April 05, 2024
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“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.”
– Red Adair
“I recently went to a new doctor and noticed he was located in something called the professional building. I felt better right away.”
– George Carlin
What is a professional? Defined strictly, a professional is someone who pursues something for economic gain rather than just as a pastime. This is an apt description when comparing a professional boxer with an amateur boxer, but it is less applicable in the workplace.
In a medical office, every paid worker is, strictly speaking, a “professional” — whether they are a “professional doctor” or a “professional receptionist.” But not every person, and certainly not every medical practice, is equally professional. Some health care workers and some practices are at least a little unprofessional.
A truly professional worker does their job competently and efficiently. They follow through on their commitments. They follow proper guidelines. They readily admit and correct their errors.
Unprofessionalism is costly. Customer service falters, driving patients away and reducing referrals. Being unprofessional frustrates co-workers, leading to their withdrawal and expensive turnover. Professional lapses can directly harm patients or at least make their office visit less pleasant.
Why are some people more professional than others?
- Their underlying personality, making them more rule-abiding, consistent, cautious or detail-oriented.
- The circumstances of their early upbringing and parenting.
- The influence of teachers, mentors and bosses who modeled professionalism.
- And often, the sheer luck of having landed a job they enjoy and want to excel at.
Most clients tell us, in so many words, “Make us better. Make us more professional. ‘Professionalize’ us.”
So here goes. Here are 21 hallmarks of professionalism in a clinical office context. Some of these are institutional, and some are individual. Some are for company leaders, and some apply to everyone.
Getting the basics right
1. Honesty and truth-telling. The most amazing practices we visit are those that scrupulously cleave to the truth about everything, especially when mistakes are made or people are not living up to company expectations.
2. Documented policies and processes applied consistently to everyone. Even the smallest clinic is a profoundly complicated environment. Every worker needs a position description. Every department needs a protocol manual. These documents should be updated yearly and followed closely.
3. High standards for recordkeeping. This includes every part of the practice. Medical records. Billing documentation. Financial reporting. Key performance indicators and benchmarks. Personnel files. Contracts. Equipment instructions.
4. Financial resilience. It is a tough world out there, with ups and downs. Medicare can hold up claims. Doctors get sick. Office buildings flood. It is hard to be professional if you are worried about these risks. Just as every family should have at least 6 months’ worth of expenses in the bank, every practice should have ample capital reserves.
Making sure we all stay on track
5. External review and feedback. Smart, professional practices visit their peers to stay up to date on the latest medicine as well as best business practices. They orbit their attorneys and accountants and bring in visiting advisors for independent feedback on operations. On a larger scale, they convene a formal advisory board.
6. Compliance reviews. Health care is highly regulated. Running afoul of even the most trivial-sounding regulations can shut down a practice or at least lead to expensive disruption.
7. Quality assurance auditing. Patient-centric doctors tell us that clinical quality assurance is at their ethical core. And yet their practices fail to routinely monitor clinical outcomes or patient satisfaction. Even the smallest practice can benefit from a QA task force to drive better patient care — and caring.
8. Oversight and accountability. Pilots use checklists to assure their airplane is flight-worthy. Practices can use the same tools, broken down by department, to assure each week that the overall practice is “ready for takeoff.”
Fostering effective leadership
9. Professionalism at the top of the practice. Doctors can only expect professionalism from their staff if they model it personally. Leaders have to follow their own policies and be consistent. They need to follow through, be inspiring in their corrective messages and not be seen to cut corners.
10. Alignment among the leaders. If Dr. A wants to go left and Dr. B wants to go right, everyone else has to pause until the two docs can get on the same page.
11. Having a formal strategic destination. It is hard to be professional if you do not know where you are going in the future. A written business plan is the key to professional success.
12. Communication excellence. Think about the best leader you ever reported to — they might be a boss, a teacher or a parent. They were probably great to the extent that they communicated effectively and explicitly, using the proper channels for each message at the right time. They were complimentary and emphasized the positive.
13. Collaboration. Whenever a practice problem arises, let’s say excess patient waiting time, assemble everyone in the practice who touches it. Agree on the underlying facts (eg, overbooking, understaffing or an ineffective template). Collaborate on possible solutions. Nominate a leader who “owns” the problem until it gets fixed. Set a deadline.
14. Active career management and coaching. Your practice is a collection of careers. If you can make each individual’s career bloom, the practice will blossom in turn.
And last, we turn to things that each of us can do on our own to professionalize the workplace. Please forgive me if some of this comes off as a list of scouting oaths. In truth, the most fortunate mastered the following traits when we were young, but it is never too late to learn.
Individual hallmarks
15. Do not give 100%. Give 95%, leaving a 5% reserve for when the clinic wheels fall off or a colleague is out sick. Hold back a little spare capacity for slowing down and perfecting how you do every element of your job.
16. If you are a doctor or a manager, spend time in the trenches learning the inner details of the company.
17. If you aspire to become a manager, spend time learning how your company ticks and what motivates people to do their best work.
18. Thrive on the “people intensity” of health care. Counting up all the patients, co-workers and vendors you rub shoulders with each year, you have to enjoy and understand people to work in medicine. Learn how to build and maintain better relationships. Do not assume your relations are great — check in frequently. Be mindful of others and their feelings. This operates at two levels, in your one-to-one interactions with others and in group settings where you need to “read the room.” Detect conflicts early and walk them back. And the most difficult: Learn how to adapt to people who are not like you. When necessary, be a saint, composed and cool when you cannot escape difficult people.
19. Be organized and shipshape. Keep your personal corner of the practice neat. Adopt an appropriate level of formality. Be presentable and well-groomed. Be well-mannered outside of the office, in the community and on social media.
20. Speak up, make suggestions and volunteer. Express gratitude widely and whenever there is the slightest opportunity to do so.
21. Finally, take the work you do seriously. In the course of your life, you will spend about 100,000 hours working — that is 20% of your waking hours. In that time, you will interact with more people — for better or worse — than in any other segment of your life. Master your job functions. Be courteous, helpful, persuasive, responsive and polished. Use your time wisely. Be reliable and follow through on your commitments. Maintain the same high standards, even when others are not watching. Be awesome.
- For more information:
- John B. Pinto is president of J. Pinto & Associates, Inc., an ophthalmic practice management consulting firm established in 1979. He is the country’s most published author on ophthalmology management topics, including John Pinto’s Little Green Book of Ophthalmology: Strategies, Tips, and Pearls to Help You Grow and Manage a Practice of Distinction, UP: Taking Ophthalmic Administrators and Their Management Teams to the Next Level of Skill, Performance, and Career Satisfaction (with Corinne Wohl), Simple: The Inner Game of Ophthalmic Practice Success, and Ophthalmic Leadership: A Practical Guide for Physicians, Administrators, and Teams. Available now for purchase at slackbooks.com. Receive 20% off with promo code PINTO20. He can be reached at 619-223-2233; email: [email protected]; website: www.pintoinc.com.
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