Today I’m talking about a number that I love so much I could almost tattoo it on my forehead (terrible idea, I know). It’s the humble rebooking rate. Yes, I’m serious! This little metric has so much heart and intelligence wrapped up in it, and I think it deserves a place of honour in every allied health practice.

Before you tune out because numbers aren’t your thing, stick with me. I promise it’s more interesting (and more impactful) than you might think. Rebooking rate is not just a data point — it's a success factor. And in my practice, it has become one of the clearest indicators of how we’re doing across care, confidence, and client connection.

In this episode, I talk about:

·      What rebooking rate (or client visit average) actually is

·      Why it's a brilliant indicator of client happiness, staff confidence, and service value

·      How it quietly signals when a team member might need support

·      Why it reflects professional, ethical care (not over-servicing!)

·      How it's different from billable hours, and why that matters

·      My beef with KPIs and why I prefer to talk about "success factors"

·      How rebooking rates can help reduce pressure and keep your practice culture healthy

·      What a low rebooking rate might be trying to tell you

·      How to start tracking and using this metric meaningfully

Takeaways and Reflections:

1.    Rebooking rate is more than a number – it reflects trust, impact, and the value your clients perceive.

2.    Success factors beat KPIs – let’s shift to numbers that feel aligned with how we actually want to practice.

3.    Rebooking rate can ease pressure – when this is strong, billable hours tend to take care of themselves.

I’ve even put together a little fact sheet to help you calculate your rebooking rate. Download it here.

And remember, this isn’t about pushing people to come back unnecessarily. It’s about making sure we’re walking alongside them properly and not assuming they can go it alone. Our work matters, and when clients keep coming back, it tells us they feel that too.

Thanks for listening. I hope this episode encourages you to embrace rebooking rate as a tool for insight, alignment, and care. If you found it helpful, share it with a friend. And if you’d like to dive deeper, come check out the membership at https://theconnectionco.com.au.

Until next time, Amy

Foreign welcome to My Good Allied Health Practice, the podcast for allied health business owners who are looking to bring smart and heart together on their journey.

On the podcast, I'll cover things about being vulnerable and brave, pivoting failures, good wins, things that work, things that don't work, and I'll talk with other practice owners who are doing good in their journeys.

I'm Amy Geach, practice owner and mum, and I'm here because I believe in you.

So let's go forward on this journey together.

Hello and welcome back to My Good Allied Health Practice podcast.

I'm so glad you are here with me today.

I really want to talk to you about my absolute favourite things to measure in my practice.

A number I love so very much I could almost tattoo it on my forehead if that wasn't a terrible business decision.

Today I'm going to be talking to you about rebooking rates.

Yes.

And why this one gorgeous metric to me might just be the unsung hero for you and your practice as well.

So before you roll your eyes or switch off, hear me out.

I know I absolutely get it.

Every time I share this with other practice owners, I really see the hesitation.

I've been talking about the rebooking rate in my membership for a long time and I see the doubt.

I see the little fucking borrowed browse and people say to me that doesn't really apply to my practice.

But honestly, the rebooking rate, I think it applies to all of us no matter what your model is.

Now let me start to talk to you about why I love this rebooking rate.

The rebooking rate has other names as well.

Some people call it the client visit average, PVA patient visit average, or you could call it your new to follow up ratio.

But it is so much more than a number.

In a nutshell, it is looking at the average of how many times every new client comes back to your practice for repeat appointment.

So for me, one of the reasons I love it is it encapsulates so many things in my practice and gives me really good insight into lots of different areas of my business.

First of all, it's a measure of impact.

It's asking are clients coming back because they're feeling seen, supported and helped?

Next.

It is a measure of client happiness.

Are my clients satisfied and are they trusting in the care that me and my team are delivering?

Next.

It is a measure of team confidence.

This is a huge one.

It's probably one of the biggest measures for me in terms of team confidence without my team having to rate themselves on confidence at all.

I've been using this rebooking rate for so long now that I can easily see when a staff member's confidence is dipping a little bit.

And that might be their confidence in how they're feeling about their sessions, planning out their sessions, knowing how to progress a client onto the next part of their rehab, it can show up in the rebooking rate.

So when I see the rebooking rate dip for one therapist over others in my practice, it really does trigger me to go and have a look.

Is that staff member feeling confident?

Have they lost their way?

Are they able to still recommend what the client actually needs?

Or are they starting to doubt themselves?

And we've all had that in practice.

As we grow as a therapist, we kind of enter these levels of knowledge.

We come out, we feel like we don't know much, and then we learn a bit, and we feel like we know all these things and it's amazing.

And we have a lot of confidence, and then we hit another little step and suddenly we think we don't know much at all again.

And I really do see lots of therapists go up in tears like that.

