When it comes to healthcare, measuring results and understanding the efficacy of treatments and services is key. Establishing relevant and effective healthcare KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is an integral part of evaluating the success of a healthcare system, organization, or program. KPIs allow healthcare organizations to track performance, measure progress, and identify areas of improvement. By tracking the right indicators, healthcare organizations can understand how their efforts are impacting patient outcomes, medical costs, and overall quality of care. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the importance of having accurate and comprehensive healthcare KPIs, how to choose the right KPIs, and how to track and measure these KPIs. With the right information and data, healthcare organizations can make informed decisions that prioritize patient care and optimize resources.
Why are health care KPIs important?
You can set realistic goals for an organization’s development or improvement and track your progress by tracking health care KPIs. As the health care market and industry are constantly changing, it can also assist you in understanding how certain factors change over time. KPI tracking is used by many practice directors and administrators in the health care industry to implement patient success plans, make facility and hiring decisions, and change budgets.
What are health care KPIs?
Health care KPIs are metrics that demonstrate the effectiveness of your healthcare facility and aid in tracking progress. Health care administrators typically monitor KPIs for healthcare over time to comprehend the facility’s development and anticipate trends. Any aspect of the business, including finances, patient care, workplace satisfaction, and equipment use, can contribute to the development of health care KPIs.
16 health care KPIs
Your specific KPIs may depend on the size and type of your medical facility, but there are numerous key performance indicators that are helpful across the health care sector. You can use the following 16 health care KPIs to evaluate the operational and financial health of your facility and implement growth strategies:
1. Net profit margin
The percentage of revenue from your facility that results in a profit is known as the net profit margin. You can determine how profitable your business is and its growth trend by monitoring your health care facility’s net profit margin and comparing it to historical data trends. You can use this data to create future profit objectives.
2. Operating expense
The money needed to run your healthcare facility includes operating expenses such as payroll, facility rentals, equipment or inventory costs, as well as any other costs your business may have. It can be helpful to track operating expenses over time because it can demonstrate how economic factors and inflation affect your company’s costs. Additionally, it can assist you in creating and implementing cost-saving strategies that will raise your net profit margin.
3. Usage of key medical equipment
You can assess whether your current inventory of medical equipment, such as X-ray machines and CT scanners, is adequate for the patients in your practice by tracking how much time doctors, nurses, and technicians spend using it. You could keep track of how frequently employees use a particular piece of equipment each week or use a timesheet to monitor machine wait times. Using this information, you can decide what equipment to buy to maximize your budget while ensuring that your facility has the right amount of medical equipment on hand.
4. Average length of patient stay
You may monitor the typical length of a patient’s stay if you oversee a hospital or other inpatient facility. You could keep an eye on the facility’s overall average patient stay length or concentrate on a particular department or ward. You can determine if your facility is running efficiently by comparing the average patient stay there to national averages. It can also assist you in making plans for facilities or staffing, as you might require more personnel and a larger workspace to accommodate longer patient stays.
5. Average wait time
Prior to seeing a nurse or doctor, the majority of patients spend an average amount of time in the waiting area or examination rooms. You can track wait times at various hours and days of the week or measure overall wait times. Keeping wait times short can encourage patients to wait for a doctor’s appointment and raise their level of satisfaction. Making hiring or scheduling decisions that minimize wait times and maximize your budget can be aided by being aware of when your staff is dealing with higher patient volumes.
6. Occupancy rate
The average percentage of your beds or rooms that are occupied at any given time is referred to as your occupancy rate. Your occupancy rate KPI can help you assess how quickly your practice is growing and how well your current facility can accommodate your patient load in addition to the average patient stay and wait time. This metric can help you set objectives to raise your occupancy rate, which will raise your profits. It can also assist you in deciding whether to establish a satellite office or look for a new building with more space.
7. Patient bed or room turnover rate
You could time how long it takes your staff to sanitize, clean, and prepare a bed or room for a new patient. Patient wait times can be affected by bed or room turnover rate, especially during high-volume periods. Monitoring this KPI can help you put policies into place that will reduce the amount of time between patients in each bed or room. Additionally, you can use this metric to assess how well your facility and staff are managing the current patient load and make adjustments for any anticipated growth by combining it with the average patient stay and wait times.
