Capturing valuable data is more necessary than ever before for any business. Data is key to understanding business drivers that drive the operational and financial results of an organization. In order to capture data effectively and extract valuable insights, businesses/clinics, in this case, need to build a structured data warehouse system that extracts data from multiple other data sources within the organization. Developing a centralized data warehouse makes it much more convenient and efficient for organizations to analyze the data and build operational and financial reporting.
With the real-time information such as transactions and appointments from the Practice Management Systems, various levels of the business, whether in-clinic level or Senior Management/CXO can understand the operational and financial performance also known as Key Performance Indicators (KPI), and gauge internal goals. Implementing such a system with a data warehouse to determine KPIs for Clinic Roll-Ups can be challenging as internal systems in place will vary per clinic. For instance, Practice Management Systems and other accounting systems used to collect data may not be consistent. Different systems may be in place as well as the use of different terminology of data. For example, “cancelled appointments” may vary as other clinic locations may use other terms such as a no-show or postponed. Ultimately, this creates more obstacles to maintain a uniform reporting tool.
There are various KPIs that can provide relevant insights into clinic roll-up’s performance and it is important to focus on identifying relevant data needed to calculate such KPIs. For clinic roll-ups, these KPIs include metrics focused on patient information, appointments, treatment and procedure, financials, and other general performance factors. Different levels within an organization will focus on different categories of metrics. For instance, ground-level clinic managers may be more interested in monitoring daily patients, appointments, visits, procedure counts, revenue vs service time, scheduling patterns, etc. to get a better scope of day-to-day operations and to identify avenues to boost patient count and revenues. This focuses on the number of active patients, new patients, number of visits, cancelled appointments, reappointments, etc. Whereas the executive level (CEO, CFO) may be more interested in high-level operational and financial KPIs, such as gross production, net collection, various operational costs, working capital, claims, and receivables, etc.
After extracting data and identifying relevant KPIs, visualization is a significant step in the process to better identify trends and patterns visually rather than looking through several rows of quantitative data. An effective visualization essentially tells a story and removes noise from data and highlights useful information. General types of visualization can include charts, tables, graphs, and dashboards that can all be updated in real-time. This can be done through robust data visualization software such as Power BI and Tableau that present visual dashboards and insights by linking a collection of data sources.
Although it may be challenging for clinic roll-ups to implement these dashboards due to the potential inconsistency between clinics, it is ultimately worth the investment. KPIs are instrumental when measuring the success and failures of a business as it provides decision-makers with an overview of performance and measures the goals of the business against actual quantifiable data. Monitoring the relevant KPIs can be done through implementing automated dashboards through organizing and extracting data from the various systems that are already in place and then visualizing the data. This enables decision-makers to see analytics presented visually and identify patterns and trends that will support future planning.
