Staff: The most important decision you’ll make!

Welcome back to the Cash Practice Solution Podcast in today’s episode. We’ll reveal the most critical decision you’ll make to build your practice.

Seems almost too simple, but it’s critical. It’s picking the right people to join your team. Okay, let’s talk about People Power. The first human contact with your practice is your office staff. Patients call and ask for an appointment. Your office staff greets people as they walk in the front door. Everything is easier to do when you have the right people in the right places.

You can’t train employees how to love people

We can train people to do almost anything in our day-to-day workflow, but it will always show up if the prospective employee doesn’t have a gift for loving people. It shows up. They get tired. They get distracted. They’re not gonna do it. A thriving cash practice demands the highest level of engagement from initiating the doctor patient relationship to achieving successful outcomes.

When every team member pours life and care into the patient. It doesn’t all hang on, you. So instead of it being all you pouring life out, you have your front office staff who’s paying attention, paying attention to the patient’s name, all their likes and dislikes, all those things. And if you have people who love people, they’re gonna do that.

Think about how the difference between your office is going be compared to an urgent care center, say, or a mega clinic where there’s seven or eight or 10 or 20 doctors who are working and a busy distracted staff, they, they don’t even know who’s coming in the door or an er even, even worse, right?

Imagine that as opposed to coming into a place where you’ve picked people who know how to engage and what that requires is that these people that you hire, they know the patient’s story.  It begins with the patient story, It reminds me of that Jerry McGuire film a million years ago when Renee Zeiger said to him, “You had me at hello.” That’s when it should happen. When the patient walks into your office or your clinic, that greeting should capture them and let them know that they’re known, that they’re welcome.

Thats it, you’re happy that they’re there through your employees. They will communicate that, and your technology should make it super easy to understand who you’re seeing, so it should demonstrate their picture, their name, the reason for the visit. Any alerts, like, you know, they don’t like chocolate or whatever is on your list, and that should all be assisted by your technology.

So it should be simple, but the loving part, that employee of yours that actually has that heart to just love people, that’s crucial. They cheerfully welcome them at the front desk. They’re upbeat. When they “room them”, it’s a prompt thing. They grab that patient, put ’em right in a room, the physician gets in right behind them and they make sure that the details and the questions and everything that’s done at checkout, is done caringly, like they care that that patient feels like they’re known and respected and all those parts are taken care of. Your team is the ultimate force multiplier in patient care. I can spend two or three minutes in a room and my nursing staff, nps, my  front desk staff can spend 10 or 20 or 15, whatever time it is, and the patient feels like they’ve had half an hour of my time. Because they’re so good at taking care of the patient. If I have to do all of that, I have a very long and very tiring day every day. But if I have the great staff that I do and I do, they get that done. .

Nuts and Bolts of Hiring

 Alright, let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of acquiring great people. Hiring requires a few simple steps no matter where you get ’em from, whether it’s word of mouth, which is our best.

That’s where we’ve gotten our best employees,  from Indeed which we’ve used. Local church connections, a job board or even friends of friends of friends, no matter where you get ’em from and no matter how exciting the candidate appears, don’t ever skip these steps. They have to have a resume. People without a resume are not interested for real one page is great. If they go to two pages, that’s okay. If it’s three pages, start to get nervous. If it’s longer. Be really nervous. They’re probably not gonna be great employees. Your current office staff, or you with the chaperone can do your first interview in just maybe 10 or 15 minutes. What you wanna do is observe how interested they are, their handshake, their greeting, their body language, eye contact.  Are they easy to talk to? Everybody’s a little nervous when they first interview, so that’s not a bad thing. But just if they’re crazy nervous, you want to be careful. And then I do a test I think it’s unique to us. It’s a one paragraph writing test and I ask them to write three or four sentences.

If they can’t capitalize the first letter in a sentence and they do some really basic goofs, they can’t spell, it becomes obvious and you really don’t wanna have people like that writing notes and doing communication from your office. And then I do the simple addition test, which is three numbers. They can be any random numbers, but just a couple digits. 21, 47 and 83 add them up if they can’t add three numbers like that you probably don’t wanna hire ’em ’cause they’re probably not bright enough to handle the day-to-day activity in a medical office. They’re just not gonna be that good. I don’t care what kind of personality testing they take or if they’re a Golden Eagle or a Beagle or a number seven. I don’t care what they are. If they can’t add, they can’t write a simple sentence, you don’t want ’em in your office. Then this is a really great question because this exposes a lot, “What’s your goal in life?” This is part of the preliminary interview. Where do you wanna be  5, 10, 20 years from now?

