Annual meetings: doing it right

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:

3 qualities to look for in your office manager

Throughout the life of this blog, we have discussed the size and significance of the staffing and employee cost in your practice.  Over the coming posts, we are going to dig deeper into the human resources component of that cost.  We’ll talk about components of costs, characteristics to look for in a new employee, hiring, firing, discipline and much more on incentives.  

Today, we look more closely at one of the key people in your practice: the office manager.  Over time, this person can develop into your right hand for carrying out the business operations of the practice and a trusted advisor on matters of future practice development.  They’ll usually oversee the front desk area, monitor marketing, receivables, cash management, payroll and a host of other tasks.  This person may also be responsible for other hires so his or her personality and preferences will touch every piece of the practice.  

In this segment, we look at some of the characteristics we feel are most important when considering what type of person to put in this key position (aside from the obvious things like not being a psychopath).  This characteristics are ranked in order of importance:

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