SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Some Points on Analyzing Your Practice or Business – Part 4, Quality Control

by Silkin Management Group on May 9, 2012

So far we have presented 3 different articles on our various Silkin Management Group blog sites, including this one, concerning investigation type questions that a practice owner can use to help analyze their practice. These are the types of questions that Silkin Management Group consultants use when doing an initial evaluation of a new client’s practice. We thought we’d pass along these tools to any practice owner, whether a Silkin Management Group client or not, to help them understand their practice better.

The three previous articles covered the following practice areas:

• Human Resources
• Marketing and Sales
• Financial Controls

You can link to previous articles not on this site at these Silkin Management Group blog sites: http://bit.ly/IJLLdm and http://bit.ly/JtMECq .

Today we’ll present some areas that one can look into regarding Quality Control. Here are some questions to ask yourself regarding this area:

• How do you maintain quality control on your product or service? Do you have ay specific methodology for this?

• How do you know if your patient/client is satisfied?

• Are you able to immediately determine if your patient/client is dissatisfied?

• What type of corrective actions do you use when finding a dissatisfied patient/client?

• What type of corrective actions do you employ for production problems or drops in production statistics?

• How do you correct employees who make mistakes or who err in handling patients/clients or in creating production?

• Do you have a regular continuing education program for yourself to consistently improve your technical abilities?

• Do you have any type of training or educational program for increasing your management skill at running the business side of your practice?

• What type of training program or programs do you have to improve the ability of your staff to produce their products or services?

Quality control includes detection and prevention systems for patient/client satisfaction, corrective programs for problems found and training to improve every employee’s competence at their job (and this includes the Doctor’s technical and management ability).

If you run through the above questions you should be able to determine what improvements you need to do in the area of quality control.

JACK HENNESSY
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For more information about this subject or practice management in general, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com or like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/silkinmanagementgroup

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Some Points on Analyzing Your Practice or Business

by Silkin Management Group on May 2, 2012

Silkin Management Group consultants have analyzed and evaluated thousands of health care practices during the 30 years we’ve been in business. We know what to look for and how to then write a specialized program or business plan to handle the issues found in the analysis.

We thought that, over the next few days on our various Silkin Management Group blog sites, we would present some basic areas that our consultants look into when evaluating a client’s practice so that anyone, whether a Silkin Management Group client or not, could start looking into these areas of their practice on their own and start determining the state that they are in. These areas are all the most fundamental functions that any business, practice or organization of any kind must have working to be successful. Look into your business and determine the state of each of these areas or functions.

Human Resource Issues:

• Who does the hiring in your company?
• How do you determine who to hire?
• Is there any kind of testing to determine who’s qualified?
• Who fires people?
• How is firing done – does it conform with the legalities of your state and federal laws?
• Do you have problems getting rid of people?
• Are there job descriptions for each position in the company?
• Are there office policies covering all basic aspects of being an employee?
• Do you have any problems with staff in areas like theft, alcohol, drug abuse, lying, cheating or unethical activities of any kind?

Office Communication:

• When mail comes in for you does it reach the individual concerned rapidly, i.e. same day?
• Do you find any slows on your internal communication lines?
• Do you find that backlogs of communication develop within your organization, either between individuals within or with others outside?
• Does your promotional material or bulk mail get out when it is supposed to?
• Do you have an efficient intra-office email system?

Office Organization/Stat Management:

• Do you have statistics for each position in the office?
• Are the key statistics of your office posted where they are easy to look at and inspect?
• If there is an area in your company with a significant boost or crash in production, do you have an effective means of investigating those areas to determine the causes so as to support the increased production or correct the failed production?
• Do you have any methods of monitoring production for each segment of your business?

We will continue this series of areas of evaluation in upcoming Silkin Management Group blogs.

ERIC KORB
Silkin Management Group Consultant

Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/silkinmanagementgroup. Visit our website at www.silkinmangementgroup.com

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: What to Watch for When Using Student Interns

April 26, 2012

I just read an article by an employment attorney that we have referred many Silkin Management Group clients to concerning the use of student interns. We’ve offered internships to local students over the years at Silkin Management Group and have found them rewarding for the student as well as the supervisory staff. This is something [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: A Checklist for Finding a Hygienist – Part 1

April 23, 2012

Silkin Management Group clients are primarily private health care practice owners in the dental, veterinary and optometric fields. Finding and hiring good staff is always something that clients new to Silkin Management Group want help with. And with our dental clients, finding and keeping a good hygienist is often high on their list of personnel [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Watching Out for Employee Theft

April 19, 2012

Silkin Management Group has written numerous articles over the years, presented on our various Silkin Management Group blog sites, covering employee fraud and theft. I recently read a very good article by Greg Jones on cnbc.com that gave a good summary of things to watch for and do to cut down on this type of [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: A Quick Accounts Receivable Analysis

April 12, 2012

Silkin Management Group clients often come to us looking for help with their accounts receivables. The first thing they wonder is whether or not their ARs are under good control or if they are bleeding money. There are a variety of ways that Silkin Management Group consultants evaluate the state of a client’s receivables. We [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Darn, I Didn’t Get My Taxes Done…What’s Next?

