Measuring the Value of Your Physical Therapy Referrals – Part 4

Important Metrics for Measuring the Value of Referrals in Your Physical Therapy Business

This is the fourth and final part of a four part blog series on Measuring the value of referrals. In part 1 of this series, I noted that the average referral is worth $1000, and discussed the importance of making the most out of every referral. In part 2 of this series, I introduced the first 2 of 4 important measures that top-performing practices analyze: Conversion Rate and Average Scheduled Frequency. In part 3 of this series I discussed the 3^rd important measure, Case Mortality Rate, discussing some strategies to manage this number and to keep patients coming back. In this blog post, I will cover the 4^th and final important measure – Average Visits per Discharged Case.

Measure 4: Average Visits per Discharged Case

Average Visits per Discharged Case = Total Visits for Discharged Cases/Number of Discharged Cases

This measure is a “rear view” indicator. It tells you how things went after the discharge. Keep in mind, this number is brought down by the cases that drop out early, so keeping your Case Mortality Rate down and watching your Average Scheduled Frequency closely will really help to make this number everything it can be. I want to be careful here. Obviously we’re focused on providing medically necessary therapy, and this will become even more important as we think about taking more risk on patients based on diagnosis. That’s why it’s important to be able to break this indicator down and analyze by diagnosis, therapist, referral source, payer and whether or not the goals were met. You should also be able to analyze the cases that were lower than average visit to understand the reasons in aggregate. Again, once you know your average visits per discharged case and your average payment per visit, you know the value of a referral to your business.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do I know my average visits per discharged case? Do I know my average payment per visit?
• Can I analyze by diagnosis, referral source, payer, therapist and whether or not the patients are meeting their goals?
• Do I think I can provide evidence of better outcomes?
• Are there specific payer plans that are forcing fewer visits?
• Who is referring those patients? Can I collaborate with the referring physician and payer and make a case for better outcomes by improving patient attendance and access to therapy or do we need to take other actions?

If your organization has other metrics you track or questions you’d like to be able to answer, please share and post a comment. There are a lot of great minds thinking about how to improve therapist utilization and therapy businesses and we’d love to increase the collaborative intelligence of the community.

And, if you would like more information on resources to help improve your practice, visit our Revenue Cycle Management Resource Page.