"Regardless of your own lack of experience regarding the
hiring and firing of employees, the reasons for a physician to
perform the task of hiring and firing are far more important
than most physicians are aware of."
Nearly all private medical practice physicians typically avoid the task of hiring and firing their employees. One obvious reason is the lack of a formal business education that teaches the hiring and firing strategies. Physicians have never been educated nor prepared for personally taking responsibility for selecting those they hire and fire.
Yet, it often is the one and only time when any physician sits down privately with a potential employee that they hire and has a direct and personal depth of verbal interaction with them. A similar conversation with that employee likely won't happen again, even if that employee works for you for ten more years.
Physicians spend their medical careers interviewing medical patients every day, and think nothing about it. About 95% of those medical doctors have never been taught the intricacies of effective job interviewing. When physicians fear, hate, detest, ignore, and deny any responsibility for hiring and firing employees, it's a whole different world of incompetence that they fear they may be exposing... yet it is an intimate and necessary part of running a medical practice business.
Think about it. Physicians are in full control of starting, growing, and maintaining the medical practice business. Sure, most medical doctors become delirious when they finally hire an employee with some extensive medical practice business experience, whom they can covertly push unreasonable amounts of responsibility on at the start. We usually call that person an "office manager."
When you do the job interviews yourself, you have the advantage of choosing those you like, those that seem trustworthy, those that are the kind of employee that patient's love, and the person that likely will become a highly productive employee, when it comes to growing the medical practice--one who is full of ideas for improving the the medical practice business management and actually believes in the work ethic.
A midlevel employee can do all that, except that employee truly does not know what you want from that new potential employee nor what you sense about their durability and communication talents, or what plans you may have for your practice that this new employee my fit into eventually (like being and office manager when someone leaves).
Another level of business weakness, just as critical, is stacked up against your medical practice management success. Job interviews are to determine the competence and compatibility of the people you hire. Medical doctors commonly don't know how to do job interviews, ask the right questions, reveal the right business background info, nor judge the long term qualities and skills that the applicant may have and you can use... or take advantage of.
Dysfunctional employees under these circumstances may become a continuous headache for the physician, create chaos in the office staff, and run your medical practice business into the ground
rather quickly.
Losing medical patients because of one single abrasive incident towards a patient one day, one time, is not uncommon. Unfortunately, in such cases, the physician will likely never know or find out about it. Other medical office staff will never tell the doctor about the incident because of
"employee gang loyalty".
Oh, I see, you never heard about "employee gang" loyalty? Often, you are so busy practicing medicine that you don't want to know about what goes on among the employees. I suspect that most employees have in the back of their minds, that if a troublesome occurrence happens that can or could cause the loss of patients, anger the doctor if he or she finds out, or creates contention among the employees, they might all lose their jobs. So they routinely hide such events
from the boss.
You look for compatibility of the interviewee with your present employees in the job interview--no angry personalities.
When the new employee compatibility doesn't happen, it slows the office flow of patients significantly. For example, if the new receptionist suddenly becomes involved with trying to find a patient's chart, while the phone is ringing off the hook and arriving patients are waiting at the window for instructions or just a "hello--be right with you," other staff members are reluctant to jump in to help her because they have their own jobs to be doing or because of his or her attitude towards other staff members is festering or worse. When you arrive on the scene, they all are
full of smiles.
The test that exposes their incompatibility is uncovered by such things as having to work through the lunch hour or after office hours in the evening to finish up the patient schedule. Or suddenly you are called to the ER for some emergency and your staff all have to stop what they are doing and help with the laborious and urgent job of re-scheduling patient appointments for the rest of the day, some already in the waiting room, some on their way to your office.
Beyond that effort is the one of apologizing to the remaining patients on the schedule that day, contact them, explain the circumstances, and get them back to the office as soon as possible.
New employees need to be told how to keep the medical records in sync with the flow of patients, or you lose money that day--you perhaps could have seen two more fit-in patients that day. I doubt that the mid-level employee handling the job interview would ever think anything about that.
You will never know when a patient's medical records are transferred to another doctor because you don't require, or keep track of, patients who leave your practice... or at least notify you about it. Very often you will never notice that a good patient you wondered about has never returned to see you over the last 3 years.
With those weaknesses in mind, how can any private practice physician ever manage to obtain the right person for the right job... let alone, let an available employee with considerably less educational and interviewing capabilities than yourself do the hiring and firing with only hope of hiring the right employee for the job?
