. There's like I said, three or four podcast episodes that I've done with D.

[00:38:20] Listen to those huge information, value bombs. We go deeper into some of these specific KPIs that you're talking about and the avatar and personality types and you name it quite a bit. There is plenty to digest regarding the PCC, especially if you're looking at a new one,

[00:38:35] thinking about adding a new one or having questions about your current one. Those could be huge for your practice. Awesome, man. Well, just as a teaser, next one we're going to be talking about is financial mastery.

[00:38:45] There's one of the two of us that likes talking about money. I'm looking forward to that one. Yeah, I can't wait. That's the next step of the private practice manual series that we're

[00:38:57] bringing to you. That'll be part number seven. And if you have any questions, reach out to me Nathan at ptoclub.com, Adam at ptoclub.com. And we're happy to help you out and also do any

[00:39:08] consults with you if you so wish. Anything else you want to share, Adam? I would just like to share that if you're listening, I would love to see you win. And if there's any support you need, reach out. I'd love to help.

[00:39:18] Thanks, dude. All right, brother. Peace out.