Posts Tagged ‘United States’
Friday, February 1st, 2013
- English: portrait of Sir Roger Moore (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mike Murdock has a cool interesting saying, ‘Every hour of your day is an employee. Give each a specific assignment.” How well you manage yourself is a good gauge of how well you manage your employees.
Do you overschedule yourself? Do you organize your resources before you begin? Do you have a realistic amount of time for things to get things done, even if things don’t go perfectly? Is every task in your day like the final scene of a James Bond film, where you rescue the world with your combination of genius, guile and out-of-the-box thinking?
A lot of doctors have addictive personalites. Being busy and the only person who can do things correctly is a potent drug. Don’t get hooked on it.
Do you just show up and do “whatever”? Do you lack clear precise goals and plans? A good gauge of how clear your plans are is how well your support staff could explain them. Does everyone on your team know what you are going for? Could you explain your goals and plans to me complete with timelines, costs, resources needed, budget and proforma? I often ask my clients to do just this. I don’t do it to discourage their dreams, only to make sure they get either acted upon or set aside. It’s important to dream without falling into the habit of being just a “dreamer”.
David Zahaluk, MD is a revenue enhancement specialist for doctors and the author of “The Ultimate Practice Building Book.”
Tags: Chief executive officer, Employment, FAQ, Jason Rubin, Mike Murdock, THQ, United States, United States bankruptcy court
Posted in General | Comments Off
Sunday, January 27th, 2013
Abraham Lincoln (Photo credit: casually_cruel)
Growth – whether personal or business – requires peak efficency of time use, among other things. The receptionist, who improves her phone skills and turns 8 hours of inbound calls into 10 appointments per day, instead of 5 is an easy example of this. So when you think of growing your income, you have to ask the question, “what should I be doing?” Or to be more precise, “what activities do I do that contribute the most to my business?’ And by extension, “what do I do that someone else could do and it would not make a difference who does them?”
Most doctors and small business people are messed up in this area. They think about this with their emotions rather than their logic. They do what they are most trained at, what they are good at and what they like to do. This is a normal and human reaction but that does not make it the right answer. As the busienss owner you are forced to think about what brings you personal fulfillment versus what your business requires to sustain and grow.
To me, it makes no sense to go to all the trouble of owning a practice and not mastering the business part of it. Why do things wrong only to get your patients upset with you, have to let your staff go, neglect your personal life and have money problems? It’s less work in the long run to just figure out how to do things right and do that. It’s not less work to outsource the whole thing to someone else unless they have a proven, proprietary method that works.
Abraham Lincoln said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will take the first four to sharpen my axe.”
He was right.
David Zahaluk, MD is a revenue enhancement specialist for doctors and the author of “The Ultimate Practice Building Book.”
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Business, David Zahaluk, History, New York Times, Presidents, Thanksgiving, United States
Posted in General | Comments Off
Monday, October 22nd, 2012
English: Dr. Dervin working at the computer. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If you’re a provider who owns your own practice, please comment in what you’re doing to build your practice. The topic intersts me, and of course I could blather on all day about it, but I thought it might be more interesting to get a community discussion going here.
The real power of a blog is to provoke insightful discussion. I guess I love to teach so much I have turned it into my own personal teaching platform. But that is a bit boring and old school, so please share your comments, provided they are relevant to the discussion.
Tags: art, Barack Obama, Burton Barr Central Library, Christianity, Education, Facebook, Fox News Sunday, Learning, Lindsay Graham, McDonalds, ProFlowers, Religion and Spirituality, Twitter, United States, YouTube
Posted in Medical Profession | Comments Off
Saturday, July 14th, 2012
English: emotions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The skill set that makes you a remarkably good doctor makes you a bad business person. Isn’t that ironic? And the really deceptive part is your high level of book smarts aren’t helping. It’s not that you lack the IQ points but a different kind of intelligence is required to do practice building.
Most doctors, reacting to life in practice with their God-given skill set put on the brakes to practice growth all the time. Hey you’ve got sick, needy and sometimes unreasonable people around you all day long. I get it that pumping the brakes may give you the illusion that you can control the onslaught. But if AT&T ran their business the way most doctors offices run, they would soon be out of business.
The secret that few doctors embrace (but the ones who get it are rewarded with incredible abundance of time, money and self satisfaction) is to reach beyond yourself and grow through others. Or to put it more succinctly, grow others so they can grow you. But you can’t do that and be a one woman army all at the same time.
