Management Skills Made Simple

Are your staff tired to death of spending half their days doing phone calls to remind patients or clients of their upcoming appointments? And does it seem harder and harder to make contact via phone? Would you rather have them spend that time on something more valuable … like marketing ideas to attract more new

Getting through your day as the practitioner, putting one foot in front of another, seeing each patient and doing what’s required, dealing with issues that come flying at you from staff, patients, and phone calls, going home late and having a late supper and kissing the kids goodnight … hey, this is just a normal

One of the hardest things to do sometimes is believing in yourself and keeping faith with yourself.  Sometimes you do dumb things or say things that aren’t strictly true or are out of line, and you can feel the deepest regret and for a short time feel that you are a bad person. And just

Apparently, there are people who look at life as a half empty glass and those who see it as a half full glass.  The first is the pessimist and the second is the optimist.  Research has found that those who see the half full glass are happier, healthier and wealthier. Which are you and your

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” This is an ancient Chinese Proverb and is still as true today as when it was first uttered. Interestingly enough, in your own practice you can apply this to increase efficiency

Whether you have your eyes on the next hill as your goal, or the next mountain, the stars, or beyond, the important thing is to have goals that you are working towards. Sometimes it is easy to get so wrapped up in everyday disasters, challenges and general production scurry that you forget to look UP!

Do you ever feel like you are in a pressure cooker with too much going on and that everything seems to require your (and only your) attention or help?  This may even be a combination of things at work as well as at home, adding up to one BIG headache. How do you let the

A well known business fact is that a business is either growing or it is shrinking.  Nothing stays exactly the same.  The practice is either being pro-actively created or it is coasting (i.e. nothing much being done to improve it) and therefore shrinking and getting behind. It is easy for apathy about changes to sneak

Every practice owner longs for staff who are perfectionists, even when they themselves are not.  Having staff with an eye for detail is a dream come true, given the huge quantity of pieces of information that cross their desk in a day, a week and a month. Also, the practitioners themselves often struggle with keeping

How do you know when you are “ready” to hire an associate.  This is an extremely common question these days … sometimes it’s because you are overloaded or booked out too far and losing potential new patients.  Maybe it’s a case of no life/work balance at all.  Or perhaps you are getting tired of practising

There is hardly a practitioner in Canada (or anywhere) that does not wish to increase the number of new patients into their practice.  Unfortunately, patients do pass on, move on, and so on.  Therefore there is a certain rate of attrition in any practice that necessitates having more new patients coming in than are leaving.

Sitting at the front desk of a healthcare practice can be a lot of fun in many ways.  You have your favourite patients or clients that make your day when they come in for their appointments.  Asking those patients to pay is no problem.  They’re the easy-to-deal-with ones. And then there are the problems ones