
Adopting New Processes with Office Team

Founder and CEO, Texas Center for Lifestyle Medicine
How to Work With Your Office Team to Adopt New Processes You Learned From Conferences
Cheng-Huai Ruan, M.D.
Full Transcript
Conference Ideas and Team Execution 0:00
Everybody, this is Ching Ron and I want to talk about why sometimes when we go to summits and conferences, why it's so difficult to bring that back and execute, when there's not necessarily a team approach and how to develop that team approach. So as you're learning and thinking about things along this conference, there are very strategic advantages that we have to talk about so that when you bring it back into your practice or into your organizational system, that everyone's on the same page, because how many times do you see that when someone goes to a conference and they bring it back and they're like, nothing happens is not applied?
It happens all the time. In fact, statistically speaking, less than 2% of people apply all that they've learned in a conference into an organization workflows, so that there are things that could be tracked over time. And so here's are some really good examples of what happens when that occurs. So you're at a conference and you learn all these great things. You want to bring it back to the tools and you get super excited about it. And you get super excited about it, because you're in that physiologic state of excitement where you're coming back and learning the things.
So when the high of the conference actually comes down, there's less excitement about it. And now a lot of the to do list seem very daunting. And so that can cause decision paralysis. And not only does it cause decision paralysis to you, it also can create decision paralysis to the other team members. But what if you are continuing on that high and you say, hey,
Categorizing Improvements and Defining Outcomes 1:51
I have all these great tools that I learned from this conference that I want to initiate right away, and without having implanted into implementation, it's very difficult as well. And so here's the thing. It's never about the actual plan is about the way you communicate to your team. So the first thing to, to talk about is here are the things I learned. But what category do they belong to? Let's say you learn about, you know, stuff on social media. So that's in the marketing category. You learn stuff about the revenue cycle that's in the finance category.
So when are you able to categorize, what areas of improvement you want for your life, for your practice? Whatever it is, label those categories and have people sit and let people know what categories you want to improve right. And so but more importantly, why do you really want to improve it? What it really is the purpose behind improving this particular category, because other people on your team may think that there's nothing wrong with this category. Like, why are we focusing on this? It could be something else for, for so for leader to be effective, you have to, communicate that with a team of I want to improve this particular category because this is where I see that we are and more importantly, this is where I see we are right now.
So that's so I call it establishing the final outcome. What is the final outcome of what you're trying to do, per thing that you've learned and what category does it belong to? So humans naturally organize through categorization. So if you're able to do this in very simple terms to your team, it's going to be a huge game changer. And the second thing is okay, now that we talked about this category improvement that we want to have and this can potentially work. That's something that I've learned within the summit.
Well why is it why is it important. What really is the motivation behind this? What is the personal emotional motivation behind it? And then what is the purposeful, emotional, motivation behind it that drives you towards the original outcome. So basically what difference will this make for us and how is everyone affected in the other categories by changing these things up?
Timelines, KPIs, and Implementation Planning 4:18
And what is the impact? What is the impact this will have for us right now, a month from now, six months from now into the future? What does that really mean? I mean, the last thing you want to have, is an idea of timelines. So setting up, timelines that are not, very it's very ethereal. That's not very specific, can be very detrimental. And, you know, we experienced is quite a bit. And you know that if you don't schedule it, it doesn't seem to happen. Right. But setting together a timeline of execution when you want this to be and then letting your team members understand that I want to have a reasonable time on what is a reasonable timeline so that everyone can buy in on the same thing as well.
So establishing that timeline also allows you to create key performance indices. So let's say that I want to, you know, install this text messaging platform within our clinical practice. It's not reasonable to say, hey, I just want to start this tomorrow. Let's just do it now because it scheduling is next to back office billing effects or medical assistance affects everyone within the company because it's a communication platform. Right. And if your category is I want to be able to communicate with our patients better with each other better, then that needs to be stated.
So have a reasonable timeline. And then when you march the reasonable timeline, we can say, hey, I would like, you know, x number of patients communicated on the text messaging platform in a week or a month or a year, whichever one it is. So establishing a timeline is is phenomenally important. And then finally we have to talk about what is the best outcome that we can have for this thing that we're about to implement, and what are some worst outcomes that we can have. So we always want to expect the best, yet prepare for the worst.
