Provider staffing is the lynchpin of care delivery. Optimizing staffing and having accurate ways to determine current utilization and forecast future needs has business-critical implications: on revenue, operations, and strategic decisions. 

• Forecast too low, and there aren’t enough providers to cover demand; overshoot and you’ve added headcount cost to the balance sheet 
• Provider recruiting can take months to onboard and train in pursuit of Clinical Excellence
  

🤝 For care delivery companies, particularly those operating multi-state and offering collaborative, complex care, this quickly becomes a puzzle that spans states, specialties, insurance coverage, and many other important variables. 

⚡To help you model provider utilization and forecasting, we built a Provider Utilization Calculator. It’s a free interactive tool that helps you pull Total Appointment Hours, Total Booked Hours, and % Utilization. Plus, you can refine it based on variables like appointment type, state, specialty of care, date range, and more. You can clone this repository and instantly make calculations. 

💡Healthie’s API-first Scheduling platform makes it uniquely possible for healthcare builders to understand business-critical metrics on provider forecasting and utilization, and eliminate spreadsheets to calculate this important information. 

How the Provider Utilization Calculator Works

First, access Healthie’s Provider Utilization Calculator and get the repo up and running. You’ll then be able to run the total number of available hours, the total number of booked hours, and the % utilization. You’ll be able to quickly make adjustments to refine your model in different scenarios and with specific sub-views. 

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Customizing your Provider Utilization Calculator

🔗 Here is a list of common permutations of the Provider Utilization Calculator, to best refine it for your particular operating model, with links to where you can find these in your Healthie UI, and via the API: 

• General Availability
• Appointment Type, including by:‍
  - Contact Type (In-person, Video, Phone)
  - Location (Site A, Site B, Site C)
• State‍
• Provider Specialty (via Tags)
• Provider Credentialing (E.g., Covered by a certain payor, via Tags)
• Provider Out-of-pocket Rate (via Tags)
• Date Range

Example Application & Implications Provider Ops

👥 Let’s dive into the example of a virtual care delivery company, currently operating in 14 states, in-network with 3 major payors, offering prenatal and postpartum therapy to families. The company currently has 33 therapists that span those 14 states of coverage, with some therapists credentialed in multiple states with between 1-3 of the major payers each.

📅 Each therapist has entered their weekly availability in Healthie, synced their Google Calendar to block off additional, non-bookable times, and has been tagged by Specialty, State, Credentials in Healthie. 

Leveraging Healthie’s Provider Utilization Calculator, a Provider Ops Team can:

• Pull by Specialty/State/Credentials, how many available provider hours are open
• Calculate % Utilization of available hours of these 33 therapists, based on the number (and booked appointment hours) of appointments that have been booked by patients, in total, and within a particular date range
• Determine the most popular Appointment Types and/or most booked therapists
• …and more!

In this example, the team is able to draw conclusions like:

• The Forecasted Revenue in each state is $X for Q3
• The most popular Appointment Type is X
• X% of Appointment Hours come from A, B, and C states 

🧠 These calculations have important implications for Business & Product Teams, as they can directly inform staffing decisions, revenue forecasts, and general strategic direction. 

Healthie’s API-first Scheduling Feature makes it uniquely possible for healthcare builders to understand business-critical metrics on provider forecasting and utilization, and eliminate spreadsheets to calculate this important information. Start Calculating with Healthie’s Customizable Provider Utilization Calculator. 

❓Interested in learning more about Healthie’s API-First Scheduling Feature used by organizations like Oscar Health and Hinge Health for healthcare delivery? Contact Us.