Strategic Employee Recruitment and Training in Medical Offices

Chapter 3 Leading the Medical Office Team

Learning Outcomes • Describe how to plan for replacing an employee or adding to staff • Develop a recruitment plan to recruit and hire the best person for each job opening • Design a training plan and provide in-service training to employees

Learning Outcomes (cont.) • Evaluate strategies for retaining and motivating excellent employees • Demonstrate team building skills • Document a four-step process to handle misconduct and performance problems

Patient Loyalty • The most important guiding principle in a highly successful medical practice is to be ever mindful of building and maintaining patient loyalty to the practice. Patient satisfaction isn’t enough in today’s competitive health care delivery market.

The Game Plan • Similar to coaches recruiting players, top medical office administrators need a hiring plan whether starting a new practice from scratch or hiring a single employee. • The game plan is to take the necessary steps that result in recruiting, hiring, retaining, and motivating the best employee for each job every single time a hiring decision is made.

Tools for the Game Plan • Job analysis—includes job title, overview, qualifications, duties, interactions, and relationships (reporting structure) • Job description—contains more detail but written from the analysis template, useful in writing the advertisement as well as subsequently to ask appropriate questions in an interview, train, and evaluate performance

Tools for the Game Plan (Cont.) • Job Description:

Recruiting and Hiring • Advertisement—attractive to strong candidates without encouraging under- or overqualified candidates. Good candidates have choices so highlight your practice’s strengths including any location advantages. • Narrow applicants to five to seven for a brief telephone interview.

The Interviews • Telephone: main purpose is to determine if the candidates can communicate well over the phone and to find out a little about their soft skills such as how self-motivated they are or if they will be independent but also able to work well with the rest of the team. Narrow choices to three for physical (face-to-face) interview.

The Interviews (cont.) • Physical interview—check references/verify any required education, certifications, or licensure, etc. Determine if you are going to offer any relocation assistance. • Goal—gain a better understanding of the candidate’s technical skills and experience than is evident on the application. Also to get a good feeling for his or her work ethic and how well he or she interacts with others at all levels—from supervisors, to coworkers, to subordinates if applicable, to patients, and other customers.

Training • New employee orientation to the office and its patient-centric culture • Provide policy and procedure manual (office demographics, breaks/meals, benefits, pay schedule, dress code, job descriptions, etc.) plus safety, grievances, and HIPAA confidentiality/privacy/security of protected health information.

Job-specific training: all software, procedures for answering the phone (all employees), where offline supplies and any paper medical records are kept, faxing policies and procedures, etc. • Training should also be ongoing for existing employees for continuing education and for various changes. Training (cont.)

Training other than continuing education and new hire includes: • Change in duties due to promotion or cross-training in a lateral position • Internal/external driven change in regulations or procedures such as coding changes • New or upgraded systems • Refresher training when an employee hasn’t done a job in awhile Training (cont.)

Teams are comprised of two or more individuals working together to achieve specified outcomes or goals. • Members must communicate effectively, listen well to each other, and collaborate with the idea that each individual member can only succeed if the whole team succeeds. Teamwork

Consistent, office-wide teamwork helps achieve continuous improvement of services and functions as well as high morale and dedication to patient loyalty. • Teams perpetuate motivation to succeed because nobody wants to let a teammate down. Teamwork (cont.)

Motivating through Leadership • The office culture should be one of courtesy and respect for everyone—internally and externally. • Managers should brainstorm with employees to determine what they think might make them more satisfied or increase morale—even if job satisfaction and morale are already relatively good.

People like to be recognized by others no matter how self-motivated they are. • Employees will be happy for the others when someone achieves special recognition or when the office is recognized by the manager or physician(s) for achieving a goal that required good teamwork. Motivating through Leadership (cont.)

Good communications are very important to motivating team players. Active listening is a crucial element of communicating effectively. • Regular staff meetings, when well organized, facilitate team-wide communications in all directions—to and from physicians, the manager, and employees. Motivating through Leadership (cont.)

Other strategies include showing respect and trust for each employee. Delegating effectively (not dumping) is one way to show trust. • Good delegation gives the employee a chance to shine and gets more work done than the manager can do alone. • Delegate the appropriate amount of authority but never responsibility. Motivating through Leadership (cont.)

Coaching, Corrective Action, and Discipline • There are two types of issues that require management intervention to correct an employee issue. • (1) Problems with the performance of the employee’s job or • (2) Problems with the employee’s behavior/conduct

Problems related to job performance are often correctable through coaching and mentoring. • Behavioral actions can be extreme enough to result in immediate termination or suspension pending further investigation (e.g., violence or theft). • Other behavioral issues may be resolved using corrective action. Coaching, Corrective Action, and Discipline (cont.)

Together these steps are known as progressive disciplinary action. Progressive refers to starting with coaching then written warning, second written warning, and ultimately termination if the process is not effective. Coaching, Corrective Action, and Discipline (cont.)

Performance issues relate directly to job quality or productivity. • Behavioral issues relate to some violation of rules or policies. • Rules are statements with no room for interpretation. • Policies are guides to decision making. Coaching, Corrective Action, and Discipline (cont.)

Coaching, Corrective Action, and Discipline (cont.) • Four-step progressive disciplinary action: • Step 1: Meet with the employee privately. • Step 2: Focus on the behavior or performance issue, not the person. • Step 3: Get the employee to commit to what he or she is going to do to correct the problem. • Step 4: Make the employee feel like you are his or her advocate—you want them to succeed.

Summary • There are many steps and tools that, when designed and implemented correctly, will assist the administrator in achieving the goal of building a patient-centric, championship team. • A patient-centric team results in patient loyalty ensuring the office of continued growth by word-of-mouth.

Strategic Employee Recruitment and Training in Medical Offices