Nine numbers cover most of what an ophthalmology practice needs to see monthly: net collection rate, days in A/R, A/R over 90 days, denial rate, no-show rate, chair utilisation, new-patient volume, evaluation-to-surgery conversion, and premium IOL conversion.
Each is only useful if you can open it. A rate that cannot be traced to the encounters, claims or patients behind it tells you something changed without telling you what to do.
Financial health
Net collection rate
The share of what you were contractually entitled to collect that you actually collected. This is the single best measure of whether your billing operation is working.
net collection rate =
(payments ÷ (charges − contractual adjustments)) × 100
Contractual adjustments must be separated from write-offs. Folding bad debt and small-balance write-offs into “adjustments” inflates the rate and hides exactly the problem the metric exists to reveal. Open it by: payer, then provider.
Days in A/R
How long, on average, money takes to arrive.
days in A/R =
total A/R ÷ average daily charges
average daily charges = charges over the last 90 days ÷ 90
Use a rolling ninety days rather than a single month, or seasonal surgical volume will make the number swing for reasons that have nothing to do with collections.
A/R over 90 days
The share of outstanding balance older than ninety days. Days in A/R can look acceptable while a stubborn tail of old claims quietly ages out. Open it by: payer and denial reason — the tail is usually concentrated in two or three causes.
Denial rate
Claims denied as a share of claims submitted. Rank denials by dollars rather than count: twenty small denials matter less than one large recurring one, and counting treats them the same. Separate front-end rejections from true payer denials, because they have different owners and different fixes.
Clinic operations
No-show rate
Missed appointments as a share of scheduled ones. Track cancellations separately — a cancellation with notice is a slot you could have refilled, and a no-show is not. Open it by: appointment type, day of week, and lead time between booking and visit, which is usually the strongest predictor.
Chair or clinic utilisation
Booked time as a share of available clinic time. The useful version compares scheduled capacity to realised capacity, so that a fully booked day that lost four slots to no-shows doesn’t read as a full day.
New-patient volume
New patients per month, by source and referring provider. The most actionable cut is not growth but attrition: which referrers have gone quiet compared to their own twelve-month baseline. That list is a set of visits somebody should make.
Surgical pipeline
Evaluation-to-surgery conversion
Of patients evaluated as surgical candidates, the share who had surgery within a defined window — ninety or one hundred and eighty days are both common; pick one and hold it. The window matters more than people expect, because a short one misclassifies patients who simply scheduled around a holiday.
Premium IOL conversion
Covered in detail in its own guide, because the definition choices are subtle enough to change the answer materially.
Two rules that matter more than the list
- Write the definition down. Most disputes about a number are disputes about its definition. A one-page data dictionary settles more arguments than any dashboard.
- Every metric needs an owner and a drill-down. A number nobody owns does not change, and a number you cannot open into a list is not an instruction.