The consequences of shoving that job onto your office staff (as most physicians do) leads to an office environment most doctors wish they could go back and change. Tolerating that issue causes far more stress than taking the time to do it yourself. After all, job interviews do not take very long---in ten minutes most physicians know what the next step is.
Maximum success and income depends entirely on the physician owner taking responsibility
for hiring/firing
"One Approach to insist on the physician
doing the job hiring and firing process"
When starting a new medical practice the first time as a young physician, you are totally focused on one thing... taking care of patients. There is no significant attention paid, unfortunately, to hiring and firing, nor the potential disasters that result. "Just get some employees in here to help us, if they still have a pulse."
Not having the knowledge and experience to manage a medical practice business, or any kind of business for that matter, the standard modus operandi is to learn the wrinkles of medical practice business management while practicing medicine. It's called working "in" your practice, not "on" it. Of course, what each doctor learns about running a business is barely enough to keep some income pouring in... not how much... just some!
As time moves along doctors learn their medical practice business and marketing mistakes and try some other business tactics using no strategies, no management consideration, and no business goals in mind. They learn what other physicians are doing in their own medical practice businesses and find an office setup that they can copy. It's the blind leading the blind.
What they are really copying, are the feeble uneducated medical practice business processes and procedures that were set up by another doctor who had no significant business education either. At least it gives them a place to start. That's exactly what I had to do when I started practice.
There are many ways to find employee candidates, which many of you reading this already recognize, or used yourself. Many times when the word gets out that a new doctor is starting practice down the street, employees in the other established doctor's offices will send other medical office workers who need a job, to apply.
Some are unemployed or have already made up their mind to quit the medical office they are now working in. Office conflicts with other employees or with the doctor they work for incites the need for a different office to work in.
It's not unusual to contact an employment agency to find applicants. The agencies screen the potential applicants to match what kind of and qualifications of employee the physician told
them he or she wanted. That saves a lot of time finding a reasonably good potential employee.
Someone at the agency has already gone over the backgrounds and work experiences of the candidates. But employment agencies never know what the physician really needs in his office. Potential employees arrive already screened, but not qualified... you make that decision.
The first difficulty often begins when another physician refers a candidate to you based on his knowledge about the person. You have to be careful how you handle this situation. You will have no idea if the other physician sent a "friend" or "relative" or actually has worked with that person themself... often never checking their backgrounds or previous work environments. Did the person get fired... and for what reason?
If the applicant turns out to be someone you believe would not live up to what you are expecting from them, you may tear up their application, never tell them you won’t hire them, or let it ride. The situation has the possibility of offending the physician who recommended that applicant, but it's rare. When dumping the referred potential employee, the smartest move is to later call the referral person an explain why. It keeps the friend and keeps further referrals coming in from that person.
Whom do you hire first for your new practice?
Should you happen to get lucky and find an experienced medical assistant or nurse with years of medical office experience, hire them on the spot. If you delay they will be gone quickly to another doctor. They are few and far between and worth the attention and salary offer.
They have a mountain of medical practice business management and knowledge that can help you find other capable employees as well as help you a great deal in setting up your office processes.
If you are not so lucky, then hire one or two people with medical office experience on a 6-month trial basis. It doesn't take long for someone to show their true colors. This tactic takes the sting out of letting them go because they did not meet what was desired of them that you discussed with them when they were hired. They aren't being fired for some unrecognized blatant compromise of the business's success, just let go because because of not fitting in to the business's
planned expansion.
To be on the safe side you may prefer to hire all your office staff on a six-month temporary basis. The number of employees you want depends on the practice style you prefer, but 4 to 6 employees can handle most of what you'll need as a solo practitioner.
If you're a psychiatrist, you may not need any employees because you can handle everything on your cell phone. Expecting a high volume of patient flow, like in other specialties-maybe see 100 patients a day-then you'll need more help as your patient load increases... how many... you decide.
Starting out with a receptionist, a billing person, a back-office person, and a medical office staff coordinator to keep it all running as smooth as possible, is bare bones. In today's medical environment you likely will need two back-office helpers and a separate person to handle all of the insurance issues and validations.
How to hire the right people... medical office employees...
You will sensibly hire your medical staff to match the job position they will hold. It means that their interests, skills, and knowledge match their job position. You don't have time to hire cheap or inexperienced staff and try to teach them everything. If you don't have the money, then you have to make cheap choices... at least for a while.
Highly successful office recruiting organizations use four of the most effective hiring techniques...
