026 - Keeping It Real in Tough Hiring Times In Medical Practice & Residency Training

Coach JPMD takes a pause by keeping it real and briefly describing what you can do to help your practice in these tough hiring times.

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Intro  0:00  
Welcome to the practice impossible podcast where your host, Jude a Pierre MD, also known as Coach JPMD discusses medical practice topics that will guide you through the maze that is the business of medicine, and teach you how to increase profits and help populations live long. Your mission should you choose to accept is to listen and be transformed. Now, here's your host, Coach JPMD.

Coach JPMD  0:24  
Thank you so much for listening to the practice impossible podcast with your host, Coach JPMD. And that's me. And this episode I titled keeping it real in some tough times, and it's going to be a short episode. It's really kind of highlighting some things that I think practising providers can take from my own experiences. Because what I'm facing now with staffing and post COVID issues have I've never faced in 20 years, we have three open positions for front office and medical assistants. And I can't imagine I can't, I'm the only one struggling and I believe many of you are struggling right now with staffing issues and just trying to maintain an efficient office. So if you are struggling with your staff and staffing, I think this is episode for you. And I want to highlight that it's okay not to be perfect. And that's something I struggled with for a long time in the practice. And it's okay for patients to complain. It's okay for them to complain about not returning phone calls or referrals. But it's not okay to be disrespectful. It's not okay for us as providers to ignore the complaints. And it's not okay to dismiss what's really going on. Okay, that's it for my rant. But, you know, I have to say that in 20 years, 20 plus years, I've never had the staffing issues that we've had here, we've got open positions. In the practice, we've got no one applying for jobs at this time. So I had to make a decision this week. And a decision was to pause the regular episodes of getting guests and preparing and researching for guests or researching for solo episodes. Because I think in order for practitioners and providers practice impossible, you have to recognize when you may have to do a shift or pivot in what you're doing. And that's what I'm doing this week, I'm actually pausing, not doing much with the practice impossible podcast while I really hone in and focus the practice, focus myself, and focus my energies on what I need to do to stabilize my practice situation. So I'm planning on working on three different things in the practice that I think will help in getting us stabilized in this time, where as we look for additional stuff, I think we can do these three things. One is delegate to a key employee or team member, I've had issues about delegating things to people and in the past. And I think if we, if you have a strong team leader, if you have someone that you know, can handle some of the additional work, as you look for that next person, delegate the menial things to that person so that it relieves you from those pressures. So that you can focus on the things that you need to do to get additional team members on your team. The second thing I did was that I approved overtime. So we typically did not approve overtime in the past. And I thought it was important to to give overtime for for the things that my team members needed to do. My call backs and return results. And if you are down in a couple of staff members, you paying additional overtime monies will not affect your bottom line, because you're already downed, down a couple of members and it shouldn't affect your finances at all. And the number three thing that I did was I that I plan to do is get more involved in the hiring process. And it may be that you know, the current team members that you have may not be able to process all the hires and process the interviews or the resumes that are coming in. So get involved with the hiring process. And that's what I'm doing. And that I hope will help you develop a plan if you're struggling with the same similar things that I'm struggling with in the practice. So like I said, this is going to be short episode, I hope these three things might help you. And I hope it helps me because I really need to help as well. And I will be back for regular episodes in two weeks. And please share this episode with a friend and if you haven't had a chance to listen to some of the other podcasts. Go ahead and listen to the one of I think 25-24 episodes that I've recorded over the past year and I'm sure you'll find something that can help you and help you practice impossible in these tough times. Cheers