The Journal of medical practice management : MPM
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Employee commitment is one of the most important principles of practice man- agement. Yet commitment is delicate; it must be carefully earned, and it can easily deteriorate. This article explores practical strategies the medical practice manager can use to assess, foster, and increase employee commitment. ⋯ It provides a 10-question guide medical practice managers can use to assess employee commitment, and a four-part roadmap that will inspire commitment through leadership. This article also offers 25 hands-on strate- gies to increase employee commitment, and more than a dozen questions to guide difficult conversations with employees when their commitment level to the medical practice is low or unclear. Finally, this article suggest four drivers of employee commitment and a five-part strategy medical practice managers can use to model commitment through their own leadership.
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The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 solidifies healthcare payment reform by signaling the death of traditional fee-for-service reimbursement for providers. Effective 2019, Medicare payments will rely heavily on data, risk-sharing, and transparency to advance value over volume. Other payers will follow.
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Every medical practice manager has to deal with a certain amount of employee pessimism at times. But one overly pessimistic employee can spread his or her negativity to the entire medical practice team if the manager doesn't intervene. This article suggests practical strategies managers can use to deal effectively with a pessimistic, defeatist, gloomy, or cynical employee. ⋯ It provides 10 self-care strategies for practice managers so they can keep themselves from succumbing to an employee's negativity. It also suggests eight ways that pessimism can hurt the medical practice team and describes five kinds of negative thinking managers may encounter. Finally, this article explores defensive pessimism theory and the surprising benefits for managers of some pessimistic thinking.
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Rituals can cement the identity of and strengthen the bonds between any people, including the members of the medical practice team. This article presents the idea that the medical practice manager is in the ideal position to create and use rituals for team building. ⋯ As well, it describes six benefits of rituals and the hallmarks of the most effective team rituals; describes seven creative and interesting corporate rituals that medical practice managers can study for inspiration; suggests 20 excellent opportunities within the medical practice calendar year for medical practice team rituals; and identifies six kinds of rituals that are used in organizations. Finally, this article provides a four-step action plan for ritualizing your medical practice team's morning huddles.
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Several models of scheduling have been documented in the literature, including the traditional model, the carve-out model, and the advanced access model. We describe the implementation of the advanced access model in our clinic, which has been very successful. Advanced access has decreased third next available appointments to less than seven days for many of our providers and has increased individual primary care physician continuity for 40% of our providers. Interestingly, we had no gains in patient satisfaction, which is consistent with other previously published studies on advanced access.