Important Financial Metrics for Physical Therapy Clinics

Financial metrics are essential to track for your physical therapy clinic, and there are helpful solutions in the market to aid you in keeping this data organized. After all, you’re not just a place that provides healing —your clinic is a fully operational business and, as such, financial metrics are critical for its successful operation. 

Expenses

You know what expenses are, but do you know how to account for your salary? What about your draw? A2C Medical can help you keep track of this and much more for measuring profitability.  With our custom reporting feature, you have the ability to configure data in the way that you need to see it – showing you a panoramic view of your operations to help you determine how to maximize your profitability, and make the best decisions for your business. 

Cost-Per-Patient

Within our software, you can keep track of cost-per-patient to your clinic by building custom reports showing the number of visits by patients and expenses – divide expense data by number of visits and you have your cost-per-patient. 

Understanding cost-per-patient can show you:

• Visibility into your bottom line 
• Your cash flow and areas for improvement
•  Insight into profitability and productivity
• How to develop a plan for success to achieve the outcome you want

Days in Accounts Receivable

Do you know how long, on average, charges are being left unpaid to your clinic? The term “Days in A/R”refers to the average number of days it takes for your practice to collect payments that are due from patients or insurance providers. The lower the number of days, the faster you are collecting – meaning more revenue and liquid assets you have available. 

The state of your accounts receivable will play a factor into the overall position of your business – and A2C Medical can help. Use our custom reports to organize the payment data and utilize the steps and example calculation below in excel to determine the average number of days in A/R for your clinic.

1. Export your data from your EMR report to Excel for the given period you would like to analyze (e.g., 6 months, 12 months) 
2. Calculate the practice’s average daily charges:

• • Add all of the charges posted for the given period 
  • Subtract all payments received from the total number of charges.
  • Divide the total charges, less payments received, by the total number of days in the selected period (e.g., 30 days, 90 days, 120 days, etc.).

3. Next, calculate the days in A/R by dividing the total receivables by the average daily charges.

Sample Calculation
(Total Receivables  – Credit Balance)/Average Daily Gross Charge Amount (Gross charges/365 days)
Receivables: $70,000
Credit balance: $5,000
Gross charges: $600,000
[$70,000 – ($5000)] / ($600,000/365 days)
$65,000/1644 = 39.54 days in A/R

With this information, you can find ways to save time in collecting payment such as offering discounts for early payments or payment plans. It is important to remember that payment plans can lead to an increase in days in A/R, so you may want to calculate this separately to see if it makes any difference to your bottom line.  

Collections

If you’re like most clinics, you keep track of your net revenue, both on a monthly and per visit basis. You can focus on reimbursements and compare what you are owed vs. what you will be paid. The expected collection rate is what the clinic expects to receive based on the contractual agreement between clinic and patient. Most likely, actual reimbursement will differ from expectations. However, using A2C Medical you can track the differences, which will help you keep track of your cash flow and let you know that there are problems in collections. Frequently, the difference is due to reduced, or denied payments by the insurer and when you combine our EMR with our Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) service, we can help you get paid faster and more efficiently. Let our dedicated billing specialists handle your claims process from intake to collections – including correcting claim errors and submitting adjustments which may be a current roadblock in your clinic’s cash flow.

Productivity

There are two important productivity ratios you need to consider, and both have to do with your individual therapists: 

1. Revenue per therapist
   You may know how many patients are seen by each therapist per day, but are you tracking the average revenue generated per therapist? With this information, you can keep an eye on billing and time management.
2. Billing-per-hour based on units used
   This helps you keep track of bookings and provides visibility into important metrics such as clinic over or underbooking and over or underbilling. 

Capitalize on Data Gathering

A2C Medical is a game changer because it keeps all your data in one place; meaning it will take less time to present impactful data.. First, the data must be timely, thorough and accurate.  

Our EMR can help you organize your data seamlessly, freeing up your time to spend with patients. Clinic management has many moving pieces, which may lead to “disconnected” data, increasing the likelihood of inaccurate or unreliable data. A2C Medical can help reduce these problems. 

A2C Medical can help you collect, analyze and put action plans in place to maximize your cash flow based on all of these metrics. Check out our blog to learn more about our services mentioned here such as Revenue Cycle Management!