00:00:04:10 – 00:00:49:00
Speaker 1
Welcome to Shorr Solutions, the podcast, and I’m your host, Jay Shorr, CEO and founder of Shorr Solutions. We are a team of national and award winning practice management consultant with experience running a multimillion dollar cosmetic, dermatology and plastic surgery practice. We’re here to share strategies and insights that will help you grow your practice efficiently and profitably. In each episode, we’ll explore the steps and actionable insights to guide you through your journey to increase efficiency, boost revenue, and decrease costs.
Speaker 1
Tune in and discover how to improve your patient experience and take your aesthetic practice to the next level.
00:00:49:01 – 00:02:04:10
Speaker 2
Hello once again and welcome to another episode of Shorr Solutions, the Podcast. I’m your host, Christian Devoz, one of the partners. Here at Shorr Solutions and senior client success Manager. And today I have two of our teammates. We have Ana Suarez who is another partner. I share solutions and she’s our director of Client development. And we have our CEO and founder Jay Shaw.
Speaker 2
And today’s conversation is going to be very, very interesting for many practices out there. We’re going to be talking about your front staff phone calls. We’re going to be talking about what happens when you get a bad review. How do you handle those situations? And basically, how do you ensure that your team is the right team to handle your patient base?
Speaker 2
Well, welcome, guys, to another episode.
Speaker 1
Well thank you. Thank you for allowing me to be a guest on our series. I really enjoy that different role, but that’s fine.
Speaker 3
And I’m happy to be here with you guys today. So exciting. I look forward to speaking about all of the different issues that we find and that we come across with our with our clients and the practices that we work with.
Speaker 1
This is going to be fun. Christian, we have three of our four partners on this podcast. And this is a first.
00:02:04:12 – 00:04:57:03
Speaker 2
Yes. First time all together. That’s awesome. So Jay, one thing that I want to ask you to begin the podcast would be, have you ever had a situation in your practice where a friend, this member, made a mistake and you got a bad review? Can you talk to us about that?
Speaker 1
Never.
Speaker 2
Never.
Speaker 1
That never happens.
Speaker 2
Never happens. Never happens. Anybody.
Speaker 1
So actually, the number one entity outside of the practitioners in our practices and our med spouse or whatever is the director of first impressions. I know everybody refers to them as the receptionist, but I know that word a long time ago. Because think about this. When somebody first calls the office that has never been there before, the first impression that they’re going to receive is from the person that answers the phone number one, are we an interruption of their day?
Speaker 1
Because as we’ve spoken about many, many times, a prospective patient and an existing patient can hear that right away. If there’s not a smile, and there’s many times that you will get a director of first Impressions, formerly known as that receptionist that is very cold, that doesn’t give the information. They’ll answer the phone if they answer the phone first of all.
Speaker 1
All right. They’ll answer the phone. Doctor’s orders. Can you hold without even ever asking for permission? And we’ll get into the proper ways to do that in another episode. But then they keep you on hold. The. Excuse me. If you can hold, please hold. And then they come back, and then they ask you the same question again. How can I help you?
Speaker 1
You know, instead of I can help you up. Then if you hear the phone ringing in the back and they put you on hold again. All right. And then this goes on and on, and they keep coming back and asking if they can help you, not realizing in the queue that they’re the one that put you on hold.
Speaker 1
Then they asked to be transferred. Now all of us had that have had this happen. We speak to somebody and all of a sudden they’re going to transfer us and what’s the next thing we hear? It’s like a dial tone, like we got disconnected. So now we have to call back again. Or my favorite one is I’m on hold for so long, I hang up, we’ll call back, figuring I’ll be the newest caller in the queue, but then they can’t find an appointment slot to put you in.
Speaker 1
And this hurts the business because what happens? Nobody in the office really knows it unless it was reported. And many times you’ll get a bad review. I called the office and nobody ever answers. I called the office. It went to a voicemail. I called the office and they didn’t have an appointment for me. I called the office and they transferred me and they hung up on me.
