Monthly Archives: December 2014

Marcus Lemonis -- the investor/fixer who stars in CNBC's "The Profit" -- believes that the keys to success for any type of business boil down to three fundamentals: people, process, product.  Once you understand that all the shortcomings and the positives of any business will fall into one of these three areas, it's easier to see how to fix the problems that prevent a business from reaching its potential. These basics absolutely apply to medical practices, too. People:  Do you have the right staff? The right providers?  Is everyone doing the right things?  Are staff members empowered to solve problems? Process:  Is your patient flow process free of unnecessary friction, or are extra steps, poor communication and other inefficiencies slowing you down? Product:  Do your providers provide the services that are needed in your area?  Are patients getting access when they need it?  Are you committed to the technology options and other patient experience innovations that patients want and need?  Do you know what patients want? In this video (one of an excellent series from Inc.), Lemonis states plainly that if you want to understand whether your process works or not, "You really just have to stand on [the other] side of the counter and say, 'What is the consumer actually seeing?'" This is, in fact a big part of what we do as practice management consultants.  We shadow patients, we sit in reception areas and at the front desk, we go through the same processes your patients do.  It's how we learn what the patient experience is like, and how we spot problems in workflow (which usually reveal themselves almost immediately!).  Your staff can also help you understand the patient experience -- let them share with you what they see at your front desk, in your hallways and in your reception area, and let them take initiative to fix problems that are within their control.

Themes seem to emerge each season in our medical practice management consulting business; in 2014, one of the most striking has been the connection between physician productivity and physician compensation.  It's an issue we've seen play out in nearly all our engagements, in both start-ups and established practices, in both private practices and hospital-owned groups. As many practices face big organizational changes and others launch new strategies to adapt in the changing healthcare environment, it's natural that physician compensation needs to evolve, too.  But what's more surprising is that this particular issue seems so resistant to the clarity and structured decision-making that guide so much else in the medical world. Instead, too many practice owners view the idea of a productivity structure or clear goals as "insulting" or even unnecessary with "professionals." This idea seems to take root in private groups in particular – the physician owners are especially leery of offending their employed colleagues. Sometimes I wonder if a misperception of business compensation contributes to the resistance physician owners and practice administrators have to tying physician compensation to productivity (or even discussing it!).  Perhaps there is a sense that other professionals don't have the burden of having their performance measured.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  In business, even executives who don't generate revenue directly typically have objective goals.  Marketers may be measured on unique visitors to a website, inbound calls, awareness or other objective criteria besides revenue.  CIOs may be measured on uptime or the response time of systems, or cost containment, or some combination of results.  Customer service professionals may need to demonstrate that their teams beat benchmarks on hold times and call length. Sales executives are always measured on sales performance -- even when they're not.  Even when an organization sets a compensation plan for sales executives that doesn't directly tie weekly or monthly sales to regular compensation, the connection is in there somewhere.  Perhaps a big part of compensation is a bonus that depends on annual performance.  Or perhaps a sales executive collects all her compensation from day one, but she knows her