What You Really Lose When You Fail to Have Team Meetings
PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
Ray Foxworth
DC, FICC, MCS-P
Team meetings are an essential tool for running and managing my business. Early on in my practice, I did not always hold regular team meetings. This may not come as much of a surprise because many of my colleagues still don’t. It’s easy to think of team meetings as an expense. After all, you are paying your team to attend a meeting while not seeing patients, which costs you revenue. However, what you gain, in my opinion, is worth so much more.
When clinics fail to hold regular team meetings, you (doctor/owner) don’t always have a clear idea of what your team is doing. Moreover, all team members need to be kept current with what their coworkers are doing, and to prevent what you think of as “routine procedures” from falling through the cracks. Not to mention that the implementation of new products, services, and simple updates to policies and procedures need to be addressed. It seems a lot of the reservations that people have when it comes to team meetings stem from the many unproductive meetings they have attended in their lives. When your meetings lack structure, they become a waste of everyone’s time.
We follow the EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System) principles for our weekly meetings (also known as level 10 meetings). Our meetings focus on solving problems and prioritizing issues. The agenda follows a simple formula:
Check-in (5 minutes): Everyone opens the meeting with their personal and professional win of the week.
Scorecard (5 minutes): We have data that is tracked each week and reported by a member of the team. We review collections, denials, patient visits, shopper call conversions, ancillary sales, etc. It’s a pretty big list, but everyone in my office is responsible for not only reporting this information but indicating why a goal was missed or exceeded. (For example, front desk collections were down this week because the credit card terminal was down for three days.)
Patient Headlines Good and Bad (5 minutes): Share both team and patient feedback so that we can learn from one another or celebrate wins and address areas that could use improvement.
To-Do List (5 minutes): Run through a list of to-do items and check off what has been done, is in the process of being completed, or has not started. It is critical that when items are put ON the to-do list that one person “owns it.” That doesn’t mean some tasks will not take the assistance of other team members, but if it’s everybody’s job, it’s nobody’s job! We don’t discuss the details, just state where we are in the process. For example, our EHR software requires an update. Susie is responsible for this task and reports that it is in process and scheduled for Wednesday at 6:00 PM, after patient hours.
Issues List (30-45 minutes): Identify, discuss, and solve issues in the clinic. At this point in the meeting, the entire team has an opportunity to discuss/identify problems in the clinic and provide possible solutions. Once you determine a solution, a team member takes responsibility for accomplishing the task. It now becomes a to-do for next week’s meeting agenda. (For example, the internet service for the practice is unreliable. A new fiber optic internet service is available in the area. Tim will contact them to get a quote to upgrade the service in the office.)
Team Training (30 minutes):
During this time, you can review phone scripts, review policies and procedures for payment processing, and complete required HIPAA and OIG training.
Wrap up (5 minutes): Review the to-do list for next week’s meeting.
Conducting regular team meetings keeps everyone informed. It may be the only time all week that everyone on your team comes together to share information. It also gives everyone a voice to share problems or concerns. It is interesting to me how long a problem will go unreported because employees think they are the only ones with the problem when, in reality, it was affecting everyone on the team.
Practice growth can become stagnant, and as a business owner, you can become frustrated. Regular meetings with your team allow you to set goals, clarify your expectations, and know that everyone is working toward the same outcome. Our meetings have helped us to identify employees that were a wrong fit for their position. For example, I had someone at the front desk who was outstanding, our patients loved her, she was organized, and she never failed to collect payments. To reward her for her excellent job, I moved her to insurance and billing. That proved (very quickly) to be a mistake. Denials were up, collections were down, and her usually outgoing personality had reached a low I could not have imagined. Why? Because I placed her in the wrong seat. She thrived on interacting with patients and did not thrive on being nose-tonose with the insurance companies. Instead of recognizing this months later, when I most likely would have lost an outstanding employee, I was able to identify the problem in a few weeks and move her back to the front desk where she could shine.
Most important, regular team meeting give your entire team a sense of ownership. It’s not something that I would have imagined before we started meeting weekly. Each member of my team has an opportunity to identify problems, voice solutions, and many times volunteer to take on the implementation of a new service or resolve an issue at hand. I have also gotten to know each of them better. Those that I believed to be more reserved are often the ones most passionate when it comes to righting a wrong. Some of my most outgoing employees are the most strategic and mindful when it comes to solving a problem. They are all creative in their own ways, and often it is a collaboration of their ideas that becomes the solution to a problem.
I challenge you to make it a priority this year to schedule regular weekly meetings with your team. The first few may be awkward, but stick to the times allowed for each item, end on time, provide snacks, and don’t give up. Numbers don’t lie. I imagine that 90 days into weekly meetings with your team, you won’t be the only one surprised by the increased efficiency and profitability of your practice.
Dr. Ray Foxworth is a certified Medical Compliance Specialist and President of Chi roHealtHUSA. A prac ticina Chirooractor. he remains "in the trenches" facing challenges with billing, coding, documentation and compliance. He has served as president of the Mississippi Chiropractic Association, former Staff Chiropractor at the G.V. Sonny Montgomery VA Medical Center, and is a Fellow of the International College of Chiropractic. To request a free one-page financial policy, send an email to [email protected].
