By: Reed Tinsley
Tel: (281) 379-5988
Email Mr. Tinsley
Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch gained many fans among the voting public when news cameras caught him shaking New Yorkers' hands and greeting them with, "I'm Ed Koch. How am I doin'?" That warm gesture and short phrase characterized him as a public servant who felt accountable to ordinary citizens - in spite of his powerful position.
As a physician, you can garner similar goodwill by recognizing your individual accountability to your group and your partners by submitting to an annual performance evaluation. Even better, following a carefully designed performance-review plan provides you with plenty of feedback to help you grow and improve both personally and professionally.
Medical practices find implementing a physician-review system is well worth the significant effort required to design and manage it. First, identify and find the best ways to conduct performance reviews for you and your colleagues. This will be different for each practice but you should identify those issues, both clinical and non-clinical, that you want evaluated. The result should be an evaluation form that is accepted by yourself if you are a solo practice or your colleagues if you are a group practice. If a group practice, develop physician buy-in throughout the practice.
Intelligent physicians respond best to concrete information, so focus on identifying objective performance measures as well as objective feedback from co-workers. To be thorough and fair, the annual review could rely on information from many sources, such as the following:
- physicians evaluate their department chairpersons
- non-physician staffers evaluate physicians within their departments
- appointment availability (days' wait for new and follow-up visits)
- gross production (charges, compared to in-house colleagues' and peer group (ex. Using MGMA data))
- patient visits (total, compared to in-house colleagues' and per group)
I think patient satisfaction is a vital component of any evaluation. Your patient questionnaire should ask about waiting times, convenience, courtesy, thoroughness, telephone experiences and impressions of the physician's technical and communication skills. The evaluation report shows how the individual physician's score in each area compares to those of other physicians within the clinic - both of the same specialty and overall.
For physicians with little or no patient contact (radiologists and pathologists), you can develop your own "physician satisfaction survey" by asking clinic doctors about their interactions with the individual specialist.
Everyone's opinion in a medical practice should count. Besides each physician, even support staffers should fill out an evaluation questionnaire. I suggest each form consists of no more than 7-8 questions with numbers to circle indicating ratings from poor to above average.
Remember brevity encourages participation - make sure it doesn't take long to fill out any questionnaire. All questions should clearly demonstrate what your medical practice sees as the top priority for its physicians' professional conduct. Many questions should emphasize:
Compiling, analyzing and reporting on this much data for large medical requires a lot of work. But for any size medical practice, the effort is worth it. Just improving patient satisfaction scores as a result of this process can really enhance the quality and perception of any practice. Satisfying patients should become a fundamental objective, and accountability should become a way of life. As a result of the ongoing evaluation process, physicians will understand practice expectations better than ever, and each member starts every year with clearly stated goals to work on.
Reed Tinsley, CPA, is a Houston-based CPA, Certified Valuation Analyst, and healthcare consultant. He works closely with physicians, medical groups, and other healthcare entities with managed care contracting issues, operational and financial management, strategic planning, and growth strategies. His entire practice is concentrated in the health care industry.
©Copyright - All Rights Reserved
DO NOT REPRODUCE WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION BY AUTHOR.
2/6/2013· Medical Practice Management
Be Certain Staff Knows Your Revenue Cycle Management Processes
By: Reed Tinsley
Does your staff really knows what "revenue cycle management" means or is? I am constantly advocating the importance of training your entire staff to understand how their job functions affect cash flow. There are many points of entry into the revenue cycle at your practice. Be sure your staff knows all of the following:
9/6/2013· Medical Practice Management
Employee Theft In a Medical Practice: If You're Going to Make It, Make Sure You Keep It
By: Reed Tinsley
As a CPA and healthcare consultant, one of the things that continues to concerns me is employee theft within a medical practice (or any other healthcare entity for that matter). You trust your staff, right? You know them to be loyal and dedicated individuals who would never steal from the practice, right? Unfortunately physician practices are no less at risk of employee theft than any other business.
10/22/2011· Medical Practice Management
Medical Practice: Regulary Evaluate Your New Doctor Associate
By: Reed Tinsley
Any expectations you have for a new Associate only works if you follow through with frequent evaluations. However, I am often struck by how little attention senior doctors give to basic personnel management of newly employed physicians.
