VISIONOMICS

Tracking Practice Performance

How data and metrics can turn into office goals that boost revenue and service

Visionomics^®, a series of COPE- and ABO-approved business-building courses, will be held at this year’s International Vision Expo West show. The courses focus on strategies for assessing and maximizing practice profitability. In this series of articles, Eyecare Business—the official trade media partner for Visionomics—will feature some of the program’s speakers. This month, Gary Gerber, O.D., discusses his course, “Tracking Practice Performance.” Dr. Gerber is the chief dream officer at The Power Practice, a practice management and consulting company, and is host of “The Power Hour,” a weekly live radio program. What follows is just a small portion of the information he will be sharing.

Gary Gerber, O.D.

the key to building a practice’s performance lies in being able to outline how it is currently performing, setting goals for ideal performance, and creating an action plan to reach those goals.

COLLECTING DATA

Before collecting and tracking data, you’ve got to determine which metrics are the most important for your practice—which ones are closely aligned with the mission of your practice. Are you mostly optical sales? Track sales numbers. Are you focused on medical eyecare? Track outcomes and compliance. Customer service? Track your Net Promoter Score, the most valid way to assign a number to a “soft” concept like customer service (find out more at netpromoter.com/why-net-promoter/know).

For more info on Visionomics, go to: visionexpowest.com/Continuing-Education/Highlights/

GOALS. Determine your WIGs (Wildly Important Goals), and how best to accomplish them. Don’t just measure things after they happen (how many pairs of AR lenses you sold last week), but also measure what you are doing to influence those sales (how often you mentioned AR lenses to patients last week).

TRACKING. Simply put, you need to track what matters most to your business, and what you can actually change. And, of course, be willing to act upon those changes. By paring down what you measure to the few most genuine, meaningful metrics, you won’t overburden staff or adversely affect patient scheduling.

ACT ON DATA

Data collected for data’s sake is useless to your practice. Use it to plan goals and create a mission for the practice.

GOAL-ORIENTED. Based on the data and metrics you’ve collected, set some short-term actions and long-term actions that are relevant to your mission and goals. The short-term actions are usually borne from customer service surveys and should be acted upon quickly. Long-term actions are more related to bigger strategic initiatives like introducing a new subspecialty.

SHOUT IT. Alert patients to any changes in your operation that came about as a result of something that kept showing up in customer surveys. In fact, shout it out on your website, Facebook page, and Tweets.

STAFF INVOLVEMENT. Getting your staff to buy in to your practice mission is key to success. Present your practice data at weekly meetings. Create and chart specific goals for staff, including ways to measure those goals. Most important: keep score. Let everyone know where the practice and staff stand in the journey to success.

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