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Come visit us regularly, we appreciate the comments.

Mindy Perry and Michele White

When someone walks through the door, the receptionist should look up from their desk and SMILE. A smile goes a long way. It’s welcoming and one doesn’t feel like a bother. The receptionist is the PR person. They are on the front line and the face of the practice. Stop and notice what other people see and feel upon entering the practice. The patients are the clients and they can choose to go to another doctor if they don’t feel appreciated and important.

Lunches. One of the only ways for a company to speak with a doctor is by bringing the entire office lunch. This is not my complaint. The majority of office staff do not even introduce themselves at the lunch. Be personable! Especially if someone is taking the time to bring the office lunch. The office manger also needs to distinguish themselves from the rest of the staff. For the most part, the person bringing a lunch has no idea who anyone is. Someone needs to take the initiative and spell out how their office works. Build up a relationship with the people bringing the office lunch. Those people are out and about every day talking to people and are evaluating the practices they enter!

Take some time to examine the practice’s culture. Is it warm, animated, laid-back, friendly, or formal? Is the practice “patient centered?” Is the culture how it was envisioned? Most practices obtain their culture by default without thought or planning. Do employees work as a team to be patient centered? This requires training and an ongoing effort to have a patient center culture. Practices can’t sacrifice relationships with patients and vendors these days. Remember, a smile goes a long way.

Here’s some easy tips to all those weary parents out there concerned about keeping their children safe while surfing the web.

Harmful and inappropriate material can come from just about everywhere on the Internet, in an e-mail or instant message, through accidentally finding a pornographic website, in chatrooms, bulletin boards, or news groups.  You know, you’ve accidentally done it many times just as I have.

There are actually more serious problems that can occur. Children may be solicited online in regards to sex. This may occur in seemingly safe situations. For example, your son or daughter might enjoy playing chess online at one of many gaming web sites. In most of these games it is possible to type conversation while playing the game. This conversation may begin innocently and then proceed over a day or weeks into sexual topics.

So is this all media hype or are there real instances happening out there? Unfortunately, there are real dangers on the Internet.  It’s important to tell your children the plain truth about dangers online. This is no different than telling them that they can’t play in the street or can’t stay out all night.

Other suggestions are to locate computers in a common room such as the den, a playroom or the parent’s bedroom rather than in a child’s bedroom. Children will be less likely to seek out inappropriate information and parents can more easily monitor the website they are visiting. It is also very important to talk with your children about possible dangers on the web. Let them know what dangers are out there and to come to you if they are having a problem. Also, take an interest in what they do when they are online. Open communication will not only help in this situation, but can help grow communication between you and your child for the future.

Michele White

According to the act, physicians are eligible to receive up to $44,000.00 over a 5 year period showing they are using an electronic medical record in a meaningful way.   After the attestation year of 2011, CMS will have a method in place to prove your compliance.   CMS just released the governing body to certify all EMR’s.

In light of the new demands and requirements that the HITECH Act has put on healthcare organizations, as well as the introduction of more severe penalties, organizations need to get started with a strategy immediately.

Is your software company testing its compliance?  Most of the criteria that will be mandated is available to review, but may be updated as time goes on.  Can your office handle implementing some of the changes within this act?  There could be some flow changes to occur in order to comply with those objectives.    Is your billing agency compliant and taking steps to report to CMS your HITECH coding?  That’s a big question that seems to elude most practices that do not directly bill from their EMR.

While CMS publishes updates, Euthenia Marketing will keep you posted so you can keep apprised of the many changes occurring in our field.

Ask anyone and they can tell you horror stories of their trials and tribulations during the recession/depression of 2009. Most of those people voicing their concerns were employees who were worried about the stability of their job, along with rising mortgage payments, increased debt etc.

Let’s stop to consider the small business owners. Their small business is their own livelihood, their dream, their passion. They can’t turn to anyone else to blame, yell at, or seek advice on what to do next, and how to tread through this economy. A lot rests on the shoulders of owners. Small businesses are what truly drive America’s economy, not large corporations. The way out of this recession will be through small businesses. Hiring one or two employees by a small business will see a faster decline of unemployment versus waiting for a large corporation to hire on 6,000 new employees.

As a small business owner myself, I understand the stress involved on retaining and adding new clients, keeping them happy, trying to keep a business afloat, and keeping employees employed. Small business owners across the board can be said to have “waited out” 2009. Waiting to see if things were going to get worse, waiting to hire new employees, waiting until the last possible moment for layoffs, waiting for new business to come in, waiting for the economy to recover, and unfortunately waiting for their business to fail. Waiting was the name of the game.

