To know where a practice stands, any analysis must include quality information assessed over a period. For a new practice, the second part can be a challenge, but that can be overcome with experience metrics used to gauge whether or not the practice is off to a good start or not. Whatever the analysis, please avoid these common mistakes.
Guessing – Whether it be looking at new patient activity, profit, expense trends or anything else, any analysis must be grounded in real-world information. We have heard way too much analysis based on feel. Phrases like “I feel like we’re getting busier” or “seems like we had a good summer” may be true, but how can the speaker of those phrases truly know and to what extent? Does “feels like we are getting busier” mean increasing volume by 10%? 1%? The difference can be significant if there even is a difference at all. Who knows when you are guessing?
Anecdotal extrapolations – We may see this more regularly than any other analysis error. We’ll hear things like “we had 3x our number of starts in October. We’re all good.” The natural follow up question becomes whether or not that is an outlier or a sign of things to come. We see a significant problem when one good data point gets repeated even as that data point falls into the more distant past. That 3x number in October story gets repeated through a bad quarter and the continues to get repeated into the next August. Now, the practice is at almost a year past that good month and stacking bad months as results decline.
Whenever you see an outlier in data, always ask “why’ and “is this repeatable.” Here’s one example. In our Florida offices, we had a bad October 2024 primarily because two major hurricanes affected the state. In October 2025, the state had no hurricane activity (yay) and the results were much better. We weren’t dumber in 2024 or smarter in 2025. The results were primarily impacted by outside factors.
Stressing only the positives – In any business, there are a substantial number of data points, and almost always, you can find some positives among the bunch (if they are all negative, probably time to explore other options). The focus should be on the ones most meaningful for your business and should not ignore red flags just so we can “pump the vibes.”
Story time: a few years ago, we had some external marketing people handling our digital ads. I asked them to give me some indicators that their marketing efforts were producing results. The response was “our total social media views are up 13%.” That certainly is a positive data point, but it’s not a critical number like new patient appointments, new production or, very importantly, money actually coming into the business. Ultimately, that information provided no value of significance and underwhelming actual results soon followed.
Need assistance with the analysis part? Want to be in a position not to repeat the mistakes made by others (including us)? We offer a free analysis and game plan to fix what isn’t working. If your information isn’t in the best shape, we can also help build historical profit and loss statements and production comparisons at no charge. Just e-mail us at marshmallow@adbmgmt.com and we’ll get things going for you.