Expert Answers: What Are Your Key Practice Indicators or Benchmarks and How Are They Monitored?

Anyone involved in the management of a hearing care practice knows there are numerous facets and different ways to assess how the business is performing. Three owners/CEOs of multi-office hearing care practices were asked “What do you consider to be your favorite key performance indicators (KPIs) or business benchmarks, and how do you monitor them?” Here are their answers:

Amir Hadar, CEO, MLM Hearing:

Effectively managing a multi-location hearing healthcare organization requires a disciplined approach to performance measurement, one that captures both operational efficiency and patient outcomes in equal measure. The following KPIs represent the metrics we consider most critical to sustainable, high-performing clinical operations:

Dollars per clinical hour serves as a foundational measure of provider productivity, incorporating schedule utilization, staffing efficiency, and revenue generation into a single actionable figure. High-performing clinics consistently produce between $350 and $600 per clinical hour, with variability driven by patient demographics, provider experience, and payer mix.

Return rate is one of the clearest indicators of fitting quality, patient satisfaction, and clinical judgment. We target return rates below 10% organization-wide, with top-performing locations operating in the 6% to 8% range or lower. Importantly, this metric requires contextual interpretation. An unusually low return rate may reflect providers avoiding complex cases rather than a genuine patient satisfaction advantage. The strongest clinics strike a deliberate balance between clinical ambition and patient-centered outcomes.

Conversion rate from evaluation to fitting reflects the quality of the clinical consultation itself, including patient education, trust development, and the degree to which the patient’s support system is engaged in the decision. Companion attendance at consultations meaningfully improves case acceptance, as hearing loss affects the entire family unit, and hearing technology represents a significant financial commitment. We target conversion rates above 65% to 70% across our locations.

Provider schedule utilization rounds out the framework. Idle clinical time represents one of the most significant sources of avoidable cost in a healthcare practice, and unlike other KPIs, it is highly actionable in the near term through cancellation recovery, waitlist management, and proactive reactivation outreach.

The most important principle underlying this framework is that no single metric tells the complete story. The most consistently successful organizations monitor operational, financial, and patient-outcome metrics together, across every location, to build an accurate and complete picture of organizational health.

Dr. Ana Anzola, AuD, owner of Hearing Doctors:

At our core, we believe in expanding practice growth and accessibility without compromising clinical standards. Focusing on these core values allows us to provide exceptional service while building lasting and trusting relationships with the team, partners, and patients we care deeply about.

Our Provider Training Program empowers the team to rise and leverage their output and performance, ensuring the business works for you rather than the other way around. Implementing consistent systems compounds into significant revenue growth over time. We monitor several key practice indicators through business intelligence and tailored solutions:

• KPI Benchmarking: To ensure our growth translates into increased productivity and revenue, we are implementing KPI benchmarking for providers and team performance. We use CRM dashboards and frequent weekly 1:1 huddles to monitor progress. Our focus is on promoting, supporting, and developing our team’s abilities. The objective is to empower each member to become an autonomous leader characterized by integrity, positive energy, consistency, and resilience, thereby contributing to long-term success.
• Revenue Growth Strategy: We utilize automated systems to ensure consistent outreach to new prospects and timely follow-ups. Given the seasonal nature of our business, we must evaluate our pipeline and schedule utilization in all offices to reach our daily goals. This analysis is crucial for accurately planning and adjusting our monthly, quarterly, and yearly forecasts.
• Patient Re-engagement/Retention Initiatives: We currently track patient history to ensure long-term retention and loyalty. By monitoring these records, we can better understand individual needs and provide the consistent care necessary to maintain strong, trusting, and lasting relationships with those we serve.
• Operational Efficiency: We are committed to streamlining all aspects of our company, from internal communications to external operations, to maintain a high standard. Moving our mission and purpose forward is only possible when we trust and elevate one another.

I view the following as being essential to meaningful practice growth:

1. Define ownership clearly and with structure

2. Reinforce ownership in real time, don’t wait to address it; reset it when it is missing

3. Diagnose gaps before you react. Otherwise, you will end up solving the wrong problem. Ask yourself if it is a lack of skill, clarity, capacity, motivation, or resources.

Hearing aid return-for-credit rate. Pulled from the practice management system at 60 days post-fit. Our internal ceiling is 7%; published industry averages tend to run 10-12%. A spike almost always traces back to a specific clinician, product line, or skipped verification step.

Close rate (units sold ÷ qualified opportunities). Calculated weekly. We target 65-70%. Under 55% triggers a coaching conversation; over 80% gets audited too, because it can signal over-recommendation.

New vs. existing patient opportunity mix. Tracked monthly as the ratio of new-patient opportunities to existing-patient opportunities on the schedule. We watch for a roughly 45/55 to 55/45 split. Heavy skew toward existing patients (above ~65%) usually means the marketing funnel is starving; heavy skew toward new (above ~65%) often signals weak retention or a missed annual-recall cadence.

Tests-per-provider-per-week. A capacity metric rather than an outcome, but it predicts everything above it. We target 15-20 diagnostic appointments per full-time provider per week.

We review these on a one-page scorecard at monthly operations meetings, using red/yellow/green thresholds rather than hard pass/fail lines. Published normative data is useful as a sanity check, but the most actionable benchmark is each practice’s own 12-month rolling trend—drift matters more than the absolute number.