Best Practice Management
Leaving Never-Never Land

Print

Lynn Homisak, PRT

Practice Management May 16, 2019

You might imagine, as a podiatry consultant I have come face to face with a number of practice management casualties that happen in offices on a daily basis. Don’t get me wrong. I have client practices that are awesome; really have their act together, and are always searching for ways to get even better. And… I have offices that just struggle and scrape. By that I mean, there exists chaos, low morale, no teamwork, bottlenecking, inefficiency, and poor communication, for starters. I get a sense of the SOTP (State of the Practice) through initial phone conferences, various questionnaires, feedback forms, and financials. Yet, I find the truest vibes, good and bad, become immediately evident within moments of stepping through the office door. And if I am aware of the harmony or discord, so too are the patients. 

If I had to pick one common denominator of disruption in a podiatry office, it would be staff mismanagement

If I had to pick one common denominator of disruption, it would be staff mismanagement. Let’s face it. Managing people is NOT easy. It requires time, patience, understanding, leadership, listening skills, etc. Done right, a healthy doctor-staff/employer-employee dynamic combined with simple fundamentals (policies and procedures) are key to those thriving practices. When either is missing, an imbalance occurs that will almost certainly lead to a workplace that no one wants to work in; at least not for long. In an effort to steer practice managers (or doctors who are managers) down a more productive road, I thought I’d share a brief exercise in awareness by way of some common problematic scenarios I’ve encountered. 

Note: This is by no means a complete list (and, if you do any of these things… stop it!)

Never, never should you…

• Hire a staff person without fully explaining the expectations, responsibilities and parameters of the job, the starting wage and benefits, and the guidelines for merit pay increases.
• Hire a staff person without having a standardized orientation program that will allow them to acclimate to their new environment and surroundings.
• Expect staff to know how to do a task without explaining and clarifying the importance of HOW and WHY it should be done a specific way as well as the expected outcome.
• Give staff a list of tasks without giving them the proper tools to accomplish them successfully.
• Delegate patient care without fully training staff and confirming their ability.
• Criticize staff in the presence of a patient or another staffer.
• Allow rumor mongering or gossiping in the office.
• Fail to compliment staff for their daily efforts or good deeds.
• Forget to say “thank you” or show genuine appreciation for jobs well-done.
• Fire a staff person via email.
• Reprimand staff for taking a different route on their way to reaching a similar outcome.
• Allow some staff members to break the rules, and reprimand others.
• Act unprofessionally (sexual advances, overtones, or humor, etc) with a staff member.
• Give a wage increase that wasn’t earned.
• Come to work with a negative attitude.
• Ask your staff to do something you wouldn’t do yourself.
• Hold your staff accountable for something you had a hand in doing poorly.
• Overlook a HIPAA violations.
• Expect your staff to follow policy that you ignore.
• Close the door of communication.
• Ignore difficulties or troubles that are affecting a staffer’s performance.
• Threaten consequences to policy violations you have no intention of enforcing (the empty threat).
• Install surveillance devices to snoop on staff without informing them.

JM Barrie, author of Peter Pan, depicts his fantasy Neverland as a stand-still universe. A place where most cease to age or ‘grow up’; a place where even Peter Pan eventually realizes he is stuck. You are not stuck. Identify a problem, make a change. Use the inertia to repeat your achievement on the next problem, and the next. Don’t suspend growth and progress. Make today the day you move forward. Leave Neverland. Stop and think about it… if you are not moving forward, you are either standing still or going backwards! You choose.