1. Candidates need to describe specific examples
of their skills
2. Always do a search and screening of the resume
3. Actual assessments are made to predict a
candidates motivations for certain jobs, for
supporting your practice, and your ways of doing things
4. Discussion as a way to evaluate specific
job-related skills, abilities, and capabilities
According to a DOl/ERE (Electronic Recruiting Exchange) survey, "behavior-based interviews", as
above, most accurately predict future performance and are used by 40% of organizations in the
survey. Resumes posted online are making it much easier to screen potential employees.
Assessments of candidates by use of multiple-choice testing, filter out those who can't read or understand instructions, tolerate criticism, or have other hidden personality problems.
The Small Business Hiring Guide offers many guidelines for hiring, that in most
doctor offices have never been heard of, such as...
1. Prepare questions in advance--it enables you
to get the right information needed for the
job applied for.
2. Choose the right interviewer-the supervisor
of the job being considered is the best one to
do the interview... that's you, doctor!
3. Listen more than you talk--start out making
the candidate feel comfortable with general
questions--save the "how you want to run your
practice business" until last, because the
candidates will be compelled to say what
you want to hear if you reveal it first.
4. Avoid the tried and true--ask unexpected
questions to get to what the candidate expects
about their future life and goals. Otherwise,
most candidates have a well-rehearsed
response everybody uses when asked
about where they want to be in 5 years.
Three questions to always ask...
1. Tell me about a time you needed to learn a new skill.
2. Describe the worst job you ever had.
3. How do you motivate someone who isn't doing his or her job?
Another two most effective questions...
4. Very helpful to ask a candidate what they would do in a certain work situation.
5. Ask about the roadblocks they had in their last project.
Three questions to always avoid asking...
1. Where do you want to be in five years?
2. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
3. Why are you leaving your present position?
Lastly-explain your office/company benefits
1. Explain company physical benefits the candidate receives
2. Explain emotional benefits
3. Have a loyal employee tell the candidate why it's so good to work
for this doctor, instead of you bragging about how great your practice has become
4. Watch the clock--don't give a poor candidate your time in personal discussions
5. A second interview is a good idea for questionable candidates you can't
get a good grasp on their caliber the first time.
Why "new hires" fail...
Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, reports on their study of newly-hired employees... 46% will fail within 18 months, 19% achieve unequivocal success. interpersonal skills were the reason for failure, not technical skills. Interpersonal skills lacking were...
1. 26% could not accept feedback
2. 230/0 unable to understand and manage their emotions
3. 17% lacked all motivation to excel
4. 15% wrong temperament for the job
5. 11% lacked technical skills
The survey studied 5,247 hiring managers in business and healthcare organizations. Distressing as that is, 82% of managers in hindsight admitted that most of the clues pertaining to problems in personality and relationships were missed during the job interviews.
The reasons that the clues were missed are related to being in a hurry, over-focused on the job itself, and lacked confidence in their interviewing abilities.
Coachability, emotional intelligence, motivation, and temperament, however, are much more predictive of a new-hires success or failure. The interviewer that spends more time or focuses on these four areas in the interview their success in landing great employees is remarkably improved.
In healthcare especially, hiring a nurse that alienates physicians, other nurses, and pharmacists, can lead to medical patient injury or worse.
The no-man's-land between hiring and firing...
That area is called Performance Reviews. Not only do people hate performance reviews in most businesses, whether a reviewer or employee, they are counterproductive. Keith Lee (Newsletter; 3D Mail Results) explains why the performance reviews are being converted into what's called a Personal Development Interview.
The whole performance review system has been changed from a non-motivational, discouraging, and, most importantly, anti-developmental process into a system that encourages feedback, innovation, and performance.
You can imagine how many good performers quit jobs because of bad performance reviews.
Keith Lee's book, "How to Control Your Business and Your Life-Proven Secrets to Creating Highly Productive teams" explains how to convert to the Personal Development Interview. Visit www.howtocontrolyourbusiness.com where you can purchase his book for $2.97?? (S&H).
The cost of firing and replacing each employee has been estimated to be over $20,000 plus the time and effort necessary to do it.
The biggest mistake for a small business is to hire the wrong person for the wrong job. From this comes the advice of business experts who advise employers to...
"Hire Slow, Fire Fast"
Hiring the wrong person causes...
