Ask Neil

Dr. Neil Gailmard

A doctor asks...

"How do you handle raises for long term employees whose salaries now exceed the market rates?"

This is referred to as "salary creep." ODs often worry about that veteran employee who is now making a fairly high income by usual standards for the practice. In my experience, this situation usually is just that: more worry than substance. Every situation is different, but here are some points to consider.

First, compare the employee's current wage with careers in the real world. A staff member earning a higher than usual wage, like $22 per hour for example, converts to a full time annual salary of about $44,000 (you can always figure this easily by doubling the hourly wage and adding three zeros). This is a fairly low income for a smart, experienced, highly skilled individual.

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Dr. Neil Gailmard, who is widely known for his practice management advice, is a member of the MBA faculty.

Super Service Pearls

Patients Don't Care About the Practice's Problems

When a customer enters a service business, he or she is interested in only one thing: having their personal problem solved with a warm, human touch.

Customers don't care about the reasons a business is too busy to serve them right away. They aren't interested in problems a business has with its suppliers, with rising costs, with declining revenue, with equipment breakdowns, with internal turf wars, with employee absenteeism or with delivery delays. They also don't care about details of the personal lives or political views of service providers, such as a recent ugly divorce, a staff member's child who made the honor roll, an owner's deteriorating retirement account or unhappiness with spendthrift politicians.

Yet somehow these topics creep into conversations with customers and patients. A practice's problems are sometimes mentioned to elicit sympathy, as excuses for service breakdowns, as response to customer demands or as justification for increased prices.

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MBA Updates

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MBA Seminar dates for 2012 to be announced soon.

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Sticky Situations

Dr. Dave Ziegler

A doctor asks...

"We switched to a pre-appoint recall system from a traditional annual reminder postcard, and now patients are upset that we presume that they will come for an exam when we want them to. How can we explain to patients that we were trying to offer them a valuable service?"

At our office, we made three separate attempts over the years to go to a pre-appoint system. The first two tries were half-hearted. When we asked patients what they preferred, at least half of them wanted the annual recall card like we had always done. Likewise, only half the staff and neither of the doctors personally liked being pre-appointed themselves, so those were very ineffective efforts.

The third time, we went in with everyone on board but didn't always do the best job of explaining to the patient how it would work. So when the pre-appoint cards went out a year later, we got some pretty insulted patients. We heard comments like, "How dare you assume that I would conform to your schedule. I will call you when I want an exam!" Other times we would hear, "You are greedy and forcing things on us that we don't want." Many patients just chose not to show up or not to respond to our phone calls to remind them before the exam.

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Dr. Dave Ziegler, who lectures and publishes regularly, is a member of the MBA Faculty.

MBA Seminars Highlight a Banner Year for MBA

Several recent MBA seminars concluded a banner year in which MBA programs were held all across the United States and Canada. The schedule for MBA events in 2012 will be announced soon and will be listed in MBA-ce.com.

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