Things are going well with my new employee Ben, but I’ve been feeling a lot of regret lately. Don’t worry, the regret has nothing to do with the choice I made in hiring Ben. He is freaking awesome! My regret has do with the one thing I didn’t do over the 6 years before I hired him: documenting procedures. Let me explain…
Documenting procedures along the way
After the first couple years in practice I really didn’t have to put any additional time or effort into marketing in order to keep my schedule full. So the time I wasn’t treating patients was focused on my online businesses, writing books, and making sure I produced regular podcasts and blog posts for my audience.
What I’m now regretting is that I didn’t also take the time to document all the “systems” and procedure lists that run my business. Not just how I want treatment provided, but every little detail of everything I do as the primary PT and administrator and marketer of the practice.
Now that I have a new PT and I’m looking for a full-time office administrator, I’m completely buried by the amount of work I need to do in order to document all these procedures and systems, and train my staff to implement them.
As I grow this business, an additional focus of mine is how to automate as many procedures and systems as possible.
If I (or anyone) want to scale up a business without just adding more and more work to my plate, this is an absolute must!
Learning how to document everything
A friend recommended a book that really got me thinking about “systems” and the importance of documenting them in order to efficiently scale a business and keep profits strong long-term.
The book is called “Work the System – The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less“.
Now, as an author I hate to turn anyone away from buying the full-length book, but as a Time Nazi, I also wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t present you with a summarized version of the book (the full length version, as many traditionally published books do, spends probably over 100 pages explaining/repeating things that aren’t completely necessary)
So here is the link to the “Bathroom Genius” summary of the book. (hilarious brand name for book summaries, right?)
I’ll leave it at that for today. Just wanted to give an update on my practice growth journey and get you thinking in terms of system creation and automation for your practice … as I’m proving, it’s never too late to learn and implement this approach but it’s a whole lot easier if you do it along the way!
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Hi Jarod, glad to hear everything is going well with your first employee! I am curious to hear what you have been able to do in terms of patient scheduling so far.
Are you trading patients occasionally because of the patient’s inability to schedule with the same PT for the next visit?
Is this used as only a last resort, and how often do you find this happening? Obviously, you both can do a great job, but I know there’s an element to continuity of care that could be lost even in the “best exchange.” Thanks for sharing your experiences!
Yes, we are co-treating a number of patients … especially now while we’re building his caseload and getting him busier and I’m too busy to get people on my schedule in a timely manner. I can fully understand the argument for having the same PT throughout all treatments, but I personally LIKE having “more than one set of eyes” on a patient. If you hire someone who you think is an incredible clinician and perhaps has skill sets/trainings that you don’t, then you can wholeheartedly suggest that your patients see both of you and get added benefit rather than detriment to the care they receive.
That makes complete sense. I was looking at this more from the patient’s perspective, but your comment helped refocus my thoughts a bit. I do agree there is a benefit to seeing two different highly skilled PTs. I suppose the most important thing is to make sure the communication/notes between the two practitioners on shared patients is where it needs to be to ensure the same quality experience if not more for the patient.
Yes, exactly, and that’s where detailed documented procedure lists for all the systems surrounding patient care comes into play.
Best of luck!