00:04:57:09 – 00:10:01:15
Speaker 1
I can go on and on, and those listening to this podcast are probably going nodding their heads or going, oh, I know exactly. Has he been in my office? No, I’ve been in all of our offices. The only difference is the name on the sign. But we’re really all the same. And we all have these problems. So what’s the ounce of cure and prevention called?
Speaker 1
Training?
Speaker 3
Yes. And that’s that’s really interesting, Jay, because I can completely relate to that. And not only as this has happened with like many of our clients, but also as a patient myself, not too long ago, I called a doctor’s office in the receptionist or the director of First Impressions, how we call them, how we should be calling them director.
Speaker 3
So first impressions. She pretty much didn’t say good morning or she didn’t say her name. She just said like, hi, just hold. And I was in shock. I was like, what? You know, like what happened? So I, you know, I stayed there and then she picked up the phone and then she was kind of like in a bad mood.
Speaker 3
And so it just set the tone on, fortunately, in a really bad way. And it left me thinking, should I keep coming back to this practice, you know, because they’re not really putting the effort. And like you said, either the training or maybe just making sure that they have the right person in the director first impression.
Speaker 1
Ana let me ask, was this a doctor’s office? And I’m not going to ask you what procedure that’s, you know, the HIPAA and violation. But was this for health insurance visit? Were you going to be filing this and under health insurance. Yes okay. Which makes it worse. Right. Because people are more tolerant to keep calling. And going back to that practice.
Speaker 1
You just made a comment. I don’t know if I should go back to that practice, and it’s probably because you felt that’s the type of treatment you’re going to get if they can’t get it right from the beginning. However, I understand that 90% of our client base, the other 10% our family practice internal medicine allergy, you know, we’re getting more and more of those types of clients.
Speaker 1
And when it’s under insurance, people will call back again and again because it’s under their insurance. But remember, if it’s aesthetic and fee for service and out of our pocket, you’re going to think differently. Well you.
Speaker 3
Yes.
Speaker 2
You’re going to be competitive.
Speaker 3
Yes you do. But with that said, I did. Just as you guys know, usually I go to a massage therapist like once a month and it’s actually a med spa. And they do offer these services where they have a massage therapist. And so obviously it’s out of pocket. And so they had recently hired, a new director of First Impressions.
Speaker 3
And I asked her about a specific treatment that they now have in on the menu. And just she, she honestly, she just didn’t respond. She just couldn’t explain to me what the treatment will be like and what it would entail. So then I end up asking her questions, and at some point I’m like, is there any way that I could speak with someone else?
Speaker 3
So maybe they have a little bit more information about the new treatment, because I was trying to, like, slice it in so many different ways to see if she could give me the answers that I was looking for. But she was so new, and I guess she didn’t get the training that was needed, that she just couldn’t answer the questions that I had.
Speaker 3
So I kind of felt that I was wasting my time. And so I needed to talk to someone who could actually answer my questions. And this is out of pocket. I think it just applies all across the board. So something is something very important to keep in mind because many of the practices that we work with, I guess this is kind of like one of their last priorities, when it should be at the top of their priority list.
Speaker 1
So you wanted a hot stone massage, not stones that were in the parking lot, and it’s 100 degrees outside that were hot, right? She did. Yeah. Difference.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. It was your treatment was kind of like a massage. And then they had like some type of new tools that they would utilize so that you could feel a more relaxed. And then on top of that, they could do like a, like a wrap. So you would kind of like get some treatments on your skin.
Speaker 3
But I was just trying to understand, do I feel get the massage and what is the order of the treatment. And I didn’t get any of those answers. So I’m like, well, should I purchase that or should I just like go with the regular massage that I always get? So it’s very important to train the directors of first impressions, because they are the ones who are having that one on one contact with patients.
Speaker 3
And so you want to make sure that when the patient calls the practice, they’re getting the information that they need. And then the directors are first impressions that they’re being nice, that they’re being polite, and they’re saying, thank you. And please, because it does makes a difference. It definitely makes a difference.
Speaker 1
You want the Ritz-Carlton Four Seasons experience true? Yeah.
