Eyeworld

76 | EYEWORLD | SUMMER 2024 P RACTICE MANAGEMENT by John Pinto and Corinne Wohl, MHSA, COE About the authors John Pinto President J. Pinto & Associates San Diego, California Corinne Wohl, MHSA, COE President C. Wohl & Associates San Diego, California W e all live a little bit like hermit crabs, those delightful tide pool creatures who swap out their shells as they grow up and need more space. When the shell he's wearing gets a little too pinched, all that Mr. Crab has to do is crawl out of the current prem- ises, find the next, larger shell, and climb on in—no architects to engage, no permits to pull, no wrangling with the general contractor. In the same way, but with considerably more hassle and cost, we change homes as our families grow and expand offices as our practic- es build. Facility expansion is an especially vexing process in the current environment. While most practices are still growing strongly, profit margins are generally declining, while building and financing costs are sky high, making it more difficult to accommodate this growth. Here is a starter list of a few basic points to assure that your facility development efforts are in lockstep with your wider development goals. This list originally ran in the March 2021 issue of EyeWorld in the article "Facility development in the peri-COVID era." However, we think the topic is more important than ever in the current environment, and we wanted to reinforce the concepts here. 1. Know your facility utilization numbers. The best gauge of whether you need more space or not is to count the number of active, fully equipped exam rooms, multiply by 173 (the nominal number of hours your clinic is open each month), and divide that figure into the number of patients seen in the average month. The resulting figure should be about 1.0, with units of "patient visits per exam room hour." Here's an example: • Your practice has 5 exam rooms. • So you have 5 x 173 = 865 room hours per month. • You serve 800 visits per month. • Divide 800 visits by 865 room hours to get 0.9 patient visits per exam room hour. If your practice has these statistics, your fa- cility is running at only about 90% of potential capacity, and you don't need additional space. This is obviously a gross, first-pass calculation. Depending on your subspecialty, the availabil- ity of optical or special testing space, pace of growth or general layout flaws, you may still be needing more space. You may also need more space if your providers only want to work during prime hours in the day or week, reduc- ing the number of room hours available per month. Facility development considerations continued on page 78 Source: iStock.com/monkeybusinessimages

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