Adjusted production

Adjusted production sits between the two numbers most owners actually watch. Start with production at your full fee, subtract the contractual write-off every in-network plan requires, and you get adjusted production: what you are contractually entitled to collect from that work, before anything else goes wrong with the balance.

The reason this middle number matters is that it isolates one variable at a time. Production minus adjusted production shows you exactly what your PPO contracts are costing you in write-offs, plan by plan, procedure by procedure. Adjusted production minus actual collections shows you something completely different: money you were owed and simply never collected, whether from a deductible nobody billed, a claim that was denied and never appealed, or a patient balance that fell through the cracks.

Most practice management software will not hand you this number directly; you build it by running a report for a single plan, comparing its allowed amount to your fee schedule on your ten or twenty highest-volume codes. Do that work before you decide whether a plan is worth staying in, because a plan that looks fine on production can be quietly expensive once the write-off is accounted for.