"Training your medical office employees to comply
with your instructions about how you want your office
organized, what you want your medical practice management procedures to accomplish, what rules you expect your
employees to understand and abide by, and how you
expect them to treat your patients is the secret to
having an efficient and profitable medical practice business."
I’ll never forget the problems I had in the 1970’s with my own medical staff when I believed that hiring office staff employees who had already worked in other medical offices was key to my office efficiency, productivity, and growth.
It seemed smart. It was logical. But, as we mature in our medical office practice management and medical practice business we all find that sometimes the smart and logical things we do are not the right things for the medical practice business or planning.
When one of the employees didn’t show up for work, the office slowed down considerably, some other employee wound up doing two jobs, patients had to wait longer to be seen, and confusion reigned. The incredible part of this was that I had no reason not to think that this is what I had to learn to live with in my solo private medical practice.
It happened in all my physician associates offices as well, but knowing that never relieved my frustration and stress caused by the situation. Having no medical office management training myself, no money to pay a trained medical office manager to do it for me, I did the best I could under the circumstances. You can eliminate that problem in your old or new medical practice.
If I had had at least some small medical business management education during my training, which even today medical schools refuse to teach or even offer to students, I would have had a much higher probability for a much more income producing practice.
Inevitably, physicians in a medical practice business either have to take the time to learn business, medical practice business management on their own, or live with a mediocre, stagnant medical practice business for years to come. If you don’t believe it, I suggest you speak with older physicians in private medical practice who can give you a profound jolt of reality.
Maybe you think it’s OK to let your office staff learning and education become an employee to employee training program without your participation? You certainly can’t run a medical practice by yourself. You hire office staff, which is a good indication that you understand the perils of doing everything on your own and why they have importance to your medical practice.
Logic says if the medical staff is important to your professional medical practice management, wouldn’t you prefer to have an office staff that is highly efficient and loyal to your goals for the medical practice business? How are employees going to find out what you want to be done and how you want things done in your office?
Is your new employee training process the consequence of being taught by older employees who you never trained in the first place? That’s what goes on in over 90% of medical doctor offices. It’s also a good part of the reason why business expert Michael Gerber, THE E-MYTH: PHYSICIAN, considers that over 90% of medical practices are “mediocre.” I’d wager that you never considered your practice to be mediocre.
Even in the case of old employees, you probably have no clear idea what you expect of them. They adapt to the lack of “correction” or “chastising” as approval of whatever they do. You certainly can “get by” with that compromising attitude about your office staff, but it doesn’t allow the lifestyle you once expected from your abundant education.
For those physicians who know and then ignore these landmines, it’s a clear and profound indication that they never expected much out of their career anyway.
For those physicians who continue to be driven towards improving and growing their practices, there are great rewards coming.
The basic behavior patterns of medical office staff employees that require education and training...
Even you, know that the usual worker today does only as much as is demanded of them and nothing else. If they aren’t continually nudged, they drift even lower in their work efforts.
This gives every employee, hopefully only a few, the opportunity to cheat on hours working, manipulating other members of the office staff to help do their work for them, and offer absolutely no creative or innovative ideas for improving the medical practice success.
This description matches what Dan Kennedy, expert in marketing strategies and business, says about an employee, “The only purpose for an employee is to make a business profitable.” If they don’t contribute, they gotta go.
This behavior of any medical office staff members can be altered by giving the proper attention to the teaching and training of medical office personnel.
One of the world’s greatest public speakers, Nido R. Qubein, points out in his book, “HOW TO BE A GREAT COMMUNICATOR”, that in today’s workforce an employee can only be trained to do mechanical things, but stops there. An organization’s business success depends on the best coordination up and down the management levels, to the last employee.
"In Economic Theory, every business is
successful exactly to the extent that
it does something others cannot do."
----WSJ Quote
It is not achieved without effective communication to, “unify the people toward a common vision, a common mission, and common goals.”
The idea in the past has been to spend way too much time teaching employees what to do. We should be thinking more about what the medical staff thinks, how they feel, and how they behave. Spending too much time getting a job done, instead of producing excellent results is the weak point. Workers spend too much time conforming than creating. You don’t train, you educate.
Successful businesses are composed of employees educated in non-mechanical skills, like goal setting, problem solving, decision making, conflict management, among others. Those are the goals every physician should teach their medical office staff members in order to get the most productivity out of them.
What does this all mean to physicians who manage a medical office?
Medical office staff education is more important than training for two reasons...
1. Robert B. Cialdini, PhD, has shown that influencing people’s behavior and reactions to a job or request is dramatically improved when one gives a “because” reason behind their request. “INFLUENCE: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSUASION,” contains many examples of studies where he demonstrates this behavior.
Taking this to the medical office indicates that when the physician or office manager tells an employee to do something, the employee is far more likely to perform the job that's assigned better if they know and understand the reason for doing it. You educate your employees. Make the time to do it yourself, or hire it done.
2. When a doctor is candid with his or her objectives, mission, and practice goals with the medical office staff, it allows for the employee to mentally move their mindset from a job completion effort only, to that of a mindset where creativity, inspiration, and desire to become an insider on
the staff is inspired.
Factors that bring the best out of your medical office staff...
