Optometry Bookeeping is Vital

Whether you have just opened an optometry practice, or you are looking to improve the efficiency and financial health of your existing practice, using metrics to improve your bottom line is the best strategy to track noticeable growth. Optometry accounting and bookkeeping solutions help you monitor key components of your business goals so that you can adjust them or create new ones.

Some of the key metrics to keep in mind for your optometry practice include revenue by patient, patient acquisition and capture rate, patient satisfaction, contact lens/eyeglasses sales, and advertising response rates.

Revenue by Patient

When you’re looking at the bottom line for your practice, it’s important evaluate the amount of revenue you’re bringing in for each patient versus what they’re being charged. This is called looking at your gross receipts, or gross sales. While you may charge a patient for services rendered, their insurance may only pay for a portion of those services. You will get a sense of the different trends and be able to accurately determine how much cash will actually be transferred to the cash line.

Understanding how much revenue you’re bringing in per patient versus how much you are charging can help you set prices on all products and services rendered and set financial goals for the next fiscal year.

Patient Acquisition and Capture Rate

While many patients may find you on the internet or through a referral, they may not stay with your practice after one visit. Furthermore, they may take your prescription and order their contact lenses or eyeglasses outside of your practice. Their satisfaction rates highly influence the patients you do retain. These patient satisfaction rates are also tied to wait times and patients-per-doctor.

Those patients who stay with your practice and place orders using your prescription through your practice are who you have “captured.” You need to assess the statistics of how many patients you are bringing into the practice versus how many you are keeping and examine the patient satisfaction rate for problems if you are not capturing enough patients each year. Your optometry accounting service or POS software can help you keep track of the percentages of your capture rate monthly, quarterly, and annually.

Advertising Response Rates

When you’re putting in hours, money, and effort into digital and print advertising, it’s important to track the returns on your investment. If new patients are using coupons from digital or print advertisements, keep track of those coupons, the services or products they purchase, and the capture rate of those patients. Use your optometry accounting service  or software to compare them with trends from the area, and see what you can do to improve your advertising and special offers. 

The idea is not just to bring in new patients, but to create a customer base that will provide a reliable source of income on the P&L that you can use to build new business goals on each year. 

Final Thoughts

By tracking these key metrics for your optometry practice, you can improve your business’ bottom line by making decisions based on solid evidence. By examining the trends these metrics highlight, you can adjust your goals and practices to increase profits, lower overhead, and increase your patients’ overall satisfaction.

Give Caro & Associates a call today and let us help you with your optometry bookkeeping needs.