For the health of your health-care business, you need to be more than ‘just’ a great physician.
Ophthalmologists are busy working hard just to deliver best-in-class care. All our efforts go toward extensive training, ongoing learning and researching new technology — all while striving to connect with patients on a personal level, to actively listen and find ways to customize explanations of specific pathology. What else could patients possibly want? After all, this is why patients come to see you, it must be what they want.
Well, yes, but maybe it is not that simple. Maybe physicians are often “asleep” to the truth about what our “product” is. Taking time to define your product will empower you to better define your practice. Redirecting efforts can lead your team to create a best-in-class practice by defocusing from just your individual role to the role of your entire practice.
WHY YOU NEED A PRODUCT
Any business needs to start by defining its product. Your practice is a business. Yes, a business; this is difficult for physicians to admit. Many hide in the exam room to avoid anything related to business for fear of appearing to be motivated by money.
However, business principles of management, operations, communication and sound financial budgets are the pillars of any successful company, including your practice. Accepting the business of medicine as a core tenet will transform each aspect of your practice. To begin, before reading further, ask yourself, what is the product your practice delivers?
DEFINE YOUR PRODUCT
Clearly the correct answer to that question is “the best care possible.” This should be the paramount component for any product definition in any health-care delivery system. However, most physicians mentally stop there; they then delegate or ignore, feeling they do not have a voice outside the exam room. In fact, I’ve seen many providers retreat to the safe haven of the exam room, close the door and hope for the best.
Admit it: How often do you just wait to put out fires and deal with patient issues only when a problem escalates, exclaiming, “They didn’t teach us about this in medical school?” But, in the end, it is your reputation that is impacted inside and outside the exam room. Accept the reality that care encompasses the total experience of the patient, from the initial phone call to schedule an appointment to the post-op phone call to the billing after the patient visit. Thus, the product in your health-care business is your patient’s total health-care experience within your practice.
NEED MORE CONVINCING?
To drive this point home, let’s look outside of medicine. Your practice is not very different from a fine-dining restaurant, where the total experience is what keeps someone coming back and referring others. Imagine that the greatest chef creates the most amazing dish in a restaurant called Perfecto. Each dish is perfect; not a detail is overlooked. To compare, it is just like you performing cataract surgery with skills in the top 1% compared to peers.
Now imagine that when you go to Perfecto for dinner you are forced to wait an hour in a crowded area, the service is slow and once the meal arrives, the side dish is no longer hot. The chef was only one part of the product. Your total experience is how you will remember the night. How excited would you be to go back to Perfecto or tell a friend?
Your practice is no different. Patient wait time, the way they are treated by staff, returned phone calls by a surgical coordinator — all impact your product, which is the patient experience.
Optimize your product
Taking ownership of your product then empowers you to allocate time and energy to optimally create this product. The first step is to engage staff as key stakeholders so they will strive to deliver the product to your patients and referral network. Your engagement will lead the way and create buy-in from staff that ultimately will transform your practice.
However, this transformation takes time; expect many meetings to improve each point within your practice. Expect, too, bumps in the road and maybe the need to hire more staff as some current employees may not be interested in adapting to this newer style of care. Create an environment that allows people to share ideas and concerns or report problems. This feedback is crucial to make the changes necessary to optimize your product.
YOUR PRODUCT THEN EVOLVES YOUR PRACTICE
I finally saw a patient who waited 90 minutes because the front desk staff overlooked his name on the sign-in sheet. Ugh! I sincerely apologized and made certain he knew that I accepted responsibility for this problem and would talk to staff to avoid it recurring in the future. And I did.
Our office meets to discuss the “ups and downs” that inevitably occur each day. There is no finger pointing and rarely any negativity or getting upset with anyone. We know our product, our goal is to deliver a great total experience for our patients, who choose to visit our practice. Thus, we meet to problem solve with the goal that the problem will not happen again.
The key is knowing that my product is patient experience, then accepting responsibility to deliver the best possible version of this and focusing my efforts beyond solely patient care. Even more importantly, my patient and my staff know I care about this facet of my practice and so become partners in the solution. Staff will feel more important when they understand their role is key.
Don’t try to do it all. Just take ownership. Seek out key decision makers in your practice and find out how you can engage them in the delivery of care. Establish and monitor key metrics such as patient wait times and patient survey results. At first, the effort is all for your patients’ benefit, but you will quickly realize it is your reputation that benefits too. OM
