- you worry about what to do about the squeak in the cabinet door in your office when you are at home
- you require every decision your staff make, even on the smallest detail, be brought to you for approval
- you personally keep close track of your supplies like how many rubber gloves are being used daily and the amount of gauze balls being consumed per week
- you time your staff’s personal calls or have considered installing a time clock for staff to punch in and out on.
All kidding aside, the tendency to micro manage comes from the fact that as a practice owner, you aren’t quite sure what the “vital signs” are that you SHOULD monitor, so resolve to “monitor everything.” This is called “sweating the small stuff.”
Instead, you should focus on the “vital signs” of your practice that you want to monitor and act on. You need to know what are the major statistics of your practice and what is the office producing. For instance, you want to know the monthly gross billings, broken down by provider, how many new patients per week. This gives you a quality control check on whether your existing clientele are happy enough to refer, and whether your marketing is effective. You also want to know your gross monthly collections and what is the monthly overhead to run this practice, excluding your salary or draw, but including everything else, such as loan payments, rent, phones, insurance, supplies, salary, leases. How does that number compare to your gross billings and collections for the month?
Now keep track of these numbers month to month, and monitor whether they are going down or up compared to the prior month. By watching what is improving and what isn’t, you can then more specifically focus on fixing or improving the areas with the declining statistics.
Try it and see if it doesn’t help make things a bit simpler for you as practice owner.
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