If you work in a medical practice, you know how useful Microsoft Excel can be for everything from tracking revenue to logging HIPAA requests. But because Excel offers an unlimited number of ways to display data and information — and to analyze it — you may find some benefit from discovering new ways to use this tool.
Check out three Excel features, including pivot tables and more, that can help you run your practice more efficiently.
1. Pivot Tables
A Pivot table is a summary table that’s based on a list of data, which you can manipulate to analyze patterns, find trends and create multiple summaries based on the information you feed into it. A pivot table allows you to:
- Transpose data fields by switching the row/column layouts
- Alter the table layout in an infinite number of ways
- Expand and collapse the table to reveal or hide details
- Group data in ways not possible while working with the original data
- Use a “drill-down” feature that reveals the record detail for any value in the table
- Create interactive charts
Many practices find that pivot tables give them the ability to generate monthly reports at the touch of a button that can allow them to share information about income, days in accounts receivable, expenses, productivity and more. Being able to quickly disseminate this information puts your staff members at an advantage, since they can make faster decisions based on the data at their fingertips.
2. The Countblank Feature
When you’re crunching numbers, your data can be thrown off quite a bit by blank cells within a range.
The Countblank function counts the number of empty cells, so you can identify what data is missing and plug it back in. Because empty cells are sometimes generated due to missing values, plugging those values into the formerly blank cells will help you have more accurate overall data.
3. Using Network Days
When you’re calculating numbers at a medical practice, projecting future performance or income is often dependent on knowing which days your practice will be open. For instance, if you know your providers bill insurers for $1,000 a day, the best way to project how much billings you’ll create through the rest of the year is to multiply $1,000 by the number of workdays left in the year.
To do this, you can use the NetworkDays function in Excel. This function allows you to calculate the number of days between two dates, excluding weekends and holidays. This provides faster calculations of factors like income, workdays, salaries and other data going forward.
For step-by-step instructions on how to create pivot tables that make your practice run more efficiently, check out tips from expert Dennis Taylor. During his 60-minute online training event, Excel Pivot Tables for Practices: Make Data Work for You, Dennis will show you the exact steps you must take to master the process. Register today!
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