Swallow your pride and realize your most important job is to build the team strong. Nourish the high performers and whack the rest. Start with your office manager and your practice building coach.
David Zahaluk, MD is a revenue enhancement specialist for doctors and the author of “The Ultimate Practice Building Book.”
Tags: AT&T, Businessperson, Emotion, Emotional intelligence, Intelligence, Intelligence quotient, Ultimate Fighting Championship, United States
Posted in General | Comments Off
Monday, May 28th, 2012
Memorial Day Commemoration 2008 (Photo credit: davidyuweb)
Happy Memorial Day from the patriotic staff at Ultimate Practice Builder.
David Zahaluk, MD is a revenue enhancement specialist for doctors and the author of “The Ultimate Practice Building Book.”
Tags: Holidays, Holocaust, Israel, Jews, Memorial Day, Organizations, Sports, United States
Posted in General | Comments Off
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
Halibut in Macks Sport Shop, Kodiak, Alaska (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The number one reason why patients leave a practice is apathy. The provider and their staff seem cold, judgmental, slow to respond to legitimate needs, uncommitted and uncaring. It’s not just bad customer service, it’s also bad practice. You get most of your diagnostic information from history unless you are a radiologist or a pathologist. Listen better. Get more involved. It’ll make your job easier.
Make a decision right away about what you are going to do to bring your practice to a significantly higher level of engagement wiht your patients. Then decide the resources you will commit in terms of time, energy and money. It won’t be easy or even necessarily free, but it will be worth it. Send me your success stories so I can share them with the world.
David Zahaluk, MD is a revenue enhancement specialist for doctors and the author of “The Ultimate Practice Building Book.”
Tags: Alaska, Business, Customer service, David Zahaluk, George Osborne, Google, Kodiak, Kodiak Alaska, Kodiak Island, Marketing, Social media, United States, Wikipedia, YouTube
Posted in General | Comments Off
Saturday, May 5th, 2012
Cinco de Mayo 2011 (Photo credit: Obtuse Photo)
Happy Cinco de Mayo from all the gringos at Ultimate Practice Builder.
David Zahaluk, MD is a revenue enhancement specialist for doctors and the author of “The Ultimate Practice Building Book.”
Tags: Cinco de Mayo, Holidays, Mexican cuisine, Mexico, Southern California, Twitter, United States, YouTube
Posted in General | Comments Off
Thursday, April 19th, 2012
- learn (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you must have some questions about how to build your specific practice. Please send them in and I will attempt to answer them one at a time in this forum. Your question may trigger someone else to great things in their practice.
David Zahaluk, MD is a revenue enhancement specialist for doctors and the author of “The Ultimate Practice Building Book.”
Tags: Disability, Education, Educational stage, Learning, Learning disability, Student, Teacher, United States
Posted in General | Comments Off
Saturday, March 31st, 2012
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
You are in the way of your practice growth. Face it, if your practice is 3 years old or more, it’s not going to change unless someone (probably from the outside) brings in new people or new processes or both.
Try this exercise. Figure out your practice profit from 2011. Now multiply by ten. What would you have to do to acheive that? Here are a few suggestions:
- Hire more providers in your specialty
- Hire more providers in a different specialty that complements yours
- Answer your phone more effectively
- Code better
- Bill and collect better
- Acquire another practice
- Start a new location
- Bring new ancillary services into your practice
- Start a cash pay practice option with affordable monthly payments
- Reactivate inactive patients
- Get current patients to refer
- Get other doctors to refer to you
- Get current patients to follow up better
Once you choose a strategy to get your revenue up, someone has to be responsible for the implementation – it has to be their primary job, no excuses. You probably are the provider, the marketing director and the executive in charge of practice development. If you needed your heart valve replaced, would you go to see the cardiovascular surgeon who is also an ObGyn and a rheumatologist? Put the best people in the key seats in your organization.
David Zahaluk, MD is a revenue enhancement specialist for doctors and the author of “The Ultimate Practice Building Book.”
Image via Wikipedia
Tags: Aortic valve, Business, Cardiac surgery, Cardiothoracic surgery, Conditions and Diseases, Health, Health care, Health care provider, Heart valve, Medicine, Nurse practitioner, Patient, United States, Wikipedia
Posted in General | Comments Off
