If you have a practice of more than a medium size, you probably find yourself more than a little occupied by the day-to-day of the operation. Patients need to be seen, fires need to be put out, marketing needs to be done. That leaves little to no time to take a breather, introduce new products, find out where everything stands with the staff and do some in-depth training.
I know that a lot of practices have morning meetings or weekly sessions, but those are usually to address short term, micro issues. Patient X wants a refund or staff person Y needs someone to substitute while on vacation. Things like that.
One useful tool that we have employed over the years is an annual get together of the doctors and/or managers. We’ve done everything from renting some empty space in an office building to blocking out rooms at a resort in Hawaii and hiring entertainment for each evening. Whatever the level of opulence you decide, here are some tips for making your meeting successful:
Make sure that you invite the right people
If you plan to discuss advances in your practice management software, new marketing techniques and ways to confirm new patients, your office manager has to be part of the process. If you plan to talk about the latest treatment techniques, you probably only need to have the doctors there.
Personally, I’ve found best results when splitting the doctors and key staff people. You can target your message a bit better and get more direct feedback which we will discuss a bit later.
Focus on a few key points
The Friday before the publishing of this post, we hosted a meeting for our office managers and doctors in Spain. We focused some new marketing principles we intend to use for the future. Other topics were discussed, but these new principles were repeated and reinforced throughout the term of the meeting.
If you have a practice management software package with a major update, that is always a good theme for managers. You can build a lot of discussion and business suggestions around those. If you try to tackle too much, you risk losing the attention of the audience or obscuring your key point.
Schedule appropriately
This is important. Of all the sessions we’ve had over the years, this is what has been reworked most frequently. All day sessions wear people out. If you limit the session just to the morning, you don’t get to include enough information. To flesh this out, here are some mistakes we’ve made as examples for you not to make:
AAO, Dallas, TX – To save time, we planned our doctor’s meeting sessions to run right after the AAO conference for the day. It seemed like a good idea. A number of our doctors would already be in Dallas for the AAO so they wouldn’t have to schedule a trip for that AND our own meeting. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, everyone was tired – presenters, attendees, spouses. Energy was low and no one got a lot of value out of it.
Beaver Creek, CO – To enable people to enjoy the amenities of the ski community, we scheduled a morning session, left the middle of the day open to allow everyone to enjoy the slopes and then followed up with an afternoon session. To say that the afternoon sessions were less than well attended was an understatement. Get your business done first and then end the day. I find that a nice morning session, short break for refreshments and a short ending portion works best.
Beau Rivage, Biloxi, MS – On the first night of our manager’s meeting, we did karaoke with an open bar. The results were obvious. The point here is this: don’t be Pollyanna about what people will do. Not everyone is going to listen to every speech with laser focus then run back to the hotel room and study the giant binders you put together for them. A lot of folks will manage to find the bar -- whether or not it is provided by the company—and enjoy themselves. As such, Day 1 is your most important day. The most poignant messages, best speakers and themes should all be prominent on this day. After that, you tend to lose some folks.
Make it fun
Not many folks like sitting through droning speeches with no interaction so jazz it up a bit. Create smaller “breakout” sessions. Ask questions and give out cash (small amounts) for correct answers. Keep the presentations lively and focused on key points.
On a few occasions, we treated our meetings like a college session (without the hazing and football team). Participants chose their classes (and yes, some were required), we had honors seminars, t-shirts and giveaway items had the Greek system lettering and so forth. People felt like they were part of something different than the standard rubber chicken and PowerPoint circuit.
You don’t need to have hundreds of people to have a successful meeting. Some of the best sessions we had were simple, informal get-togethers at the Homewood Suites in Orlando (is that still around)? Just make them productive and please follow up to make sure your themes turn into actual practice.
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