Optimizing Patient Flow For Clinics – A Case Study – Capitol Physical Therapy

Capitol Physical Therapy (CPT) is a physical therapy clinic in Washington D.C. CPT has one provider, Subha, who sees new evaluations for one hour and follow-up patients for half an hour. Subha’s ideal patient flow is 60-70 patient visits per week. She wanted to know how many new patient evaluations she would need to see every week to maintain her current patient volume and how many to increase her patient volume.

Symbiosis collects metadata for each of our clients so we have information regarding number of patient visits/week, new patients/week and how patients found CPT. From this information we were able to calculate the average number of visits a patient has before being discharged. We were then able to find the effect of a new patient on number of patients per week. For CPT, one new patient usually makes 2 visits/week for 4 weeks. Using this information we were able to create formulas to determine the amount of new patients needed per week to 1.) maintain current patient flow and 2.) to increase patient flow.

Let’s look at 4 week period and assume that in Week 0 there are 60 patient visits. Most of them will be gone after Week 3. In order to maintain a constant flow and have 60 patient visits after Week 3, you would have to add 10 new patients per week (since a patient on average has 2 visits a week).

Please remember that this is a very simple explanation as you might have already guessed by now that week 4 needs to add new patients as well to keep the cycle going. Moreover, the baseline data keeps changing over time as well, so we have to recalculate these numbers and apply those for every report.

Now to apply this analysis to help Capitol PT. Since we know the specific avenues through which patients find CPT, we can use the formulas to determine the best marketing methods and split the budget between those methods. For example, Subha had been marketing on a website that charges a fee for every patient that calls through their site regardless of whether the patient actually comes in or not. We tracked the number of patients who found CPT via that website vs how much the service was costing CPT and determined that it was not an effective marketing method.

Instead, we found that many patients were finding CPT through a Google search and then chose to come to CPT based on proximity to their work/home and CPT’s Google Reviews. Therefore, we decided that Google search engine optimization and patient reviews is where we should focus CPTs marketing. Using the data we collected we were able to find out how many new patients CPT needs per week and the most effective marketing method to bring in new patients. While search engine optimization and review-driven marketing worked best for CPT, a different kind of marketing may work better for a different clinic. That’s why Symbiosis focuses on data collection and analysis, to make sure we can find the optimal method to make each clinic successful.

Subha is a relatively new clinic owner. She is an excellent physical therapist and started Capitol Physical Therapy because she wanted to treat patients her way. However, she didn’t want the hassles of running a business to take away from her primary focus, treating patients. With Symbiosis, she doesn’t have to worry about the business hassles, we take care of that for her. Along with reports like this where she can visualize her Clinic performance analysis, Symbiosis also handles everything from office space, staff and equipment all the way to EMR software, website management and marketing.

If you are a interested in starting a healthcare clinic or are planning to expand, and have been putting it off because you are afraid of the upfront cost and time then come check us out on our website and scheduling a tour. We also offer these services for clinics who aren’t setup at our location. Contact us to learn more about what we can do for your clinic.