And sometimes if the rebooking rate is down for one of my staff members, I will know that I need to just check in with them because it may be that they've hit one of those next tier levels and they're just questioning what they're doing and they're not feeling as confident as maybe they were six months earlier.

The other thing the rebooking rate does is it reflects the perceived value of an appointment, the perceived value that we're offering in our clinic.

So it's asking, do people believe what I offer is worth returning for, to make a repeat booking for?

So there is a whole lot of gold wrapped up in one little number.

So I love it so very much.

Now, I want to make it really clear that this isn't just about booking people in more, because that is definitely not what I'm about.

And even though this is a measure of how many times a new patient comes back through my clinic, I really want to clear something up, because I can sometimes hear the uncomfortable squirm, squirming with the thought of booking people in more than they need to.

And this is not about unethically getting people to book more appointments than they need.

That's absolutely not what I'm about.

And that's really not what our profession is about.

This is something much deeper.

It's about making sure we're not assuming our clients know what to do on their own.

It's about supporting them to reach outcomes sooner, not slower.

It's about making sure they don't fall through the cracks because we guessed they were fine.

And it's about being confident enough in our value to recommend the next best step rather than backing off in that way to kind of avoid disappointment or discomfort.

A strong rebooking rate doesn't mean your milking sessions or anything like that.

It means your clients understand their care plan.

They feel safe, they feel supported, they're actually on the path to really meaningful outcomes.

And you are on the path to making amazing impact for those individuals.

And that's what we're here for, right?

I think this is the opposite of unethical.

It's professional, client centered care.

So when I talk about measuring rebooking rate, I'm really saying, are we doing what it takes to get this person where they want to go?

I'm going to say it again because I think it's really important.

When we're measuring the rebooking rate, what we are really saying is, are we doing what it takes to get this person where they want to go?

And if we're not, then maybe that's what the number is trying to tell us now.

You will hear me frequently.

If you listen to me long enough, or you own my membership or my mastermind, or you've been on a retreat with me, you will hear me talk about success factors.

And I presented on this at a conference a few years ago at a business conference for occupational therapists.

I don't talk about KPIs, I talk about success factors.

Even though I find it hard to say the word success factors, I often trip up on it.

But I just want to go on a little rant here for a moment.

Can we please, please retire the term KPIs from allied health private practice?

I can feel the stress in my shoulders just saying the words KPI, the letters KPI.

And look, here is my beef with it.

It's very clinical, it's very cold, and it's used like a bit of a stick instead of a compass.

And in allied health, here's the truth, right?

We are heart led people, we care, we are nurturers, we want to help people.

And we thrive when we're motivated by purpose, not by pressure.

I think the terminology of KPIs doesn't have a positive glow in our industry and it can create this pressure.

You'll hear employees talk about the stress of KPIs, you will hear practice owners talk about the stress of KPIs.

And I just think let's make things easier and let's make things more aligned with who we are as allied health professionals.

So I'm all for flipping the script and let's ditch the word KPI and let's call them success factors.

Let's look at the factors in our practice that lead to success.

Success for us as practice owners, success for the business, financially success for our employees so they have a happy, joyful workplace that creates impact for them as well, and factors that contribute to the success for our clients.

That is what I am referring to when I talk about success factors.

They are metrics and I believe they really reflect our values.

More than going on about KPIs.

Success factors to me are numbers that feel good to measure because they are aligned with the care that we give and the way that we want to show up.

So I'm not going to talk about KPIs, I'm going to talk about success factors.

And rebooking rate is one of my favorite success factors because it ticks all of those boxes and it's relational, it's not transactional.

I love it.

So that leads me on to now talk to you about, should we call it the elephant in the room?

I'm not sure.

Billable hours.

How many times have you heard the bill, that phrase in private practice world, billable hours, that might trigger some stress in you already.

I've seen it a lot recently.

In our industry, there is a lot of emphasis on billable hours.

A lot of practice owners are trying to find the right balance of how many billable hours they should be expecting their team to contribute to the practice each week.

And then we also have employees who are getting stressed or spoken to about their billable hours.

And look, sometimes a practice can hit this with harmony and it works really well, but I probably see more stress around it than I do harmony.

So yeah, look, don't get me wrong, you absolutely need to know what you need to bill to break even and reach your profit goals.

Right?

And knowing how many hours to bill each week is therefore important.

Yes, it's smart practice ownership for sure.

But this is where we trip up.

We trip up.

When practice owners use billable hours as their main target, they're not really looking at their other success factors.

And success factors can be team happiness, your own happiness, client satisfaction.

There are so many success factors and it's about picking the ones that tie in with your vision, your mission and where your aim is to go, as well as your Values.

So I see practices all the time so focused, really, really focused on billable hours.

And that's their main target.

It's the main thing they talk about with their staff.

It's the main thing they're tracking.

It's the main thing they're focusing on.

And it just concerns me because one, you miss so much gold in the other success factors that you could be tracking.

