Based on the last metrics post on new patients, we’ve got some idea of how many new patients we’ve got coming in the door for any given time period.

Let’s go a little further, and see how many active patients you have in your practice. The term active is going to mean something a little different for everyone, depending on your modality and how you operate your business. Naturopaths, for example, might consider anyone seen in the last year as active. A chiropractor, however, might consider monthly or even weekly visits as the cutoff point. It’s up to you, but make sure that your definition of active meets these requirements:

• The patient in not deceased
• The patient hasn’t shifted to another practitioner
• The patient hasn’t “given up” or abandoned your modality
• They’ve been seen at least once in the past year.

As mentioned, you may want to change the time period of the last requirement, but I suggest a year as the longest time frame you use. Sure, you may have patients that just don’t need your services for several years at a time, then turn up out of nowhere, but those folks don’t help much when we’re doing calculations for business purposes.

Once you’ve decided on your time frame, then it’s a matter of adding them up. This is going to be either a) really easy, because you’re using software to manage patients b)moderately easy because you use those handy file labels that color-code the years, or c) really hard because you don’t use any kind of system at all

If you’re in position (c), this’ll be a great exercise. It’ll force you to get organized. 🙂

What it tells you: In a growing practice, the number of active patients should continue to increase over time. Declining active patient numbers over time generally indicate some type of “problem” that needs to be addressed: office management issues like scheduling or staff, increasing competition, or business model problems such as not building a “return visit” practice. On the bright side, it could also indicate that you’re doing such a fantastic job that everyone’s healthy doesn’t need to see you any more…:)

You can also compare your active numbers against your new patient numbers. If the new patients are continuing to come in the door, but the active numbers are down, it’s more likely an internal problem, like service or office management, as opposed to an external one like competition.