Now bring on 2010. What does this year have in store for us? The economy is still the same, but 2010 will not be the year of waiting. As far as the medical field and marketing is concerned, we are finding that these physician practices, aka small businesses, are tired of waiting for something to happen. We have seen more interest this year as to how to market their practice and save the revenue they currently have coming in. The waiting game is over. 2010 brings movement forward, recession or not.

2. Be personable, don’t try to “sell”. Establish a relationship with the practice

3. Make it easy for you and your company to make transitions to your products or service easy for the physicians

4. Remember that you will have to sell your product or service to a number of different people within the practice

5. Minimize the practice’s risk

1. Adopt an EMR with e-prescribing.

By maintaining all prescriptions electronically, this eliminates staff from having to pull a patient’s chart in order to view which prescriptions are needed.

2. At the time of the patient’s visit, issue all prescriptions and refills

Going beyond just using e-prescribing, think about when the patient’s next visit to the office will be. If the patient is not due to return for another 6 months, provide the patient with enough prescriptions to last until the next visit. This will eliminate unnecessary calls for refills.

3. Staffing

Review the busy times of the office and have enough staff to sufficiently cover the time that is necessary to run the front office and have the physician seeing patients on time. One of the biggest complaints about medical practices is the long wait times. The last thing a medical practice needs is to lose patients due to staffing issues and the physicians running behind.  Also, create staggering hours to ensure all times are covered without having to pay for overtime.

4. Telephone Auto-Attendant

Most medical practices today have an auto-attendant for their telephones. Have the recording be short and to the point. Have no more than 3 options for incoming calls. Patients don’t want to waste time, so provide a short directory.

5. Website

Have an interactive website where patients can schedule appointments, request prescription refills, get test results and complete all forms for registration.

What does this mean for businesses? Think of the reach Facebook has for potential customers. By building a presence on Facebook, a business has access to the world’s largest advertising market. Also, with Google’s move to begin including status updates, video and other content from Facebook, a company also stands to help increase traffic to brand pages.

It is important to note that Facebook is constantly changing. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, posted a letter regarding the future of Facebook back in October. The upcoming changes are very important to marketers and businesses that use Facebook as a primary presence since the upcoming changes are directed towards how brands can leverage Facebook.

Currently, posting content on the Wall of Facebook Pages is the customary way to spread a branded message by allowing Fans to comment, share, or like the content. With the upcoming changes, businesses will need to further adapt by adding custom content to the Page to highlight promotions, applications, and links.

A second change will come with the News Feeds. If a business were to update content, it appears in the Fan’s feeds section. The change will be that content will be surfaced based on a Facebook algorithm. This algorithm will factor how people connect with the content that is being published. If people frequently visit a Page, leave comments, or even like the content, the more Facebook will place your updates into their feeds. Just publishing content, like the majority of businesses do now, will no longer be enough to get ranked on Fan’s Pages. Facebook will be putting marketers in a position to strategize more and engage their audience.

Another change that is in the works is with email. Facebook’s new email will have the capability to build direct communication channels with Facebook fans outside of Facebook.  Businesses will be able to collect email addresses from Facebook users through Facebook Pages and application, which will allow marketers to build email lists much easier.

With the changes that Facebook is looking to implement, innovate marketers will be able to connect with their target market more efficiently. Businesses will still be able to set up their business page, market their presence, and take advantage of the new changes.

1. Outline every employees job responsibilities and functions

By listing out job responsibilities, it is easier to see which project priorities are being put aside and who should be responsible for those projects. If an employee is not suited for a particular project, delegate the project to someone else. This will ensure that projects get done on time and the employees work on projects that are suited for them. Keep in mind as well that most medical practices promote employees based on longevity rather than performance. Listing employee’s job functions will provide a clear view of which employees should be promoted based on performance.

2. Create a Team Leader approach.

Promote one person from each department to be Team Leader of their respective department. Once a month the Team Leaders should host a meeting to discuss solutions to problems, how to streamline current processes, collaboration of different departments, and future goals of each department. This will foster a team approach.

3. Establish a performance evaluation system

Once the list of employee’s responsibilities are clearly defined, it is easier to establish a performance evaluation system to ensure that the employee is meeting their goals and to assess accomplishments and behaviors. The key is to implement the performance evaluation system fairly. The system must remain the same for every employee. Exceptions cannot be made.

4. Continuing education

Help employees grow professionally by allowing time for continuing education. This will boost the employees self worth in the practice as well as keep the practice as a whole up to date on current industry techniques and procedures. The practice administrator or office manager is not the only person who should be attending continuing education seminars.

5. Identify and reward initiative

If an employee has gone above and beyond, reward the employee. The reward does not need to be extravagant; it just needs to be meaningful. The small things are what matters most.

6. Fun

The best employees are employees who enjoy going to work each day. Have a little fun throughout the day; it will motivate your employees to come to work with a smile. Celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. Again, the small things are what truly matter.