Modern practices need a trusted team of resources who are not W2 employees of your company, but can provide needed knowledge and information and action in a timely, cost-effective manner. Practice management consultant I know, a bit self-serving to lead off with this! A capable practice consultant will provide several things that every doctor needs. This is an abbreviated list, certainly: Accountability. In larger scale businesses, the CEO is hired by and reports to the board of directors. This means there is built-in accountability to someone else, even by the top person in the … [Read more...] about Your Professional Team
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The Sea of Entitlement
The current dominant theme you will face as both an employer and health care provider is one of entrenched, unconscious entitlement. Entitlements have been a part of our social and legal landscape for a long time, but this feature has grown and become progressively more crippling and destructive to the normal course of business. Entitlement means a legal claim to receive or to do something, many times relating to money. It’s not the same thing as a right, such as those outlined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, or in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United … [Read more...] about The Sea of Entitlement
A Culture of Service
All healthy businesses exist for the purpose of providing their customer base with goods and services that are sold at a profit. That much is fairly obvious and self-evident. Past that however, the concept of serving customers in an excellent manner gets murky and muddied. In many markets, including in health care provision, excellent customer service is the delineator between a thriving, high-energy practice and one that suffers from low exposure and utilization. This has little or nothing to do with the technical skills or knowledge basis of the doctor, and everything to do with the … [Read more...] about A Culture of Service
A Culture of Accountability
The dominant culture of America was a direct product of accountability in the post WWII years. President Truman’s famous dictum was “The buck stops here.” This means, in essence, “I am responsible for the decisions I make, my personal conduct and the results of my decisions.” There is no blaming, no finger-pointing and no externalizing of causes in this statement. Think of how rare this has become in current culture, three generations later. Assigning and spreading blame is a national pastime. End results are now thought to be a product of conditions, rather than personal or group actions … [Read more...] about A Culture of Accountability