High-performing practices think of themselves as businesses first and foremost. They accept that healthcare organizations operate with costs and revenue, and they reject the notion that profits conflict with mission orientation or professional responsibilities.
When our team visited the corporate headquarters of one health care partner, we saw a whiteboard of monthly new patient acquisition targets, prominently displayed in the middle of the office. It’s not only possible but beneficial to think about how much each new patient contributes to a provider organization’s bottom line.
Decipher the Alphabet Soup
High-performing practices are fluent in the metrics that matter to their margins, such as LTV (lifetime value) and CAC (customer acquisition cost). Understanding the value of patients to a provider organization and the costs it takes to acquire them is fundamental to the success of any practice.
Zocdoc recently laid out some clarifying industry benchmarks of average patient value across practice sizes, specialties and procedures. These can be helpful as provider organizations establish their own acquisition targets and baselines, based on local and regional markets. 
Using LTV or annual value as a foundational number, high-performing practices rely on CAC as a key metric to more effectively set acquisition and marketing budgets.
It’s a straightforward process: Determine the CAC per marketing lever, set this against LTV (or another patient value measurement) and optimize accordingly. A practice that overlooks these metrics might pour money into top-of-funnel tactics like billboards without understanding how to evaluate the return.
High-performing practices use these and other metrics to frame every business decision. When provider organizations focus on these data points, they more expertly allocate their marketing budget, understand ROI and drive their businesses forward. Starting with the right numbers — and the right approach to the data — is the first step toward a growing and sustainable practice.
After taking a deep dive into Zocdoc’s top-performing practices, we’ve identified lessons from their success that any provider organization can adopt. Get more of these insights in our white paper, “These Provider Organizations Get All The Bookings – Here’s Why.”