June 2003

The power of FSV and PNM

by Dr. C.J. Mertz

Over the years, chiropractors have often asked me what are the most important things to track in their practice to best describe its current strength and growth potential. Invariably, I have reduced it to teaching them about Future Scheduled Visits (FSV) and Patient Net Momentum (PNM).

FSV

Most consultants merely track patient visits per week, which is an historical statistic. It certainly has value in terms of a look at past trends, but the best way to evaluate which way your practice is headed is to track FSV.

Imagine last week you rendered 300 patient adjustments. Is that good? Well, if the week before was 200, last week was great! But short of the obvious, you can't know whether 300 was good, bad or indifferent simply by looking at patient visits per week. You need to know how many scheduled adjustments were generated last week to really know what the next couple of weeks of growth potential will reveal.

For example, let's say you had five new patients last week. Four converted to a one‑year program (consisting of an 80 adjustment plan) and one patient converted to a three‑month program (40 adjustment plan). So far, that's a total of 360 FSV generated.

In addition, five patients were up for renewal and three accepted your one‑year program of one adjustment per week (50 adjustment plan), while the other two patients opted not to continue care. That's another 150 FSV generated last week, leaving a total of 510 FSV.

If you adjusted 300 last week with an FSV of more than 500, there's no question that you practice is going to increase over the next couple of weeks. Now, for perhaps the first time, you can track with confidence, the future growth potential of your practice!

Recently, I had a client go from 275 adjustments to 306 adjustments the following week. Yet, when we evaluated his FSV count, it was less than 275! If something didn't get corrected, his practice was actually headed into a reset. At the same time on the opposite side of the country, I had another client concerned because his practice had gone from 225 adjustments to 202 adjustments the following week. When we calculated his FSV, it was over 300! That practice was positioned to grow over the next few weeks.

My suggestion is to track your FSV every week, then keep a running average over the last four weeks. That way you can match your FSV average to your actual patient adjustments per week and know which way your practice is going to head and how you can improve your situation.

Not knowing your FSV is like shooting in the dark ‑‑ you're lucky when things turn out right. If you have a consultant, start sending in your FSV stats and ask them to provide you with ways to consistently increase FSV (that is the most predictable way for a practice to grow that I've ever seen).

PNM

Patient Net Momentum (PNM) is the second indicator for future growth potential.

Once again, most chiropractors only track new patients to determine how well their practice is doing. Every practice however, experiences some level of patient dropout and the only way to really know how you're doing is to track both of these statistics simultaneously.

Let's say you had 30 new patients last month with just five patients dropping out of care. That means your PNM was +25 for the month, which is fantastic! But you can have 30 new patients and 28 dropouts and not really know why your patient adjustments have stayed the same (or gone down) because you never track PNM. Patients who reactivate during the month (to a care plan) should be considered as new patients for PNM.

These two tracking methods have provided my clients more ease in practice, more confidence and more focus on the skills they need to improve to build a big practice. I'm not really a strong advocate for managing your practice by statistics (my clients will tell you that I force them at times not to look at any stats for weeks at a time!) because the passion for practice is in serving people not statistics. I do like information that guides you and your team toward continuous improvement and more fulfillment along your practice journey.

Start keeping FSV and PNM for three months and my guess is they will become the primary focus of your practice analysis from then on.

(Dr. C.J. Mertz is founder and head coach of the prestigious Waiting List Practice chiropractic training organization. If you would like more information on WLP services and products, call Mark at 877/TEAM‑WLP.)