Some aspects of growing a medical practice from a single office or branch is like any other business industry expansion. You must attend to both the administrative and soft-skill details required of all larger organizations. However, there are unique challenges stemming from the industry’s needs, such as ensuring you are a trusted entity patients will feel comfortable visiting.
There are plenty of known pitfalls to avoid, with challenges ranging from hiring to risk management. In this post, we will cover the common challenges an expanding medical practice can face and how to effectively solve those problems.
Hire the Right People to Carry Your Practice
Having the right staff is foundational for any business, but especially medical practices where your team is the face of the organization. Patients visiting your practice will decide whether to stay in your network or find another provider based on the support they receive. Ensuring you have knowledgeable, helpful, and supportive staff will help you grow most quickly.
Once you find your quality staff, keeping them within your organization is crucial. Supporting your staff makes them happy to work for you, leading them to leave a better impression on your patients. Offering a comprehensive employee benefits helps you achieve your goals of hiring and retaining the right staff for your practice.
Establishing a quality benefits package pays off over time by improving retention, encouraging better workplace engagement, causing fewer workplace disruptions, and a greater level of efficiency with experienced staff. Desirable benefits packages include healthcare coverage, PTO, life insurance options, training, and career mobility. When people look at job openings and offers, they actively compare notes, and more often than not, highly-skilled talent gravitates towards more than compensation alone.
Providing benefits can be difficult and challenging. However, outsourcing is a cost-effective option to support your staff. Working with a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) can help you tailor competitive benefit packages that make sense for your business and are attractive to your labor market.
Be Proactive with Administrative Paperwork
Filling out forms is a necessary part of running a company, even if it is tedious and mundane. Onboarding employees is a form-heavy activity that must meet federal and state requirements. If paperwork, such as employee tax withholding, is not in order, you can be fined for each violation.
Twenty percent of medical offices and companies have only one person managing employee compliance. What happens if that person leaves or gets sick? And if you're managing the paperwork directly, you’re not managing patients.
Managing onboarding and other paperwork is another task you can manage through HR outsourcing. Their regulatory expertise helps you maintain compliance, and their onboarding processes provide online forms for the employee to fill out. That lowers risk of having a number mistyped when processing paper forms into the system. PEOs don’t take days off, so you will always have someone available when you require assistance.
Manage Risk Before It Becomes a Liability
Do you have the right risk management for your practice right now? What about when it grows 50 percent in size? Risk management isn’t something that does much good after the fact. Some lessons are learned through mistakes, but for something this costly, you should proactively manage.
You need to prevent and prepare for injury or damage incidents before they happen, for both your staff and patients. Make sure you stay clear of HIPAA and OSHA violations as well. Supporting your staff increases their workplace satisfaction but keeping them rested and alert will prevent mistakes and errors that could lead to medical malpractice suits.
Preparing helps your risk vulnerability decrease while practice productivity increases, boosting your bottom line.
Negotiating Leases for Space and Equipment
When a business is growing, it needs more space and equipment. Sometimes this is temporary and sometimes it’s long-term. A lot of administrative work goes into acquiring the additional space and equipment necessary for growth.
Sometimes, medical practices expand through a short-term space and equipment lease, which can eliminate a long-term financial commitment. Other times, expansion takes place through a merger, which also requires considerable administrative commitment.
These processes take a considerable amount of time and worker energy. However, letting a PEO handle your administrative tasks frees up your team to take on these challenges. Aside from providing guidance through their expertise, they handle the crucial but mundane tasks that keep your practice running. That way, your staff can focus on the higher-level strategy that makes your organization grow.
Avoiding Burnout During Growth
During a high-growth phase, medical offices tend to over-rely on experienced staff to handle administrative duties. Key players can feel as though they are glued to their computers, making it a challenge to avoid employee burnout. Too often, employers miss the critical signs and realize the problem when the person quits.
Instead, there should be a purposeful allocation of the workload, with a focus on keeping patient interaction and satisfaction high. PEO experts can provide a third-party neutrality, watching for burnout signs and helping manage productivity levels. Relieving the administrative burden supports staff at all levels, ensuring retention does not become an additional issue during a time of growth.
Embrace Help to Grow Your Practice
You don’t need to struggle with medical practice growth on your own. Assistance from a PEO can make a big difference in your success. Experts can give your office the key guidance needed when change matters the most in your practice.
