Mixed Messages?
Are your patients getting mixed messages, and you don’t even know it?
Most especially, might there may be an incongruence or two with regard to office policies which might not only be slowing you down, but could be like driving your car with the brakes on?
Well, if you have more than one staff person, the answer might be yes.
Even in my practice, I discovered this quite by accident last week. The problem began with a newer staff person getting into encounters for the first time by herself.
It seems like everything has broken in my office in the last 3 months. Computers, phones, credit card swipe machines, and even an ultrasound unit. Stay in practice long enough and stuff just happens to fail eventually.
Anyway, last week it was the card swipe machine. With the volume of cash sales we do, this can really hurt the income for a day or two. Now my staff is very bright, and they know our policies on collections. So why did the failure of one simple device cause chaos at the front desk?
It was because, unbeknownst to me, while I was taking care of patients in the back, instead of calmly taking card numbers and running the charges in batches when the unit was fixed, there was total disagreement among the staff on how to handle this. Something so very simple. When I observed this firsthand later in the day, I was absolutely flabbergasted. And next my staff saw a side of me I usually try never to display. The correct thing to do in this situation should have been so obvious!
How could this happen in the consultants office? The same way an undefeated championship football team gets their butt kicked in the biggest game of the year! Poor communications, failure of execution, and lack of applied discipline.
It was only because the new staff person was being given directives based upon fleeting thoughts from the others, rather than them thinking just a little more about what the office policies on collections actually are. I was nonetheless, absolutely livid.
Later that night, when I finally cooled off, I made a list of 7 or so vital areas in practice to review in great detail with the entire staff. And we did so, as a team the very first thing before patients the next day.
Of course, the theme of this meeting was “Mixed Messages to Patients”.
In practice, mixed message to your patients can spell absolute disaster. If everybody is not precisely on the same page with crucial practice issues, especially collections, billings and patient compliance, chaos and poor production and the accompanying frustration that results will really drag you down. And lets face it; practice is difficult enough without all these items not running on autopilot.
So, what’s the bottom line in your office policies on appointments, insurances, and time of service plans, over the counter collections, noncompliance with home care, etc? What about the all important staff policies on attendance, vacations, etc? Every single staff person must know and execute these in a similar cohesive manor.
Whatever policies you ultimately adopt, these need to be spelled out in great detail, and regularly reviewed and reiterated. And when something unforeseen, when something as simple as what happened in my office occurs, you must take steps to fix them immediately.
Not having firm, detailed policies on all these items creates great stress and profound underachievement in private practice.
This does not have to be an elaborate process either. Simply having a word document on your desktop that you can add to, or even just text messaging on your cell phone can go along way towards fine-tuning your policies. They need not be elaborate, but only clear.
If there are unique circumstances in your practice or community, make sure you spell these out too! For example, what happens during snowstorms? What about religious observances and your office hours?
The bottom line is, the more of these things you can think of in advance, the better off you will be.
And this is one of those seemingly little things that can propel you to enormous success in private practice.
