By Jay A. Shorr, BA, MBM-C, CAC I-V
You’ve finally hired the perfect practice manager. The past two articles in this series likely helped get you to this point. It was a long, often grueling process that involved interview after interview, a background check, and a social media review, but you are not on easy street just yet. Now it’s time to make sure your newest addition is up to task.
This starts by giving him or her the tools to succeed and providing in-the-moment feedback. Start by
1. Making Every Day a Training Day
Start training on day 1. Don’t wait until you get back from a conference or have a day without surgery to walk him/her through the practice, make introductions, and demonstrate how your electronic medical record/electronic health record system works. Proper training in the beginning ensures that bad habits don’t become bad practices. If it’s helpful, reach out to vendors for additional staff training.
2. Establishing Checkpoints
Set up monthly reviews, at least in the beginning, to make sure your new employee is meeting, if not beating, expectations. Cross-referencing how your employee presented himself/herself on paper to how s/he is executing the daily job functions can be a good jumping-off point for these mini-reviews
3. Asking Around
This needs to be taken with a grain of salt as former practice managers may have been tight with staff, and a new sheriff could be wildly unpopular at first. Listen to your staff’s feedback about your new practice manager’s style and skill set, but read between the lines, too,
4. Doing the Math
Always assess how your new practice manager is affecting your bottom line. If your procedural sales are down, find out why. If your skincare sales are up, make sure that your net revenue for this particular line item is up as well. We’ve seen instances where practices’ gross profit increased, but, due to larger expenses or poorly managed profit margins, net revenue declined.
Jay A. Shorr, BA, MBM-C, CAC I-VI, is the founder and managing partner of The Best Medical Business Solutions, based in Fort Lauderdale and Orlando, Fla. His column, “The Shorr Thing,” appears in every issue of Plastic Surgery Practice. He can be reached via [email protected]
