Numbers

When you’re a student, life is all about numbers… what percentage on the last test? How many days left until finals? How many physicals have I done? How many adjustments do I need before I can check out? Etc.

In many ways, practicing is about numbers, too, but a lot of students find difficulty in transitioning from unimportant numbers to more important numbers. For example, I was looking at chiropractic videos on YouTube today and I saw a video by a guy who graduated a couple years ahead of me in school. His video had his name, with “1500 Visits per Month” below it.

Well, OK.

So what?

Is 1500 visits per month an important number? To a student, it SURE is, and, evidently, to a lot of chiropractors it is. But is it REALLY? I recently saw an ad for a chiropractic speaker whose achievement was seeing 50 new patients in one month after opening his office.

Well, OK.

So what?

(Are you sensing a theme?) Let’s look at the so-called importance of these numbers. Is seeing 1500 patient visits in a month an achievement? It sure is. Is having 50 new patients in a month something big? I think so. But in terms of what numbers MEAN, do they mean much? Not really. 

For example… did the doctor who saw 50 new patients in one month give away a bunch of free services? Was he running a We’re-New-In-Town-Here’s-A-Special-Deal-To-Come-See-Us special? Maybe the exam and x-rays were free? Did he and his staff put 30-50 hours in that month to see 50 new patients without charging them anything? Anyone can bring a lot of new patients through the door when they are giving their time and services away.

Maybe the doctor charged for his services, but is running an ad campaign on radio, print and television that cost him $10,000 that month. Let’s say he charges an average of $120 for a new patient visit. Did his ad yield a return on the investment? Not initially, but it might over time.

See why there is more to the numbers than the numbers?

Let’s look at Dr. 1500. 1,500 patient visits in a month is a LOT. He is a member of a certain practice management group, and that group isn’t big on chit chat and wasting time with things like taking a history, so he isn’t spending that much time with each patient, but seeing that number of patients is a huge amount of work. It takes training, discipline, the right office setup, a management company and coach, and a staff.

What is he charging per patient visit? Maybe he is charging $10. Maybe he is not charging anything and just takes what insurance pays (illegal, by the way). Maybe he is putting families on care plans and is only averaging $8/visit once it’s all said and done… we don’t know. Maybe he has enormous overhead and it costs him what he makes from the first 1,000 patients just to pay his expenses for the month. Maybe all of the above…

I’ve seen very busy practices have very rough financial times because of poor business practices, namely bad collections policies and high overhead. 1,500 visits doesn’t look so good when you’re only making a few thousand dollars a month in profit doing it. That’s hard work for little money.

Be smart and start learning about how businesses run. Get out of this mindset that more visits and more new patients equates to better practices and more profit. Those numbers, outside of the context of the practices overall business expenses, are completely meaningless. Don’t be duped by the numbers, but rather put your stock in the quality of the doctor producing the numbers and the overall health and fitness of the practice.