The above image is from my book on the subject of churn. I thought I would share it with those of you who are dealing with this issue. Patient turnover, or churn, sucks. In 2018, we decided to analyze things and we found the numbers in the image shown. Here’s some more data:
- Total amount of patients lost = 181
- Single = 39
- Couples = 20
- Families = 24
- Total amount lost or written off for 2018 = $4,925.00
Now for some math. We had 181 leave which when then divided over 12 months, which comes to 15 people leaving per month. This is a little confusing because it may be just three or four big families but I am not going to adjust for that now. This number is 2.5% of the practice each month. From what I can tell, from other subscription-based industries, this is pretty good. I also think it is standard for DPC but time will tell as others do this.
It’s obvious that every DPC office could get better and we are no exception. It is nice to see that the biggest reason for leaving the practice is that they moved. The next biggest motivation is “unknown”, which means we need to do a better job finding out why. “Finances”, “failed payments”, and “too expensive” are next and proves that money is ALWAYS an issue in DPC. Only 7% of ours left because they got insurance and 8% were terminated for many reasons that I will go into in later chapters.
So, what did we learn from this? Well, every practice is different. Sometimes you have no control over why people leave. Sometimes you do and our office found that we need to dig in and find out what that “unknown reason” is for some of our churn. My guess is that it isn’t a flattering answer. The finances or money issue is real for some patients and embellished by others. Remember, you can’t save them all. If you can cut your churn rate in half then you will be much more profitable and less stressed. It also makes it easier to get rid of some other patients who aren’t a fit.
Click below to learn more about this and to find ways to keep sane in the DPC profession