Setting Goals and Focusing Your Team on Performance

Background

“Setting Goals and Focusing Your Team on Performance” was a frequent conversation topic during PracticeLight’s 24-month listening tour of specialty healthcare practices, especially among owners and managers at growth-oriented clinics.  These individuals recognized the need to professionalize their management approach by providing staff members with clearer direction and better tools to succeed.  They also saw an important role for PracticeLight in helping them set performance goals, structure incentives and measure results.  The paragraphs below contain some of the highlights from our discussions.

What Are You Doing to Make the Most of Your Investment in Staff?

Few factors contribute to (or detract from) the success of a practice as much as the people who work there.  But it’s up to the clinic’s leadership to create an environment where they can contribute at their full potential.  Without the right guidance, tools and feedback, even the most motivated, capable staff members will probably fall short.  This is why we do our best to help less experienced owners and managers understand that bringing on new team members isn’t just a commitment to higher payroll and benefits expenses.  It also requires matching investments in oversight, communication and development.  This is where PracticeLight can help.

Understanding the Challenges

For some private practice owners and managers, the temptation to simply open the clinic doors and start seeing patients without having the business fundamentals in place is overwhelming.  Sometimes it’s financial pressures that are driving the urgency, sometimes it’s just excitement or impatience.  But at some point they learn that they can’t outgrow the problems that come with neglecting basic management processes, systems and organization.  Instead, these problems just get bigger and more complicated with age.  That’s certainly the case when it comes to hiring and managing staff members.

Our early advisers were interested in finding ways beyond job descriptions and employee handbooks to communicate with staff more effectively about clinic goals and performance and to help them understand how their own work contributes to success.  The most progressive among them suggested that PracticeLight’s dashboards and scorecards could be used to improve individual performance reviews and incentive programs.

	“Communicating about expectations has always been our Achilles heel.  Part of the problem was that we never had a credible basis for setting goals in the first place.  The other part was that we weren’t consistent about measuring the results or giving feedback.  Over time we taught them we weren’t serious.”
	“Our approach has always been about checklists—things our staff needs to do each day or each week.  So we’ve encouraged a lot of individual accountability about specific tasks.  The challenge we have now is teaching them group ownership of broader results.”
	“We moved to open-book accounting two years ago to give our employees more perspective on the business side of the clinic.  What we really need now is a set of non-financial metrics and goals that connect their jobs to the results they see at the end of every month.”

Owner and Manager Priorities

Setting meaningful goals and providing regular, timely feedback is a vital part of every clinic owner and manager’s role.  Doing this in key areas of the practice where staff members’ decisions and actions have a significant influence on the outcome focuses the team’s effort and promotes a culture of performance.  PracticeLight is designed to make the performance management process easier and more valuable for all the stakeholders in your practice.

“Give us a better foundation for setting team goals.”

“Help us communicate more consistently and specifically about expectations and progress.”

“Provide a “single version of the truth” that we can use in staff reviews and incentive programs.”

“Make it easier for our staff to see areas for improvement.”

“Encourage our team to think about the big picture and how they contribute.”

How PracticeLight Can Help

PracticeLight was designed from the ground up to help you see practice performance the way you want to see it.  From the data collection process to the metrics we report and the way we display data, our approach helps Members set goals and focus their teams on performance by showing them what’s really happening inside their clinics and giving them the tools to understand it better.  And while we’re doing that, PracticeLight also helps Members develop important internal management disciplines that serve them well as their businesses grow and evolve.

Attracting and Retaining the Right Patients for Your Practice.
	Powerful Business Insights. Performance metrics, benchmarks, and analysis tools help you see your practice in a new light.
	Flexible Services. Solutions that can be tailored to your own information requirements help you get what you need the way you need it.
	Simple, Secure Process. Common sense approaches to collecting data, managing access and providing support help make it easier to do the right thing for your business.
	Affordable Pricing. Low-cost memberships with just-in-time access to expanded services help you invest in your practice’s future without affecting your cash flow.
	Easy to Get Started. Web-based services that don’t require any new technology and let you use your existing systems help you start by building on what you already have.

Check out our complete Overview and Highlights for more detailed information about PracticeLight’s performance management and benchmarking services.

Join PracticeLight Become a Member today.

Read About More Reasons Members Use PracticeLight

Achieving and Managing Growth
Attracting and Retaining the Right Patients for Your Practice
Improving Profitability
Making Fact-Based Management Decisions
Setting Goals and Focusing Your Team on Performance
Taking Better Control of Your Practice
Working Smarter Instead of Harder