April 9, 2012

Unless you are living on another planet you know that the national dread-day of April 15th is rapidly approaching. Sometimes clients new to Silkin Management Group do not have proper financial systems in place to insure that their taxes are done in time. When this happens they naturally wonder what their alternatives are. Silkin Management [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Some Ideas on a Job Description for a Marketing Manager in a Specialty Health Care Practice Part 1

April 5, 2012

Silkin Management Group has many specialists as clients, such as orthodontists, oral surgeons, ophthalmologists, vet specialists, etc. These types of practices require their own unique type of marketing as they often primarily depend upon referrals from general practices. Last month, on one of our Silkin Management Group blog sites, we brought up an idea on [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Obama-Care; What’s Next?

April 2, 2012

Last week, on our various Silkin Management Group blog sites, we covered the three days of oral arguments before the Supreme Court concerning the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as “Obama-Care”. Each day of debates before the Justices covered different subjects. Day one was concerned with whether this was the correct time legally for [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Who Won Day 1 at the Supreme Court?

March 27, 2012

Silkin Management Group blogs have presented numerous articles in the last year concerning “Obama-Care” and outlined the various pieces of litigation and rulings that have been going through the Federal Court System ending up at the Supreme Court. We pointed out that the Supreme Court would hear oral arguments on this at the end of [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Some Ideas on Handling “Shoppers” – Part 3

March 22, 2012

We’ve presented two previous articles on our various Silkin Management Group blog sites about how a receptionist should handle new patients/clients who call in for prices on certain services. We call such a person a “shopper”. You can link to those articles at these Silkin Management Group sites: http://bit.ly/GC0yly and http://bit.ly/GFL28w The first article pointed [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Some Ideas on a Job Description for a Practice Owner – Part 3

March 19, 2012

Last week we began a series of articles covering some ideas for a practice owner’s job description and list of job duties. We are doing this because we have found through the years that very few, if any, clients new to Silkin Management Group have clearly written job descriptions for each position in their office [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Ideas for Letters From Specialists to New Referral Sources

March 12, 2012

Many Silkin Management Group clients are specialists in their field. In addition to general practitioners, we also consult and train specialists such as oral surgeons, ophthalmologists, orthodontists, veterinary specialists, etc. These practices are unique in terms of their marketing templates as they often primarily rely on referrals from GPs for their new patients. One key [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Taking on a Partner – Part 6

March 7, 2012

Silkin Management Group clients have interest in bringing on a partner usually for two reasons: a) to continue the expansion of the practice as they have maximized the level of production that can be done by one doctor and/or b) to bring on a future buyer of the practice for retirement purposes. This often starts [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: How Does the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Apply to Your Business?

March 2, 2012

Given that Silkin Management Group clients are all small business owners, primarily private practice owners in the health care field, it behooves them to know applicable employment laws and regulations. Since most Silkin Management Group clients never received any education in practice management, including human resources issues, our consultants are frequently educating and advising clients [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP – Taking on a Partner – Part 2

February 28, 2012

Yesterday we began a series of articles for our various Silkin Management Group blog sites that cover key points about taking on a partner. You can access Part 1 of this series here: http://bit.ly/wZgLZm We decided to present this series as many Silkin Management Group clients are beginning to look at how to plan for [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Working with a Partner

February 22, 2012

Silkin Management Group clients are primarily private health care practice owners in the dental, veterinary and optometric fields. Quite a few of our clients are partnerships, and many of them come to us because of difficulties in their partnership. They may have disagreements of one kind or another including one partner feeling that he/she does [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: A Winning Game!

February 15, 2012

One of the most successful actions that Silkin Management Group consultants advise their clients on is the implementation of a yearly game with BIG rewards for the staff. Below is an actual game instituted by a Silkin Management Group client with a reward of one week in Hawaii for eligible staff and their spouses. The [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Job Duties of a Promotional Secretary, Part 3

February 10, 2012

Over the last several days on this Silkin Management Group blog site we have gone over the importance of having someone in the office responsible for accomplishing the promotional duties needed in a health care office. This job title is known as the Promotional Secretary. Unless the office is very large, this job is usually [...]

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SILKIN MANAGEMENT GROUP: Job Duties of a Promotional Secretary, Part 2

February 8, 2012

Clients new to Silkin Management Group almost always want more new patients. This is usually fairly easy to accomplish by implementing the successful marketing and promotion techniques and activities that we have developed in our 30 years of delivering practice management to thousands of clients. But, in order to accomplish this it requires someone in [...]

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