00:10:01:17 – 13:29:06
Speaker 2
Correct. Well, that was really enlightening. And I thank you so much for sharing your story there. And I was even thinking about my own personal stories. And I definitely agree with both of you guys. Even though I’m in Colombia, I see the same things happening here. You call a medical practice and you don’t get the best of services, and it makes me think back to my call center days, when I used to be a supervisor at a call center.
Speaker 2
One of the things that we got clear on training from day one was there are two things that your staff needs to know, especially your phone people. They need to know customer service, and they need to know why you offer your services. And is that Ritz-Carlton experience that Jay was talking about? How do you make your patients feel like they want to come back to your practice?
Speaker 2
Why are you the right people to go to? What makes you different from the others? So thank you Ana for sharing that, because what Jay was saying is true. This is pay for the service you have to pay out of pocket for these, aesthetic services as opposed to insurance. So people will have a pick of what do they want to go and who they want to go with.
Speaker 1
Unfortunately, I feel many times, even when I walk into the office, a physician’s office, because not as a consultant, but as a patient, look, we are all patients somewhere, and I walk in there. And if that receptionist or director or first impressions and I say if they pick up their head to greet me, I feel like I’m an interruption of their day.
Speaker 2
What should happen when you walk in in a practice? What should happen?
Speaker 1
They should stand up to greet me because I am the newest guest or family member in their office. Right? People don’t understand is yes, I’m a patient, but I represent revenue, whether it’s through insurance or whether it’s out of my pocket. I represent revenue and I walk in the door. And the moment that you don’t respect that and you don’t treat me with that same respect that I actually request or demand, because if I’m going to give service, I want you to understand that I appreciate your business.
Speaker 1
Thank you for becoming part of our family today. And it isn’t any different than when the procedure is over. Don’t shuffle the patient out to where the receptionist once again and pay and let them walk out the door by themselves. Walk them to the door and thank them for spending a part of the day with your family today, because that’s what it is.
Speaker 2
So that should be on the training for sure. Now, you guys both mentioned training, Ana I know that you are really good when it comes to H.R. And training. So can you walk us through maybe some tips for our doctors, nurse practitioners, our audience out there who are listening to this podcast? What advice would you give them? Bring their their staff.
Speaker 3
Yes. Training is key. There’s different parts to the training, but the most important thing is to have something organized and prepared for once you have the person hired into the Director of First Impressions position. Before we even get into that, making sure that the job description is very detailed and that he has all of the criteria that we’re looking for this person to to have.
00:13:29:06 – 00:14:36:18
Speaker 2
Yes, we all know that we have to hire. Right. And as a matter of fact, we help practices out there hire.
Speaker 3
Yes.
Speaker 2
You know, directors of first impressions and doctors and practitioners and you name it, we are very good when it comes to interviewing your different candidates, giving you the best options, in our opinion, so you can make your best choice possible. And we look at things like not only what the resume says, but what the resume doesn’t say, right?
Speaker 2
Like, who are they as a person? Do they align with your culture? These are things that you have to keep in mind when you’re hiring your people. And we always look at those when we help our clients.
Speaker 1
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00:14:36:20 – 00:18:48:16
Speaker 1
And as a special thank you for being a podcast listener, use Code podcast to get 20% off. Click the link in the show notes to sign up today.
Speaker 2
Now, can you walk us? Maybe just give us 2 or 3 things that you really want to make sure that every training should have? When you’re training one of your staff members, especially your phone people.
Speaker 3
Yeah, definitely. So we definitely want to make sure that we have scripts ready for our directors of first impressions, and it doesn’t mean that they have to follow it. You know, where by word, but just know that they have an idea and a structure to to their call and an idea of what needs to be covered from the beginning.
Speaker 3
The middle of that interaction, and then all the way until the the end of the conversation. So that’s that’s a must in especially at the beginning when they’re trying to learn and the questions that they get asked and the type of information that they have to provide, that’s essential. We also want to show them, and sometimes we do it by listening to some of the, the directors of First Impressions, their their phone calls and how they respond to them.
Speaker 3
We get the approval from the provider, from the owner of the practice, and we listen to some of those calls with them so they can listen to themselves and see areas that they’re doing really good with. You know, they’re they excel at them, maybe because they already have the personality. But then there’s also other areas where they could be some need for improvement.
