One of the core challenges for a growing private practice is the difficulty in expanding your practitioner team.
It's typical to think that if you just had a few more practitioners, your practice would run so much smoother! You would be able to manage more clients!
Few practices anticipate the complexity of hiring new people. It's more than just your time recruiting; it's having the systems and tools in place for them to succeed. It's the challenge of sharing knowledge across the practice and onboarding and training new team members. It's creating a team culture where people value each other's contributions.
A team of 3 people has 9 communication points (each person communicates with each other person). In this case, it's somewhat easy to be on the same page, sharing consistent values and ways of working.
However, once that team doubles to 6 people, you suddenly have 36 communication points. That's a type of growth, but not the one you would have hoped.
How can you maintain asynchronous communication across your private practice team as it grows from 3 to 6 to 18 practitioners?
These are our top 3 tips to help grow your private practice like a pro.
Our Top Tips for Managing a Growing Practitioner Team
Hire slow, fire fast
Firing people sucks!
However, suppose your practice has even one practitioner doing the wrong thing. It can be a disaster for your reputation and business.
This doesn't mean firing someone for making a simple mistake or looking at you the wrong way. It means thinking deeply about what standards you set and ensuring everyone in your team meets them.
The best way to remove this risk is only to hire the best people.
Take your time finding excellent practitioners.
They are probably not out there applying for a job advert! Ask your community who they admire the most, understand who else your clients love. Once you triangulate this input, you will probably have a clear shortlist of people to go after. Send them a note, buy them a coffee. Get to know them before you are ready to hire.
Hire first for shared values, then second for potential. You can teach practitioners the right skills, but it's hard to teach them to conduct themselves professionally.
Harvard Business Review has a great guide on selecting the right people.
Start this process before you need to hire, then you'll have a handful of people already vetted.
Productive weekly team meetings
Ah yes, the cornerstone of success.
Team meetings are possibly the most overlooked aspects of practice management by leaders, and their results cannot be understated.
When onboarding new hires, team meetings provide a unique opportunity to establish standards across the team. It enables senior team members to provide guidance and support to new hires.
By getting new practitioners up-to-speed on your practice's clients and workflow as early as possible, you're getting the right tone, accelerating the rate at which new hires can contribute.
It's the little things that often feel impenetrable to new hires, like who to go to for help, how many clients they should be seeing, and how to solve complex clinical problems.
Make it easy for them to know what they need to do and exactly how it should be done. This could include activities with the team to break the ice and help people get to know each other.
With that said, you must remember weekly meetings are not just for new team members. It's for the whole practice to come together!
Social activities with your team are also essential, even if it's just a team breakfast, shared lunch, or even a couple of drinks after work once a month. New practitioners will especially appreciate the extra attention to pave the way to success.
Face-to-face team meetings are great, but in these times, they are not always possible. Don't be afraid to host these via video.
Use the best Practice Management system – Religiously
Ensure each person can collaborate as a team within one practice management app.
Without a single core platform approach, you cannot achieve consistency for your clients.
Carepatron is the world-leading practice management solution.
It will help you to manage your practice and all its work in one place, whether it's appointments, tasks, or reminders. You can monitor and track them all in one place.
Assigning clients to you, a new staff member, was historically tricky. You had to collate their health records, notes, reports, and communication. Then physically handing it across. With Carepatron, you can do this in 3 secs, with one click. Give it a try. It feels so good.
Automate electronic patient records, client billing, and payments. These tasks usually take time to train and teach new people. Carepatron will take care of these for you.
Practitioner view gives each user a focused way to concentrate on what needs to get done without cluttering their workspace, making it easy to stay on track.
Establish a practice toolkit
Modern practices typically utilize various core tools, software, systems, and frameworks to get their work done.
Think carefully about what are your practices 4 or 5 core systems. Don't endlessly add to this toolkit. If a new tool needs to be adopted, think about which tool you can take away.
Having a basic set of resources will help you onboard and upskill your new practitioners. Teaching someone how to use 4 or 5 core tools only takes a few days.
Also, it sets the person up for success. They feel more confident in themselves and proficient in their role quicker.
Keep changing
Remember, you're bringing on a new clinician to help your business do better. These new employees will probably bring new ideas, different clinical skills, and ways of doing things practices. Don't try to hold on to the past. Let your new hires bring their own magic to your business.
Remember, you're not making clones. Part of the reason you're growing the team is to bring new clinical skills and capacity to your practice. Don't diminish its potential! Be open to new approaches or perspectives.
As a practice leader, your goal should always be to move forward.
Get started today
If your practice is multiplying, you're probably pretty happy.
You will be trying to develop your senior practitioners, establishing the foundation for a successful healthcare practice.
Investing time in growing your team with the right people and helping them to be successful is probably one of the best investments you can ever make.
Failing to prepare for the expected growing pains will undoubtedly impact your growth rate and team culture.
Get started with Carepatron today.
Take your time. Get growth right!
