00:00:04:09 – 00:00:55:18
Jay Shorr
Welcome to Shorr Solutions: The Podcast. I’m your host, Jay Shorr. I’m the CEO and founder of Shorr Solutions, a national and award-winning consulting firm, assisting aesthetic and surgical practices with their operational, administrative and financial success. I have an amazing team of practice management experts and clients across the U.S. and as an industry expert with firsthand experience owning a multi-million-dollar cosmetic dermatology and plastic surgery practice. Listen in as I lend you my expertise and best tips to successfully manage and grow your aesthetic practice. I will also be bringing in guests along the way, so get ready to be equipped to operate your aesthetic practice strategically and profitably.
Welcome to Shorr Solutions: The Podcast.
00:00:55:19 – 00:01:22:23
Welcome to another episode of Shorr Solutions: The Podcast. I’m your host, Jay Shorr. Today we’re going to speak on when is it time to hire a new provider? Everybody asks me that and they want to know, should I do it now? Should I do it later? Should I do it when I buy a new piece of technology or a machine?
00:01:23:01 – 00:03:04:16
First question I want to know is can they solve the problem that you’re looking for? So what is the problem? Is the problem that I can’t get patients in fast enough? Is it that my office hours are limited and patients are waiting too long to come in? That’s why I need another provider. Or are you a solo provider? And you’re performing every procedure and the follow up by yourself? That can be very problematic, and it doesn’t give you any chance to breathe, any chance to work on your business, even off times because you’re so busy. Any chance to get follow up? Any chance to finish your paperwork? Any chance to do anything about your business and meet with your employees, your staff, your management, your vendors? Or is your specialty either too limited or too broad? Now, there can be operational issues that are bogging you down and you don’t have enough time to handle all of this. And then it’s going to fall inside your practice because your staff is going to get frustrated. Things aren’t getting done. So maybe you might want to consider hiring another provider. Is it that you have over time? If you are in a surgery of your own surgery center and you need to fill that OR that you have, you’re doing fine, but you have some dead space, or is it that you’re built a new facility and you want to increase the amount of patients that you have, but you don’t have another provider to fill all of the appointments? So these are all reasons why you might want to consider it.
00:03:04:18 – 00:04:01:14
So what do you look for when you’re looking to hire another provider? Well, certification level is really important. Now I’m not speaking when I speak about another provider. I’m not just speaking about a doctor. I could be speaking about an MD, D.O., I could be speaking about a PA, an NP, or an R.N. or I could be speaking about an aesthetician. These are all providers. Sometimes medical assistants in certain medspas provide different types of services or injections under the doctors or the medical directors, exclusive supervision. So you have to check who on your team is able to do what. And if you’re looking externally, you have to look at what are they able to do. So what do I look for in a new provider. Depends on the level of the provider that you want.
00:04:01:16 – 00:04:42:09
So the first thing naturally is your curriculum vitae or the CV. And we carefully scrutinize that. Now I and my team literally look at hundreds of resumes per week. And the reason that we look at all of these is because we post jobs for a lot of our clients, and we have to ensure that they’re the right candidate. But a resumé alone does not give you everything you need. They’re just words on paper until you get to deep dive. And I mean deep dive is can they fit the need of what are trying to hire them for?
00:04:42:11 – 00:05:07:10
Do you have a preferred language for your patient demographics? Meaning if you are in I’m in South Florida, so Spanish is spoken a lot. If you’re up in Canada, you may want English or French Canadian be able to speak French. If you’re in some of the other areas, you may have other languages that you want to speak. So fish where the fish are.
00:05:07:12 – 00:05:29:03
What is the reason for them wanting to join you does it align with your goals? Are they looking for improvement or are they looking to scale down? They were full time. They only want to possibly work part time. What’s the reason for them wanting to join you? Because it’s very important that you get the right fit.
00:05:29:05 – 00:06:02:12
References. What are the references comments outside of the traditional yes, he or she worked here that doesn’t fly. I always want to know, the reference tells me, boy, I’m so sorry they left. I would hire them back in a minute. That’s who I’m looking for. What are the great comments they wanted full time? I was only able to provide part time, but what a great asset to my practice. I would love to have them back.
00:06:02:14 – 00:07:16:00
And experience in education. Do they meet your standards? Many times, especially in our business, we get the candidate that really wants to enter into the aesthetic and cosmetic business. Everybody out there wants to enter our business because it’s fee for service and it’s the beauty business, and everybody wants to take advantage of that. But do they meet your standards? I interview a lot of people for nurse practitioners, physician associates, physician assistants, estheticians, and sometimes many of them look fake and I don’t want to get into any more details. However, people don’t want other people in some of their practices that don’t look natural because they don’t want the patient feeling that that’s the way that provider is going to make them look. Some people love it. Other people don’t. So I’m suggesting that beyond the experience and the education of them trying to meet your standards, that they also meet the standard base of the type of a patient that you attract.
00:07:16:01 – 00:07:35:01
What is their reputation in the online community? Always check social media tells you a lot. I have refrained from hiring somebody because I didn’t like their online posts, because patients and prospective patients are going to look on social media.
00:07:35:03 – 00:08:04:17
Do they have or have they had any legal issues, background and credential checks? We do background checks on each and every candidate we interview for a position. Why? We may uncover something. All right. So we do a credentialing. If it’s for a doctor we do the National Practitioners Data Bank. Otherwise we’ll do any types of other searches to make sure there aren’t any legal issues that we have to be in store for.
00:08:04:19 – 00:08:18:14
Ask them to actually do a working interview. And in that working interview, you’re going to be able to see their bedside manner. Next.