Speaker 3
And how could we do that? And sometimes it’s just as simple as adding some pleasantries. Thank you. And may I please get your name? You know, so different things like that. And that way they will learn how to improve their response to some of these goals and what to keep doing and what to kind of like, improve.
Speaker 1
Christian, what are the two words that I hate to hear from a staff member?
Speaker 2
No problem.
Speaker 1
What should you say?
Speaker 3
My pleasure. It’s my pleasure.
Speaker 1
To think about how my how wonderful that sounds. And I know that it’s not meant with malice. When somebody you ask them something and you say thank you and they say, oh, no problem. I know they don’t mean it. That’s what they mean is it’s not a problem. You know, it was no problem. But it doesn’t sound right.
Speaker 1
And that’s why we trained everybody to say it was my pleasure. It makes people feel better. Ana how is it. And this always strikes a hot iron with me. How is it that patient will call the office and knows everything about the procedure? Because they’ve seen it and they read it on the website? Because don’t be fooled for one minute that a new patient hasn’t viewed your website before they call you.
Speaker 1
All right. Even people calling us have already viewed our website. How is it that we’ll put not us, but a client. We’ll put somebody that warm body at the front desk, never, ever looked at the website. And now a patient calls or a prospective patient has already viewed the website and knows more about the practice than the person at the front desk.
Speaker 1
But how can we solve that problem? Yeah.
Speaker 3
I mean, that’s a great point. And obviously that happens because they didn’t get the training that was needed. So how can we solve that? Just making sure that the new hires, they’re able to lay with read the same information on the website. They’re also able to talk to the practice manager or whoever is helping with the training and just kind of like go over especially the most popular procedures that people call about that they have questions about those making sure that everything was explained to the new director of first Impressions, that they know what the procedure is about, and so that if they have any questions, they could be answered by the practice administrator or
Speaker 3
whoever is that is training the director of first impressions. So making sure that they do get the opportunity to learn about the treatments, about the procedures, because that’s their job. Their job is very much like answering the calls and the questions that the either existing patients or future patients they will have. And so just kind of like helping them understand what the procedures will do for them and how would they benefit the patients. be able to recruit, interview, hire and train. Those are the four of the six steps of hiring.
00:18:48:16 – 00:25:41:02
Speaker 1
But Ana that takes so long to train. I can’t afford that. Then what? You know, my favorite answer is you can’t afford not to.
Speaker 3
Exactly. You just can’t afford not to. And if you have to prioritize, many times we recommend prioritizing. These are the most profitable procedures that the practice provides. And so those are the ones that we have to prioritize for the director. First impressions to kind of like learn about those or even if they don’t know the answer to that, you know, during that moment they could say, I’m not really sure, but I’m going to get you in contact with someone that has all of the details and all of the information.
Speaker 3
Our nurse is here with me, and let me just transfer you. Could you please hold a second? In her name is Rose and Rose will be explaining to you the benefits of that specific procedure. And then in this way, the patient feels that even though the director of First Impressions wasn’t able to answer the call, she was still helpful.
Speaker 3
He was still helpful because they can. She or he connected them to the right provider, the right person. That could help them with that question.
Speaker 1
Perfect. But what we really need to know in our training is that the non medical license of any type of provider license, whether it’s an R.N. and LVN, Pas and NP, anybody that person should never give medical advice on the phone. They can share an opinion of how their procedure went, but they’re never to share what type of anesthesia the doctor is going to give and how the treatment is going to be given.
Speaker 1
That’s up to the provider to share, because now you’re giving medical advice, which is not legal for a non licensed professional, correct?
Speaker 2
Well, I love that from both of you. So let me kind of switch gears a little bit here because of course we just talked about training and to kind of summarize what was said. Yes, we talked about scripts. We talked about the importance of customer service. We talked about making sure that they know your website, making sure that they are basically fully trained and understand the extent of what they are allowed to say and what they are not allowed to say in the medical advice portion that you were talking about.