Where would you like to be? And if they’re somebody who’s really looking forward to retirement, probably not good. You want somebody who’s interested in growing and learning, because a great cash practice is going to demand that also, and this is probably the last and most important thing, is how do they dress?

And there’s two words, neat and clean, style’s not important, formality is not important. But if they’re neat and clean, that’s the respect that you’re looking for. That shows that they’re respectful of you and they will be  respectful of patients. So then you check the references and then you do a little more in depth interviews.

It really is easy to not check references. You make a phone call or two and you don’t get through, but you have to do it. There’s also some legalities there. If you don’t check references on each employee who you’re gonna interview, they can say it was discrimination or other things can come up that they create problems. So check references. Once in a while you’ll be surprised, you’ll get somebody who actually has had a problem and  pretty much people that we have references from have good references, but not always.  If you can record those discussions, that’s great. Our telephones auto record, so we record everything.

If you can’t record, take notes.

After you’ve done the references and you make sure that they’re squared away and everything kind of a formal part’s done, you should participate in an unstructured interview with the front office staff and the back office staff where you can just kind of sit around a table and see how that person handles that.

Prior to their half day working interview. So basically sit ’em down, have a little conversation, then spend about a half a day with them in the environment you’re gonna expect them to work, either clinical side or front office, or if they’re gonna do both. They do both. But you want them to be involved in a day-to-day activity ’cause.

In our world where we’re seeing patients and we’re making sure they’re connected with properly, that person is gonna show their ability to do that. Even in that setting, they’re gonna show their ability to move out of the way, how to engage when they’re introduced to a patient, which you always introduce them, they’ll properly introduce themselves and it’ll be good, and you’ll just feel the chemistry and you’ll know.

Making an offer and contracts

 Alright, so you’ve gone through the formalities and you’ve made sure that the interview’s good and the resume’s good, and the references are good. It’s time to make the offer, make it clear, part-time, full-time salary, hourly, whatever you do, make it really, really clear so that there’s no questions later.

The timeframe to respond should be brief. Really good people are hard to find, so you want to kind of nail ’em down. If you find somebody who’s great, move on, it don’t take a long time. So usually it takes somebody, usually a day or so to reply. Typically, they’ll reply with a phone call or email. It doesn’t need to be in person. And when they do, then say, great job. And then you make sure the expectations of this job are clear, that they have a job description that they know about.  In our office everybody knows that they have a clinical job or a front office job, but that no job in the office is outside of their scope when it comes to regular service, if the bathroom’s a mess. We clean it up. We don’t wait for the cleaning service and everybody knows that everybody chips in and participates as part of the team. They need to be clear about that. Then you have your more legal part, which I think is important just to at least mention. You have a personnel policy that you have to have and they, it should be read and signed by every employee.

You have a non-disclosure agreement so that they don’t go telling people things that they shouldn’t. HIPAA of course applies, but even your the way that you operate your practice, it should be A non-disclosure agreement should cover that. The Department of Health and Human Services requires an employee eligibility verification and the IRS wants you to have a W four withholding certificate or W nine taxpayer id, uh, done and taken care of.

So those are the legalities and no matter wha,t the thing that makes my practice great, no matter what, people love to talk to my front office staff. They think that they’re some of their very best friends, and I think they’re probably right. And the reason that is, is because they love them and care for them.

The medical care that we provide is something that we provide at a very high standard, and we charge for it. And we have a very, very good business. The love part, you don’t get paid for. At least not in cash. Yeah. But the benefit of it is just, it’s immeasurable and it happens every time.

Patients come in and say, I just love being here. And it’s not because our building’s so wonderful though. It’s nice. It’s because the people are wonderful. So thanks for tuning into the Cash Practice Solution podcast. I’m Dr. Jay. I’m here to remind you that a fulfilling cash practice is within your reach and we can help you get there.

If you start a new cash practice, we’re here. If you want to optimize your current situation, we’re here. Check out all our resources at cashpracticesolution.com. So until next time, the big three, listen to your patients, learn their stories, and love them with all your heart, and you will be unstoppable.