When you subtract the number of providers who leave the network from the number who've joined for a time period, you get an important metric, Net Change. Net Change measures the overall growth in a network. Potential clients are looking for long-term relationships, and while losing providers isn’t positive, the ability to replace them efficiently is a strength.
In the example above, while Network A lost 8% of its providers during the time period versus only 6% for Network B, it was able to more than replace them, with adds of 14%. Network A’s net growth of 6%, compared to the competitor’s growth of just 2%, can be positioned as a clear advantage. From a management perspective, Net Change also serves well as a key performance indicator for provider relations teams.
Another important metric is Total Change, which demonstrates the amount of movement in a network or a market. While Net Change measures network growth, Total Change simply measures movement. It shows the overall change in the makeup of the network over time. Using the previous example, Network A had a total change of 22% (14% adds plus 8% drops) versus Network B’s total change of 14% (8% adds plus 6% drops.)
Employed by itself, Total Change is not all that revealing. However, when combined with Net Change, it creates a powerful new metric for gauging the productivity of your network development activities compared to internal benchmarks and relative to your competition, which we call the Network Productivity Index.