Physicians Practice - March 2008 - (Page 29)

PATIENT RELATIONS must reﬂect that ideal throughout the entire patient experience. As the physician, you set the tone for your practice’s operations. Your staff will observe your attitude toward patient service and follow your lead. “A really strong service “Let’s assume your front-desk receptionist just has an absolutely foul attitude and, although she is very efﬁcient, she is also as mean and nasty as can be,” says Friedman. “What’s going to be the word among your patients? Well, they’re not One of the most effective ways to keep your staff happy is to give them the autonomy they need to do the jobs you hired them to do. Miller says that her 10-physician group empowers its staff to suggest policies and procedures to their supervisors. Processes are developed by the people who actually carry them out. But even then, says Miller, you have to trust your staff enough to allow them to bend the rules if necessary. “Our attitude is that we are here to take care of patients,” says Miller. “It’s a simple philosophy: Do what you need to do to make that happen. I usually tell staff that our policies and procedures are guidelines, but if they think it’s necessary to go around a rule to properly take care of a patient, then by all means they have permission to do that.” Bradford also tells her physician clients to empower their staff to solve problems as they arise in their own departments. For example, the frontdesk staffers at one pediatric practice were frustrated that harried parents often resisted, or even refused, to hand over their insurance cards at check-in (on the grounds that the request was an unnecessary nuisance). So the staff brainstormed and came up with a game. Receptionists distributed small cards to incoming “A really strong service orientation has to start with the physician.” FOLLOW THE LEADER Susan Miller, practice administrator orientation has to start with the physician,” says Susan Miller, the practice administrator for Family Practice Associates of Lexington in Kentucky. “Frankly, I don’t care how many times I tell staff to be nice to patients. If the physicians don’t embody that, if they don’t have that attitude of wanting to help patients, you’re really ﬁghting a losing battle. There needs to be a service orientation that goes all the way to the top.” And being an effective leader also means knowing when to listen to your staff. “Leadership has an important job to play, but [physicians are] not necessarily the smartest kids on the block,” says Leonard Friedman, public health professor and the coordinator of Health Management and Policy Programs at Oregon State University. “I may have an MD behind my name, but the people who know the most about scheduling are the people who are sitting behind that front desk.” You can’t achieve high patient satisfaction when your staff is unhappy. Patients can easily detect the dysfunctional atmosphere bred by a team of quarreling, dissatisﬁed employees. WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM going to be very happy when they walk in, and I suppose some of them are going to tell their friends that this particular clinic has a real problem with its staff. And there’s the potential that some patients may vote with their feet and ﬁnd another physician group in town. The actions and activities of your lowest-paid employee could have signiﬁcant ﬁnancial repercussions on the larger practice, and even on the livelihood of your physicians.” PATIENT EXPERIENCE Source: Adapted From “Redesigning the Patient Experience” at 2007 MGMA Annual Conference, presented by Stephen Malik and Susan Miller. MARCH 2008 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | 29 http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - March 2008

Physicians Practice - March 2008 Contents The Bigger Picture: Try a Little Tenderness Second Opinion Letters Physicians Practice Pearls: The Value of First Impressions Noteworthy Cover Story: Your Complete Guide to Patient Service Billings & Collections: Rules to Code By The Administrators Desk: Selecting an EMR Technology: Learn to Love Your Nerd Ask The Experts Coding The Guide The Tech Doctor: All About Blogs The Great Practice Makeover: When Bad Things Happen to Good Practices Start It Up - NEW! The Law: Audits 101 In Practice: Do As I Say... Pretty Please? Healthonomics: Handling the Changes Wrought by Medicare D Classifieds Advertiser Index

Physicians Practice - March 2008

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