Efficiency is the key to practice success Posted by John Pinto, April 15, 2009 09:19 AM In a recent study, spiders in an experimental environment newly abundant in crickets (a large, difficult prey) somehow knew it was time to bulk up their webs from the gossamer ones they had been spinning for light, easy prey. Now, I doubt that many spiders go to business or medical school. But it turns out that the common house spider is a pretty efficient operator, metering its hunting resources to its practical, professional needs. Are you as efficient as a spider? Check with these three "starter" benchmarks: Count up the number of patient visits (including postoperative visits) your entire practice sees in a typical month. Then divide this patient count by the number of doctor equivalents (DEs). A DE is one physician working full time or two optometrists working full time. The result should be well over 500. Count the number of fully equipped and active exam rooms in your practice. Multiply this number by 173 (the number of hours of operation per month in the typical practice). Divide the resulting figure into the number of total patients (including postops) seen in a month. In an efficient practice, the number resulting from this is 1.0 or above. Count up the number of technician full-time equivalents (FTEs) in your practice. A FTE is one staffer working 40 hours per week; someone working 20 hours per week would be 0.5 FTE. Count as techs anyone who is rooming and working up patients, assisting chairside or performing special testing. Multiply the resulting FTE count by 173 (the number of paid payroll hours in the typical month) and divide the resulting number by the number of patient visits per month. If the number in your general ophthalmology practice is not under 1.0, you may have too many techs. Comments (0)

Soothing staff anxiety during challenging times Posted by John Pinto, April 8, 2009 03:47 PM Remember that good economic times can paper over poor leadership habits. If your style as an owner has veered in the past to the gruff and the negative, you may now no longer be in a position to exchange endless pay raises for love and inspirational leadership. Scrupulous leadership, which takes honesty and frequent situation updates, is the key right now. If as a physician you've been the somewhat shy, invisible leader of your practice (letting an administrator be your proxy), now is the time to circulate the office often, learn everyone's name and learn how they're each contributing to your success. And then keep it up. If this works at times like this, just imagine what a great leader you'll be after "The Great Recession" is over. Some coaching pearls: Staff morale can be more positively impacted by their interaction with you as a physician, and by your specific positive comments about their performance, than by any other single influence in the workplace. Don't just praise the technicians you see every day, but also the billing staff and front desk clerks. Hold plenty of meetings (all-hands, departmental, even quick "team spirit" huddles in advance of each clinic session). Invite and answer questions about "How it's all going to work out." Do what you can to counter the negative daily news feeds. Let your staff know why a career in medicine — and especially a career in eye care — is so valued at times like these. Emphasize the positive in every staff communication. Be especially careful about the things you put in writing. As a doctor or manager, it's easy to dryly write about the practice's misfortunes in a way that feels good to you — getting things off your chest — but that will absolutely freak out the troops. Balance anything negative you feel you must report with the silver lining: "It appears that we are down 7% in patient visits and 9% in collections this year. However, because of our new flex-staffing program, and the way we've been able to trim the cost. of supplies, I'm happy to report we're only going to be trimming about 5% of staff hours over the balance of this year, starting with voluntary reductions. And as soon as the economy turns around, we hope to rapidly restore everyone possible to their former hours." Make sure the entire team stays top-line focused. Profit enhancement in the largely fixed-cost business of eye care is more a matter of revenue enhancement than cost containment. Just three more patients per day will increase profits by $100,000+ per year in the typical practice.