00:08:18:16 – 00:08:55:18
The job description don’t have an offer for any provider that doesn’t have a clear, concise and consistent job description, because we never want anybody to ever say to us, that’s not my job, or I didn’t know I had to do that. In the posting, in the interviewing, in the bedside manner, and then having them do a work interview, you’re going to be able to determine, are they able to meet the job description of those items that you want them to do.
00:08:55:20 – 00:09:45:03
And the current location? Will they possibly bring patients to you to help you? Were they independent and now they’re able to bring you patients? I want to caution you for a second. I know, because a lot of my clients say to me, I want to hire somebody. That was from another practice that could bring me a book of business. And here’s what I caution my client. That’s all well and good, because what you’re doing is poaching on your competitor. However, comma, when they leave you, the same thing is going to happen. And that patient base that you have worked so hard to accumulate is going to go away and go with that other providers will be be very, very careful.
00:09:45:05 – 00:11:13:07
Yes. We’re going to take a quick break and a slight intermission.
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00:11:13:09 – 00:11:42:18
So where do I find this new provider? Wow. That is the million dollar question. Number one, you can get them from a referral from a colleague, from a patient, somebody at a conference that, you know, relevant societies and industry related recruiters and consultants. We know a lot of people when we refer them to other practices, we refer them to other consultants and let those people around, you know, that you’re looking for somebody.
0:11:42:20 – 00:13:39:02
So take the following steps. When you’re ready to hire a provider, the first thing you do is you post it. Then you have a phone screening interview. All that phone screening interview is, is a determining factor as to whether or not you want to even move forward to a second portion of an interview, which can be your primary interview. But don’t tell people on that first telephonic interview that it is truly an interview. This is a screening process to let them know who is going to move on to the next step. And then conduct a video interview. Because with a video interview, you’re going to be able to see the person in real time. How did they dress? How do they conduct themselves? Do they make eye contact? Are they reading something? And then if they really go well with the video interview, because we video every interview we do for clients. And when I hired people that were working in our practice, I did video of them because I might see something after the interview was over that I didn’t pick up. And my staff may also pick it up as well. Then I invite them in for an in-person interview to allow the staff to meet them. That’s followed on by an onsite working interview and an onsite working interview should be compensated. Don’t try to do that for free unless it’s just somebody shadowing you. But if you’re ever going to have them doing anything, then offer them a fair day’s wage and then you can move on to the contract or an offer letter negotiation so that all the terms and conditions are met that are equal, fair and consistent with both of your needs and requests.
00:13:39:07 – 00:14:55:08
So what do you look for in the contract? Well, professional liability commonly known as malpractice. CMEs. Are you going to offer them continuing medical education credits. And how much, usually could be $2,000 in a year. And it could be inclusive of the conferences. It could be inclusive of memberships, anything where they can get their CMEs, all types of benefits, whether it is PTO/ vacation, whether it’s health insurance, 401 retirement, healthy living, and then non-compete non-disclosure agreements.
The non-compete is going to go away. And by the time that you might be watching this, it may have already gone away. But a non-disclosure non disparagement and non solicitation should never go away. The non-compete is one issue that the Federal Trade Commission has gotten their hands on, but they have not gotten their hands on non-disclosure. You can’t give away trade secrets and intellectual property, and you can’t poach and solicit staff and existing patients that don’t belong to that provider.
00:14:55:10 – 00:17:00:06
What to look for in the contract. What are your social media policies? What can you and what can’t you post on your own? Be very, very careful and scrutinize not to allow an additional provider in your office to post on their own feed. That is a horse of another color that can get you in trouble. They may repost, but I strongly advise allowing any of your providers to post original pictures and comments about your patients on their feed, because they may not have gotten the proper consent that allows them them, and only them to be able to post that patient’s information because of that patient then says they want it brought down. You have no control over it. So that brings us to the story of who owns the patient. The practice owns the patient, not the provider. We could argue this all day long. The provider may get copies of the records if need be government authority, court jurisdiction, a subpoena, whatever. But you own the records. And finally, beware of warning signs of overly complicated contract negotiations. They bring in their husband. They bring in their wife. They want to have their accountant or their attorney with them. That doesn’t come until later when you’re creating this contract. I have nothing against sharing it with your trusted advisors. We review contracts for all of our clients. Attorneys and accountants are very good parts and many members of the executive management team. Beware of unsaved social media profiles. That tells you a lot and always as well. Be very, very careful about sketchy Google searches. If they’re that good, they would show up on social media. I’m kind of leery when I can’t find somebody on social media. What kind of presence do you already have?
00:17:00:07 – 00:18:48:15
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for spending your time again with me on episode 108 of Shorr Solutions: The Podcast on when is it time to hire a new provider? Good luck and God bless.
So that wraps up today’s episode of Shorr Solutions: The podcast. If we mentioned any website links, you can find them in our show notes to work directly with me and our award-winning team of consultants to increase efficiency, increase revenue and decrease costs in your aesthetic practice, schedule a free consult with us today. We will help you establish and refine your aesthetic practice’s protocols for maximum efficiency and productivity, decrease your expenses and increase your profitability with an expert financial analysis of your business. Attract more patients, convert calls to consults, convert consults to treatments and keep patients coming back for more. With our sales training, coaching and complimentary access to our conversion cascade online course. Recruit, hire and train new team members and manage any staff turnover with our human resource expertise plus more, head over to our show notes and click on the link to schedule a free 30-minute consult with us today. And if you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to spread the word and share this episode with your friends, colleagues and the rest of your team. Remember to also follow us on social media @ShorrSolutions and sign up for our e-newsletter. You’ll learn about our latest tips, blog posts, services, videos, webinars and more. Links to our social media channels, and to sign up for our e-newsletter are in our show notes. So see you next time and remember to leave us a review and subscribe or more valuable content.
