By Michael Gallagher, IntelliSuite Technologies
Pri-Med Midwest 2008 took place from April 23rd to April 26th at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL. Pri-Med is the nation’s leading provider of CME, educating more than 250,000 physicians over the past 12 years.
Pri-Med provides courses for both clinical issues and practice solutions. I attended several of the practice solution courses on Thursday and Friday and want to share some of the information that was presented in one of the sessions.
Thursday morning, Karen Zupko presented “The Seven Deadly Sins of Practice Management.”
“Karen Zupko is a seasoned, senior advisor who has been helping physicians navigate the waters of America's healthcare system since 1974. Her perspective stems from more than 25 years of consulting, coaching, and training experience with physicians and those who manage them. Karen has built her firm from a "solo practice" to a team of 17. She is on the board of editorial consultants of Medical Economics magazine, and is a member of the American Marketing Association and the Health Care Strategy Forum and has served on the board of trustees of Chicago's Grant Hospital.” - Pri-Med.com
Karen passionately discussed issues, solutions, and advice regarding some of the more common yet less obvious issues practice managers face on a daily basis. In summary, many of the topics Karen presented are business principles that could translate into many industries. As with many management positions, managing a medical practice can prove to be a daunting task. While concentrating on all the issues and tasks at hand, it is very easy to allow what should be obvious to become extremely obscure.
During Karen’s presentation, she mentioned several suggestions that could help improve a practice’s performance. Below are my interpretations of several topics Karen delivered in her session. The bolded titles are subsets of the “Seven Deadly Sins…” Karen discussed and do not reflect titles within her presentation.
Hiring Due Diligence: Run a background and credit check on every potential employee before hiring them. A medical practice can be a smorgasbord for criminal considering the personal and financial information collected for patients, prescription drug access, and even cash collected at the front desk. Let’s face it, not all criminals walk around with black ski masks. A simple background check can save your medical practice from hiring an employee that could eventually bankrupt your practice as one audience member shared. A credit check can be used to confirm a potential employee’s level of responsibility. If you run a credit check and find that the person you are considering is in severe debt or has a history of neglecting financial obligations, it is reasonable to assume that your practice may be at risk if this candidate becomes desperate.
Analyze Information Frequently: Reviewing information can help you in a variety of ways. Reviewing your monthly postage costs can allow you to confirm that your billing statements are being sent out by your staff. Reviewing “no shows” daily will allow you to identify possible fraudulent activity in the checkout process. If a patient pays their bill in cash, an employee can mark them as a “no show” and pocket the cash. Of course, there is more additional investigation necessary to confirm such a suspicion but you have the ability to at least look into the issue rather than naively exercising blind trust.
Use A Quality Billing Company: Before hiring a company to outsource billing, it is in your best interest to understand what on demand reports they have available. A common issue amongst billing companies is they do very little to help resolve rejected claims. Some billing companies even go as far as resubmitting rejected claims without making the necessary adjustments required for approval. Access to on demand reporting can help you analyze your billing company’s strengths, weaknesses, and quality of service.
Do Not Let Your Employees Define Your Workflow: Many practice managers inherit a staff when they first come into a practice. Some staff members may feel a sense of entitlement due to their tenure with the practice. In these situations, you may often hear “but this is the way we have always done it,” or “I don’t like collecting co-pays at check-in.” The solution here is pretty simple. You are the boss, should define the process, and are ultimately responsible for the success of your practice. You MUST demand that the office operates based on your guidance and instruction.
Enable Your Employees to Make Decisions: A good practice manager should surround themselves with capable, reliable employees. It is very easy for a practice manager to become a bottleneck within a practice by feeling the need to approve every decision made within the organization. If you feel the need to oversee or approve everything in your practice, you have either hired to wrong employees or you need to rethink your management strategy. You need to oversee so many aspects of the practice and getting bogged down with tactical decisions can prove to be very distracting. Quality employees will make good decisions provided you share your business and decision making philosophy with them. At times, your staff will make bad decisions. You have to foster an environment that enables people to make bad decisions provided they learn from them.
“Free” Employees That Do Not Help Your Organization: Most medical practices are small organizations. The smaller your practice is, the more important it is that you keep a staff that carries their weight. Absorbing an employee that is not providing the level of production you require can have many negative effects on your practice. They directly affect your bottom line, can lower the standards within your office, and can upset or distract other employees who are more productive. As Karen Zupko creatively stated, “you need to free these employees” and allow them to move on to something that they are better suited for. This is purely a business decision and you should not let your personal emotions get involved in the decision making process. Even if an unproductive employee is the kindest, nicest person in the world, you must consider whether or not they are a good, productive fit for your practice.
Karen’s presentation offers a great deal more information than I have been able to discuss in this article. I would urge anyone faced with the challenges of managing a medical practice to attend one of Karen’s presentations if she visits your area. To view the upcoming Pri-Med Conferences, please visit the following link (www.pri-med.com).
Related Links
http://www.karenzupko.com/
KarenZupko&Associates, Inc.
625 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 2225
Chicago, IL 60611
Phone: 312.642.5616
Fax: 312-642-5571