You are a professional and are probably very well trained in the profession you chose. However, it is extremely rare to find a healthcare professional who is fully trained in how to be a great boss and leader, how to hire and train the ideal staff, the systems and structure that should be in place, how to run an efficient but high quality care practice, what is the best bang for your buck on marketing, and so on. Not even MBA programs teach you these specific skills.
Can a consultant help you with these things? That depends. If the consultant is simply a person who has worked in practices as a staff in the past, they can come in and train your staff on the way that they were trained (good or bad). The staff may or may not follow through with what they are taught when the consultant leaves the practice. Worst yet, there is no trained executive (you) running the place at the end of the consulting process who can continue the growth of the practice for years to come and keep systems from backsliding.
Things that a well-trained and experienced management consultant can help with:
- Advice on location and appearances and leasing and buying pros and cons.
- You probably already have the right staff (even if you think you don’t) but you may not be trained as an executive to delegate, get compliance, lead the team in a positive way, guide and correct when needed, confront issues that need to be addressed, etc.
- You need to have job descriptions, protocols, a policy manual, staff meetings that are productive, and morning huddles are great too.
- You need proper Employment Standards Act staff contracts for all staff and associates who work for you.
- Staff need to be taught how to do scheduling for ideal days for maximum efficiency as it is a necessity for ideal care to your patients. They are not born knowing the best ways to do this.
- Treatment Plan Presentation Skills are necessary so that patients or clients choose the ideal care you are presenting. This includes all your staff being trained and practiced on the handling of every kind of objection a person may present as to why they can’t accept the ideal care you are proposing. Your patients depend on you to be extremely top-notch at this.
- Fine tuning your recall/reminder system so it is fully effective and you are not failing to service your patients at the appropriate intervals required for optimum health.
- Reactivation project to recover patients or clients who have dropped off. This is not an easy thing to do as the patient or client has ceased to come for one or more reasons and it requires considerable skill to find out those issues and handle them well enough that the patient is rescheduled.
- What marketing is going to work best for your practice for the demographic area you are in and the ethnicity of the populace, the most cost effective marketing methods, how to succeed in the digital marketing arena, how much marketing SHOULD you be doing, and so on.
- Statistical management is one of the most vital tools of a good executive as you need to be able to exactly diagnose what made the stats go up for the week (so you can repeat, repeat, repeat the successful actions) or what caused them to go down (so you can cancel that unsuccessful action). This is a huge stress buster for practice owners who just want to focus on patient care, yet have a business that needs guidance.
- Pretty much any issue that has ever risen its head in your practice or your mind can be dealt with by an experienced consultant with a trail of successful practices in their wake.
- Ask for references is always a good policy when choosing a consultant.
Check out our website and meet with us if you would like a free, in-depth practice analysis to see if and how we can help you.
416-466-6217 or click here
