A consultant surgeon sometimes does not understand how valuable his time is.
All MHM clients are incredibly busy. I’m amazed at the volume of work they get through in a single day. They are either on-call, doing a ward round or in theatre. Then they have to see their private patients. That explains why most of them call me either very early in the morning or in the evening. One prefers a Saturday morning. It doesn’t bother me. It’s my job to fit in around them and make their life easier.
Recently, however, I was asked to review the private practice of a consultant who was having serious difficulties generating any cash into his practice. And following my question to his medical secretary, it didn’t take long to establish why.
The question was: what is the biggest problem you have this week. The reply said it all:
“I never get a response to the queries or receive the information I need after I’ve asked Mr. Surgeon. He always seems too busy to deal with the things I need”
The situation was despite leaving messages on his phone or emailing him, seldom did Mr. Surgeon respond. He was too busy. Yet most of the information the med-secretary needed was fundamental to generating cash into the practice. For example, two clinic lists a week ago (result: no invoices sent out) or remittances from an insurance company (no idea who had or hadn’t paid) or the post Mr. Surgeon picked up and put in his bag one-day last week (it had cheques from patients in it)
So I sat down with Mr. Surgeon and asked him what he thought about it. His response was a classic: “I just don’t have time to deal with all that. Patients are paying to see me so they must come first”
I agree with him.
Sadly however therein lies the cause of the issue.
The reason Mr. Surgeon is having difficulty generating the cash is due to him not dealing with such issues as the missing clinic lists or not passing over remittance advices.
Mr. Surgeon needed to make very sure, the support facilities of the practice were dealt with. The word “support” suggests these things can be demoted to a “They are not that important so I’ll deal with it later” category.
Sadly they can’t.
Eventually, they catch up with you. In the case of Mr. Surgeon, they were the reason he was struggling to generate cash into his practice.
Mr. Surgeon is a very safe pair of hands and the patients love him. He’s a nice guy as well. But he needed to change ONE SINGLE THING in the way he works. He needed to put aside an hour a week to make sure he’s covered all his administration too.
So he did.
And within a month Mr. Surgeon was pleased to see not only more cash coming into his business but that he wasn’t being chased by his med-sec so often.
In case you are wondering why I don’t have such issues with MHM clients its because every single week my clients take their post or clinic lists etc scan them to me and promptly proceed to forget about them afterward.
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
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