Speaker 2
Okay, now let’s talk a little bit about hiring because you have to hire slowly and fire quickly. However, what does hiring slowly mean? What should you be doing to ensure that you’re hiring the right person, especially for from this, for your director of First impressions.
Speaker 1
I find that to be for any position and I mean literally any position, and I’m going to share a horror story without mentioning the name of a practice or where it was or what specialty it is. When I say hire slowly, what I mean is when you hire quickly, you’re always going to be taking the heat. All right?
Speaker 1
When you hire a warm body just to fill the need. And other words, we’ll use the director of first impressions because that’s where we spot we’ve spoken about. And let’s just say somebody is gracious enough. If they’re gracious enough to give us a two week notice, most of the time they just don’t show up. But if they’re gracious enough to give us two weeks, it is not virtually impossible.
Speaker 1
It is impossible to peat that it is impossible to be able to recruit, interview, hire, and train an employee in two weeks. So what is I happening? If you’re able to even find a resumé all right, that fits your qualifications and you’re able to interview them and hire them.
Speaker 1
And if you have a drug testing policy for the post offer and they pass the drug test or whatever, it’s impossible to train them in two weeks. Now, many times if we’re lucky, if we’re lucky, we can get somebody within the same field, then they’ll at least know something about it. But what I mean by the training is that you shouldn’t be.
Speaker 1
It’s part of your onboarding, and you shouldn’t be putting the warm body on the phone because they’re going to be answering the wrong questions. Or if they’re in a they shouldn’t be mixing Botox. Even though you’ve trained somebody, somebody has a fight with their spouse. They come in in the morning, their heads, not paying attention. All of the things, these things, if it’s in a practice and it creates an anaphylactic reaction, if you’re in an OR and you mix something improperly, you can severely damage, hurt or possibly even kill a patient.
Speaker 1
And you’ve just got to be careful, because I can’t tell you how many times people aren’t trained, right. Even in a dermatology practice, when a doctor asks to to dilute a certain medication to a certain percentage and the Ma doesn’t know how to do it, why? Because they weren’t trained properly how to do it. So it’s up to us whether we have cheat cards that show that or it’s checked.
Speaker 1
All right. And if nobody checks it, you’re going to be giving somebody a medication, even if it’s like a Botox or a dysport or, you know, any of the other neurotoxins, you got to be very careful because you’ll be giving somebody either an under dose or a higher dose than you really want it to give them, and you’ll be giving them too much.
Speaker 1
It isn’t going to kill them. First of all, it’s a cost center, and you’re going to be giving them more than they paid for. But it can hurt them, all right. And if it’s improperly injected, you’re really going to have a problem.
Speaker 2
Right. And it’s very interesting what you’re saying Jay because it does happen. And sometimes you hire slow. You get the best person that you can get. You trained them the best that you can train them. And mistakes still happen. And now we get these horrible, angry reviews where the patient is now telling you how unhappy they are, and now they’re getting all this attention from your other patients, and then people start sharing it on social media and it becomes this big issue.
Speaker 2
What what do you think is, yes, something that you always say is that you teach not only what to do, but what do you do when something goes wrong. And that’s what I want our audience to know right now. What do you do when something goes wrong? Because most of the time, at some point in your career, it’s going to happen.
Speaker 2
Something is going to go wrong. A staff member is going to make a mistake. A front staff member is going to say the wrong thing, or they’re going to get medical advice. A nurse is going to check on properly. You know, you might overdose a patient if it happens. What do we do now to remedy the situation? Because now we have these horrible bad reviews.
00:25:41:04 – 00:35:25:15
Speaker 1
So now we have to have not only a protocol on what to do, right, but we need to have a protocol on how to remediate something. When something goes wrong. You’re right, Christian, I always say when I teach, I teach students either at the university or I teach students at conferences what to do when what you’ve been taught didn’t work.
Speaker 1
Because there’s five ways to get the five, four plus one, three plus two, ten divided by two. You can go on and on and on. It’s still going to get the same answer. One may take you longer, one may take you shorter. But if you make one step along the way, you’re not going to get the same result that you want it.
