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!
TRAINING

5 reasons to pay for medical office staff education

Paid continuing education is one of the most popular perks you can offer your employees. Besides making your staff happier, paid upgrading and training also benefits the practice in at least five ways. Enhancing knowledge and skills: Continuing education and staff upgrading help employees to stay current with the latest advancements and trends in the healthcare industry. It allows them to enhance their knowledge and skills, which leads to improved performance, better patient outcomes, and higher levels of job satisfaction. Meeting regulatory requirements: Many healthcare regulatory bodies require healthcare providers to have certain levels of training and education. For example, nurses may need to maintain their license by completing continuing education credits, while medical assistants may need to be certified to perform certain tasks. Improving patient outcomes: By investing in… . . . read more.

MANAGING STAFF

Partnering: Reset your relationship with your employees

By Lynne Curry You want your employees to work harder. They seem to expect a medal for what they’re already doing. You want your employees to feel happy about returning to the office. They don’t. They’d prefer to work remote. You handed out raises and expected your employees to thank you. Your employees reminded you their wages, even with the raises, haven’t kept pace with inflation. This disconnect may be so extreme that you can’t find enough employees willing to work for what you’re paying them. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, many employers have left jobs unfilled because they can’t afford to pay employees the wages employees demand. If you’re a manager or business owner struggling with the gulf between employee expectations and employer needs, here’s what… . . . read more.

MOTIVATING YOUR STAFF

Praise is nice but a year-end bonus is better

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.

HIRING & FIRING

Employees who ask to be fired: A new trend to obtain a strategic advantage

By Lynne Curry At first, you think you’re imagining things. Your employee, “Kevin,” seems to want you to fire him. It started with Kevin not showing up for two critical team meetings in a row. When you sent him a text asking, “what happened” after the first, he responded, “It wasn’t on my radar.” You sent him an individual meeting request to ask him about this, but he was a “no show.” You planned to ask him to stay after the second team meeting, but he didn’t show up. In the meantime, your hear a complaint from another staffer: “He treats me with total disrespect. Maybe it’s that I’m a woman, or Hispanic, but I don’t plan to take it anymore.” This cascade of problems tells you need to act… . . . read more.

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS

Staff continuing education: Must you or should you pay for it?

By Paul Edwards I’m looking to hire a new employee and they asked me about my policy on paying for employee CE. I normally don’t pay for employee CE but it sounds important to this potential new employee. What is the best way to handle this? Many individuals working in healthcare fields have annual continuing education (CE) requirements they need to meet in order to maintain certain licenses. Meeting that requirement is an obligation on the individual, not on the practice. Of course, you should keep track of whether your employees have a valid license and are meeting the requirements for renewing it, otherwise it does become a problem for the practice. While you may not be required to help pay for the cost of license renewals or CEs taken… . . . read more.

HUMAN RESOURCES

5 ways to help your staff cope with inflation

By Paul Edwards CEO, CEDR  Solutions Inflation is on everyone’s minds right now, and understandably so. Most Americans are aware that the purchasing power of a dollar is always decreasing to some degree, but rarely does the rise in the cost of living have such a powerful impact on our daily lives or feature so prominently in the public discourse. As you may already know, financial pressure on American consumers reached an all-time high this year. Based on The Consumer Price Index—the best-known indicator of inflation—inflation rose to 8.6 percent in the 12 months ending in May 2022, marking the most extreme spike in that figure in over 40 years. The Impact of Inflation on You and Your Team Employees are justifiably concerned by this sudden and dramatic hike in the cost… . . . read more.

RETAINING STAFF

Do you make your employees want to stay?

By Lynne Curry Your employees are leaving, because they want better opportunities. What are you giving them? If it’s not better opportunities, you’ll lose them. Here’s what you need to consider: Do you pay your employees what they’re worth? If you can’t afford competitive compensation, do you compensate by giving employees flexibility and autonomy, allowing them to feel they’re in charge of leveraging their time and productivity, and can work harder or longer one day and take a bit of a break the next day? Do you give your employees the chance to learn new things and develop professionally? Do you respect and value your employees, and do you clearly demonstrate that you value them? As a manager/supervisor, do you step to the plate? If you want the best employees,… . . . read more.

RECRUITING

How to attract employees in the post-pandemic job market

By Lynne Curry The pandemic has changed employees and what they want out of a job. It’s up to employers to recognize these new attitudes toward work and figure out how to attract good staff. See if you relate to the situation described here by a manager in another industry, and if you can use some of the advice.  Question: I always thought I was a good manager. Not anymore. I feel outgunned by what’s happened with my employees. A third of them have left for “better” jobs. The ones who’ve stayed have made it clear they expect higher wages and to work from home when they want.  The woman we hired to handle HR and accounting tells us she’s doing her best, but she hires “the best of the… . . . read more.

MANAGING THE OFFICE

4 day workweek: Is it in your future?

By Lynne Curry If you’re an employee, you’re immediately interested. If you’re an employer, you’re doubtful—yet you keep hearing about this new strategy that might make a significant difference in your company’s ability to survive and thrive. It’s the four-day workweek, though not the compressed 4/10’s workweek that oil patch and similar companies used. Employers adopting this four-day workweek ask each employee to work 8.5 hours four days a week, providing them full salaries for 34 rather than 40 hours weekly. Forty U.S. and Canadian employers are trying out this strategy in a pilot program run by 4 Day Week Global.1 Another 32 U.S. employers have adopted it.2 The concept asks employees to maintain 100% productivity for 100% of their pay while working only 80% of the time. It requires… . . . read more.

MANAGING STAFF

Dealing with the runaround when an employee stalls about coming back to work

An employee with a history of documented performance issues claimed they were in a car accident that rendered their vehicle inoperable. The employee began missing work first due to their lack of transportation, then for various medical appointments, though they refused or were unable to provide a proper doctor’s note to justify their prolonged absence. The employer was wondering how to address this issue in a way that was respectful of the severity of the situation while also protecting the practice’s interests. Part of being a great manager is understanding that life happens outside of the office and making space for the issues that come along with that, says Paul Edwards, CEO and founder of Cedr Solutions. That being said, he adds, there’s also a level of reciprocity that’s expected… . . . read more.


(-0)