Expensive lessons learned

A chiropractor told me about a very expensive lesson he learned recently.

When his office manager quit, he did not act quickly. He wasn’t worried because he outsourced his billing to a company specializing in that function, and he had a good front-desk CA.

But to his surprise, shortly after the office manager quit, his CA turned in her notice. Then, compounding the problem, almost simultaneously the billing company he was using went out of business.

The DC said he panicked. He placed an ad and hired the first person he interviewed who claimed receptionist experience. She may have been hired as a receptionist, he confided, but she didn’t have any people skills and didn’t know how to schedule. He fired her.

He went through a series of similar hires. Finally, he hired an office manager he was confident could do the job. But, he said, his billing was a mess and he was sure he had lost a lot of money.

The chiropractor learned several important lessons:

• Procrastination is bad. And very expensive.

• Panic hiring is bad hiring. Panic puts a warm body in your office, but that’s usually all it does.

• Everyone, including the DC, needs cross-training. If you have more than one employee, make sure they know how to do each other’s jobs. Include yourself in the cross-training. You don’t need to be an expert in billing, but you need to be able to do it if all else fails.

• You need a ‘Plan B.’ Stuff happens. Now is the time to develop a contingency plan on how to get the work done if “stuff” happens to you.

Losing a staff member is a serious, expensive problem. Earlier this year, we asked readers to help us find out if turnover is a problem in chiropractic offices. You’ll find the results of this survey on page 33. You will also find advice from experts on keeping your staff happy in order to eliminate a turnover problem.

This issue is devoted to successful office strategies. The first strategy is to hire the best people to help you. I hope you enjoy the issue.

Until next time,

Linda Segall, Editor-in-Chief