Be Cautious To Have All Eggs In One Basket in Your Business
A few questions before we begin our dialogue of always being "prepared" and have a "back up" plan in place for your business.
Assess your current situation :
A) Do you currently have only 1(ONE) person you trust with your livelihood to handle all of your most personal detailed information, running your finances and business daily?
B) Do you have more than one person handling your business affairs equally distributed, while they must also run your office?
C) Do you have too many people handling different aspects of your business with no designated position for them to be held accountable for?
D) Do you have a manager or administrator to assure all your affairs are being taken care of, employees are being held accountable for their task positions, and your business plan is being followed according to plan, with weekly reports to keep you up to date?
Of these questions presented above, which one do you fall under? To define more clearly your "risks" or "rewards" if you resonated well with "D" then you are on the right track!
In today's medical practice climate, physicians or providers have received their own reductions thanks to insurance, although incentives are provided with use of current EMR systems and MIPS as a bonus for physicians / providers to receive reimbursement for proper reporting methods on patient care. Most medical professionals feel they can "cut costs" with employee time or hires and use only a fragment of FTE's (1 to 2) to run their busy office. This is by far the largest mistake a provider can make if you want to have growth and success in your medical practice!
Do not put all your eggs into one Employee basket no matter how great that person is, and if you do, stay engaged and keep very good records of all your documentation, passwords, functionality and flow of office etc.; or else when that employee reaches "burn out" stage and just leaves without notice, "you're stuck in the mud!". What do you do then? Do you have a preparedness plan? Probably not. At this point you're in "panic" mode and on your own. I cannot emphasize how many times I've run into this in my consulting years. It is a sad cyclical effect that leads to constant struggle to keep a practice / business running smoothly, especially if you're held hostage to information YOU OWN!
So how do you fix this? Plan D. Assure you have practice administrator/manager in place to assist you even if it's just part time according to your budget (such as what we do here at Market Power Inc). Someone who is outside, knows all the facets of a medical/business to support you and guide you through proper regulatory measures, connect you to the best, most cost-effective options for your specificity. Accordingly, this administrator can assess and recommend based on "your specific workloads and tasks" how much time per employee is required to sufficiently meet the needs of your "clientele", (i.e. budget and job responsibilities). Your money coming in.
Assure to have a good CPA or Accounting firm handling your books, taxes etc. to assure you are up to date quarterly with no surprises end of year. Have a marketing professional assist you with your market and branding plan, to keep business rolling in the door, someone who IS a professional that can produce creative materials you need "professionally" not just something made on Microsoft publisher with clip art work etc. What you present to people before they come to you, is the example you set if they even want to even try your product or business!
Every employee in your business/medical practice is a "team member" supporting YOUR BUSINESS, without your team behind you there is no business, remember this. No offense providers, but if you think just by being an MD, NP, PA gives you the knowledge on how to run a business and market it, I suggest highly go back to college and obtain a business degree as well, unless you've already done that .... then you're well ahead of many!
It's this simple, everyone has their SEAT ON THE BUS in your business. For example- Medical Practice : you are the physician seeing patients daily, this is what you went to medical school for years to do. This is what "you" know and are credentialed to do. No one else in your office can take your place unless they are another Physician, Nurse Practitioner or Physician Assistant. So when and where did you have time to learn about running a business? Do you have time to do this efficiently so all runs smooth (20-40 hrs a week) on top of your patient visits. Your Nurse or Medical Assistants are credentialed to do what they do and learned their specific job duties, they are not necessarily business majors either. So why do I find so many physicians placing their RN's or MA's in the positions to run their offices? There are some unique individuals who can multi-task and are up to the challenge but I can assure you they will NOT do it for lowest pay scale amounts.
Keep one essential item HR item in mind: a happy employee =successful business and repeat business! If you pay your employees what they "deserve" you will reap your rewards long-term, they will be dedicated more so. Assure your employee(s) are able to handle the tasks provided to them within the time frame allocated and keep things into "realistic" perspective on what "the individual" can handle not what you can handle. No one is like you! Respect each person has their strengths and weaknesses, emphasize the strengths and apply tasks accordingly and assure team members are on board.
Allow the Administrator/Manager to be your support person to address sensitive items as well be the protector of your information in addition to acting as the HR person for employees, this will alleviate disgruntled issues that possibly an employee may not want to directly address to their "boss". It is NOT recommended to have a general employee with no HR experience to handle new/incoming hire papers etc. unless you have properly trained that individual an promoted him/her as the office manager. It is healthy to have an open door policy with your employees, yet it doesn't hurt to have someone who has your back! Your safety net.
Make sure to keep all your records straight, assure you have access to all passwords - keep a confidential privacy protected log per HIPAA regulations, so you have access to key items if/when disaster may strike, this could be due to anything. There is more information related to HIPAA every office should be apprised and prepared for.
If you have any questions, feel free to write your inquiry to us on the contact page of our website at www.marketpowerinc.com. We hope this information enlightens you in some way, and wish all success in your business.
