Straight Talk for Doctors

Costly (and Easily Correctable) Telephone Mistakes

Joe Capko — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:16:36 +0000

All of us by now have had the feeling of being held captive by a merciless phone tree or being asked, “Can you please hold?” before being left in limbo for five, ten or even fifteen minutes or more. Like you, patients don’t like having their time wasted when calling your practice. Nonetheless, many practices have taken high demand and technological developments as an excuse for failing to review and refine the systems they have in place for serving their patients over the phone. If you’ve recently reviewed your online presence and encountered a negative review, you can appreciate how important it is to establish with your patients a sense that you are dedicated to taking good care of them regardless of whether they are in or out of the exam room.

Improving patient phone service needn’t be an overwhelming chore for your all-ready busy office. In fact, this process is ideally suited for working on around your schedule as there are many components that can be improved in fifteen minute blocks.

Most modern telephone systems have impressive reporting capabilities, despite the fact that most practice staff usually know nothing about them. Make it a priority to generate reports that can serve as benchmarks for your practice’s performance in this area. How long do callers wait on hold? How many calls come in relative to your patient visits? When are calls coming in?

One very common problem is the rush of calls that often occurs as the practice opens up after the lunch hour. As the lunch hour is the most convenient times for many of your patients to call, the simple fact is that you should have telephone coverage over lunch. Rotating this assignment through your staff is easy to implement — you’ll get more new patient bookings and smooth the flow of calls, meaning happier patients and staff.

You should have a current diagram of your phone tree that illustrates that patients can find their way through the tree in a timely manner. Consulting with your systems reports, eliminate branches of the tree that are infrequently accessed. You’ve probably been the victim of a phone tree that didn’t offer you any appropriate choices from which to choose — the choices should be mutually exclusive (non-overlapping) and all inclusive (giving an option for all callers, e.g., “For all other callers, please stay on the line.)”

It is hugely important that whomever handles the calls appreciate how patients experience the totality of customer care. Naturally, many patients calling into a physician are tired, sick and in pain. Considerate and compassionate care should be delivered at every single point of contact. Accordingly, time is of the essence and you’ll want to have good, solid data on what patients are calling about and when in order to serve them in a timely manner. A quick and easy way to collect this data is for those covering the phone to keep a log of the types of incoming calls – sometimes for just a single day is sufficient — and use this data to assess the quality of your existing systems. Heading this process can be a great opportunity for a receptionist to shine when they present their findings at your next staff meeting.

The keys to improving staff performance, By Judy Capko

Judy Capko — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 19:41:14 +0000

Staff members need to feel valued and part of a team. Sometimes in the hustle of getting through the day and taking casre of patients, practice leaders can forget to acknowledge staff and make them feel important.

Quite simply, if you make CAM part of your every day thoughts and actions you will win staff over, keep them committed and reduce disenchantment and turnover.
The CAM is communication, accountability and motivation.

Communicate well. Let your staff know you appreciate their contribution and if there are areas where improvement is needed be willing to discuss it and provide improvement support before performance deteriorates.

Accountability. Give employees clear direction and performance standards that define your expectations. Of course, this must be supported by training staff and giving them the tools to succeed, and if they fail to hit the mark hold them accountable by meeting with them and discussing ways to avoid a recurrence.

Motivation. Yep, it’s management’s job to keep staff motivated. It’s a matter of giving them an opportunity to grow their skills and remembering the old adage “compliment in public, criticize in private” – and make the criticism constructive. Also invest in your staff by giving them opportunity for continuing education and upward mobility. Help your insurance staff become certified coders, have your nurse and receptionist participate in conducting chart audits. Help your top performers move up the organizational ladder when job openings occur. Delegate tasks to staff to show your confidence in them and give you the opportunity to focus on responsibilities that require your expertise.

By doing these simple things you create a great work environment that is a “win-win-win” for physicians, management and staff!

A Novel New Mobile Medical Practice

Laurie Morgan — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:11:21 +0000

Just heard about Hangover Heaven, a mobile medical business in Las Vegas started by anesthesiologist Jason Burke, MD. Dr. Burke brings over-imbibers relief — direct to their hotel rooms or any location on the Vegas strip!

We’re always interested in novel new medical practice models — and this is one we definitely didn’t see coming.

Hangover Heaven

OB/GYNs are hard-working … this one may be the hardest-working!

Laurie Morgan — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:58:50 +0000

We’ve been working on several projects with OB/GYNs of late, so stories related to obstetrics are catching my attention more than usual. This one is really inspiring: a 101-year-old OB who has personally delivered more than 15,000 babies! I heard about him on NPR — read or listen to the story here:

At 101, and 15,000 babies, an OB/GYN works on

Hotel Hôpital

Laurie Morgan — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 20:38:25 +0000

What if hotel billing were like medical billing? A funny-but-sad video by Costs of Care in partnership with Harvard Medical School and the University of Chicago explores the possibility in a tongue-in-cheek way (click “continue reading” to view the video).

