The numbers that matter - The Practice Owner's Guide

You can run a practice on one page of numbers, reviewed monthly. More dashboards than this usually means less attention per number.

The money four

KPI	Healthy	What it catches
Production	Trend vs. plan	Schedule holes, provider capacity
Collection rate (net)	96-99% of collectible production	Leaky billing; measure against contracted rates, not charges
Days in AR	Under 30-35	Slow claims, unworked denials
AR over 90 days	Under 10-15% of AR	The write-off pile forming

The revenue-cycle vitals

Denial rate by payer (over ~5-8% means an upstream fix, work your denials), clean-claim rate from your clearinghouse, and patient collection rate at time of service (patient responsibility).

The operational vitals

No-show rate (under ~5-8% with reminders), new patients per month, schedule utilization, and hygiene/recall reactivation if you’re dental.

The habit

Same hour every month: pull the sheet, compare to last month and last year, pick the one worst number, and fix its upstream cause. The KPIs are outputs; the fixes are always process (month-end close produces the clean inputs).