Have you ever heard from a staff member, “Oh, well”?  What exactly does this mean?  It is clear that a response such as this reflects an attitude that simply says “I don’t care”.  This same lack of interest can develop over time in any relationship at home, with a friend or at work.  What has led to this feeling of complacency in that once-motivated and hard-working employee or winning relationship? 

The key to avoid hearing those painful words, “Oh, well”, is to constantly communicate. How many times have we heard that you are setting yourself up for failure if you let problems build until the situation blows up?  But yet, in the majority of practices we hear the excuse that they simply do not have time to have meetings to discuss issues on a regular basis.  This is a poor excuse, and the practices that hold regular office meetings or even a five minute pow-wow before or after seeing patients appear to have the best harmony.  It is an interesting study of human nature that even if there is not resolution of an issue presented, the employee feels significantly better to just have the opportunity to get the load off their shoulders and be heard.

Another justification we frequently hear from staff is that “the doctor never listens, so we just stopped bringing up issues and giving ideas on how to improve the practice”.  Yes, this is surely a challenge, but our best chance of effecting change is to never give up.  The doctor does listen but oftentimes needs to hear things time and time again before they wake up.  Of course, we won’t mention the doctor’s ego that sometimes trips them up and clogs their ears and blurs their vision.  The key to change things within your practice is quite simple.  Every time you present a problem or issue, give two to three suggestions on how to address it.  What frustrates doctors the most is constantly hearing about changes needed in the office without suggestions from those that control the destiny of the result in the office.  Get a stack of note cards and for each issue discussed write the two or three suggested solutions on the card and after discussing these with the doctor and staff post them in your break room or keep them in a notebook.  Write the action item to address the issue on the bottom of the note card and review them every two weeks.  Get three different colored note cards, one for front office issues, one for back office, and the other for billing.

And finally, as we learned from that practice management guru, John Guiliana, DPM, MS, the formula is quite straightforward:

   E (event) + R (response) = O (outcome)

The only variable you have control over is your response (R) to an event.  And this is how you can ultimately affect the outcome at work, home and everywhere in between!