1. You must believe that the education of your office staff improves your office productivity and income. If you don’t, then you need more education about medical practice business.
2. You must commit the time and effort on a regular basis to educate, inform, and communicate with all your office staff. (ex. 1 hour each week at a specified time)
3. When your staff sees you making these efforts yourself, they become more compliant with a desire to help improve the office business management to them as well.
Imagine for a minute that you’re one of those physicians who has no interest in... good grief... educating your office staff. Why would a staffer go out of their way to suggest creative ideas for seeing more patients, or regaining ones that have left your practice, or better methods to handle
the 90-day overdue accounts?
Your staff only sees that you are out of the office most of the time, you scarcely ever speak to them in any personal or complimentary way, and you keep all your personal feelings and beliefs a secret from them. You must be a true introvert, which hamstrings you for life.
Imagine how frustrating it is for a member of your office staff to offer their help, even when it’s not in their job description, on a project you have going and then never hear a thank you for it. If you believe that these things are all taken for granted, you probably are divorced or near it.
Nothing should be taken for granted. Your mouth must be educated to say what should be said at the time it should be said—not the next day. Not only that, your mouth must be trained to repeatedly speak those same complimentary phrases over and over on a regular basis no matter how silly or ridiculous it may seem to you to have to do so.
How to move your office staff from wild turkeys running through the forest of patients and paperwork to their full potential of genius and creativeness that continues to ooze out through
their skin and are unable to control it? Then you can educate them because they are ready to
learn and implement.
You know the process. You just haven’t had time to think about it, especially with all the predatory alligators in the community pond.
Here's how to create employee inspiration...
1. First, you have to demonstrate your desire to work hard to improve and grow your practice, instead of gabbing for hours with the other physicians in the doctor’s lounge at the hospital... something obvious to them whether you believe that or not.
2. Second , make yourself a social networker inside your office. It proves to your office staff that you are congenial, friendly, open to discussions, like to hear other opinions, and are interested in how they feel and what they want or need. This is easily done by informing them of your thoughts, ideas, and plans about what you intend to do with your practice, emphasizing goals and strategies that you hope they can contribute to. It's like gabbing with your brother of sister.
3. Third, be persistent, consistent, and verbal on frequently repeated occasions about where you are headed with your practice. The message is that what you said prior continues to be the focus of the practice and wasn’t just a flash in the dark. They understand you are serious, and they should be too... or leave.
4. Fourth, convince the staff that you need all their help, which lets them know they are part of the enterprise, company, or practice... not just a temporary unimportant person outside the inner circle. It establishes loyalty, respect, and reassurance for their value.
5. Fifth, time to weed out the non-performers so that they don’t poison the rest of the office staff.
6. Sixth, be very clear about your expectations for each staff member. This process alerts each member of the office staff that those expectations can only be met if they are educated enough to meet those expectations.
By this time the staff is prepared to learn what you will teach them because they want to be part of the great adventure, you have in store for them. They see themselves as important, productive, creative, and self-esteem abundant.
7. Seventh, establish a schedule for the education sessions and how you want them to be conducted. Determine the topics for each session before beginning the sessions so they know what to expect. Remember, that each staffer has their own talents and skills.
Each will need private education sessions to take full advantage of their skills. Every session whether done in a group or separately must be instructed on how each bit of knowledge fits into the whole picture you have in mind for the practice.
8. Eighth, determine who will teach the class sessions. For the best outcome, you should be the teacher and instructor. The impossibility of having anyone else teach what you want to be taught in the way you want it to come across to your staff requires you to teach them.
You can hire it done because there are specialists who do this kind of teaching. However, they still can’t compare to what you can teach them because your practice and functionality is unique
to you only.
9. Ninth, after the education process is done, you must follow up diligently to ensure all that has been constructed or created is persistently kept up and expanded. There’s no end to the growth and expansion of the practice. The whole process becomes a routine habit pattern for your staff.
10. Tenth, when the progress you see happening because of this effort, try not to brag. You now have a well-oiled money machine that will work on automatic even when you’re not present. You can be proud of the fact that you are the one out of 100,000 physicians in our nation who have reached your full potential for your medical office business management and medical practice income.
It goes without saying that you will need to study medical practice business and marketing in an ongoing fashion to keep up with what is working in the business at the time. My suggestion is to subscribe to many online medical practice business and marketing newsletters.
Contact me for the information about the best newsletters and for my recommendations (presently the best is www.newsletterpro.com ). If you would like to read about what factors determine how successful your medical practice could be, I suggest you read my EBook on the topic, "How To Propel Your Medical Practice Income..."
Comment about the "time expense" of doing business efficiently...
For you to have a highly productive and proficient office staff that have an educated view of your medical office business means, expect conflicts with your time, patient services, and family sometimes. It’s the price you have to pay for reaching your maximum potential as a physician and maximum potential for your medical practice business income.
It occurs to me that you have already become used to sacrifices and conflicts during your college and medical education, so it’s not something new to you. The surprise here is that you thought that you could slack off after graduation and the Board Exams and still hit your peak. Never happen!
----Professional Probe----
"Squabbles with your medical office staff about whether
to provide education or training for them can be settled
in a good old fashioned mud-fight and have fun doing it."
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #25 3-16-22