1. Employee Conflict
2. Costly Errors
3. Poor Customer Service
4. Low Productivity
5. Lost Patients & Trust
Grant Robinson's hiring system is now being used in many large businesses. The system is known to reduce hiring errors. You can purchase the software and implement the guidelines into your medical practice. This investment can be a profitable investment for you considering that the average length of time employees remain with a doctor's office staff is five years.
Assuming that you replace all 5 of your office employees during that time at a replacement cost of $20,000 each (the cost of everything associated with replacement of one employee determined by survey information), your cost will possibly be $100,000 every five years dedicated to employee replacement… something you didn’t want to hear about today.
You take your time to hire a top-quality of the employee for the job position, follow the advice of effective job interviews, and hire someone on a trial basis for a period of time you will likely save yourself hours of time correcting the blunders of a bad employee.
Additionally, you will save your practice considerable expense that can then be applied to essential medical equipment, materials, or education that will improve your bottom line.
Termination of an employee...
Here's a lot of what's wrong that has created a hammer and sickle environment in business functions today. Things most all doctors have to wrestle with in their private medical practice businesses are becoming worse.
The most descriptive words that set the stage for troubles, helps to make us aware and vigilant. The description about business problems offered by the well-known business expert Dan Kennedy is…
Way too many people have their pay disconnected from accountability, get 'bonuses' that have nothing to do with successful outcomes, get raises tied only to a number of years of mediocre or incompetent performance, and many do not have the opportunity to raise their pay by
good performance.
The move to convert our entire society from differential benefits produced by different choices, behaviors, sacrifices, initiative, and effort into a 'flat system' with everyone guaranteed the same minimum and limited to the same maximum, and little space between the two is gaining popularity and momentum.
Those huge crowds that have been turning out for the only openly declared Socialist ever to run for the U.S. Presidency and the $2-million-plus hastily raised by him from small donors (less than $100.00 each) is not just because people love a freak show. A lot of them actually think he's right.
For the record, he and those excited by him, do not just have a difference of opinion with us. They are anti-American, enemies of this nation, all it stands for. In most cases, they are ignorant of history and economics, thus as gullible as a goat, but that's no excuse.
They are an enemy, and ought to be treated as such. They are all dangerous to us and should be understood as such. When some moron says to you, "Well, Bernie has a point", you should not maintain equanimity. Such a person is at least as loathsome as a racist, as a drug dealer, as any other avowed enemy wishing "death to America."
At least get away from them and stay away from them, if you choose not to engage in battle. Yes, our non-Socialist Constitution guarantees them their right to hold and express even their vile, traitorous opinions. (In a Socialist country, like Cuba, voicing capitalistic opinions would have them in irons.)
But that does not mean you have to grant them audience or even tolerance, any more than you are required to feed and pet a skunk as if it were a cute little kitty. Which it ain't. A skunk is a skunk.
Us older physicians can remember those dynamic individuals, college classmates, medical school classmates, that actually had jobs and earned their way through college and even medical school.
Now students don't even try to do such things. Young students have been given the idea that their educational loans will likely be forgiven so there is no motivation to go out and earn the money
while a student.
Everything has changed around us so we must adapt to the changes or fail. The reason physicians now are having so many difficulties with retaining office personnel is a result of those drastic changes of attitudes, mindset, goals, motivation, and lack of a futuristic view. You can expect to have a much greater turnover of medical office staff.
It's a matter of having to fire more employees for characteristics that are incompatible with office business, efficiency, and profitability. Some types of employees with personality and sociability problems should be fired quickly.
"I wanted a happy office culture, so
I fired all the unhappy employees."
We teach our children to work hard and never, ever, give up. We teach them to be grateful, respectful, positive thinking, and to see the best in people. Later it's necessary to teach them all of the reasons that will get them fired from a job because children become influenced by the "herd effect" which is quite the opposite of the way we “seniors” were raised. And we must teach them how to fire people when their job position requires it.
Passive-aggressive types of personalities block innovation
and suck the energy out of teammates.
Three categories of employees that are the most disruptive in a medical office ("Three Types of People to Fire Immediately", article by Michael Maddock and Ralph Viton)…
1. The Victims...
"People with BPD (bipolar disorder) are like people with third-degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement." ----Marsha Linehan
“Can you believe what they want us to do now? And of course we have no time to do it. I don’t get paid enough for this. The boss is clueless.”
Victims are people who see problems as occasions for persecution rather than challenges to overcome. We all play the role of victim occasionally, but for some, it has turned into a way of life. These people feel persecuted by humans, processes, and inanimate objects with equal ease—they almost seem to enjoy it.
