"The attribute of competence in assigning jobs
to your medical office staff is also the one thing
that enables physicians to avoid medical practice
management disruptions that will cause their
medical practice business to disintegrate far
more rapidly than you can shake a stick at."
After reading a recent article about business management and the difficulties that business administrators have in doing their jobs, I immediately could visualize the close connection to
why most physicians not only have difficulty with the administration of their own medical practice business, but also why all professional medical providers are victims of their own attributes.
It's well recognized and accepted that medical practice entrepreneurs make lousy managers and administrators. Medical doctors are, by definition, entrepreneurs. It would be difficult to argue against that premise because physicians function in the same environment, or world, as
all other entrepreneurs.
Almost every patient comes to the physician with a symptom, or complaint, or medical problem that may not present an easily recognizable pattern of a disease or diagnosis. So, here in the first few minutes of speaking with his or her patient, physicians find themselves outside their comfort zone and involved in mental creativity.
The physician can then open their mind to all kinds of possibilities for diagnosing the problem
as well as possible treatments, all of which are subliminally squeezed out of the memory
banks by the subconscious mind. From there, the search becomes more focused, and the possibilities are narrowed down.
The whole pile of information and findings are funneled down to the most obvious cause which usually has a most common treatment. If that's not the case, the doctor ends up in entrepreneur heaven with bundles of ideas and a great opportunity to solve the problem anyway, and show the world what they're made of--perhaps even the elite medical school they graduated from.
Getting back to those attributes I mentioned above. Several are those that are a real pain in the ass for those physicians in private medical practice.
Like avoid taking full control of their office business, avoid the responsibility for management of their medical practice business, and avoid attempting to learn and implement time proven business principles every physician must have for maximizing their own potential in practice and the highest potential for their business income and efficiency. For physicians in this hypnotic state of avoidance, the inevitable consequences always show up, often, when it's too late to do much
about their circumstances.
The crime is, that it should never happen to any physician, when it is
entirely preventable.
Probably, the greatest distaste for management to a physician is that too much of the administrative work is either too routine, or not challenging enough to peak their interest. You know that the worst thing that can happen to you in medical practice is to have two jobs at the same time.
In one you are your own employee working for that invisible corporation you set up to run the medical practice business. The other is being the owner and CEO of the medical practice business which requires management of the business done by the only person responsible for the success of
the business... you!
Pushing the management job on to an untrained employee who thinks she or he can handle the job is downright stupidity. As the old saying goes,"Ignorance can be overcome by education, but stupidity lasts forever."
Hiring a person trained in management, dramatically improves the office business functioning, but does not remove your overall responsibility for supervising the manager and maintaining your control of every aspect of your medical practice business. Managers earn higher salaries, so you must earn more to pay them, which is often a problem for physicians nowadays.
Another trait physicians have that makes it difficult to manage their office is difficulty in delegating duties. Most doctors want things done a certain way. They often are not satisfied with how someone else does a job and would much rather do it themselves and have it done "right."
A mistake made by the majority of doctors who do delegate duties to their staff is that of not taking the time to explain to the employee exactly what he wants done in detail. If it's done without a detailed explanation, you will get back what the person thinks you may have meant.
Delegation of duties, including outsourcing, is a critical issue for business growth. Physicians must learn to be satisfied with, "good enough" work done by others. No one can do it all themselves.
The distasteful idea of replacing yourself, your importance, your supreme talents, makes a huge dent in the ego and self esteem, which is another barrier to good management for physicians.
We all develop habit patterns in our lives to make our life experiences easier and quicker.
It's been reported that 80% of our daily activities are composed of habit patterns. For
doctors, it's just another problem in their adjustment to a managerial status, where most everything in management is constantly changing, new problems, new innovations, new procedures, new employees, new systems, new toys, etc.
If there is one essential factor to keep in mind while thinking through all of this stuff, it's
one that's known to all success business people, business experts, management experts, and
maybe even your wife or husband.
You need to make your productive time even more important than it is now. You must free up the time to do the $100/hr. job instead of doing the $10/hr. job. It's very easy to find an employee to work for $10/hour but you rarely can find an employee capable of doing what the $100/hour requires. That, is what you must do yourself, no one else can do it. In most medical practices that job is marketing your medical practice and establishing a constant flow of new patients
into your practice.
Medical practice management and expertise develop only because of the many aspects of your medical practice business necessities that are required to grow and maintain the constant influx of new medical patients as well as the powerful influence of marketing necessary for business success.
And all of that can occur only if there is enough income to support the processes. It requires a strong focus on such things as...
Requirements for maximizing your medical practice income
1. Good knowledge of medical practice management
2. Having the energy for continuous medical practice marketing
3. Medical practice business planning is important.
4. Marketing for physicians and their office staff is a winning set up.
5. Learn what makes a medical practice business successful.
6. Your medical practice business system is essential.
7. Bothe practice marketing and physician marketing is rewarding.
8. Business success is the objective of all physicians in private
medical practice.
9. My business website—www.marketingamedicalpractice.com
10. Medical practice business planning ignites the process activity.
----Professional Probe----
"Nothing distresses your office staff more,
than for the physician to ignore their own
responsibility to manage the office and practice,
especially when the job is dumped on to an
office staff member who has far less knowledge
about management of the medical practice than
the physician has. Use the tactic for putting foot
pressure on the physician to do what he or she is
responsible for doing."
Articles©2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #99, 3-16-22
