Start Your FREE Membership NOW
• Discover Proven Ways to Be a Better Medical Office Manager
• Get Our Daily eNewsletter, MOMAlert, and MUCH MORE
• Absolutely NO Risk or Obligation on Your Part -- It's FREE!
EMAIL ADDRESS

Upgrade to Premium Membership NOW for Just $90!
• Get 3 Months of Full Premium Membership Access
• Includes Our Monthly Newsletter, Office Toolbox, Policy Center, and Archives
• Plus, You Get FREE Webinars, and MUCH MORE!
Home » topics » Productivity
INCREASING PROFITS

Track these 5 metrics for practice profitability

January 6, 2023 by

By Mike Rigert “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … , ” wrote author Charles Dickens in his classic novel, “A Tale of Two Cities.” While it’s certainly not the worst of times for most healthcare practices (that honor likely went to 2020-2021), things could always be better, right? You’re likely still dealing with the impacts of rampant inflation and ongoing short staffing, among other things. Despite these setbacks, there’s clear opportunities to move your practice forward to improve both production and productivity to help you reach your financial goals. It all goes back to numbers—the key performance indicators (KPIs) that determine whether your practice sinks or swims. Some metrics are more important and vital to the success of your practice than others. We’ve outlined five… . . . read more.

TAGGED WITH: , , , , , ,
HIPAA

Proposed rule would standardize how to send health care attachments

December 26, 2022 by

It might get easier for your medical office to send healthcare attachments and electronic signatures. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), has issued a proposed rule, “Adoption of Standards for Health Care Attachments Transactions and Electronic Signatures, and Modification to Referral Certification and Authorization Transaction Standard (CMS-0053-P).” If finalized, the proposed rule, would adopt standards for “health care attachments” transactions, such as medical charts, x-rays, and provider notes that document physician referrals, and office or telemedicine visits. The modifications to the HIPAA transactions would support both health care claims and prior authorization transactions, standards for electronic signatures to be used in conjunction with health care attachments transactions, and a modification to the standard for the referral certification and authorization transaction. The is a part of ongoing efforts to… . . . read more.

TAGGED WITH: , , ,
MOTIVATING YOUR STAFF

Praise is nice but a year-end bonus is better

December 15, 2022 by

A year-end bonus can be a powerful tool for reminding your staff their hard work and commitment and the company’s overall growth and success are closely intertwined. And according to a survey of employers, 50% of companies plan to award year-end bonuses in 2022. While this is down from 63% last year, it’s a sign that staff retention remains top of mind for many employers, says Robert Half, the specialized talent solutions and business consulting firm which conducted the survey. Presenting employees with a financial reward—whether it’s to acknowledge individual, departmental or companywide success—can help bolster retention and even help with recruitment efforts. It can also be a motivational tool for driving team productivity and engagement in the year ahead. A year-end bonus can help employees feel like they make a… . . . read more.

TAGGED WITH: , , , ,
PRODUCTIVITY

5 ways to make standup meetings work for your medical office

November 26, 2022 by

A daily standup meeting can be a highly effective way to keep your staff motivated and moving on important tasks. This 10-minute meeting, used in a variety of workplaces, provides an opportunity for a quick check-in on the day’s priorities. As the name implies, participants stand up—a posture that discourages long discussion. Here are ways to make the meeting work for your medical office Schedule the meeting at the same time and place deal. The start of the shift, after staff arrives and gets settled for work but before the office opens to patients, is one common time to schedule the regular standup meeting. You can use the time to review ongoing projects such as processing claims. You can remind your team of unfinished job from yesterday, such as loading… . . . read more.

TAGGED WITH: , ,
REMOTE WORK

Digital presenteeism: Faking you care, faking you’re even there

November 17, 2022 by

By Lynne Curry A surprising number of employees, determined to hold on to their “work from home” status and aware that managers and others suspect remote employees of working less than their required hours, practice digital presenteeism. Digital presenteeism involves remote employees demonstrating they’re hard workers by responding to additional emails, attending additional meetings, and contributing comments in every meeting. According to a recent job trends report, the average remote employee works 67 additional minutes daily in an effort to convince managers they’re fully engaged in their jobs, https://www.flexjobs.com/remote-jobs/company/talentwise. The same report reveals that a record 85% of managers find it difficult to know for sure if their remote employees are productive. The problem—these actions erode morale and don’t equate with higher productivity. Said one mid-level manager who called me… . . . read more.