“Surprise” medical costs do more than just frustrate patients — they hurt practices, too. By helping patients understand the costs of their care, practices can help patients make more informed decisions, plan better, and maintain a positive relationship with the practice. And, patients who are better informed and understand what they’ll be charged are more likely to pay their bills.

Medicare-focused practice network shows high promise – Forbes

Laurie Morgan — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 18:44:11 +0000

This article about ChenMed on Forbes really caught my eye, because for a while now I’ve been wondering why no one has created a practice focusing on Medicare patients. All the big attention is generated for practices quitting the program, but while Medicare’s hassles and limitations get plenty of coverage, the spotlight is rarely trained on its advantages: speedy and predictable reimbursement.

ChenMed has identified a few key success factors, including location (they started in Virginia, which they identified as an area poorly served for Medicare patients), an emphasis on preventive care, and a custom, home-grown technology system.

They’re raising capital and looking to expand into other markets. We’ll be watching.

Read the story on Forbes.

It’s easy and it makes a difference to your practice and your patients

Laurie Morgan — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:57:53 +0000

MarketingProfs has a nice summary of how important it is for any small/local business to monitor, own and, if necessary, “clean up” its listings in online directories.

For medical practices, this is doubly important, because of the increasing number of medicine-related directories and ratings sites that are pulling from licensing and other databases — databases that are often outdated. Moreover, patients often look for listings online while on-the-go — for example, using mobile phones.

Keeping tabs on this information helps insure all the places you’re listed relate to the “real” you — i.e., the real identity of your practice. It doesn’t have to be time-consuming. Work on it over a few weeks, one site at a time, until you get all your medical site listings and main yellow pages directories claimed and cleaned up. Then be sure you have Google Alerts set up so you’ll receive notices when pages are launched or updated containing your practice information — so you can fix any erroneous data. (Find Google Alerts here.)

It’s back! Suppressing online reviews – the issue that won’t go away

Laurie Morgan — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:01:37 +0000

Today’s Washington Post has a story about a lawsuit by a dentist against one of its patients. The dentist had the patient to sign a “do-not-talk” contract prior to treating the patient’s aching tooth, but the patient nonetheless posted a negative review on two sites when faced with an unexpected $4,000 bill.

Attempting to control online reviews by contracts that squelch patient speech is an approach that is bound to backfire; patients will wonder why you feel the need to restrict their honest views and what kind of negative reactions other patients have had.

Moreover, as the article pointed out:

online reviews are only one tool patients can use to choose a doctor — and only a small percentage use them
doctors have many other lines of defense when bad reviews are posted — including the courts if a review is defamatory
the vast majority of reviews are positive!

One website, RateMDs.com, has even started a “wall of shame” where patients can report doctors who attempt to prevent reviews by pre-emptive contract. Not the kind of publicity any practice wants!

Don’t let paranoia about negative reviews lead you to make this kind of mistake. Reputable physicians can use reviews to their advantage — not just through the benefit of positive reviews, but through the opportunity to learn about (and address) customer service problems in the office that may be invisible to providers.

Doing things the MBA way

Laurie Morgan — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 02:48:50 +0000

My partner Joe Capko and I just had a new article published in Practice Link, a magazine for job-hunting physicians. Our assignment was to explore the idea of a “15 minute MBA for doctors.” In other words, are there guideposts that we can draw from business school training that might help physicians know what they need to learn, and how to develop the business skills they’ll need to thrive in the future — whether they run their own practices or work for a larger system?

We’re delighted with the input we had from the physicians we interviewed — wonderful advice for newly minted doctors. We spoke with a wide range of physicians — including anesthesia, OB/GYN, pediatrics, family practice and academia — as well as a number of practice management experts to get a diversity of viewpoints.

Check it out here – we’d welcome any feedback.

Inspiration from small businesses

Laurie Morgan — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:31:58 +0000

I recently completed a series of articles for Kareo’s Getting Paid blog about how small business management issues relate to practice management. While medical practices have an important mission that reaches beyond business, they can’t achieve that mission without succeeding on business terms. And, in many fundamental ways, medical practices are not so different from other kinds of small businesses. There’s a lot to be learned from examining the success factors that apply to seemingly-unrelated businesses. Plus, it’s kind of interesting and fun to think about other businesses in the ‘real world’ and how they deal with their challenges — almost like looking at your own organization through a different lens.

If you’re interested in checking out the Small Business Lessons for Physician Practices series, here are the links:

Small Business Lessons for Practices: Human Resources

Getting Started with Marketing

Financial Basics

Operations Management for Physician Practices