Speaker 1
So what do you do? Do you have VI trace on board? If you did something like that, do you have other medications to remediate your error? All right. It just you got to be very, very careful.
Speaker 2
Ana do you have any advice on what the verbiage should be when you’re responding to bad reviews?
Speaker 3
Yeah. So I know exactly what you’re talking about, Christian. Because we do good. Many of our clients, sometimes they have patients and they do leave these negative reviews. So there’s a couple of things that we could do. First of all, we have to make sure that we’re not naming the patient. Some of our clients have made that mistake in the past before we we started working with them.
Speaker 3
And so obviously that’s a huge no no because patients are protected by HIPPA laws. So that’s a first step, second step. And we have to look into what it is that happened. Because sometimes what the patient says is very different than what actually happened in the practice. Right. And so we kind of have to do a little bit of research, see exactly what happened, and then we can give kind of like an overall response without giving too many details.
Speaker 3
But what we usually recommend is kind of like listing the internal protocols that we have for our practice. So that, whoever is reading that review, whether that is a person who wrote it or any other patients or future patients, they can kind of like, see, what is the protocol, what is that process that we have internally at the practice.
Speaker 3
And then they can decide, you know, to think what it is that they want to think. So basically it’s just letting them know this is what the patient said or this is what this person’s saying. But however this is how we go about doing our process in the practice.
Speaker 1
You know, when we get a bad review, people ask me all the time, what do we do? And Ana mentioned, first of all, you never respond to the review with the patient’s name because you are in violation of that HIPAA for the protected health information. You’re not necessarily responding to the procedure because many times they will have named the procedure, but you don’t.
Speaker 1
The way to answer that basically is apologize. You know that we’re sorry that you feel this way. At our practice, we intend to treat each patient with the most safe and efficacious treatments that we can. And then if you would please call the office and allow us to try to remedy the situation. Now, I many times have offered some type, whether it’s a treatment for free to remediate that.
Speaker 1
But I will do that. And you know, I’ll never put it in writing, but I will ask a patient, to take the review down. You never want to get caught in what they call a quid pro quo. And quid pro quo means I will do this. If you do that. Also, you don’t ever want it to be misconstrued that a patient says I will write this review if you don’t give me my money back, all right, because that’s really extortion.
Speaker 1
All right. Now, we don’t really want to take it that far. We really wanted to go away. All right. Yes, the answer is I will always ask somebody to take a review down, but I won’t make it a quid pro quo. I will ask as a courtesy. Would you mind doing this? I’m more than happy to help you.
Speaker 1
And if most of the time, if you offer a remediation to a patient and then ask them to take the review down, which isn’t a mandate, if I give you this treatment, you have to. That’s the violation right there. Most of the time, people will. Otherwise some people may not want you to retreat them, at which point they’re going to make bad review and then they’re going to want their money back.
Speaker 1
So that brings us to one another point bad reviews, unhappy patient. Let’s talk about I want my money back. So there’s two types of I want my money back. The first type is and I know ladies and gentlemen who are listening, you may have refund policies where it states you don’t offer a refund for XYZ. For whatever that reason is.
Speaker 1
Please let me reassure you that I can’t count the amount of times that a client wants to refuse to give the money back for a treatment that wasn’t done yet, or even a treatment was done yet, and yet they would gladly pay that amount of money, which would have been the refund to get a review removed. And I always say, then why are you being so stubborn in not wanting to offer a refund?
Speaker 1
But if you would come to me and say, man, I’d gladly pay that kind of money to get that review removed because nobody likes a one star review. All right, now folks, let me assure you, don’t ever give money back as a refund for a treatment already done that the patient was unhappy with. Without a release. Now, is it ever okay to give money back?
Speaker 1
The answer is without a release the answer is yes. If the treatment has not been performed because then it’s unearned revenue that you’ve gotten. And it’s not like they can ever sue you for a bad treatment. Okay. You paid me. You didn’t get the treatment. We’ll refund your money and then it’s even. However, if you give money back for a treatment that was already performed, that never precludes the fact that a patient can’t sue you or post a bad review, all right, because they have to sign that release, the release that we assist with clearly states that this is not an admission of guilt, but merely an agreement between the parties.
