From Insight to Action: Using Dashboards to Drive Podiatric Practice Success
The term “dashboard” can refer to a multitude of resources and complex systems that interlace within your practice/business. They may reference a real-time view of your practice functionalities (ie, wait times, no shows, utilizations, etc.) or a more summary view of your departments, investments, and returns on investment. In a simple summary, dashboards make it easy to track, measure, and intelligently analyze important trends within any business via digital platforms and automation.
Why is having a centralized dashboard essential for managing a medical practice? Our favorite phrase to say in strategy meetings is, “prove it to me.” Too often we allow thoughts or feelings that lack reason or proof of need to influence critical practice management decisions. We have noted, as clinicians first, that we tend to make critical changes (big or small) to our practice without being aware of the full scope, believing we need to act quickly to stay ahead. While we believe this is true in many ways, we have also seen instances where one can dig themselves into a very deep financial hole if that person is not careful.
Having a robust dashboard that includes a full gambit of key performance indicators (KPIs) is the best method to track benchmarks, analyze trends, and make educated decisions. Start by establishing industry-specific benchmarks for different components of your practice, setting clear goals to enhance operability. For example, simple trackables such as new patient percentages, payer ratios, referral sources, cash ratios, throughputs, etc., are extremely important and should be tracked at different intervals. For specific benchmarks and those “magic percentages” you’re looking for, we recommend partnering with an expert. You can also seek help from local practice management-based conferences, peers, or even social media. Once you’ve found your ideal KPIs, utilize historical data to trend each KPI and create predictors that help enhance your ability to stay agile within the market.
Designing the Right Dashboard
When designing a dashboard for a medical practice, it is important to take a closer look at the metrics. While we feel they are becoming more intuitive every day, in our observation, most EMRs are still pretty one-dimensional in reporting capabilities. This makes it imperative to consider and track all data necessary to run your business. We recommend an all-encompassing approach that includes KPI tracking for every department: Operations, Finance, Marketing, and Clinical Operations. In our experience, the best dashboards will pull/share information between departments, ensuring consistency in data and trends.
A good place to kick things off is with your EMR. We find that most will either offer their own templated dashboard or allow you to create your own. It is important to recognize 2 key points: the experts who design these dashboards are knowledgeable in their field, and they are not as familiar as you are with your unique practice or its specific details. While there are the standard metrics you should keep on hand (such as room utilization and charge per visit), you should also elevate your reporting by tracking what makes you special and/or what aligns with your annual goals.
While personalizing your dashboard sometimes means extracting into separate software, it doesn’t have to break the bank or become administratively burdensome. While Excel may seem too archaic for adequate dashboard management, it is an available user-friendly and intuitive resource. Establish easy steps that allow you to extract relevant data from one source and input it into your Excel master workbook. For example, software like ModMed allows you to bookmark certain reports with specific dimensions already set. Use these to quickly find data like new patient trends. Inject simple numbers within an operations dashboard that shares workbook links with a marketing dashboard to determine metrics such as your new Patient Acquisition Cost (PAC).
Considering Customizations and Dashboard Ownership
Different team members, from physicians to practice managers, have varying data needs. Your dashboard can provide relevant insights for each role while maintaining a unified view of the practice’s performance. There are a few ways to work towards this result.
One pathway is to “go corporate!” Departmentalize every aspect of your practice and ensure there are proper channels for communication and reporting. Establish department heads within your practice with clear expectations for data capture, analysis, and action. The key thing to remember here is you, as the owner/provider, should not have ownership of all dashboards and their management. You should expect your management team to use KPIs to maintain or surpass benchmarked expectations of their relevant team/department.
You can take this concept as far as you really want. Keep operation-based dashboards inclusive of the entirety of the clinic, or you can be more assiduous and drill down to Team Lead-based reporting. As an example, your Patient Experience Team Lead can be responsible for the tracking and reporting of missed call percentages, prior authorization time frames, new referrals, etc. At appropriate report outs with appropriate participants, said Team Lead should provide a detailed synopsis of their findings and rationale as to why determined benchmarks were or were not met.
While it’s a good idea to have dashboards at the Team Lead level, it’s also imperative to have departmental dashboards in which data from others are pulled from. As an example, an operational dashboard (operations department) should pull in total call volume and missed call percentage to compare against call queue staffing (Patient Experience team). Again, benchmarks at this level highlight the need for staffing and/or training changes.
