Setting up your practice management software to report accurately is critical. When it is right, it can teach us how profitable we are, how profitable we can be, what parts of our practice are growing, whether our marketing efforts are working, where we can reduce expenses, and on and on and on. Unfortunately most of us are asked to make decisions about how this practice management software reportage should be set up when we first open our practices…a time when we are least prepared to make these decisions. The resulting data looks like a dog tracking a lunatic: circuitous, mixed up and meandering. If you want to make a support team member at Cornerstone, Infinity, Avimark smile today, take a look at the following areas of your practice management software and make sure they are set up optimally to do the work they were designed to do.
Practice Management Software Service Classes
If you’re sorting eye ointments into classes of goos and gobs, you’re missing the point. Service classes are not designed to differentiate between what things do or what they are; they are designed to differentiate things based on what they earn and what they cost. Classes (sometimes called categories) should be organized to help you figure out four things: doctor production, return on investment, compliance to standard of care, and comparability to other similar practices (benchmarking). For a drilled-down look at any of these four areas, explore this link to help you make the changes you need.
Multiple Codes For the Same Thing
You want to treat yourself to straightforward practice management software reportage and a shot of well-needed fast capital at the same time? Then cease charging a different price and creating multiple codes for the same thing. You know what I’m talking about: it’s the Brief Exam, the Semi Brief Exam, SQ Fluids, SQ Fluids for Old Ladies on a Pension, etc. Multiple levels of pricing accumulate over years of client complaints. Someone has a meltdown at the desk, and to reflect our understanding of their plight, we create a new service code called ‘Charge This if You Feel Like They’re Going to Complain’. Do yourself a favor. Knock it off. Go into the software and inactivate all the exams except the one called Exam. If you’d like to track things like ‘annual visits’ or ‘oral health checks’, fine; you’re allowed more titles, but only one price. Other exceptions include blood tests that double as annual wellness tests.
Item Set Up
There are 25 or more data fields for each inventory item. Many practices use only two: the name of the product and the price. HUGE mistake. Fifteen cents or more of every dollar earned at a veterinary practices is spent on inventory. Turn your back for a few weeks and you may return to find that the same number has crept up to 20 cents or worse. Just to put things in perspective, if your practice generates 1 million in annual sales, that’s a 50,000-dollar increase in expenses. By understanding how each data field in the inventory item set up window can help you, you are not only gaining accurate information of what you have, you’re learning how to manage what you have better.
Companies like Vetstreet and Antech work together to integrate with your practice management software, load lab information directly into your practice management software, and provide you a way to communicate those results to clients.
Practice Management Software: A Word of Caution
Tread carefully when reorganizing any of your practice’s data. The changes that you make today with respect to classifications and items in general will automatically render comparisons between today’s data and yesterday’s data meaningless. Before making any changes to the way your practice management software is organized or set up, call up your support team and run your ideas past them. Even then, proceed slowly. Invariably the process turns out to be more complicated and to have more hidden bugs than you anticipated.