The road to practice excellence: Profitability, productivity, operations and value

The Medical Group Management Association’s most recent MGMA Stat poll asked healthcare leaders, “What is your org’s top improvement priority?”

• 31% said “profitability.”
• 30% said “operations.”
• 24% said “productivity.”
• 11% said “value.”
• Another 4% responded “other,” with responses related to recruitment/hiring, culture and morale. 

The poll was conducted Oct. 13, 2020, with 704 applicable responses. 

While effective and successful practice management melds elements of all these areas together, understanding how your organization measures up to local competition and national benchmarks is the foundation for achieving practice excellence.

That’s the rationale behind the MGMA Better Performers dataset, which combines key performance indicators from 3,864 organizations that participated in three MGMA data surveys:

1. Compensation and Production
2. Cost and Revenue
3. Practice Operations.

As noted by David N. Gans, MSHA, FACMPE, senior fellow, MGMA, in the latest MGMA Connection magazine, the Better Performers dataset includes four categories in which the top-performing medical groups stand above their peers:

1. Operations: Evaluating the revenue cycle by identifying practices with better and faster collections while also having lower total accounts receivable (A/R)
2. Productivity: Recognizing practices with lower operating costs per unit of output and greater revenue after operating costs
3. Profitability: Evaluating provider and staff output at the practice level and individually
4. Value: Identifying practices that report quality metrics while qualifying as having better performer status in operations, productivity or profitability.

MGMA’s latest data report, Performance and Practices of Successful Medical Groups, continues a tradition of looking closer at the data of Better Performers and understanding the best practices and factors that yield exceptional results in collections, revenue, work RVUs and more.

As Ryan Lawler, data analyst II, MGMA, notes, the determining criteria used has “morphed over time, much like the industry itself.” There is no on-size-fits-all approach to determining superior performance, but the four categories of Better Performers “gives us the chance to evaluate them on a specialty level as well as by ownership,” Lawler added. “In a way, that gives us the chance to look at them in a more holistic manner.”

Attaining Better Performer status is no easy achievement, either: Beyond the hard work to obtain top performance in those metrics, there’s also the time and energy required to report the data to all three data surveys required for Better Performer consideration. 
 

Better Performers: What’s the secret sauce?

Lawler noted that Better Performer practices tend to spend slightly more on operating expenses than other practices. “The return on investment there is that they tend to also have far higher total medical revenue,” Lawler said. “Investments in your staff and operating expenses really has a payoff on the bottom line.”

When it comes to where the 1,036 Better Performer practices reported their success:

• 57.7% were Better Performers in profitability (379 practices)
• 36.6% were Better Performers in operations (598 practices)
• 28.8% were Better Performers in productivity (298 practices)
• 27.1% were Better Performers in value (281 practices).* 

* Figures do not add up to 100%, as 466 practices were Better Performers in more than one category.

And when it comes to the very best of the best, there was only one practice that attained Better Performer status in all four categories: Graves Gilbert Clinic, a multispecialty clinic in Bowling Green, Ky.

MGMA Stat

Would you like to join our polling panel to voice your opinion on important practice management topics? MGMA Stat is a national poll that addresses practice management issues, the impact of new legislation and related topics. Participation is open to all healthcare leaders. Results of other polls and information on how to participate in MGMA Stat are available at: mgma.com/stat.
 

Additional resources

• MGMA DataDive Better Performers report: Performance and Practices of Successful Medical Groups — Insights into how top-performing medical practices rise above
• Better Performers case study: “Great care from people who care” — A closer look at Missoula Bone & Joint LLC, a Better Performer in operations