Understanding “Real-Time” Data
Real-time data can be a game-changer in practice management. However, to us, “real-time” can mean a couple of things. Firstly, we find that having real-time data of your clinic’s inner day-to-day workings is hugely beneficial, yet vastly underutilized and undervalued. A strong EMR or integration into software like Power BI is important here. Fortunately, most modern EMRs provide you with the option of tracking a patient’s movement within the clinic. At a minimum, you should be documenting a patient’s arrival time, check-in completion time, rooming time, and check-out. You can take things to the next level and use digital flags within your EMR to track provider in-room time, durable medical equipment (DME), X-ray, etc.
Having a benchmarked length of time in mind for each step illuminates how your clinic is run, where your weak link(s) may be, and where you can make operational improvements. When you notice you’re running 30 minutes behind and have a lobby starting to fill up, it’s important to not guess what’s creating the delay. Instead, rely on your dashboard to see where benchmarks are not being met, creating delays. Through adequate tracking, you’ll be able to see if your roomer is moving a little slower today, you’ve had more patients requiring X-ray, you’re chattier with your patients, or simply a patient checked in past your grace period. Remember, knowledge is power, and data is the source of true knowledge. This newfound knowledge grants you the ability to quickly shift your functionality and get back on track with your standard of care.
Secondly, we consider the ability to shift business strategy to meet forecasted goals quickly as another example of “real-time.” For clarity, we’ve created a tool that allows us to forecast monthly revenue by provider and/or clinic line revenue monthly. Throughout the month, we check our charge statues to ensure we’re on track for the anticipated goal. Considering things like total clinic volume and charge per visit (CPV) gives us directions of where within our dashboard to search for further answers. As an example, if total clinic volume is down, we will check missed call percentages and online scheduler numbers. If CPV is down but volume is as forecasted, we will look at ancillary and over-the-counter dispensing ratios. This may also lead to analyzing the marketing dashboard to see what Google keywords patients are finding us through, as we simply may be attracting the wrong patient type. Again, from here we know what changes are necessary to adjust and get back on track to forecasted expectations.
Overcoming Dashboard Challenges
The biggest challenge right out of the gate is knowing what to look at. There are a million KPIs out there, and every analyst will provide you with a different prioritized list. The unfortunate truth is that a dashboard cannot be a one-size-fits-all situation. Your practice is unique and should be treated as such. Granted, we’ve listed some basic standards like new patient percentage, no-call-no-show, call volume, referral sources, utilization, throughputs, etc, but what’s arguably more important is what others do not prioritize. Determine your practice’s “secret sauce” and find a way to capture data, benchmark, and trend your progress relevant to it.
Keeping up with your dashboards is also challenging. We all get so lost in the day-to-day and forget the importance of trend analysis. Don’t get caught simply working in your practice; you must work on it as well. That’s why we suggest “going corporate” and departmentalizing your clinic. Create specific silos of accountability in which your team is responsible for meeting the specific, departmental benchmarks you establish. It’s a theory that we refer to as the “Rudy Complex.” Here, we identify the strengths and weaknesses of not only ourselves, but of those within our team. Grant them the opportunity to have their own responsibilities within areas that they’ve proven themselves better than, or more expert in than you. With true, defined accountability of specific areas, we feel that you’ll witness enhanced operability, ownership, and more tasks completed. Department heads or Team Leads should report out dashboard findings at a minimum monthly rate. These reports should relay the reason(s) behind trends and how they, as owners of the department, plan to adjust for negativity or sustain for positivity.
Finally, you must strategize and stick to it. Too often we are distracted by the next shiny thing. What and why we track becomes skewed or seemingly pointless, resulting in dashboards becoming neglected. Annually, we feel it is wise to create a strategy with key points of interest. Along with your “routine KPIs,” determine methods of tracking said areas of interest and build these within your dashboards. For example, if you want to increase your patient volume by 30% in anticipation of a new associate coming aboard, you will want to track not only the total new patient volume, but how they found you. Where exactly are these patients coming from, and do they meet your targeted demographic? Knowing this will help you determine if you’re truly ready to bring in a new provider. Hold quarterly retreats or strategy sessions with your leadership team to ensure you’re on track for goals and use your dashboards to adjust as necessary.
In Conclusion
Creating and maintaining an effective practice dashboard is not just about tracking numbers—it’s about cultivating a culture of accountability, agility, and strategic foresight. When customized to reflect your unique goals and powered by actionable data, dashboards become the compass that guides your entire team toward sustainable growth and operational excellence. Commit to consistency, empower your team with ownership, and let your data work as hard as you do.
Mr. Meier is the Director of Operations at Lexington Podiatry, and a co-owner of Modern Podiatrist and Toe Tactics. He has an extensive history in healthcare administration both in and outside of active-duty service in the United States Air Force.
Dr. Freels is the founder and CEO of Lexington Podiatry. She serves in multiple medical advisor and consultant roles, is the creator and founder of Modern Podiatrist, and a partner in Toe Tactics.
