Unless you’ve hired James Bond, no member of your team is great at everything. Running your business takes a wide range of skills and finding that absolutely perfect person to handle every single thing is damn near impossible. Marketing talent may come at the expense of skills with collecting money from past dues.
We recently had one office manager who had years of experience in the dental field. She was outstanding in building relationships with patients, handling billing disputes and staying on top of the day to day glitches that befall every office. But this person did not have a comfort level with the latest tech (like the nuances of digital x-rays) and did not want to push the practice’s social media efforts.
Clearly, the solution here is not to terminate such a valuable person. Rather, the answer is to complement the person’s skill set with either the other people or systems. Note that I did not say to hire someone just because that person may have a skill that no one else has. Your first consideration priority needs to be on having a properly sized staff.
Let’s look at some of the considerations in ensuring that your staff has complementary skills.
Hire based on skill set, not necessarily on function
Functions like reviewing and updating insurance claims and handling accounts payable may seem to fall within two separate departments: receivables and accounting. However, the same basic set of skills are required to handle both functions. In both cases, substantial facility with numbers and the ability to critically analyze that information are crucial. You may even want that person to review some of your production results because that function involves the analysis of numbers too. Yes, as you get larger and have some expansion of staff, you may want to separate duties into more traditional roles for controls, SAS 70 compliance and the like.
Until you get to that point, don’t get boxed into traditional definitions if possible. Try to maximize the talents of your team by allowing them to engage in functions to which each person is best suited.
Cross train
I am regularly surprised by the strict segmentation of duties in a practice, especially when it comes to the business side (or front) and the clinical side (or back). Regularly, those groups seem to be split apart and never the twain shall meet – until it is time for the practice holiday party. On off days and during down time, take the time to cross train people who have shown skill in a particular field. Everyone should be involved in your practice’s marketing effort so you should definitely train on the types of promotions and marketing tools you employ.
Beyond that, if you have a clinician who shows propensity for numbers, put that person in a position to help in that area during non-clinical time. On busy days, everyone handles the normal responsibilities, but there is a slow period in every business and on these days, take the opportunity to cross train and allow everyone to rotate to different functions. Who knows? You could find the next superstar on your team. That person just needed the opportunity.
Consider using systems to handle certain functions
Obviously, you cannot have a computer greet patients at the front desk (well, you could, but that novelty would probably wear off pretty quickly). But other functions could be handled by systems if you have to replace a person. We’ve discussed this more in detail in a previous post, but if you don’t have someone that can truly handle doing a reconciliation, look at developing (or having someone develop) an automated process to run the reconciliation and provide you with any exceptions that need to be resolved.
Of course, in this day and age, pretty much anything can be outsourced. Experts in running various practices functions and niches within each function abound. Full service operations can take the full burden off you. Here, you simply want to be in a position to balance the cost with the quality of service and your comfort level with having an outside entity handle a certain process for you. A number of good service companies will usually give you a free trial or discounted period up front to let you see how you like the service and if it fits within the culture of the practice you are trying to create.
When it came to the person I discussed at the beginning of this section, through cross training we found that we had two clinicians who were social media aficionados. We redirected some of their energy from posting funny pictures to posting content and engaging with people who showed interest. We outsourced the IT side to a local, inexpensive company interested in building business. This provided us with a low cost, quality alternative to bringing on someone to deal with the office's networking and computers on a regular basis.
Thoughts, questions, comments? Let us know.
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