Courses Offered

Workshops, Seminars and In Service Training

• Human Resources Basic Training^SM:
  Common Sense Personnel Administration
  Target Audience: Physicians, supervisors and administrators of solo and group practices
  Format: Half day or full day course
  Précis: An intensive training session for physicians and managers to learn the best way to approach both routing and sensitive personnel matters to maintain staff morale, productivity and to protect against regulatory and civil risks.
  Topics:
  • Structuring better jobs that attract and retain good workers
  • Establishing rational and sensible employment policies and rules
  • Recruiting and selecting good employees
  • Training to enhance the team

• Practice Management Metrics^SM:
  How to Check your Practice's Vital Signs and 'Pulse Points'
  Target Audience: Physicians, supervisors and administrators of solo and group practices
  Format: Half day or full day course
  Précis: An intensive training session for physicians and managers to learn the best ways to track and analyze practice data with the objectives of better supervision of team members, better transaction controls using collected benchmarks, rules of thumb and monitoring techniques that give diagnostic snapshots and regular feedback to spot, anticipate and avoid problems.
  Topics:
  • Why Measure? Measure What?
  • Fees and Pricing
  • Provider Productivity - making sense of gross charges
  • How to check E&M billing patterns with software off the Internet
  • Monitoring capitation, managed care and PPO contract compliance
  • Expense monitoring and budgets
  • Using the calendar and YTD numbers to predict seasonality and defend against cash flow problems
  • Using your aging report to monitor - and reward - account rep performance

• Confronting the Hardest Practice Decisions^SM
  How to Deal with Conflict without Ducking Crucial Issues
  Target Audience: Physicians, supervisors and administrators of solo and group practices
  Format: Half day course
  Précis: An intensive training session for physicians and managers to learn the best way to approach sensitive issues and touchy policy and operations questions collected from our consulting experience in more than 2,000 practices since 1978.
  Topics:
  • Fair and timely buy-ins and exit strategies
  • Reasonable physician group compensation plans
  • Call coverage and 'slowing down'
  • Group governance and the 'managing partner' question
  • Egocentric selfishness v. 'groupthink'
  • Dealing with problem partners and staff sacred cows

• Physician Productivity Best Practices^SM
  A Crash Course for Physician Executives
  Target Audience: Physicians, supervisors and administrators of solo and group practices
  Format: Full day course
  Précis: An intensive training session for physicians and managers responsible for getting better results from existing or diminishing resources. It's ironic: many physicians are working harder to earn less. Is there an end in sight, a turnaround of the economics of practice? Actually, there is, but it's not just going to happen to you automatically. Physicians are learning to adapt their practice styles to take advantage of new technology and to use knowledge - workers to push their productivity up without stressing their practice or home life. Ringing telephones, patients on hold, crowded waiting rooms, and clogged exam and consulting rooms create stress. Wasted motion, inefficient patient service and lack of direction can cost your practice money, patients and good personnel.
  Topics:
  • Efficiency Basics - Productivity Defined
  • Rethinking Who Does What
  • Scheduling for Higher Productivity
  • Patient Flow Streamlining
  • Technology - E-mail and the Internet, Intranets and Electronic Medical Records
  • Telephone and Printed Forms Timesavers

• The Micro-MBA^SM:
  A Crash Course for Physician Executives
  Target Audience: Physician leaders of solo and group practices
  Format: Two one-day courses
  Précis: An intensive two day training session for physicians who are or expect to be responsible for the smooth and profitable running of any size practice or who have taken on management responsibilities for which they feel under-trained. And, for the already skilled executive, the course provides a powerful refresher on indispensable management skills.
  THE MICRO MBA^SM 101
  Developing Your Executive Skills
  
  • What Executives Are Supposed to Do
  • Leadership: The Executive Self-Development Process
  • Planning
  • The Governance Process -- Organizing for Smooth Decision Making
  • Compliance 1aw -- Your Legal Responsibilities
  • The Executive as Negotiator
  THE MICRO MBA^SM 102
  Putting Executive Skills to Work
  
  • Staffing
  • Marketing - Advanced Practice Development
  • Financial and Managerial Controls

• Treating Patients Right^SM:
  Tact, Courtesy and Etiquette in the Medical Office
  Target Audience: All medical practice personnel and physicians in office based specialties.
  Format: Half day course
  Précis: The best marketing is internal marketing, and studies continually show that the personnel in the medical office are the most widely stated reason for patient dissatisfaction. This half-day workshop covers the essentials of etiquette and customer service for the medical office. We use group exercises, role playing and case studies to make learning fun and memorable.
  Topics:
  • The patient service roles in the practice.
  • Non-verbal communication: "It's not what you said, . . ."
  • Better listening techniques: it's more than half the communication process.
  • Projecting authority to build patient confidence in the practice.
  • Saying what you mean, and making patients love it.
  • How to handle angry or emotional patients.
  • What to say when the answer has to be "no."

