SVMIC Practice Management Advisor February 28, 2005
Welcome to the SVMIC
Practice Management Advisor, a new email newsletter brought to you
twice a month by State Volunteer Mutual Insurance Company. The SVMIC Practice Management Advisor will
bring you timely, informative and practical practice management advice in a
succinct format. Practice management
expert Elizabeth Woodcock, MBA, FACMPE, CPC, is the author and writer of the
newsletter. Best of all, it’s totally
free!
Feel free to tell
your friends about it, or sign up all of your staff members. Email elvad@svmic.com with the names and email addresses. We’ll sign you up right away!
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The SVMIC
Practice Management Advisor
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Volume 1, Issue 2
February 28, 2005
By Elizabeth W.
Woodcock, MBA, FACMPE, CPC
First
impressions count: Low cost ways to
improve your office’s reception area
It’s been said that
we form lasting impressions of people within the first seconds after we first
meet them. To some extent, the same goes for a physician’s office.
Is the floor or
carpet stained? Are plants wilted or, if plastic, are they dusty? Are the
pictures of your practice’s physicians more than 10 years old? Are magazines
tattered and outdated? If so, replace these items.
I have been to
literally hundreds of medical practices over the past few years, and I
guarantee that first impressions do make a difference. You may be overlooking
what your practice’s waiting room says about you because you see it every day,
or maybe you enter by a side door and hardly see it at all. For a little bit of
time and not much money, you can show patients that you care about them and
that your practice is capable of paying attention to details, both large and
small.
Sprucing up your
reception area doesn’t have to cost a fortune. You can even do it on a tight
budget by following some of these suggestions:
- Contact a local artist. Many artists
would leap at an offer to display their art in a well-traveled public place,
especially with cards that contain their contact information. You get new
artwork; the artist gets exposure.
- “Hire” a volunteer. Call a local senior
citizen’s center and ask if they know someone who wants to volunteer as a
greeter in your reception area. Hospitals have done this for years, and
rely heavily on volunteers. The volunteer could serve coffee, read to
children, hold the door for the mother shepherding small children, or
fetch a pen for someone filling out a form.
- Get help from children. If your
practice treats children, ask them to participate in an interior
decoration project. They can bring in drawings or you can give them
drawing supplies to use while they wait. I worked with a pediatric
practice that used children’s art to dress up temporary walls during a
renovation project. If you don’t have pediatric patients, the children or
grandchildren of your staff and physicians could help. Since most
school-aged kids bring home at least one or two art “projects” a week, you
should have an ample supply. Find inexpensive picture frames at a thrift
store to add a little extra “class” to the art before hanging it in the
reception area.
- Hang pictures of providers and staff
throughout the practice. These days you’d be wise to ask patients for permission
to display their photos (although this certainly shouldn’t stop you from
asking!), but you don’t have to ask yourself. Have a fun hobby? A photo in
the reception area of you on your motorcycle, or playing bagpipes, or
whatever your hobby is will certainly delight patients. Baby pictures are
sure-fire attention getters. Ask your staff to bring in their baby photos,
too. It’s a guaranteed way to generate chuckles from patients and form a
bond with them in the process.
- Stage a contest. Hold an art contest
among the staff. If you have a small practice, extend the contest to
include patients. You’ll be delighted to see your staff’s talents, which
may include photography, quilting, drawing, embroidery, or other arts.
Establish a first prize such as a gift certificate at the local mall or a
lunch out with you, and you’ll have entries pouring in.
- Get historical. Scan yard sales and
antique shops for interesting medical-related items. You might find old
medical equipment, tools, documents, photographs, or other items. You may
find some non-medical items of interest to your patients. One practice
located in a recently built-up area hung photographs of the area from the
19th Century when it was still rural.
- Set up an announcement board. You can
provide important community resources to patients, which is particularly
relevant if you serve patients who suffer from chronic problems. An
endocrinology practice should have information from the American Diabetes
Association and local diabetes support groups; a pulmonology practice,
information from the American Lung Association and so on. Ask a local
patient support group to contribute to the resource board (which also
could be posted on your practice’s web site). Volunteers will leap at an
opportunity to reach dozens of patients each day.
- Take a critical look at your signage. I
was recently at a practice where I counted 30 pieces of paper hung
everywhere through the reception area. There were announcements of
everything from charging for late payments to the appointment cancellation
policy. Besides being a visual overload, these signs are often
unprofessional – containing spelling mistakes, smudges, and sometimes,
they are unintelligible. Take a few minutes after hours to sit in your
reception area and look around. What do you see? Is it “we don’t do this,”
“we won’t do that” and “we’ll charge you extra for such and such?” Discard
this negative messaging. Put those signs into a Practice Policy Brochure
or integrate the messages into your registration forms. (In the next
issue, I’ll cover what to put in your Practice Policy Brochure.) Give
those policies to patients in writing and post them on your website, not
your walls.
Use these tips to
get started on the low-cost improvements that can make your waiting room seem
less cluttered, less dingy, and much more welcoming to patients.
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Ask Elizabeth
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QUESTION: Who
is allowed to call in prescription refills and renewals? Does a
nurse have to make the call?
ANSWER: There
is no requirement for training, skill level, or a specific
credential. A staff member who is not a nurse may call prescription
refills and renewals into the pharmacy. However, it is of note that the
physician is liable for the actions of this staff member(s). Thus, for
your (and your patients') sake, it's important that the staff member
assigned this duty have the appropriate training, skill level and knowledge
base, as well as guidance from the physician for whom he or she is
working.
Have a practice
management question that you’d like to see answered? E-mail Elizabeth
at ewwoodcock@mindspring.com . We’ll publish one of
your questions -- and the answer -- in every issue of the SVMIC Practice
Management Advisor!
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Upcoming
SVMIC Practice Management Programs
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PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
FOR PHYSICIANS
TOP
10 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
Owning and working
in a medical practice requires knowledge and skills that many physicians are
unprepared for. The physician is faced
with a multitude of financial, organizational, regulatory, and operational
issues for their practice. This program
will cover ten areas that every physician needs to monitor within their
practice to insure that it is compliant, efficient, safe and harmonious. Attendees should leave the program with
information on specific areas in which they focus.
This program is
designed for physicians. The two-hour
workshop will focus on specific activities a physician should insure are being
done in their practice.
For cities, dates,
and registration, see www.svmic.com/mps
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Elizabeth
Woodcock, MBA, FACMPE, CPC,
is a national practice management speaker and author. The material for The SVMIC Practice Management Advisor comes from
her frequent visits to medical practices, as well as her nearly 15 years of
practice management experience. She was
educated at Duke
University and The
Wharton School of Business.
This material is
brought to you by the Medical Practice Services Department of State
Volunteer Mutual Insurance Company.
Copyright 2005 by SVMIC and Elizabeth Woodcock. All rights reserved. For
reprint requests, please contact Elizabeth
Woodcock at ewwoodcock@mindspring.com or Elva Denney at elvad@svmic.com.
The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of SVMIC.
To be removed from
this email, please email elvad@svmic.com with "REMOVE ADVISOR" as the
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