Focus on turnover

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This month our report focuses on the financial factors of practice management and we make comparisons between the turnover per eye examination and the dispensing rate by practice turnover size.

Last month the Index reported an increase in total practice turnover to 173 Index points which was the highest value since June 2010, but the adjusted figure (after late submissions are included) is 171.4 Index points which is fractionally lower than April 2011. Total practice turnover is a little lower this month at 171.2 Index points, this is almost 3 per cent higher than May last year. In Figure 1, the moving average line, which takes into account historic values, shows the significant recovery throughout 2010 with the peak in May and June of that year, but this has flattened through the course of 2011 and 2012 and annual growth is currently 1.6 per cent. The series line shows a fall in May last year, which has not been mirrored in 2012, and in October we reported that the fall outside the tight band within which this benchmark was operating may signal a falling trend, but this has not happened. The linear trend-line, which takes into account only the values included in the chart and no historic data, shows a slight upward trend.