TAGGED WITH: , , , , ,
TELECOMMUTING

Flexibility is the key to remote work practices

November 8, 2022 by

“The name of the game is flexibility,” says Carl Kutsmode, Senior Vice President at Talentrise, an executive search and talent management consulting firm, talking about the nature of remote work since the coronavirus pandemic. Kutsmode discusses how the pandemic has changed the workforce, likely for good. Additionally, his perspective provides tips to help employers adapt to new business and networking practices in a post-pandemic world. Pandemic’s push for career reevaluations The confinement of the pandemic enabled people to pause, reconnect with their families, and establish a work-life balance that had not existed to such an extent before 2020. As the world slowly moves away from the pandemic’s restrictions, employees are motivated by new, different factors than they once were and, as such, have different expectations of their employer. As the… . . . read more.

TAGGED WITH: , , , , ,
REMOTE WORK

Make online team meetings work for you

November 4, 2022 by

By Lynne Curry If you dread online meetings–attending them, hosting them–and long for meetings to become more than a necessary evil, you can make it happen. Recently, I hosted a two-day, 15-hour meeting that the 17 attendees said “zoomed by,” “was fun, kept me engaged the entire time;” and “made an hour seem like five minutes.” Here’s how we did it. A “you” start We started with the “real,” with questions like “how is remote working for you this week?” Real value Before I launched into the first topic, I asked everyone what they hoped the meeting focused on and what results they wanted from it. Everyone listens to the same radio station, WIFM, “what’s in it for me”. If your meeting attendees know from the start, they’ll receive value,… . . . read more.

TAGGED WITH: , , , ,
MANAGING STAFF

Quiet firing meets quiet quitting

September 12, 2022 by

By Lynne Curry Quiet quitting, the employee behavior pattern that swept through the nation this summer after a viral TikTok video in July, has met its match—quiet firing. Employers, disgusted by employees that consider it justified to do the bare minimum at work, are blessing these employees out the door. Managers take action In September 2022, 91% of 1,000 managers surveyed reported taking action against quiet quitters or firing them (1 in 3 managers have responded to ‘quiet quitting’ with ‘quiet firing’ – ResumeBuilder.com). One in three of the surveyed managers reported firing quiet quitters; 75% of the 1000 managers described firing quiet quitters as justifiable. Managers that didn’t outright fire quiet quitters took other actions. 27% of them denied raises to quiet quitters; 23% denied promotions to quiet quitters…. . . . read more.

TAGGED WITH: , , ,
MANAGING STAFF

Quiet quitting: The new ‘just say no’ employee pushback

August 20, 2022 by

By Lynne Curry Gone are the days when employers could count on employees competing to go “above and beyond” to rise faster in their organizations. Employers now face “quiet quitting,” a trend that emerged in July 2022 from a viral TikTok video to become a phenomenon noted on Wikipedia and discussed in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. Quiet quitting is more than employees setting boundaries or intentionally putting a hard stop to their work day or work week so they can create a work/life balance. Checked-out quiet quitters simply slack their way through their workweek by doing the bare minimum needed to keep their jobs, overloading their coworkers, frustrating their supervisors, and draining productivity from their employers. According ResumeBuilder.com’s August 2022 survey of 1000 U.S. employees, 21% of surveyed… . . . read more.

TAGGED WITH: , ,
MANAGEMENT

Workplaces slow to get well from COVID-19 damage

August 20, 2022 by

By Lynne Curry You’ve heard that “long-haulers,” individuals with long COVID, suffer persistent COVID-19 symptoms that erode their quality of life. Anyone scanning the workplace soon realizes that some employers suffer from “long COVID”. A few refuse employers treatment, expecting to get well on their own. Three symptoms signal an employer suffers “long COVID”. Difficult to fill vacancies and continual turnover Job openings outnumber available workers by 5.46 million. So many potential employees have left the labor market to become self-employed, or gig and contract workers, that employers with vacancies continue to fight talent wars. Desperate to fill their positions, long hauler employers hire hastily, hoping the “best of the worst” will work out. Some new hires don’t last a day. Others leave without notice within their first four months,… . . . read more.

TAGGED WITH: , , ,

(-0)