How to Utilize Your Billing Reports to

 Maintain and Grow Market Share

April 2010

Management Home Page

By Leigh Polk, PSA Marketing Director

 

Pathology practices and laboratories utilize their billing and collection reports to make effective practice management decisions.  However, some don’t realize their billing and collection reports can also contain valuable information which can be utilized to monitor and maintain current clients. 

 

Analyze Referring Physicians

An important part of client maintenance is identifying and monitoring the referral patterns of referring physician client accounts.  Each month, PSA provides clients a “Unit Trend Report” which lists referring physicians grouped by practice and the number of units referred by each physician for the trailing twelve months.  Monitoring this information will provide the resources necessary to measure fluctuations in referring physician clients and take proactive marketing efforts to maintain existing business.

 

Utilize the 80/20 Rule

Keep in mind the 80/20 rule - 80% of your referral volume is received from your top 20 clients. The Unit Trend Report provided to PSA clients also provides the percentage of outreach volume referred from each client.  Understanding where your referral work is coming from will help ensure your practice is focusing their client maintenance efforts effectively.  

 

Identify Leakage

Never assume your practice is receiving all of the work from any referral source.  Analyze top referring physician clients by physicians to compare monthly volumes and ordering trends within the practice.  Is there a physician in the group who is referring less to your practice compared to his colleagues?  Investigate these issues to determine if there is an opportunity to increase the number of referrals from the practice or physician.   

 

Specialty and Geography

Analyzing the report by specialty and geography is another tool to better understand your client mix.  Identifying the top referring specialties will assist in focusing your marketing efforts on issues specific to that specialty.  Sorting by geography is another way to analyze your client list and will assist in identifying areas for business development.  Perhaps there is a town in which you receive no referrals, but your courier travels through in route to another area.   This is an excellent way to grow your business in areas which already have established courier routes. 

 

Developing Business within Current Clients

After identifying your top clients, identify those clients who make up the bottom 20% of your referral business.  This is an excellent opportunity to identify those clients who are not referring a majority of their work to you or who may not have referred anything for numerous months.  Target these clients which you already have a relationship with to determine if there is an opportunity to gain additional referrals.

 

PSA provides billing, coding, marketing, and business support services to pathologists nationwide. For more information on PSA please visit www.PSAPath.com or please contact Leigh Polk, PSA Marketing Director, at 800-832-5270 x 2941 or lpolk@psapath.com.