We often talk about increasing productivity in the hearing clinic, but what does that really mean and why does it matter? Productivity is a metric that helps you understand:  

• The measure of work effectiveness   
• The amount of labor needed to complete a job  
• When and how your business needs to adjust to achieve better results    

Productivity allows staff to get more high-quality work done in less time. This blog will explain why understanding, calculating, and boosting productivity is essential, and provide tips on how to accomplish this.    

A hearing care professional or staff’s productivity is the amount of value generated by an individual within a specific period. Internal and external factors influence productivity, including:

• The economy
• Competition
• Workflow
• Processes
• Staff engagement
• …and more 

Understanding and calculating productivity can help you understand and optimize your workforce and be more adaptable when productivity changes.    

Management consultant Peter Drucker has famously said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. This is certainly true from a productivity standpoint. 

Staff productivity is an important thing for your care clinic or clinic to measure. Understanding productivity will help you adapt and adjust in ways that will benefit your business and clinical care.  

The formula to calculate productivity is:  

Productivity = total output/total input  

As an example, suppose a company produces hearing aids. In one month, they make more than 200,000 hearing aids, with 40 staff working 18 days, 9 hours per day, for 6 months.

To calculate your total input:  

Input = 40 (# of staff) x 9 (# of hours of work per day) x 6 (# of months) x 18 (# of days worked in a month).  

That’s 38,880.  

Productivity = 200,000 / 38,880 = 5.14  

That means the company produced 5.14 hearing aids every hour.  

Now, suppose that company hired an Operations Manager to optimize processes and workflows. This leads to a more significant increase in the number of hearing aids produced (270,000) but maintains the same amount of effort.  

As a result of this one change (a manager to optimize processes and workflow), the company’s output increased to 6.8 HA per hour.  

That’s an improvement of 1.66 (32%) in productivity based on that one change. You can see how having the data – and making just one adjustment – can significantly improve the productivity numbers and total output.  

Increasingly, hearing care clinics and clinics are relying on tech solutions – rather than gut instinct – to track key metrics, such as productivity. Using a practice management software like Auditdata Manage allows care clinics to easily compile, review, and assess reports on numerous metrics, including productivity. Using this intuitive software allows care clinics to easily track and measure productivity by care clinic location and staff.   

Your hearing care clinic should track productivity to:  

Manage your business better – A solid understanding of your care clinic’s productivity levels results in many benefits. More data allows care clinic owners to:

• Make more informed decisions about critical things like staffing, scheduling, equipment utilization, etc. 
• Help identify areas of concern (e.g., underperforming staff members, an inefficient scheduling model, overscheduled hearing care professionals, etc.)

Auditdata’s practice management software, Manage, helps care clinic and clinic owners track productivity by location and staff, spot trends, and adjust, as necessary.  

Track productivity changes – If there’s a drop in productivity, it will negatively impact your bottom line. Look for any productivity changes and determine what’s causing them:

• Is an audiologist overworked and burnt out, leading to less productive efforts in the care clinic? 
• Have you lost customers and need to generate more leads to fill your schedule? 

Once you identify any changes and determine their cause, you’re able to act quickly to improve the situation. 

Optimize your workflows. Calculating productivity will help your care clinic understand your current workforce and workflows, providing critical information about whether you need to make any adjustments.

This is important data to see if you need to adjust work schedules, organizational structure, operational costs, staff performance, and/or any other factors that contribute to your care clinic’s success.  

Boost profitability and improve your bottom line – Analyzing productivity allows you to adjust and optimize staff, processes, or workflows to maximize performance and, ultimately, your bottom line. 

This effort helps ensure your care clinic is in the best position to increase appointments, sales, and profits.  

Consider these factors when looking at productivity in your care clinic:     

Complexity of service.  Some services (like ear wax removal) are quick and can be completed in 15 minutes. Other appointments (such as an initial appointment and hearing test) may take a full hour. Consider the complexity of the service and the length of the appointment when calculating productivity:

• If Audiologist A performs 32 ear wax removals in a 9-hour day, and Audiologist B performs 8 initial appointments in the same timeframe, you cannot assume that Audiologist A was more productive because they completed more appointments. 
• Consider other factors (e.g., a patient’s age, the severity of their hearing loss, their communication difficulties), that may impact the length of the appointment.

Auditdata offers this helpful guide to optimize scheduling so you can boost key performance metrics.