And it can.

Not all the time, but a lot of the time it can lead to people feeling like they have to start pushing staff to hit their numbers right without really looking at how they're doing it or why the hours are high or low.

And I see a lot of practices set billable hours not for what suits their individual practice, but for what they think is the right thing in the industry.

And to be honest with you, a lot of people have jumped on the billable hours bandwagon, set their billable hours way too low because they think they're being a nice boss and that's going to attract staff and low billable hours.

But they end up in a significant financial strain.

When we end up in that significant financial strain, guess what happens?

We turn around and we vomit that fear onto our team and we tell them, you didn't bill enough billable hours this week and it's not a nice place to be.

That is not where I want any practice owner to be.

Things can go very south when we are just focusing on billable hours.

So yes, by all means, know how many you need to hit to break even and make the profit you want to make, but don't make it your main sole target that you are chasing because once we do that, it leads to staff burnout, unhappy clients, pressure based culture in your practice.

And yeah, don't love it.

And this is what I've noticed in my own practice, right.

And I have not talked about billable hours with my team in a very, very long time.

And even then, like, it's not a consistent thing that I bring up at all, at all.

What I find though is I talk about the rebooking rate because when the rebooking rate is strong, which I love because it tells me so many aspects of my practice is healthy, we've talked about the different things that a rebooking rate can show you.

So when it is strong, and that is coupled with a happy team who feel appreciated and seen, guess what, the billable hours take care of themselves.

The pressure comes off.

You don't really need to be looking at that.

That's the magic.

You don't have to bang on about it because people are coming back for the care they need and staff feel good recommending the next step.

It's a game changer.

So here are my three key takeaways about the rebooking rate.

It is absolutely more than a number.

It reflects trust, impact and value in your practice.

Number two, measuring success through success factors, not the good old KPIs gives your team a better feel, good focus and yourself as well.

And when the rebooking rates are strong and they are aligned with great outcomes, billable hours naturally flow.

So you don't need to worry as much about them.

Now I've put together a handy little fact sheet that walks you through how to calculate your rebooking rate.

I'm very happy to share that with anyone who wants to reach out to us at the Connection Co.

So you can head to our website, the community connectionco.com you can send us an email.

Yeah, feel free to reach out to us even on our social media pages because I'm happy to share this fact sheet with you.

It's called the Rebooking Rate Fact Sheet.

That's what you want to ask for when you reach out to us and it will break down the equation for you that you use.

I really want you to get on board with this rebooking rate.

As I said, it is one of my favorite things to do.

One of the things to remember is knowing that each practice will be different depending, depending on the nature of your services and the model of care that you provide.

So don't be stressed if yours is lower than somebody else or higher than somebody else.

But if you work it out on a monthly basis and you consistently are looking at it each month, you'll start to see some patterns and you'll start to work out what your benchmark is.

Then you can have a look at your practice over time and see if it drops.

You'll know kind of what to do.

So what might a lower ratio mean?

It can mean all sorts of different things.

I'll give you a couple of examples.

It might mean that you need to review your appointment availability.

So maybe you're getting some really good new clients coming in, but you can't actually fit them in your diary for follow ups.

This is going to produce a lower rebooking rate for you.

So that's one thing to look at is the availability of follow up appointments.

Maybe a lower number means that your staff are not valuing themselves enough.

They're not able to communicate the value of another session to the client.

Well in a way that makes that client want to rebook and continue on that journey.

It might also mean that you or your staff have made an assumption that the client can't afford it or the client knows what to do in between sessions.

And those two things can lead to this behavior where and sometimes it's behavior you're not even conscious of where you push out the appointment to either save money.

That's often the main reason is to save money, and that's just delaying the magical outcome that you could get for somebody.

So there are just a couple of reasons why your rebooking rate might be low.

There's lots of others.

So if you go through the process of working out your rebooking rate and you want to have a chat with me about it, absolutely.

Reach out.

I'm more than happy to talk people through this because as I said, is such a game changer.

It's one of my favorite success factors and I hope that by you engaging in it as well, you can take some of the pressure off your practice around billable hours and get some really key insights into what is actually going on with the value the clients and your team members and yourself.

Thank you so much for tuning in today.

I know that rebooking rate might not be the sexiest metric out there, but trust me, it is a hidden okay.

I want you to measure what matters and let your success factors reflect the kind of care that you're giving.

I will catch you next time on the podcast where I'm going to be.

Drumroll Having my first guest speaker and I am so excited.

It is the incredible Belinda Weaver.

Wait till you hear her.

She is phenomenal.

So I look forward to you listening in for the next episode.

Thank you for being here.

I am incredibly grateful.

If you have a friend that would find this helpful, please go ahead and share it with them too.

You can learn more about me and how to be part of my Allied Health Connection community over@theconnectionco.com.