Perhaps you have experienced having a fantastic production month in January and you think, “Yes! Off to a great new year!” And then in February, the practice dives into a huge slump. And you don’t know why. Bonuses vanish and everyone gets bummed. March is looking about as bad but you have a feeling that if you just KNEW what could have prevented February’s dive, everything would be wonderful again. You worry, you stress, you introvert. You still don’t come up with an answer.
What are you missing?
Here’s the first clue to the mystery: You went to your professional college for about 4 years to learn the tools of your profession. You were trained, you were put through clinical trials, you gained experienced with applying the new tools that you had learned. You understood what you were doing and why and then you applied that knowledge. You became a trained professional.
Then you bought or started a practice which is a whole new profession called “Practice Owner” or “CEO of a Healthcare Practice,” or “Executive.” And you did this without any training. So you go to the School of Hard Knocks and you learn some things through trial and error, like “I’m never doing THAT again” or “well, THAT didn’t go very well, did it?” And you feel stressed, you worry and you introvert. You may start wondering, “What is wrong with me?” At times, some of you may think you need to fire all your staff and start again, and others may think they need to fire themselves. Some of you will give up and go back to being an associate or change businesses altogether.
The Truth About Stress
The actual, factual, truthful and real reason for stress is that you don’t have the tools to make the right decisions to BE IN CONTROL. If you were as trained in management as you are in your healthcare profession, you would have very little stress. You would have the systems and structure to run a smooth operation and you would KNOW what were the correct decisions and you would feel IN CONTROL.
What is the Solution
These days, every top athlete in the world does intense training and has one or more coaches guiding them to apply all the best techniques. But the bottom line is that the coach can’t run the race or jump the hurdles or do the dive for you. They can only give you the tools to do it for yourself.
Similarly with practices. You can out-source marketing if you want to, you can out-source Human Resources if you want to, you can even out-source some of the production by hiring associates. You can bring in consultants who train your staff at great expense. But you can’t out-source the top management of YOUR practice and still feel in control of it. Yes, you can download or delegate actions to an Office Manager (who is also not a trained exec), but the bottom line is that you will be as unstressed as YOU ARE IN CONTROL OF YOUR OWN PRACTICE … not a consultant, not an Office Manager … BUT YOU! If you want to delegate the Owner’s Hat, become an associate.
Reach your Full Potential
Did you know that there is a published statistic that 50% of businesses fail due to lack of administrative know-how? But since failure is not an option, the answer therefore to reaching your full potential and being successful is to gain administrative know-how. When you are trained in management tools to be able to make the right decisions and CREATE the practice of your dreams, you will be a happier camper.
You need to know such things as how to set goals, how to give orders and get compliance, how to manage by statistics for objective and accurate decision making, how to improve the service levels of your practice, how to organize for better efficiency, how to train staff to reach their full potential, how to be a good leader. And so on.
Where to Get Help
There are consulting companies that “fix” your staff for you (a temporary solution at best and often quite expensive), and there are consultants that coach you into some better paths in a cookie cutter fashion, but at the end of the day, you are still an untrained executive trying to run the show.
AMI has taken a different approach that makes us unique. We put YOU in control of your practice by training you as an executive and then we hold your hand to get the systems and structure all in place and running smoothly. This is the obvious best long-term solution and the least expensive.
We are all about YOU! Let us help you TAKE CONTROL!
