Key information to help eyecare professionals collect current info to track and act upon key performance indicators.

Looking back. That’s what Mick Kling, O.D., addressed last month in part one of this three-part series on KPIs kicking off EB’s new In Practice column. “Everything I showed was rearview-mirror KPIs…trailing indicators.”

Important as that is, adds Dr. Kling, “That is only part of the story” in tracking how well his two San Diego-based locations, Invision Optometry and Vision Boutique, are doing. “The most important KPI for me, however, is real-time data,” he explains.

How does he collect it—and what does he do with that information? That’s the topic of this month’s In Practice column (second in a three-part series) featuring Dr. Kling.

Monthly Spreadsheet

Each month, Dr. Kling creates a real-time spreadsheet. The starting point is the number of business days in that month. Using November as an example, Dr. Kling explains that the spreadsheet basically tells him, “OK, in the month of November, there were 20 business days. We have completed the month, so we’ve completed 20 days. It is 100% completed.”

He compares target numbers and goals with what happened in real time. Here, he shares a few examples, as well as why some goals are more meaningful to him than others.

EXAM GOAL. “We had a goal of 509 exams. We did 483, so we met 95% of our exam goal.”

PATIENT GOAL. “We completed, on average, 24.2 exams per day. To hit our numbers, the goal was 25.”

COLLECTIONS GOAL. “Our collection goal was $14,000 per day. The actual average collection per day was $15,290, however.”

It’s important to look at all three—exam, patient, and collection—goals. “Even though we did fewer eye exams than our goal, we actually collected more, and our average collection per exam for the month was $633.”

PRODUCT GOALS. The practice also tracks collections by product category, so there are contact lens material, frame, and lens goals as well as a total collections goal. “For November,” he says, “the locations beat their goal by 9%.”

Populating + Communicating Data

How is all this information entered? “Every day, each department lead populates their key financial data themselves,” says Dr. Kling. “That provides a real-time running analysis.”

In terms of key performance indicators, this data tells both Dr. Kling and his staff members, in real time, what percent of the month is completed, where they are with their exam and collections goals relative to the month, and how many exams they’re doing on average relative to the month, as well as total collections per day.

He meets every Tuesday with his leadership team. They start every meeting by looking at this data so they can answer the question, “How are we doing this month?” As Dr. Kling explains, “It doesn’t do us any good to look at the month after it’s completed and say what we should have done. We want to be able to course-correct in the middle of the month if needed.”

Course Corrections

“Sometimes that can simply entail reaching out to our call center to say, ‘We noticed that we’re doing 24 exams on average per day. We really need 25. What’s going on with the schedule?’ Or ‘Are recalls going out as we need them to?”’

What if optical sales are off? “We can go to our opticians and say, ‘Our optical collections are a little bit low so far this month. Is there some challenge that you are encountering?’

“In other words, it allows us to course-correct midstream, as opposed to waiting until the month’s done and then look back and ask ourselves, ‘What happened?’” he says.

It’s all about tracking numbers in real time, and constantly communicating with staff. That’s why next month’s final installment of the In Practice column with Dr. Kling will look at working with the team to make all of this happen.