They are often angry, usually annoyed, and almost always complaining. Just when you think everything is humming along perfectly, they find something, anything, to complain about. At Halloween parties, they’re the gloomy, pessimistic donkey from the Winnie the Pooh stories—regardless of the costume they choose.
Victims aren’t looking for opportunities; they are looking for problems. Victims can’t innovate.
So if you want an innovative team, you simply can’t include victims. Fire the victims. (Note to the HR department: Victims are also the most likely to feel the company has maliciously terminated them regardless of cause.
They will often go looking for someone—anyone—who will agree that you have treated them unjustly. Lawyers are often left to play this role. So have your documentation in order before you let victims go, because chances are you will hear from their attorneys.
2. The Nonbelievers
“Why should we work so hard on this? Even if we come up with a good idea, the boss will probably kill it. If she doesn’t, the market will. I’ve seen this a hundred
times before.”
We love the Henry Ford quote: “If you think you can or think you cannot, you are correct.” The difference between the winning team that makes industry-changing innovation happen and the losing one that comes up short is a lack of willpower. Said differently, the winners really believed they could do it, while the losers doubted it was possible.
In our experience, we’ve found the link between believing and succeeding incredibly powerful and real. Great leaders understand this. They find and promote believers within their organizations. They also understand the cancerous effect that nonbelievers have on a team and will cut them out of the organization quickly and without regret.
If you are a leader who says your mission is to innovate, but you have a staff that houses nonbelievers, you are either a lousy leader or in denial. Which is it? You deserve the staff you get. Terminate the nonbelievers.
3. The Know-It-Alls
“You people obviously don’t understand the business we are in. The regulations will not allow an idea like this, and our stakeholders won’t embrace it. Don’t even get me started on our IT infrastructure’s inability to support it. And then there is the problem of...”
The best innovators are learners, not knowers. The same can be said about innovative cultures; they are learning cultures. The leaders who have built these cultures, either through intuition or experience, know that in order to discover, they must eagerly seek out things they don’t understand and jump right into the deep end of the pool.
They must fail fearlessly and quickly and then learn and share their lessons with the team. When they behave this way, they empower others around them to follow suit—and presto, a culture of discovery is born and nurtured.
In school, the one who knows the most gets the best grades, goes to the best college, and gets the best salary. On the job, the person who can figure things out the quickest is often celebrated. And unfortunately, it is often this smartest, most-seasoned employee who eventually becomes expert in using his or her knowledge to explain why things are impossible rather than possible.
This employee should be challenged, retrained, and compensated for failing forward. But if this person’s habits are too deeply ingrained to change, you must let him or her go. Otherwise, this individual will unwittingly keep your team from seeing opportunity right under your noses.
The folks at Blockbuster didn’t see Netflix (NFLX)‘s ascendancy. The encyclopedia companies didn’t see Google (GOOG) coming. But the problem of expert blindness existed well before the Internet.
Two of our favorites from rinkworks.com: “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” —Western Union internal memo, 1876.
And “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” —David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
At one point in his career, Thomas A. Edison had dozens of inventors working for him at the same time. He charged each with the task of failing forward and sharing the learning from each discovery. All of them needed to believe that they were part of something big. You want the same sort of people.
You don’t want the victims, nonbelievers, or know-it-alls. It is up to you to make sure they take their anti-innovative outlooks elsewhere.
How hiring and firing applies to the independent medical practice offices...
Hiring the wrong person causes...
1. Employee Conflict
2. Costly Errors
3. Poor Customer Service
4. Low Productivity
5. Lost Patients & Trust
Grant Robinson's hiring system is now being used in many large businesses. The system is known to reduce hiring errors. You can purchase the software and implement the guidelines into your medical practice. This investment can be a profitable investment for you considering that the average length of time employees remain with a doctor's office staff is five years.
Assuming that you replace all 5 of your office employees during that time at a replacement cost of $20,000 each (the cost of everything associated with replacement of one employee determined by survey information), your cost will possibly be $100,000 every five years dedicated to employee replacement… something you didn’t want to hear about today.
You take your time to hire a top-quality of the employee for the job position, follow the advice of effective job interviews, and hire someone on a trial basis for a period of time you will likely save yourself hours of time correcting the blunders of a bad employee.
Additionally, you will save your practice considerable expense that can then be applied to essential medical equipment, materials, or education that will improve your bottom line.
Passive-aggressive types of personalities block innovation and suck the energy out of teammates.
