Setting goals for every department in your practice is one of the easiest ways to improve employee engagement and boost productivity. Tracking KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) over time allows you to track your team's progress towards reaching their goals. We’re going to discuss three KPIs that you can use to solve some of the biggest problems at your front desk.

1. Arrival Rate

It’s extremely frustrating to have a full schedule for the week only to have patients cancel, reschedule, or no-show. There may be an underlying problem that is causing patients not to come in for their appointments. We recommend running a report that gives you the total number of patients seen and scheduled. To calculate your arrival rate, use this formula (Number of Patients Seen/Number of Patients Scheduled X 100).

Once you’ve determined your arrival rate, you will see if there is a need for improvement. Determine who to involve in improving the arrival rate for your practice.

2. Data-Entry Denial Rate

Data-entry errors made at the front desk are likely the leading cause of rejections and denials that your billing team receives. Reducing the number of data-entry errors will reduce claim processing time and create a more consistent cash flow.

Have your billing team manually track all rejections and denials on a spreadsheet and specify which type. For example, wrong patient ID can be designated as a “data-entry denial” whereas a no-auth denial would be “Ref/Auth Denial”. At the end of the month, tally the total denials and the total denied for data-entry errors. To calculate your data-entry denial rate, use this formula (denials and rejections caused by data-entry errors/total rejections and denials X 100). You can set a goal for your front desk to reduce data-entry errors by X% and measure their success by calculating the data-entry denial rate once a month.

3. Front Desk Collection Rate

When a patient is discharged with an outstanding balance, the chance of collecting that money drops by 60% as soon as they walk out the door. We always recommend collecting patient financial responsibility at the time of service.

Determining if you’re front desk is collecting at the time of service can be done in a few different ways depending on your EMR/billing software. For example, most billing systems have a Co-pay Balance Report which lists what should have been collected for the day versus the amount collected. You may need to search your systems reporting options for this one or another one with a different title but has the same information. To calculate the collection rate, use this formula (total money collected/total money due X 100) The goal for your front desk should be collecting 100% of patient financial responsibility at the time of service.

Start by setting one goal for your front desk per quarter and use KPIs to measure their progress. This is a great way to boost employee engagement and reduce burnout, which in turn will reduce turnover at the front desk.