Productivity Planner

Do you know how much money your practice loses from patients who don’t show up for their appointments? Consider this. According to published medical researches average no-show rate in the United States is about 18%. An average practice that schedules 60 patients a day may have up to 10 patients that do not show up for their scheduled appointments. Multiply 10 no-shows by a per visit cost of only $60 and the practice loses approximately $600 a day, $12,000 by the end of the month, $144,000 by the end of the year.

It is apparent that not taking action is the worst way of handling no-shows. So what other options do you have? There are 3 main ways medical groups can fight patient no-shows: phone calls made by office staff, sending patient reminder cards, or using automated appointment confirmation calls. This article will examine the pros and cons of sending appointment reminder cards.

Sending postcards is still a very popular appointment confirmation tool. This is mainly because it is easy to print several thousand postcards. However, it is much more important to find out how efficient sending postcards to patients really is. For an average clinic you will need to send 60 postcards per day. Printing costs for your postcards will cost around 20 cents. Mailing costs are 41 cents. In addition an employee has to spend at least an hour writing appointment times, addresses, adding postage, etc. At an average wage of $10 per hour, your total cost per card will total about 77 cents.

So now that the patient cards are mailed there is nothing else to worry about right? Well, not quite. First you have to send the cards way in advance of the appointment to make sure they arrive on time. So for appointments on Friday you will mail the cards on Monday. However, there is a whole week, to schedule more patients that would not be able to confirm their a [Read more →]

Tags: , , Leadership, Inspiration, Management, Organizational Culture by Chris Russell
No Comments »

When overnight shipping was made possible, it solved many problems for many people and for businesses. This is because there are times when items must be shipped in a hurry. There are emergency situations when someone needs to have a particular item in their hands by the next day. Maybe it is because they are a business needing a part to operate a very important piece of machinery or a computer that is vital to the operation of the business. Maybe the school play is the next day and a piece from one of the props suddenly broke and a replacement part needs to be sent as soon as possible.

So what are some of the most frequent items that use overnight shipping? Here is a list of some of those items:

- Store merchandise - There are stores that need merchandise shipped quickly, especially if that merchandise is high in demand and they run out quickly. By paying extra, they can arrange for overnight delivery and have the item on the shelf the next day.

- Computers - Although they have to be assembled, it really doesn’t take that long since some of the parts are already put together in the factory. For a hefty price, a computer can be shipped overnight and be operating on a person’s computer desk the next day.

- Gifts. There are many major retailers online offering overnight shipping of their items. This is great for the person buying the last minute gift. They can have the gift shipped to the recipient’s house the very next day. In many cases, it can be gift wrapped with a gift tag placed upon it.

- Wedding flowers. Unfortunately, many brides find out that they don’t have enough wedding flowers when decorating the church, so they have to order more the day before the wedding. When this happens, they are able to get the flowers on time and get the church decorated before the wedding goers arrive.

-Repair parts. As stated [Read more →]

Tags: , , Leadership, Inspiration, Management, Organizational Culture by Chris Russell
No Comments »

Fear and uncertainty are two of the biggest de-motivators of employees. When an employee is not sure whether they will have a job next week or year or are uncertain as to whether you will even be in business next month I’ll guarantee that these are having a negative impact on their loyalty, productivity, effectiveness and creativity.

We live in an uncertain world and always have. There is no security in a job, a career or a way of life. Sooner or later each of us must face our own reality that our security is within us. However, this mindset takes a great deal of maturity, courage and self-trust which many employees lack today. Add to this mix of emotional chaos for an employee the unknowns that they have little control over and is it any wonder why companies are failing in droves these days.

If you want to successfully emerge from these challenging times it’s going to take creativity, staying power and faith in yourself and your employees. It is going to require that your employees have faith and trust in your decisions, actions and choices of which they have very little control.

Too many managers attempt to hide the raw truth from employees or camouflage it around positive words without positive actions supporting them. Employees can generally see right through your veil of uncertainty and will behave accordingly.

Everyone wants to feel secure but too many people turn this over to forces outside of themselves. Everyone wants to feel in control and yet few of us really have control over many of the situations in our lives. So what’s the answer?

If you want motivated, productive and creative employees shoot straight with them but at the same time keep looking for imaginative ways to maintain or grow your business. Staying stuck in old mindsets, policies, products or services during changing times is a recipe for disaster [Read more →]

Tags: , , Leadership, Inspiration, Management, Organizational Culture by Chris Russell
No Comments »