If everyone on the team is able to prepare for the worst, whether it be delays or patient communication or hipa violations and stuff like that. What it allows the organization to do is create safety points. That's around something that's going to be implemented in those safety points or create them higher level of certainty for people within the organization. Whenever there seems to be a lot that's, needs to be implemented, choose
Preparing for Risks and Small High-Impact Changes 7:00
what is something that is very simple to do that creates the absolute biggest impact, because the last thing that you want to do is change a whole lot of different systems. No. What is the one thing that you can do that provides you that two millimeter shift to the right or to the left that has a big downstream effect? Do that first, because everything else will become easier when the root of, multiple categories of improvement can be changed. Just switch it up. And that has a great downstream effect in this way.
That's effective leadership and communication. And then always asks for feedback. Ask for feedback on okay, well now this is what I want to implement into the practice. How do you feel and how do you feel about it and how do you feel about it? And continue and ask for continuous feedback as the project goes on as well. Everyone has to really be bought in to the process, which is why we start with defining an outcome we want to to achieve first. If we can define it, end outcome, people know the purpose behind it or the drive behind it.
And then the, your team can help you execute on what needs to happen now. Every leader has blind spots. Doesn't matter how good of a leader you are. And so what you are going to rely on is we want your team to look at the invisible things that may be pain points in executing this particular item or agenda. That's how you build great team culture and understanding that it requires every person on the team to be bought in, so that we define the end outcomes. That's where you want to go. However, who should really define the actual outcomes?
Should it be you? The practice leader, the physician? Or should it be other members of the team? And the real? The the real answer is it depends because we are able to identify pain points within our clinical practice or administrative practices at certain intervals. But those pain points are specific to us. But other different people within the organization have pain points that are specific to them. And by the way, all pain points are emotional. These are emotional pain points that occur that takes away the fulfillment
Feedback, Team Buy-In, and Leadership Culture 9:20
or the ability for someone to really do their job effectively. And so you as a physician may want a specific outcome, but in reality, your team members have other outcomes that may need to occur first prior to you executing on the outcome that you desire to have. And that's really important to figure out what they are. I can't tell you how many times we have team meetings, and I would like something to get done, and then I find other red flags within the organization that I didn't know about. Other people didn't know about, because it became a matter of uncovering certain things to create the desired outcome. So.
Long story short, in order to implement something, you have to know where you are now versus where you want to go. And also know where your team thinks, where you are right now and where your team wants to go as well. And there's nothing wrong with providing guidance and leadership in direction of the end result that you want to achieve, but to get the whole team to buy into the process, there's a lot of feedback that really needs to occur. And so if you've listened to anything on this summit, you'll know that a lot of leaders here are talking about the same thing.
How do you get your team to execute on things? What does the communication look like? We're all saying the same things is that we have to have mutual respect for each other, for whoever the team position is. Doesn't matter if it's the doctor or the nurse practitioner or the medical system. Front desk, back office, billing staff, janitor. It doesn't matter who it is, they have a role to play in. Each of those roles deliver a tremendous amount of value to us, to our organization, and to our patients as well.
Sometimes a lot of this may seem very daunting. It may seem very overwhelming. And that's okay. It's okay to be overwhelmed, but we recognize it. That is overwhelming. But once you start categorizing things and moving things around and communicating
Community Invitation and Summit Closing 11:32
what that is, you realize that we're not really alone. We always have support that's really around us. So I really encourage you to join my leadership platform. It's free. And, I'm staying away from social media because a lot of what's happening with Facebook and Instagram and stuff like that maybe is a little controversial these days. So I created my own leadership forum and go ahead and click on the link. That's the description of this video. And make sure that you actually join the physicians forum.
It's a private network of doctors who are inspired to be leaders. It's called the Physician Leaders Community Forum, so that we can share things like that amongst each other and, in and also there's going to be free gifts and free PDFs and all this stuff like that, that a lot of leaders I've already created that we're going to give away within the actual platform as well. So I want to thank you for attending the Physician Practice, Automation Summit. And if you haven't watched all the videos, don't worry.
It's okay. It's available on demand as well. So thank you very much and have a great day.
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