When the tech with the dragon tattoo just won’t do

Patients are hard to come by. Don’t let staff’s appearance and demeanor scare them away.

By Stuart Michaelson, Contributing Editor

While patients visit your practice so you can do something for their eyes, what they see and hear before they get to you may be a deal maker — or breaker — on a crucial question: Will they return?

Or as Mary Jo Krist, business administrator at Eye Consultants of Northern Virginia, says, “You don’t get a second chance to make a professional impression.” Patients leave, she says, “not over the doctor, but over the staff, and they never tell the doctor. My philosophy is to treat everyone like they would want their grandmother to be treated, or themselves to be treated, or their mother to be treated.”

Ms. Krist, who has been at the two-office, six-doctor practice in Springfield, Va., for 14 years, is among five practice administrators who share their insights about dress codes and employee policies on body piercings, hair colorings and similar appearance standards. All can figure into how a practice comes across to patients, for whom employees must mix competence with sensitivity when it comes to health questions, phone manners, complaints, appearance and, especially, seniors’ needs. Here they explain how they pull off that balancing act.

SETTING THE TONE

Embracing a ‘kinder, gentler’ approach

“For clientele among ophthalmology offices, who are often older and more traditional, you need to be kinder and gentler,” says Deborah A. Keary, vice president at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in Alexandria, Va.

Paige Hedrick, assistant administrator for the two-office, 24-employee InSight Vision Center in Fresno, Calif., agrees. “As many of our patients are elderly, we realize that communication can sometimes be difficult, and we tell our employees to be patient, and not to raise their voice too much,” she says. If patients have difficulty understanding, “we repeat the information in different words and try to help them understand,” she says. “In a worse-case scenario, if they can’t understand, we send them written correspondence.”

Shadowing as a training tool

InSight Vision Center trains new hires in presentation skills by having them shadow veteran employees. So does Florida Eye Clinic in Altamonte Springs, which employs 212, including 12 ophthalmologists and 14 optometrists in 11 locations. Customer-service workshops and scripts for answering phones underscore a commitment to service, says Sondra Hoffman, CEO/administrator at Florida Eye Clinic.

“It is important to make sure our patients understand what they are being told as it relates to the scheduling of their appointments: How long they will be here, if a family member must accompany them and what their expectations should be when they visit our office,” Ms. Hoffman says.

Even unsatisfied patients can present opportunities for the practice and staff to show their level of concern. “If you have people who are upset that they had too long a wait time, that is a great chance to demonstrate good customer service,” says Ms. Keary of SHRM. Ms. Hedrick at InSight Vision concurs: “If a patient is unhappy, he or she can speak to a supervisor, the administrator or the doctor.”

Figures 1-3: Basic black — or classic black and white — are a favorite choice to create an impression of professionalism. The technicians of InSight Vision (1); Debbie Assaly (left) and Brittney Segar (2) of Eye Consultants of Northern Virginia; and Brooklyn Edwards (3), also of Eye Consultants of Northern Virginia.
COURTESY: EYE CONSULTANTS OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA AND INSIGHT VISION

Complement to medical care

Friendliness, however, like fresh coffee and current magazines, complements prompt, competent medical care. InSight Vision employs triage staffers and uses an online portal so patients “don’t have to wait on hold,” says Ms. Hedrick. Follow-up occurs online or via phone — patient’s choice — on non-urgent questions within 24 to 48 hours.

Eye Consultants of Northern Virginia takes a similar approach. “The technical staff is trained to answer medical questions, issues with eyes and drops, and those are punted to the technical staff,” Ms. Krist says. Schedulers pass messages to technicians armed with triage sheets and flow charts.

MANAGING MILLENNIALS

Getting Gen Y on board

And while all employees must be trained to best use their skills, focus now falls on those in Generation Y, also known as Millennials, whose 72.5 million members were born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s. Millennials “are very close to their parents and bond easily with the Boomer generation,” as Bonnie Parker, office manager at Parker Cornea in Birmingham, Ala., told about 200 physicians and practice managers at a her session on managing this population group at the 2013 American Academy of Ophthalmic Executives (AAOE) meeting. “If you show that you care about them, they do want to please you,” she said.

Figure 4: Is black too gloomy for your practice? Parker Cornea opts for another dark neutral to create a professional atmosphere: dark blue.
COURTESY PARKER CORNEA

“People say they have no work ethic and are disrespectful,” Ms. Parker says in a subsequent interview. “I don’t think that is true, but they are more comfortable with older generations and are not as formal as we are with our bosses. We can’t expect them to work 15 to 20 years in the same place. They don’t live to work, they work to live.”

Millennials embrace direction

Millennials who work at the front desk and as technicians at Parker Cornea have a take on being supervised that many employers may appreciate: Bring it on!

“Gen Y want you to meet with them every other week,” Ms. Parker says. “Growing up, they always had organized activities, doing what someone tells them to do. It is important to make it clear what is expected and what is acceptable.”

As children, Millennials “had equal time on the field regardless of their skills. Winning the game was not supposed to be the focus,” Ms. Parker told her audience last year. “Everyone got a trophy for being on the team.”

DRESS CODE AND PRESENTATION

What works where you work

One aspect of teamwork and presentation is personal appearance, which means dress codes. Here, regional tastes influence what’s acceptable, Ms. Parker and Ms. Krist say.

Parker Cornea, which has one 10-employee office, mandates employees wear blue scrubs and allows sneakers (but no sandals). After four months’ probation, the practice provides a $200 annual stipend for uniforms.

“This is Birmingham, Ala., and we don’t have workers with tattoos or nose rings or blue hair,” Ms. Parker told her AAOE audience. “In our area of the country, especially with the fact that many of our patients are elderly, we have an office policy: no visible tattoos, no unnatural hair colors.”

“In northern Virginia, we are very conservative,” explains Ms. Krist, whose practice employs clerical and medical staff and one optician. “Everyone wears black on bottom and white or black on top.” Technicians wear ironed scrubs (the practice gives them two lab coats a year) in blacks and whites. Jeans are forbidden. Shoes do not have to conform to black or white, and sneakers are acceptable for technical staff. Women in dresses must also wear hosiery. “And no capris,” Ms. Krist says. “We are not here on a picnic.”

Exception to the rule

The same goes for clinical staffers, with one exception: “Except for pediatrics, as kids don’t like white coats, so we allow colors,” Ms. Krist says.

Florida Eye Clinic takes a similar approach: front-office employees wear scrubs, optical employees white lab coats or jackets with professional work attire, and clerical and clinical employees wear scrubs with black sneakers, Ms. Hoffman says. The practice also provides an annual uniform allowance. Some offices wear all one color, others alternate solid colors, some all black, others different colors daily. Employees can wear clean sneakers with white socks, but not open-toed sandals; those sent home to change aren’t paid for the time.

InSight in Fresno, Calif., similarly enforces a dress code, Ms. Hedrick says. Front- and back-office workers wear black scrubs and black shoes (the company buys uniforms) and administrative personnel, including doctors, wear business attire — but no jeans. Optical-shop staff wear black suits with white-collared shirts underneath.