29 Apr Hiring a Great Practice Manager
So, you are thinking about starting your private practice, but you want to balance it out with other responsibilities as well.
Alternatively, your medical practice has grown considerably; you have some support staff who need leadership, as well as external consultants who need data to provide relevant reporting.
However, most importantly you need someone to make sure everything operates, every day the way you want it to be done!
Managers can assist in stabilising the workflow, monitor employee performance, review billing processes, interact with your accountant, keep patients happier, and maintaining a peaceful, productive environment in administration.
We understand that it’s tricky enough to hire staff for your practice so now that you have to pick a leader it’s much more challenging.
We’ll give you some guideline on how you can narrow the choice and have a better chance of choosing the best candidate to be your practice manager.
THEIR EDUCATION
You may want to shortlist candidates with tertiary qualifications, but in management positions such as this, the relevant diplomas work too.
Of course, if you’ll want your practice manager to handle complex tasks, then a college degree (accounting) would be preferable, so it entirely depends upon the kind of work you want your practice manager to do.
THEIR EXPERIENCE
It’s likely that you regard experience to be just as valuable as relevant qualifications, sometimes even more.
Ideally, you’ll want to find a candidate who has previous experience managing staff (most important), building and expanding operations, accounting and office management computer programs.
You must never hire an applicant who doesn’t have the relevant experience because you don’t have the time or resources to train them. You also want them to bring with them the best practices they have used in a larger or similar practice.
By hiring someone competent and well educated, you get an opportunity to mould them as per the workplace culture of your practice.
However, most importantly you receive the benefit of moving straight to adopting best practice without the need to reinvent the wheel, saving you time, money and avoiding the impact of unforeseen risks.
THEIR PERSONALITY
Unless your candidate has the right personality for the job, their qualifications won’t matter much.
There aren’t any ‘right’ personalities, but there are certain traits that can benefit your practice management.
The way that applicants choose to answer questions about themselves can tell you quite a lot about how they are as a person.
Ask them:
- How did you contribute to improvements in employee productivity at your previous position?
- To solve three accounting or operational problems that you are now facing.
- Why do you want to work in my private practice?
- What have you learned from your previous successes and failures?
- Use three adjectives to describe yourself.
- What would you think is the perfect office culture?
- How would you achieve that perfect office culture?
- What did you like and not like about your previous job?
At the same time, you should look for these red flags whenever you interact with them: –
- When they don’t express interest in collaborating and working with a team
- If the first thing they ask about is the salary, the benefits package and days they will need to take leave after joining
- If they negatively talk about people from their previous workplace
- Moreover, if they tell you confidential information regarding their last employer
- If they cannot provide you with three referees who will corroborate their answers to the above questions
Although it seems like a difficult task, choosing someone to be your practice manager isn’t all that complicated.
It may be prudent to also include a six-month probation period in their employment contract.
Simply go through a few of these factors, so you know what to look for in a candidate, and you will know how to deal with them during different stages and the interview.