Create flowcharts to be your ‘pocket trainers’
By Todd Crabtree, DC, JD

When a key employee leaves your clinic, how do you make sure that the employee’s accumulated knowledge does not leave with the individual, but is transferred to the new employee?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could have a free professional trainer available at a moment’s notice, who knows all of your clinic operations intimately, and could tell your staff members what to do, in any situation in precise detail?

You can have that by implementing an operational method designed to retain most of a key person’s knowledge. And, if you use this method, you will find that it will help you reduce errors, increase efficiency, produce quality healthcare, raise profits, and make training new employees easy.

The method: Flowcharting.

Flowcharting has been around for so long, no one knows who invented it. Management guru W. Edwards Demming, the genius who revitalized Japan’s industries with quality circles, used flowcharting as a key management tool for success.

If a picture speaks a thousand words, a well done flowchart speaks ten thousand. You will find that flowcharting:

• Documents processes. Often, what you think is a simple process is quite complicated.

• Identifies barriers to efficiencies. When you put the process down on paper in a flowchart, you not only get an overview, you also identify barriers to efficient workflow. These are easily spotted on the flowchart in queues (a place where a process is stopped, such as in patient waiting), and redundancies (such as filling out forms that ask for the same information).

You and your staff can then come up with solutions on breaking down those barriers by using technology and scripts, and eliminating inefficiencies.

• Creates a learning environment. The exercise of creating and improving process flowcharts creates a learning clinic environment.

• Build a core of transferable information. When you flowchart, your clinic becomes stronger by incorporating the strengths of individuals and transferring them to the organization.

• Reduces disruptions when turnover occurs. When an employee leaves, patients will experience fewer service disruptions.

• Reduces the learning curve. The flowchart will be one of your best training tools for new employees.

The learning curve for new staff members will be shortened because they have a ready reference for their job duties.

• Allows you to adopt new procedures faster. New clinic initiatives can be rapidly incorporated into existing process flowcharts. You or your office manager will have fewer interruptions with requests on how to handle certain situations.

If a new situation arises, it can be added to the “as is” flowchart. Proposed changes to process flow can be quickly compared to each other and the most efficient process selected.

• Allows staff members to take control of their work. Staff will make better use of their time so they can work on more proactive initiatives, such as marketing. Job satisfaction will increase as the staff takes more control of their work. And increased job satisfaction translates into reduced turnover.

CLOSELY GUARDED ASSET

Your flowchart book will become a closely guarded clinic asset. You will begin to recognize that most clinic problems are not people problems, but are process problems. However, if you do have a people problem or a resource problem, the process will reveal it through backlog identification.

No two clinics will have the same process flowchart. You should not copy another clinic’s flowchart because you may harm your clinic by eliminating strengths and upsetting your staff.

Change-management theory recommends starting with an existing process and involving team members affected by the process in order to achieve buy-in, rapid change and higher job satisfaction. However, using the process flowchart for a clinic’s multiple locations creates cross-clinic efficiencies in management, economies of scale and builds brand identity.

By employing a robust flowchart system, your clinic will become a learning clinic, run smother, gain market share and a competitive advantage.

SIDEBAR:
How to create a flowchart
Flowcharting with software

Todd Crabtree, DC, JD, MBA,, is the CEO of Clinic Doctor, Inc., a provider of online billing, marketing, and business management consulting services. He can be reached at 866-999-5859, Todd.Crabtree@ClinicDr.com or at www.ClinicDr.com