8. Ratio of staff to patients
The number of patients per medical professional is referred to as the staff to patient ratio. The overall staff-to-patient ratio can be calculated, or the doctor-to-patient ratio and nurse-to-patient ratio can be tracked separately. These figures can demonstrate the level of individualized care that the typical patient in your facility receives and the proportion of that care that is provided by nurses or doctors. The staff-to-patient ratio can assist you in hiring and scheduling decisions in addition to wait times to enhance staff performance and patient care.
9. Patient cost per visit
The cost of care at your facility can be compared to industry trends by tracking patient costs per visit, either before or after insurance payouts. Additionally, it can assist you in figuring out how many patients you’ll need to see in order to maintain your current operating costs or reach your growth objectives. By setting and achieving cost-saving goals with the aid of this KPI, you may be able to draw in more patients.
10. Patient satisfaction
You can call or email current and former patients, conduct a care survey, and track this KPI. You can enter the information into your KPI tracking software, which enables you to track the average satisfaction for many patients over time. Asking patients to rate their care on a numerical scale A need for additional staff training or procedures to enhance the patient experience can be indicated by changes in average patient satisfaction numbers.
11. Appointment cancellation rate
This KPI measures the frequency of cancellations of appointments made at your facility, whether they occur within or outside of the permitted cancellation period. When more patients keep their scheduled appointments, your administration and scheduling systems may function more effectively, so this can be a crucial KPI to monitor. This KPI can be used to implement and track new practices, such as calling or texting patients to remind them of appointments or adding a rescheduling button to your patient portal online.
12. Patient readmit rate
Patients with chronic conditions, whose readmission may not be related to the care they receive from your staff, are frequently excluded from the calculation of the patient readmit rate, which is the percentage of patients who visit your facility more than once for the same medical condition. By lowering the readmission rate, you can free up more appointments for new patients, so monitoring this KPI can make your practice run more smoothly. Utilize this KPI to implement and evaluate training initiatives aimed at decreasing readmissions.
13. Safety compliance rate
A statistic known as the safety compliance rate counts the number of biohazard or equipment safety concerns in relation to your facility’s standard operating procedures. By monitoring this KPI, you can enhance your staff’s biohazard and equipment safety training and make sure they have the skills they need to do their jobs safely and effectively. By lowering cleanup costs and raising the average staff tenure, increasing the safety compliance rate can also help you cut operating costs.
14. Average staff tenure
The average employee’s tenure in a position is a measurement of how long they remain there before switching to another company or industry. Monitoring the average staff tenure can help you evaluate workplace satisfaction at your business, which may have an impact on patient care. It can also assist you in putting policies into place to lengthen the tenure of your employees, such as more training, more coverage during peak periods, or employee appreciation activities.
15. Average annual training time
This KPI calculates the annual average total amount of additional training or professional development that your medical and administrative staff completes, broken down by department. By monitoring this KPI, you can find out how much training your employees receive compared to industry standards and identify which departments could use more training initiatives. If your staff has access to more training opportunities, they may feel more confident in their abilities and patients may have a higher level of satisfaction if their medical professionals have received more training.
16. Referral rate from patients and other medical professionals
If the success of your medical practice depends on maintaining a steady flow of loyal patients, you may want to track referral rates and sources to learn how your patients learned about you. By concentrating your marketing efforts on referral sources that have historically resulted in new patient enrollments, measuring this KPI can help you develop a strategy to expand your practice. For example, if you find that 15% of your current patients were referred by one specific general practitioner, you might propose a partnership with that doctor or reach out to build a network with their colleagues
Which is the most important KPI in healthcare?
FAQ
Which are KPIs for health care providers?
People, quality, time, and growth are the five main performance indicators for healthcare organizations.
What are the 7 key performance indicators?
- Average Hospital Stay.
- Bed Occupancy Rate.
- Medical Equipment Utilization.
- Patient Drug Cost Per Stay.
- Treatment Costs.
- Operating Cash Flow.
- Net Profit Margin.
- Patient Room Turnover Rate.
