The Journal of medical practice management : MPM
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A well-planned and focused daily huddle meeting with your employees can greatly impact your medical practice team's ability to work cohesively, create a seamless flow, increase efficiency, reduce stress, and provide exceptional patient care. This article explores these and other benefits of morning huddles, including how medical practice managers can use morning huddles to build and foster team morale. ⋯ It also describes nine benefits of morning huddles and four practice management goals for huddles. Finally, this article also offers eight fun ideas to keep morning huddles interesting and three strategies for getting team buy-in for morning huddles.
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Managing a lazy employee can be a huge source of frustration for a medica practice manager. It can also be baffling, especially when the manager is highly self-motivated and cannot relate to an employee's penchant for laziness. This article defines laziness and explores the most likely reasons behind an employee's lazy behavior. ⋯ It then offers practice managers 10 strategies for dealing effectively with lazy employees and 15 do's and don'ts for them to share with employees who are dealing with a lazy coworker. This article also provides five suggestions for overcoming one's own temptation to be lazy and advice for instituting a mentorship program to bring lazy employees up to speed. Finally, this article explores whether laziness is an innate characteristic or learned be- havior and suggests how managers can use this information in their approach to managing a lazy employee.
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In light of the ever-increasing cost of medical care, coupled with growing patient responsibility-and, as a result, growing bad debt-healthcare organizations are working harder than ever to reduce costs and improve collections in order to maintain a healthy revenue cycle. One major factor influencing your medical practice's success that is often overlooked is the culture of the organization and the engagement and quality of the team that upholds it. Receivables Management Partners has developed the C. ⋯ R. E. model of hiring, which can aid your practice in establishing a culture of success and hiring and maintaining an engaged and committed workforce. Engaged employees will nurture an exceptional patient experience, and can improve your bottom line.
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The Obama Administration has continued where the previous one left off in advocating the widespread adoption of electronic (digital) medical records (EMRs). But an expensive EMR system loaded with bells and whistles that you don't really need, and requiring doctors to interact with computers, can cost you in terms of patient-care time as well as money. The Big Three (which can encompass dictation/transcription), drug prescribing, and lab test ordering/results. An inexpensive "KISS" (Keep It Simple, Stupid) EMR containing these basic elements, and not requiring disruptive changes in office routines, may be all you really need.
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Although meaicai practice managers often know a lot about how to reward individual employee performance, they may not be as well versed in the best strategies for rewarding teamwork. However, the most effective employee recognition and rewards programs focus on both individual and team performance. This article describes strategies that practice managers can use to reward teamwork without lessening their employees' desire to perform well individually. ⋯ It describes three types of team rewards programs and discusses when to use continuous and intermittent rewards. This article also offers medical practice managers a reliable five-question survey to use with their employees to assess teamwork and suggests a strategy to encourage employees to recognize the teamwork they observe in one another. Finally, this article explores the importance of the medical practice manager's attitude about team recognition and rewards and suggests what to do when the manager is conflicted about the team rewards he or she must give.