PT Billing Metrics That Give Useful Insights into Your PT Practice Starting Point (Pre-Reimbursement)

A PT practitioner’s productivity can be monitored and measured systematically. The normal routines in a typical workday can sometimes keep a clinician focused on one aspect of the practice but often times neglect the other equally critical aspects of business—ROI.

So where should practice owners start? Here are a few areas Physical Therapists can pay attention to in order to improve their forecasting and budgeting:

1. Average Number of Visits Per Patient. What is the frequency of visits per patient per month?
2. Average Charge Per Patient Per Visit or Monthly Billings. What is the total amount billed monthly? Your total charges billed to patients and insurance also lets you forecast future income.
3. Revenue per Therapist. What is the billed amount per therapist per month? This help you identify and provide incentives to therapists who are able to treat the most number of patients and/or provide effective holistic treatments.
4. Billable Hours per Therapist. If you have full time PT’s on staff, you can determine the ratio of billed hours vs. actual work hours in order to maximize the hours rendered by salaried staff. If you have a team or a staff of PT’s, you can use the same basic monitoring grid to help identify the therapist with the highest productivity rates.
5. Appointment Cancellations. It’s impossible to have 100% show-rate all the time, but it helps to manage late cancellations and no-shows to less than 5%. Proactive reminders and follow-ups can help minimize conflicts in scheduling and will help you assess your front-office staff’s scheduling accuracy.

   For example:
   Therapist #1: Patient A, B, and C

   	No. of Visits Per Month	Average Charge per visit per patient per month (based on 1-hour sessions each)	Total amount billed per patient per month
   Patient A	4	$50	$200.00
   Patient B	8	$100	$800
   Patient C	12	$60	$720
   MONTHLY AVERAGE PER PATIENT	8	$70	$573.33

   According to Health Cost Helper, “Physical therapy typically is covered by health insurance when medically necessary. For patients not covered by health insurance, physical therapy typically costs $50-$350 or more per session, depending on the length of the session, the service provided during the session and the provider.”

6. PT Practice Costs. At surface level, this can help you assess the average revenue at any given time and will help you compute your ROI. Your practice comes with fixed and variable operating expenses. You can compute your overhead costs: rent; marketing and advertising, front and back office staff, non-therapy supplies/office supplies, etc.

   Not to be ignored in billing metrics monitoring and management is Patient Satisfaction and Progress Rates. Numbers are critical but it’s not everything. This ensures that the therapeutic program works not just for you but for your patients as well.

   These are metrics outside of reimbursements that will help PT practitioners to fully and effectively manage their business performance and to achieve optimal profitability.

How are you tracking and monitoring your billing? JetPT Billing helps you evaluate your billing situation and maximize collections. Get paid fast! Click here to get your reimbursement performance index score or email us at [email protected].