Why Medical Practice Performance Metrics Matter
The concierge medicine space is a relatively young vertical in healthcare. While not a rule, such practices are typically independent, which means flying blind when it comes to medical practice performance metrics.
Concierge practices know their own numbers, but they don’t know how those numbers stack up against the metrics of other similar practices.
Why is this a problem? Simply put, performance metrics need context. Looking at trends and prevailing metrics among others in our little niche of healthcare helps practices evaluate their situations and make better, data-backed decisions.
Why Your Peers’ Medical Practice Metrics Matter
Maybe a business has been doing $200,000 in revenue for each of the last five years and feels great. But things change when it learns that similar practices are making $400,000.
Medical practice metrics provide you with benchmarks to compare against. That information might lead you to examine your operation and see where you can improve things, whether it be changing your fee structure or analyzing your operational costs.
If finding and retaining nurses and physicians has been a problem, for example, you might discover that other practices are paying nurses and physicians more. Or, if people never move on from your practice, maybe you’re paying them more than everybody else.
Maybe the rent you’re paying is higher than everyone else. That information might lead you to get out of your lease and find a better deal. Or to even contemplate buying your own space.
Understanding where you sit relative to your peers is wildly informative. Suddenly, numbers that you always thought were normal come into focus and provide exactly the sort of compass you need to grow your medical practice.
Why You Can’t Compare With Traditional Practices
Because concierge medicine is so new, niche, and independent, there hasn’t been a single convening source with all the data from all the practices. And while medical practice performance metrics are available for traditional fee-for-service practices, comparison there just doesn’t work. It’s apples and oranges. The differences are too extreme for a comparison to be helpful.
A traditional primary care physician must carry from 2,000 to 3,000 patients in their panel to do well, whereas in concierge medicine, panel size runs anywhere from 100 to 600 patients.
Traditional revenue infrastructure comes largely from insurance reimbursement, while concierge comes mostly from membership dues.
Even compensation for your physicians differs dramatically from what a health system, large private practice, and even most fee-for-service offices pay. We’re not aware of a single health system giving equity away to primary care physicians as part of their total compensation package.
To help our community of independent practices get the data that actually matters, ROAMD has started collecting medical practice metrics for concierge medicine. Members submit data year over year to benchmark progress not only against past performance, but also in light of other practices’ experience.
ROAMD Members Are Independent but Not Alone
The annual benchmarking report we generate matches the core spirit of why ROAMD exists. We want private physicians to be independent, but not aloneTM.
Participating doesn’t mean you sacrifice your autonomy or entrepreneurship. It simply means you contribute to and receive empowering data that helps concierge practices make great decisions and grow.
We want you to continue to be independent in your business. We just want you to have the best information possible to run that business successfully.
We collect medical practice metrics such as:
- Panel size per physician.
- Panel size per location.
- Whether practices accept insurance.
- Owning versus renting building space.
- How much that space costs.
- How many RNs and MAs per practice.
How do metrics like these help? Take something simple, like the size of a practice’s office space. One practice might have 900 square feet, but they learn that most of their peers last year had 3,000 square feet. They realize that the industry will support a larger space than they knew, and as a result they triple their space and grow their business.
A more substantial metric that physicians often find helpful is what services other practices offer. For example, a practice that doesn’t offer in-office phlebotomy might learn that 85% of other ROAMD members have a phlebotomist on staff. That presents an opportunity for the practice to add a service they didn’t realize had become fairly standard in the concierge world.
The opposite is also true. Suppose a practice offers services that haven’t been that successful, but that they think are the norm. When they learn other practices don’t offer those services, they feel released to drop them.
Finding out how other practices structure their tiered pricing can also provide valuable insights. An office might offer eight or nine tiers, but simplify when they find out many of the most successful practices offer just two or three.
Medical practice performance metrics from the ROAMD annual report can stimulate a lot of healthy questions for practices, and provide answers for questions they’ve already had.
Should you offer equity to new doctors? How long should physicians work at the practice before earning equity? Should you have PharmDs on staff? Dietitians? Mental health counselors? Massage therapists?
How much front office personnel do you need? How much are you charging? Are any services you offer outdated or too time-consuming?
ROAMD captures all of that information and lets you see where you stand among true peers.
How You Can Access ROAMD’s Medical Practice Metrics
ROAMD shares our benchmarking survey every year at the ROAMD Annual Meeting. If you want to see the data, you have to attend the event and submit your practice’s data.
We invite all ROAMD members to join the meeting to receive the report. If you’re not yet a member, we’d like to extend a special invitation to you to consider joining. If that doesn’t seem like a good fit, we encourage you to find another physician network that collects and shares the medical practice metrics you find most helpful.
Of course, we realize that some ROAMD members can’t attend the annual meeting each year. We also know that some providers might not be ready to become members, but still want to see the report.
If that’s you, I invite you to contact me directly to discuss what options might be open to you.
Note: We’re committed to safely collecting our practice metric data. We will not sell the data we collect under any circumstance, and all reports are shared with de-identified data so your practice isn’t “exposed.” All collected data is exclusively used for the betterment of all participating practices.
Dr. Scott Pope serves as the Chief Growth Officer at In Scope Ventures, a growth consulting firm focused on early stage healthcare companies. Scott is passionate about healthcare entrepreneurship and has been involved in various advocacy efforts to promote innovation in the industry.
Scott earned his PharmD from Ohio Northern University, where he participated in Habitat for Humanity, Phi Mu Delta, Order of Omega, and NCAA basketball. After graduating from ONU, Scott completed a pharmacy residency at Cone Health, followed by a specialty residency in infectious diseases, internal medicine, and academics at Campbell University and Duke University Medical Center.
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