Our Last blog covered tips on how to start a practice management accountability program and focused on the accountability of your practice manager and yourself. Your accountability program should include setting the right goals; tracking KPIs; reviewing key KPIs daily, weekly, and monthly; holding monthly meetings with your manager; and evaluating both yourself and your office manager. Our poll asked “Do You Currently Have an Accountability Program in Place?” The results were split equally between “Yes” and “No”. It is important to have a practice management accountability program in place, otherwise certain tasks will seem unimportant and will not get done, leaving your practice vulnerable.
This article will cover how to start an employee accountability program. Even if you hired an employee that is detail-oriented, works well as part of a team, is motivated to do their job and has great work ethic, it is still important for accountability to be more than just an idea or concept. It is important to have physical representation of important tasks being completed.
Below are the steps to take to implement an employee accountability program in your practice:
Develop Job Standards
- Each position should have clear written objectives. They should cover the main ideas but not every little detail of the process and they should be limited to one page. They must also be maintained for important updates and learning.
- This will set your employees up for success since they will know exactly what outcome you are expecting. Each job description should detail expectations of that position and desired outcomes.
- Start with your top 5 to 6 job functions and then expand as necessary.
Set Individual and Team Goals
- Offer training and advice for new hires and have in-depth conversations on how goals and standards will be met. The more this can be documented on paper and preferably video the better.
- For individual goals, these should be part of their performance review and limited to the top 2 or 3 things to work on until next time. If more than 3, then you are not doing a good job of managing the employee. Asking for everything results in nothing.
- Downtime should be utilized to help other areas of the office that may be lacking. If a patient cancels, a clinician can work on a reactivation project up front. Similarly, if the front office is slow, yet exam rooms are not being used because they need cleaned, consider having the patient coordinator help catch up the back office. Downtime is also the perfect time to update documentation.
- Marketing must be done consistently to keep the office alive. Obtaining new patients will no doubt help the practice meet production goals.
- Every clinician should be offering extra services at every appointment that may benefit the patient. This will help them meet their daily production goals.
Track Employee Progress
- Hold bi-annual or annual employee reviews to let them know how they are measuring up to the standards they have been given. These reviews need to be simple and we will provide a template in the future. In our template, it will be so simple that you might not appreciate it, because their is a tendency to ask for everything versus laser focus.
- Use Doctors CFO Salary and Raise Planner to help make decisions based on these reviews to reward your best employees.
- Track the important attributes of success that impact the job as required and do this by exception only. Exception only means, it is assumed that is was correct, unless you mark it otherwise. If tardiness affects the job, then it should be tracked. If behavior affects the job, it should also be tracked.
Hold Employee Reviews
- Lead monthly meetings where feedback can be given and received.
- Set an example by being accountable to your employees. This will also help form a trusting relationship between you and your staff.
- Goals, standards, and planning can be adjusted if necessary based on conversations had at these meetings.
Follow Through on Disciplinary Action
- This is easier if consequences are made clear in the beginning.
- Investigate and question employee to make sure you have all the facts.
- Listen to feedback from employee to ensure changes do not need to be made on your part.
By making your employees accountable, there is a much better chance that important tasks will get done. It will also set your employees up for success by creating an objective setting in which they can be rated on their performance. To keep your best employees motivated to stay with you, Doctors CFO offers a Salary and Raise Planner. It will calculate bonuses, raises, and starting salaries that work into your individualized budget and financial plans.
To participate in our poll this week, please subscribe to our mailing list and follow us on Instagram. “When Doing Employee Raises, Do You Use a Strategic Approach or Wing it?”
The reason we are publishing these articles is so that your office can increase its success. We appreciate your feedback on how we can help you more and love it when you pass these articles along to other practice owners and office managers.
Developing a management report is not easy and Doctors CFO currently has a robust model for most practice types that is customized for our monthly and bi-monthly clients. If you have questions on how this model applies to your practice or you are interested in applying the Doctors CFO model in your practice, via one of our annual, bi-monthly or monthly assessments, please contact us.
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