Management Essentials

Building a Championship Team

By Farrell "Toby" Tyson, MD, FACS

The NCAA college football national championship is right around the corner and the two teams that will meet there did not get there by chance. It took years of recruiting, team development and instruction to get these teams playing at their peak. Developing a championship ophthalmology team takes the same investment and the rewards are just as sweet.

Trading Up

A surgeon is just like a head coach. It doesn't matter how good you are personally, if you are surrounded by mediocrity. In order to surround yourself with the best, you must take the team you are given and upgrade the talent at every opportunity.

Most practices are content with their current staffing. They know they could do better, but feel it is not worth the effort necessary to upgrade. This is a self-defeating notion. The practice must always be looking at how it can upgrade staff, whether through training or new hires. Many practices only evaluate new applicants when there is a position to be filled. A good practice should always be accepting applications and interviewing whether there is a need or not. This allows you to see what is available. In this economy, there are excellent applicants who have better credentials and are willing to work for less.

Recruiting Talent

The most successful college football coaches are the ones that are great at recruiting. In ophthalmology, we don't normally think in these terms. We tend to pick employees out of a stack of applications. Usually, the best workers are happily employed and not trolling the job market. In order to recruit the best employees, you need to build a practice that is well respected, not just from clinical acumen, but also as an exciting and fair place to work.

Flexibility is also a key factor in recruiting talented employees. Money is usually not the motivating factor for people to change employment. It may be work schedule, travel time, benefits or on-the-job challenges.

Your current staff can be great recruiters for you. If they are happily employed, they may refer well-qualified potential candidates. When we hire a referred employee, we provide a finder's fee to the referring employee. In addition, the doctor should be involved during the interview process. This personal touch can be the difference between an applicant picking you or your competition.

When trying to fill a position, most practices put an ad in the local paper. The Internet provides many online classified job sites that are less expensive and have the capability to pre-select candidates meeting certain criteria. Another avenue is to hire raw talent and provide on-the-job training. Local high school work-experience programs provide energetic and driven individuals with the enthusiasm to learn at a reasonable wage. Many of these student interns will continue employment with you after graduation and will be brought up in your practice culture.

Bad Calls

Many doctors, administrators and managers make the mistake of consistently hiring people of lesser abilities. This is believed to ensure job security. On the contrary, everyone, including the physician, should be looking to bring in individuals at least as good, if not better, than themselves. This brings increased value to the practice, which will drive practice growth.

When looking to bring in a partner, most solo-practice doctors are looking for a type-B personality associate who is not going to make waves. While this might work in the short run, the energy that initially built the practice will be diluted and may end in a practice separation. After all, more than 50% of residents entering a practice will end up leaving it. This, in effect, leads to bringing your own competition to town. It is better to bring in an associate who has the drive to succeed and will be able to generate the revenue needed to eventually buy out the practice.

Drastic Medicare cuts on the horizon and the uncertainty of medicine have made the consequences of success or failure all the more real to us. We no longer have the luxury of being happy that our practice is a "Top 25 Team." Through proper staff and doctor selection, we can put together a national championship-caliber team that can compete and win in this everchanging business of medicine. OM

Farrell C. Tyson, MD, FACS, is a refractive cataract/glaucoma eye surgeon at the Cape Coral Eye Center in Florida. He may be reached at tysonfc@hotmail.com.