Practice management benchmarking can be useful in keeping your practice operationally healthy, allowing you to have confidence in your practice's performance—which in turn means that you and your partners can concentrate your efforts on patient care. Done right, such benchmarking can highlight problems (or catch them before they have a chance to grow), such as:

Inefficiencies: by evaluating visits per day or relative value units (RVUs) per hour and year that lead to physician stress and burnout;

Poor collections—and identifying bad payer behaviors of delays and denials;

Embezzlement—by evaluating collection ratios, adjustment statistics, and accounts receivable;

Over- or under-staffing—by comparing charges and collection ratios with full time equivalent (FTE) staff

Waste of supplies or theft—by reviewing profit and loss statements;

Inappropriate equipment purchases—by evaluating asset profitability

Group practice income debates—using compensation and FTE studies;

Coding compliance—using ICD/CPT reports; and

Patient adherence—using recall system effectiveness evaluations