Speaker 1
It is a compromise between the parties without an admission of guilt, and we ask that we will gladly refund the money. However, with the refund, you may not speak about the practice negatively, orally, written or electronically. All right. And once that release is signed and notarized, then I’m more than happy to give the refund. Now I want to share that there are some errors and mistakes the practice is make.
Speaker 1
And let’s just say I’ll use Allen getting dermo for a second because they have reward points. All right. And when you go to get a treatment, the patient I mean let’s just say the treatment was $900 and they have $100 or $200 in reward points. And now they have to pay $700. And the treatment went bad. All right.
Speaker 1
Now they want their money back. Many practices will say, well, they only pay me 700. The problem is you can’t refund the reward points and the reward points were paid to you, all right? Either in a product or you may have gotten it, you know, ACH to your bag from the vendor. Therefore, when it comes time for a refund, you really owe the patient the $900 because they used $200 of their points.
Speaker 1
They earned those points. So you were remunerated $900 even though they paid you 700 or 600, whatever the rewards were, because you got the balance paid by the Allergan gal dermo, whomever was offered the reward points. So please don’t be shortsighted. If you were paid with nonrefundable monies, then you owe the patient back the full amount. Ladies and gentlemen, I promise you, you would gladly pay the 500 600 and $900 to get the review removed, because the only way to get a bad review pushed down is to get a lot more positive reviews.
Speaker 1
So don’t freak out about a bad review is to start freaking out about many bad reviews because it tells us something. And when it happens over and over and over again, our team looks into this and say, you know what? There’s a pattern going on here. Maybe there’s a common denominator, maybe it’s you.
Speaker 2
Wow, that was amazing, Jay and for those of you listening, I will rewatch that and maybe write down some of that verbiage that you used for how to respond to the review, some of the protocols that you should have in place, such as the release, when you’re going to get the money back. These are things that many practices sometimes don’t know or they just don’t do, and they end up getting in trouble.
Speaker 2
So be very careful with how you handle your negative reviews 100%. So guys, this has been quite the conversation we talked about. You know, your phone people, directors of first impressions and how you should train then that you should be careful when you’re hiring them and make sure that they have the right experience. And we talked about the reviews and everything.
Speaker 2
Are there any final thoughts that you want to share with the audience?
00:35:25:18 – 00:40:52:01
Speaker 1
Yeah, I know Ana is as our director of Client development, Ana really handles the HR portion. You know, she is taking that on this or willing to manage that. And supervisor actually even does a lot of it herself. All right. But I want to you know Ana we hear from every practice. And I always say this our number one resource is our human resource.
Speaker 1
And our number one nightmare is our human nightmare is our human resource. What is the number one common denominator that you find that’s negative in the entire recruitment process from recruitment posting to actually interviewing?
Speaker 2
It’s a great question.
Speaker 3
Well, what I find is that many times our provider is they don’t have the time to look for the, the, you know, the new candidate. And so they don’t allocate the necessary time to do that. And sometimes I just I try to do it themselves. And that’s a really bad idea because of what I, what I just said, they just don’t have the time.
Speaker 3
So when they come to work with us, we explain to them it is a process. This isn’t going to happen over time. So I would define, say, a time allocation in kind of like false expectations of thinking that finding the right person for this new position that they have or just to, you know, replace the person that left.
Speaker 3
It’s going to happen quickly because as we said earlier on in this conversation, in two weeks, it’s not even enough. You know, it’s not enough. Usually when someone leaves, they would give them two weeks. If they do give the two weeks, because many times they don’t. And then two weeks is just like we would just be barely studied the process, and we have to take our time to make sure that we’re hiring the right person with the right experience, the right qualifications, and most importantly, many times the right personality, the right attitude.
Speaker 3
So I would say the common denominator is not realizing that it’s a process. It takes time. And you do have to be selective. You cannot just say, hire anyone that comes across or that could just, you know, locks in their hand at the door because that’s that doesn’t mean that that’s the right person. You know, you have to take your time.
