Acupuncture Practice Dashboard

Dashboards have been used for many years in business to help keep trace of various aspects of a business using visual elements. They are used to look at daily, weekly, monthly, or annual numbers in a visual way. We have put one together for use in acupuncture and Asian medicine practices. ***Warning: this dashboard is a relatively advanced Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. If you are not at least an advanced beginner of Excel or are number challenged, please do not use this. We cannot provide any technical support.*** We may be able to answer occasional comments on this page however. And reading the following may help you conceptualize aspects of your practice.

Practice Dashboard

Elements of the Dashboard

Dashboard

If you look on the bottom of the Excel spreadsheet, the first tab is called “Dashboard.” This should be the landing page and give a visual overview of various aspects of your clinic, once the next tab, Data, is filled in. Basically, this is the crux of the dashboard, but is not useful until data are entered and enough data at that.

Data

This is where you need to enter the goods. Put in as much data as you can, going back into your records as much as you can. The more entered here and the further back that data goes, the more useful the dashboard will be. Most of it should be self-explanatory (I know, it never is…). Here are some of the acronyms and lines used:

• EBITDA: Earnings Before Income Tax, Depreciation, and Amortization. Essentially this is your profit (or loss)
• NP: New Patient
• RP: Returning Patient
• Returning versus 1 mo new (or 3 mo or 6 mo): This is hard to keep track of, but is incredibly useful. It is how many times does a new patient return in the first month (or third or sixth)

Pt. Tracking

This is a basic spreadsheet where you can keep track of where your patients come from. It is an invaluable marketing tool, though it does not figure into the dashboard.

Financial Ratios

A key concept for the dashboard is the concept of financial ratios. Ratios are combinations of other numbers that yield useful information for decision making. There are several created automatically from the data entered. For example, occupancy rate. This is a ratio that shows how much are you using your resources for seeing patients and combines the number of patients you see and how long you spend on returning and new patients divided by the number of hours worked at the clinic multiplied by the number of massage tables available. This yields a percentage of occupancy. If this is too low, you may want to get rid or rent out an extra room. Too high, you may want to set up another room. Keeping track of the ups and downs of this number can really give a snapshot of how many patients you are seeing and can be indicative of changing marketing or rent.