*This course is frequently offered in two half-day sessions at each location, morning and afternoon, to allow more employees from a single office to attend.

• Financial Controls for Physicians^SM:
  Preventing Money Leaks in Smaller Practices
  Target Audience: This workshop contains sensitive material and enrollment is restricted to physicians and their spouses.
  Format: Half day course
  Précis: This three hour workshop is recommended as a half-day or evening program. The objective of the program is to establish financial controls and reporting systems in the practice that are easy to monitor and practical to implement. Topics covered include billing and collection controls, accounts payable and payroll safeguards, and some simple but effective audit techniques for physicians. The marketing of this program stresses the message that, unnoticed, dishonesty and incompetence affect the physician in the same way.
  
• Swimming With Sharks^SM:
  Building Your Negotiation Skills
  Target Audience: This course is for every physician or manager who has ever worried about what to do in a disagreement or dispute.
  Format: Half day course
  Précis: You don't get mad or get even, you get results. Most physicians and managers dread negotiation but these skills aren't just for MBAs and lawyers. This course covers tough negotiations, but also focuses on getting along with those whose interests conflict with your own. You don't have to choose between being nasty and getting taken.
  
• Efficient Patient Service^SM:
  How to Improve Productivity with Patient Flo Best Practices
  Target Audience: Medical office managers, front office supervisors, receptionists and clinical personnel.
  Format: Half day or full day course
  Précis: Many medical offices are running too far behind to take time to get organized. This workshop shows how a little organization can bring big productivity rewards. The content covers the essentials of patient flow.
  Topics:
  • Appointment scheduling for improved patient service and enhanced physician productivity.
  • Improved telephone management techniques.
  • Reorganizing job duties to improve personnel efficiency.
  • Medical records handling ideas to reduce confusion in busy offices.
  • Cutting out the bottlenecks at the front desk and the check-out window.
  • Improving doctor/nurse communication.

• How Capitation Works^SM:
  How to Succeed in Prepaid Medicine
  Target Audience: Physicians, medical office managers, clinic administrators.
  Format: Half day or full day course
  Précis: This course thoroughly covers the latest challenge to private practice physicians - acceptance of risk contracts. Unlike many other fads, this one won't soon fade. Learning to negotiate and manage reasonable capitation arrangements can provide an opportunity for physicians to benefit from their case management skills and training for the first time.
  Topics:
  • How to decide if capitation contracting is right for your practice.
  • How capitation reimbursement works.
  • How to distinguish an acceptable premium rate and know when payments are in jeopardy.
  • What to do about retroactive denials and additions.
  • How to negotiate the contract's sticky provisions - and notice what's been left out.
  • How to prepare to actively solicit capitation exclusives.

• Honing Leadership, Teamwork and Management Skills^SM:
  Organization Development For Physicians, Administrators and Supervisors
  Target Audience: Physicians, medical office managers, clinic administrators.
  Format: One day course
  Précis: This course targets the most common weaknesses in the self-taught manager or supervisor: leadership, motivation, and organization. Efficiency topics include how to do more in less time, dealing with interruptions, avoiding procrastination, handling priorities (and posteriorities), effective delegating, and reducing management by crisis. People skills topics include how to deal with the boss (or bosses) in a medical office, how to select and train the best employees, how to evaluate and compensate good workers, and fair, low risk termination of the ones who don't respond to coaching.
  
• Appealing Unfair Payments^SM:
  Advanced Managed Care Claims Follow-up
  Target Audience: Physicians, medical office managers, billing and insurance supervisors and claims processing personnel.
  Format: Half day course
  Précis: This totally new version of our most popular half-day course is designed to cement the message: "You don't just have to settle for what Medicare and other carriers decide to pay anymore." We supply practical and proven techniques to "go back to the well" when managed care organizations and insurance carriers' payments are disappointing.
  Topics:
  • Inadequate payments: How to find out why you were paid so little.
  • The no pay, no response problem and what to do about it.
  • How to appeal retroactive denials and cutbacks.
  • How to prepare for the successful appeal.
  • How to write a winning, convincing, and effective appeal letter.
  • What to do when all else fails: the velvet hammer.