Subjects in the Abuse group were more likely to report subclinical symptoms of paranoid, narcissistic, borderline, antisocial, obsessive compulsive, passive-aggressive, and depressive personality disorders.
For example---
- Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a mental disorder where a person has a deep and extreme need for attention and praise. More-so, people struggling with this disorder have a very excessive view of their self-image. In many cases, the person will have little to no empathy for other people. As with every other type of personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder causes several social and mental problems as time goes on.
- Those with a narcissistic personality disorder are usually very vulnerable under their mask of confidence. People struggling with this disorder cannot take even the slightest criticism. This ends up developing into several problems in relationships, at work, school, and financially as well. Due to these problems, people struggling with narcissistic personality disorder are usually unhappy and find little enjoyment in relationships with others.
The legal side of hiring and firing may be like a lightning strike...
Remember to always document on paper or otherwise all of the incidents, causes of complaints, and circumstances regarding each issue where an employee has disrupted the office business.
You must do this to protect your medical practice because lawsuits for unlawful termination are not rare and the employee wins in court 95% of the time. The reason that doctors lose so often is that doctors cannot prove in court that they told the employee about all the activities that could
get them fired.
Doctors can be a winner of these suits if they have an "Office Personnel Policies Manual" that they make the new hires read at the time they began work--and add their signature to. The problem is that less than 1% of doctors ever create or buy such a manual for their practice. So all evidence in court is based on, "he said, she said" issues... all verbal.
The employee’s opinion will most often be accepted as fact by the court. If a physician can show the judge an office personnel policy manual they have in their practice, there is an assumption that the employee must have read it or had the opportunity to read it…making it possible for the physician
to win the case.
Other reasons to fire medical office employees...
During my personal season in private medical practice many problems occurred that
sent me spinning.
1. Employee Comradery
It took me several years to discover that there is such a powerful relationship that exists in medical offices and other kinds of business offices as well. Problem issues arise in a medical office that the boss, doctor, never will find out about for years... unless the doctor witnesses the problems or stumbles into it accidentally.
Your office staff members will hide from the boss every untoward event that happens in your office. It may include arguments or rude remarks to patients, battles among staff members about whose job it is to do something, or advantages are taken by employees when there's an opportunity to take the afternoon off when they are supposed to be working.
I finally discovered one morning when I came into my office very early and caught my receptionist hard at work copying a hundred or so church bulletins. She had been copying programs for her church for a couple of years that I had no knowledge about. If she had asked me if she could do that, I would have said yes, because I donate to many church organizations.
Another comradery problem that beats them all was when I terminated one employee, others quit the same day which was totally unexpected. I never found out why. I can honestly say that I never did anything to my staff that warranted that response.
2. Office theft
It's kind of usual and often acceptable to find the pilfering of small items from the office supplies, like pens, copy paper, tablets, magazines, and staplers... not good but tolerable if minimal.
Theft and embezzlement of office money take things one step above tolerable. One receptionist stole $30,000 from a doctor friend of mine. Another billing clerk over a period of years stole $40,000 from an OBG... discovered only when he sold his practice and had to have complete financial auditing done.
It's a good reason to be able to read and understand what your monthly bank or CPA profit-and-loss statement is telling you.
Comments...
These and many other problems in medical practice marketing can be prevented but only if the physician has obtained a good business education--enough to recognize the problem symptoms before much damage can occur. Medical practice business education teaches physicians how to recognize management, marketing, and economic problems before they become irreversible.
Medical practice Business management ignorance for physicians will always seriously compromise medical practice business income when the doctor has no real business management knowledge or education.
Again, I have overstayed my virtual welcome time... but I never apologize when I know the reason is to make your lives, practices, incomes, and careers better.
----Professional Probe----
"In any physician's office, there lurks the
possibility that emotional 'explosions' can
happen, which can be earth-shaking and
practice-breaking"
No one can force you to take over the job of hiring and firing employees, but the persistent aggravation associated with refusing that responsibility will cripple your income and career later.
Employment interviews are no harder to do than medical patient interviews. Because you already know how to interview patients, you already have a short step into learning to do
employment interviews. Follow the sequences suggested in this article to obtain the unique employees that are a major element in building your practice, your profitability, your reduction of stress, and your ability to balance your professional life with your family life.
The secret to very good results is having prepared for the interview, have a check-off the list, and a list of appropriate questions to ask the candidate.
You are far better at interviewing than you think. No one can select an employee that can do the work better than yourself.
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #69, 3-16-22
