Investing in Your Practice’s most important asset

I came across an article that I wrote several years ago when one of my employees shared a Facebook post. She said, “I am praying to find a good job, a place where I can be happy and have a long career.” This year, she will be celebrating nine years with us. She was our 4th full-time employee, and, over the years, we have undergone so many changes within the company. The one thing that has remained the same was the decision to invest in my team through internal and external training. We have annual team training, but, depending on their positions in the company and their interests, we have sought out individualized training. That same employee just became a Certified Professional Biller. Another is a Certified Professional Coder. And, we have a Certified Professional Compliance Officer. We also have employees getting certified in software and marketing training through Salesforce.

Training is becoming a forgotten priority in the business world. We live in a world where we are so busy being busy that we throw new employees, and even our existing ones, into the eye of the storm with little to no instruction on how to do their jobs, much less how to do them well. In today’s complex and compliance-mandated healthcare environment, we must take the time to cultivate and develop talent in our offices. Training is not an expense but an investment in our business. To quote my friend Dr. Nathan Unruh, “training isn’t something you did, it’s something you do.” With each new training course and certification that my team completes, we see improvements in productivity, customer service, and company morale.

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Start by picking an area for improvement at each team meeting. Discuss billing, coding, your financial policy, and patient communication. Explore out-of-office training on leadership and communication. Take your team to conventions and seminars, once we can attend in person. Before the pandemic, I found myself not looking forward to attending my annual convention for the mandatory CE needed each year. Now, I long to see old friends, meet new ones, and truthfully, attending in-person rejuvenates my spirit and love for this amazing profession. Encouraging your team to experience these events with you is a great way to ignite their passion for chiropractic, too.

Employees want to do their jobs well. A lack of training in your practice can create unhappiness and lack of motivation and ultimately leads to higher turnover. Employees want to know what is expected of them and would welcome the tools to perform well. Investing in your team builds a more compliant, efficient, and profitable practice. When employees are happy to be in the office, they spread that happiness to your patients. I’ve told almost everyone I’ve ever hired that MY job is to make their job the best one they have ever had. When I focus on this one thing, I am rewarded with hard-working, dedicated, and loyal employees like you wouldn’t believe. It almost eliminates turn-over and creates stability in any organization.