Last week I explained for you the 3 biggest ways practices lose money through their daily flow and operations.
These 3 should be constant and never ending areas you seek to improve and perfect. Always focusing on these in some way, shape or form routinely will result in incredible breakthroughs that elevate your team’s level of performance.
This week I’m asking you to focus on the first one…
Repeating (and Wasting) Effort
As we discussed, this is the biggest problem that drives lack of efficiency in your team, patient flow, clinical execution and all around critical tasks within the practice.
This can be everything from…
Having multiple team members answer the same question
Having to re-do any tasks, work or treatment
Having to leave the room to get an instrument
Having rooms set up differently
Having too many hands in the ordering “cookie jar”
Not having clear protocols on insurance data gathering
Not having a precise chain of communication and point person for various decisions, whether they originate from the front or the back
Not having time scheduled properly for specific procedures
I can go on and on and on and make a very long list, but what matters is not my list – it is yours and your team’s list.
This is what champions do. They go to work on the basics. The routine, monotonous, daily details that they have to deal with patient after patient, hour after hour, day after day.
Repeating effort is waste because it destroys the flow and it diminishes key people’s time value and the real priorities that need to be addressed and attended to.
Simple question: from every single team member’s perspective, where is there repeated effort, inefficiencies, things that don’t get done or things that have to get fixed and redone in some way.
Go around the room to ask the question, make a list of the answers and then go to work on a solution. Talk through it and make sure these items are dealt with through structured systems that distributes responsibilities and are supported with whatever training is necessary.
You’ll flow through your day, have less stress and more time for patients when you aren’t repeating things and wasting effort. You’ll make more money and that means you are helping more patients get healthy.
