What is Your Staff Development Plan?

Medical group leaders understand the difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff, but very few understand the importance of having a plan to train, re-train and develop their staff as an ongoing business strategy. In looking at hundreds of budgets for medical groups around the country, less than 5% of medical groups that I have worked with during the past five years have a budgeted line item for staff development. This is true for both private practices and hospital employed groups. Most medical group professionals understand the importance of their providers attending continuing medical education (CME) programs, taking their board examinations and attending conferences. Little attention, however, is placed on developing the medical group’s staff.

Customer service continues to be a hot topic in medical group management. There are several surveys used today that measure patients’ perceptions of their physicians and medical groups. Many of these surveys focus on the staffs’ competence, customer service and care. Administrators may need to convince their physicians or hospital administrators of the importance of training and re-training all of the staff in the medical group—not just the physicians.

As a leader, ask yourself some basic questions:

• Do you have a specific budgeted line item for staff development for all of your staff?
• Do you have a budgeted amount of CME for clinical staff, non-clinical staff and business office staff?
• Do you keep track of the training each staff member receives?
• Do you encourage staff to attend CME conferences or workshops?
• Do you discuss the importance of training in your staff meetings?
• Do you set yearly goals with all of your employees and help them address any weaknesses they may have by offering CME and/or the opportunity to attend other appropriate conferences?
   

Addressing these questions will give you a good foundation for developing an overall staff development plan.

CONTACT US TODAY!

If you are interested in learning more about setting up your staff development plan, please contact Nick A. Fabrizio at nfabrizio@mgma.com.