Practice Management: Your people can give your practice a powerful edge
Everyone reading this article may work in different fields, yet all of us work in the same business:the business of serving people. Your success or failure depends on how well you please your patients and referring physicians.
* When a patient enters your office for their scheduled appointment, are they welcomed with a smile, or do they have to battle for attention and respect?
* Is the atmosphere in your office calm, controlled and reassuring, or hectic and overwhelmed?
* Do your practitioners treat that patient as an individual, or must they ask repetitive questions that make that person feel like a number?
* When a referring physician calls in to your practice, does she sense that sending patients to you will reflect well on her?
Your employees hold the answers to all of these questions. And while they all have different titles - scheduler, therapist, billing manager - ultimately, they all have the same job responsibility: to build the business. The only reason you as a business owner ever hire anyone (other than an in-law) is that you expect the added investment in payroll to make you more money.
So it's ironic that very few practice owners equip their people with the tools and the vision to proactively deliver a magnificent patient experience that builds the business. Here are two ways you can reverse this tendency and turn everyone in your office into bona fide business-builders.
Automate Your Office
SpectraSoft's recently-completed 2005 Industry Survey found that relatively few offices automate tedious tasks like appointment reminder calls and scheduling. Of over 200 businesses surveyed:
* Only 5% of companies automate the process of phone and email reminders;
* A third of all companies don't make appointment reminder calls at all - and only 1 in 12 send email reminders - which leads to higher no-show rates and lower patient retention;
* Two-thirds of companies (excluding SpectraSoft customers) do not use medical scheduling software of any kind.
These companies spend endless staff hours on tedious tasks that could be completed literally in no time at all each day with computer-based systems. In many cases, these solutions pay for themselves in a matter of weeks. By freeing your staff to focus on higher-level tasks - like greeting patients and tending to their needs - you take the first step toward creating "business builders."
Yet automation is about much more than freeing up staff time. I often hear statements like, "We don't need to automate that - we'll just have Kathy do it." These owners don't realize that tedious tasks are not only time-consuming -- they're passion-consuming. Even if Kathy is a saint, after four hours of making reminder calls and hand-writing appointment cards, how enthusiastically is she likely to greet patients by the time the afternoon rolls around?
When you automate your office, you make a very clear statement to every individual in the company: "You are important." And when the people in your company feel that they are important and that the work they do is important, you begin to create a positive atmosphere that patients are sure to notice.
Goal-Setting
It's basic human nature that your employees want to feel that they are accomplishing something or improving in their job skills during the 40 hours a week they spend on the job. One way to inspire your company is to set goals for each department:
* Can the front desk reduce wait times and no-shows by 10% next month?
* Can our practitioners improve the outcome rate for this procedure by 5% next quarter?
* Can the billing department boost our collections/billing ratio by 15% next month?
Goal-setting isn't easy. It requires consistent follow-up, week, after week, after week. It also requires you to track your practice activity thoroughly and precisely. And most important, effective goal-setting requires a system of rewards and consequences.
With goal-setting, you not only see the measurable gains that come with meeting your numbers, you also increase the professionalism and job satisfaction of the people in your company.
Conclusion
When people feel like they are professionals, that confidence manifests itself in the way patients are greeted, in the enthusiasm heard when a phone is answered, and in the attitude a physician perceives when they follow up on a patient. AND THAT BUILDS BUSINESS!
Author Credits ::
Steve Petrie is CEO of SpectraSoft, makers of scheduling software in Tempe, AZ.