• The Big Secret^SM:
  Keeping Smaller Practices Successful
  Target Audience: Physicians and office managers.
  Format: One day course
  Précis: Contrary to popular opinion, solo and small group practice is not dead - or even sick. This course is designed to show physicians how they can remain in satisfying mainstream, traditional practice in spite of the changes going on in medicine.
  Topics:
  • What makes small single specialty practices better than larger groups and multi specialty settings and how to exploit these advantages.
  • How to evaluate the few advantages your bigger competitors have and counter them effectively.
  • How to turn your big competitors' disadvantages to your benefit.
  • How to keep your overhead lower than the competition by staying lean and mean.
  • Planning for success - how to logically approach your market and set a strategy that will work.

• Right-Sizing Your Practice^SM:
  Growth and Contraction Strategies for the Shake-out Decade Ahead
  Target Audience: Physicians, clinic administrators and office managers.
  Format: One day course
  Précis: This course covers the ins and outs (literally) of group practice - how to decide the best size for a practice and then execute the market positioning strategy flawlessly.
  Topics:
  • Pressures on the status quo and how to evaluate the trends in medicine, the market and physician/hospital relations.
  • How to evaluate MSOs, foundations, and integrated medical groups.
  • Creating alliances and group practices that work.
  • How to acquire or merge practices into solid, successful groups and the pitfalls to avoid.
  • Buy-in and pay-out strategies that are fair these days for group members.
  • Reasonable compensation strategies for group practice that promote harmony and good work and managed care values.
  • Selling to a group or equity partner? How to evaluate the deal points.
  • Group practice management structures that work - and those that don't.

• Anticipating Retirement^SM:
  Audience: Physicians and their spouses, ages 45 and above.
  Format: Half day course
  Précis: An intensive half-day program for physicians who want to plan for an orderly and rewarding exit from active practice. There was a time when a satisfying retirement was a fairly automatic way to wind up a medical career. Not anymore. This course covers the myriad practical details physicians need to anticipate as well as the larger issues.
  Topics:
  • State laws regarding records retention, notifications of patients, suppliers and other agencies.
  • Tax, legal and practical considerations on closing a practice.
  • When to sell a practice and the eleven motivations of sellers and buyers.
  • How to determine a practice's value.
  • How to offer a practice for sale.
  • How to negotiate the best (and fairest) exit deal in group practices.

*This program may be provided in concert with medical society selected legal counsel and/or personal financial planner as a second half-day module.

• Evaluating Physician Career Opportunities^SM:
  Target Audience: Physicians (and spouses) in their last year of residency or fellowship.
  Format: One day course
  Précis: This one day program is designed to get residents off on the right foot as they enter practice, whether taking salaried positions, buying into group practices, or establishing new practices.
  Topics:
  • How to decide what kind of practice has the best chance of providing personal satisfaction.
  • What is realistic to expect in a job offer, partnership or association contract and how to negotiate effectively without ruining the atmosphere.
  • What it will take to build a practice these days.
  • How to sensibly evaluate the current climate for solo and small group practice.
  • How physicians can fill-in the gaps in their business know-how.

*With enrollments usually subsidized by the sponsor, the course creates bonding to the sponsor and stimulates membership.

• Controlling Overhead^SM:
  Cutting Costs with Surgical Precision
  Target Audience: Physicians, administrators and office mangers
  Format: Half day course
  Précis: This program is designed to help prepare clear reports to help the "non-accountant" understand practice overhead and explore the most productive areas to save money.
  Topics:
  • Making sense out of an income and expense statement
  • Setting attainable goals for overhead
  • Using technology and task analysis to get more productivity from your staff
  • Compensation and bonuses that don't break the bank
  • Getting the most out of every inch of your space and penny of your rent
  • Training a black belt shopper for the best saving on supplies

*This course makes an ideal second session for a day including Financial Controls for Physicians^SM

• The Management Team^SM:
  Improving How Physicians and Managers work Together
  Target Audience: Physicians, administrators and office mangers attending as a team.
  Format: Half day course
  Précis: This program is designed to help physicians and managers get better results from a more satisfying collaboration.
  Topics:
  • Setting attainable goals for managers
  • Improving communication on the management team
  • Coaching the staff from the same play book
  • Mutual supervision to keep things moving ahead
  • Setting reasonable standards for management performance
  • The manager's role as interpreter and link between physicians and staff
  • Managing change: not as easy as it looks
  • Knowing when to involve the physicians and when to act independently
  • The five biggest problems physicians have with managers
  • The five biggest problems managers have with physicians

• Dealing with Problem Employees^SM:
  How to Get the Best out of your Staff
  Target Audience: Physicians, administrators and office mangers and supervisors.
  Format: Half day course
  Précis: This half-day program is designed to help physicians and managers deal with the sensitive, day-to-day problems of managing people.
  Topics:
  • Dealing with negativity and conflict
  • Motivation: pulling strings and pushing the right buttons
  • Improving people skills
  • Special problems for the newly promoted manager or supervisor
  • Selling change