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When we first began working on PracticeVital, our team envisioned the tool as a solution to the inefficiencies in running a therapy practice. Our goal was to help practice owners save time, eliminate the need for spreadsheets, and make sense of their data. However, as we evolved and listened to feedback from our users, we’ve discovered countless ways that practice owners are using PracticeVital to improve their operations overall. PracticeVital has transformed into an unparalleled tool for coaching, accountability, revenue boosting, financial decision-making, and employee development. Here’s how:
1. Use As A Coaching Tool
By providing clear, actionable insights, it empowers practice owners and their leadership teams to guide their clinicians in specific areas that need development. PracticeVital makes it easy to see groups of clinicians who are struggling all with the same thing. When you recognize a group of clinicians who are all struggling with high cancellation rates, for example, you might offer (or require) a coaching session just for those clinicians to learn specific strategies for reducing their cancellations– this blog post can help!
Specific coaching around ways to boost client retention will help foster professional growth and enhance your therapist’s clinical skills, which of course contributes to better client outcomes. PracticeVital ensures that every team member has a path to grow and succeed.
2. Instill Practice-wide Accountability
Accountability is key to any successful practice. PracticeVital helps you to set clear expectations and track progress towards goals. Regularly seeing data related to key performance metrics in a color coded system that offers guidelines for performance based on industry standards–ensures everyone is held accountable. Supervisors can easily see whether they’re on or off track towards their KPIs and can easily see if what they’re doing to support their team of clinicians is working or not. You might also consider setting practice wide goals based on practice wide metrics such as retention. You could, for example, set a practice wide goal of achieving 70% retention and offering a team wide bonus that would be paid out based on the whole group’s success in hitting that benchmark. Having accountability systems in place encourages a culture of responsibility and continuous improvement, ensuring that the entire team is aligned and working towards common objectives.
3. Find Ways To Boost Revenue
PracticeVital is instrumental in boosting revenue in a number of ways. When clinicians are hitting their session goals and retaining clients for longer, you’re maximizing the resources you already have in place. With real-time data on client attendance and engagement, you can easily identify trends and intervene before it's too late. Recently we had a coaching session with a PV customer who shared that she was worried about a clinician on her team with a poor retention rate. At the start of our call, she shared that she thought the clinician’s performance had recently gone downhill. We took a second to look back over the previous three years that this clinician has been at the practice and realized that over the past three years she had an average retention rate of 41% and had seen over 150 clients. This practice owner was shocked to see that 59% of those 150 clients (88 individuals) had terminated treatment prior to hitting the 8 session mark– meaning most of them would not have had a positive experience at the practice and would not have hit their treatment goals. Based on this data, she was able to put a clear and time-limited plan in place to work with this clinician on improving her retention. She also determined, with certainty, that if this clinician can’t show a significant amount of improvement over the next quarter, she’ll need to let her go as the clinician is currently a drain on the practice’s financial resources and reputation. The practice owner acknowledged that had she had access to PracticeVital three years ago when this clinician began at her practice, they wouldn’t have lost three years of revenue and 88 clients.
4. Make Smarter Financial Decisions
Financial health is the backbone of any practice. PracticeVital provides the data needed to make informed financial decisions. By tracking key performance indicators like utilization, practice owners can identify areas for cost savings and boost operational efficiency. PracticeVital ensures all of your decisions (e.g. knowing when to hire or when to scale back on giving a clinician new clients) are backed by data, leading to more strategic and effective use of resources. When you set a revenue goal at the start of the year, you can easily work backwards to determine the number of sessions you’ll need each week or month to achieve that goal. The completed sessions report and the practice dashboard will allow you to check in on your goals – at a glance– so they stay top of mind for you and your leadership team.
5. Build and Execute Compensation Plans
Having a clearly defined compensation plan is crucial for motivating and retaining clinicians. PracticeVital delivers the data needed to build and execute compensation plans that will be a win-win for the practice and each clinician. By including performance metrics such as churn rate and retention as part of your compensation plan, you’ll reward the clinicians who are contributing most to the practice and to their clients. For example, many of our customers are now offering tiered compensation plans that offer additional bonuses or a higher percentage or hourly rate to clinicians who maintain a retention rate at or above 80%. Clear data on performance and progress allows for transparent and justified compensation adjustments, fostering trust and satisfaction among employees.
6. Facilitate Professional Development
Employee growth is vital for retaining talent and ensuring optimal client outcomes. PracticeVital can help you clearly define goals and development plans for team members. By providing insights into individual performance and growth areas, it allows practice owners to identify opportunities for training and professional development. A customer we spoke to recently shared that she is having her clinician with the highest retention rate on her team provide ongoing trainings to the rest of her team in order to enhance the team’s clinical skills. This not only helps in advancing and retaining her clinician with the highest retention but also in building a more skilled team overall.
What started as a solution to practice management inefficiencies has grown into a multifaceted tool that supports every aspect of running a successful practice. PracticeVital is not just a dashboard; it’s a comprehensive system that empowers practice owners to coach their teams, ensure accountability, boost revenue, make smarter financial decisions, and support employee advancement. We are eager to hear your stories about ways that PracticeVital has helped you make more informed decisions and ultimately grow your practice. Join our Facebook group and share your success stories with our community!