Speaker 3
You have to speak with them, do the interviews, follow up, check references. That’s a big one. That’s a big step that many people just like skip. Many of our, practices, our providers are like, no, no, it’s okay. You know that they’re fine. I mean, I know we are gonna be calling the references. We’re going to make sure that whoever they work for before, what is that they have to say about them?
Speaker 3
Would they recommend them? Are there any red flags? You know, so taking the time to go through the process to make sure that you’re going to end up with the best possible candidate?
Speaker 1
And you mentioned references Ana I have a habit never to call the reference, the personal references that people give me. All right. And I laugh when prospective clients that we’re having. We have an interview this afternoon with a prospective new client as well, and I laugh when I have this and they say to me, can you give me some references that you work with?
Speaker 1
And I laugh and I say, of course I said, but do you think I’ll give you a reference of a bad plant? All right. So and of course everybody laughs but they still want the references. My question, you know, is my comment. I don’t accept the personal reference. I want to speak to the actual person that this candidate worked for, not their friend at the practice.
Speaker 1
All right. And the number one question that I ask, what do you think the number one question that I ask is who?
Speaker 3
You rehire them.
Speaker 1
Bingo. Would you rehire them again? Or when you call and you get a reference and they say, yeah, they worked here. Yeah, they worked here. Why? Because it’s a litigious society and people are afraid to say something out of fear that they’ll be sued.
Speaker 2
But hey, if someone says that in that scene a lot, we just that phrase.
Speaker 1
But they’re saying a lot without saying anything.
Speaker 3
In my experience, when you do call for those references, if that person did a great job, it’s really good job, where they used to be. And you barely have to ask the question because the person will tell you. They will tell you what responsible they were and how much they missed them. So just keep that in mind that if you’re calling the references and they don’t say much, and that’s kind of like a red flag, right?
Speaker 2
So in conclusion, hire slow. You cannot afford not to train your people. You have to have protocols on what to do when things go wrong. You have to spend the time and resources to make sure that you hire the right person.
Speaker 1
In closing, I’ll give you the old Steve Jobs line. I didn’t make this line up. Steve Jobs always said, what if we invest in our team and our individuals and spend all this money and they leave? And the other side of the coin was, what if we don’t spend any money training and they stay? I didn’t make that up, ladies and gentlemen, but I want you to think about it.
Speaker 1
I am very big on training. I always trained my staff. I continue to teach and train our staff here. We love to teach. We love to train. Education and knowledge is power. Please don’t let it scare you.
00:40:52:04 – 00:42:35:22
Speaker 2
Absolutely. Ana any closing words?
Speaker 3
I do want to say one last thing. Just kind of like keeping in mind the whole patient journey, the patient experience. If we really think about everything that we have discussed here today, it just comes down to that the training, the right hiring. I respond to patients that sometimes they they don’t feel satisfied with the care that they got or they had some type of complaint.
Speaker 3
Just because we go to a medical practice, it doesn’t mean that it has to be like dry or unprofessional. If anything, it should be the opposite, because people who go for medical care, you know, they want to make sure that they feel better, that they look better. And so we all take a part into that whole experience. So just keeping that in mind, whether you are the director of First Impressions, the provider or the practice administrator, we all play a critical role in these people’s lives, and it’s actually a very important part of their lives, which is their health and their wellness and how they feel about themselves.
Speaker 3
So just keeping that in mind that we’re all humans and that we all deserve like a good experience, whether that is at a medical practice or like a hotel, whatever it may be, but especially in the healthcare services industry.
Speaker 2
I love that. I love that every patient matters, right? They are not just a number. And I know that we also want to make money, but never lose sight of the fact that a patient is still a human being and is the top priority in your practice, right? Everyone with that. This is the end of this episode of Shorr Solutions, a podcast.
Speaker 2
Thank you Jay, and thank you for being a guest this time around. It’s been a pleasure to have you both, and thank you to our audience for listening and we will see you next time. Good luck and God bless to everyone.
00:42:36:00 – 00:43:14:05
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
If you’re ready to take your practice to the next level, schedule a free consult with our team today. Thank you for joining us on Shaw Solutions, the podcast.
