The Optometric Minute

Highlights from the Leadership OD Retreat

Feb. 3, 2016

Mike Rothschild, OD, founder of Leadership OD, believes that all practices face similar challenges in engaging and empowering staff to help to deliver outstanding patient care and enhance practice performance. See key learnings from peer-to-peer sharing exercises at the recent Leadership OD Executive Retreat held in San Diego.

 

“At the executive retreat, we’ve been asking everybody, what are the biggest challenges that are facing you in your practice, and the issue of staffing keeps coming up. Staff morale, staff togetherness, staff motivation are some of the issues that we keep talking about over and over again,” says Dr. Rothschild of the retreat, in which participants break into small groups to brainstorm better ways of leading their practices.

“When we really started digging, we found that it has less to do with the staff and more to do with the leadership. Are we creating a vision? Are we setting the proper expectations,” says Dr. Rothschild. “Are we setting up opportunities for our staff to communicate and share their ideas and share objections? That’s where we’re really finding success with these practices is teaching them how to develop the ideas, share the ideas and allow communication. So at this event, we really had a good time organizing, sharing those ideas and making those kinds of things happen.”

Staffing is the heart of practice operations. “The biggest challenge and the biggest reward in my practice is always the staff,” says Kelly MacDonald, OD, of Nashua N.H. “They’re the people who keep us going. They’re the most wonderful part of the practice, and the most challenging part. We’re always focusing on one area or the other, and we grow one area and then have to grow the other, but that’s the nature of working with people, whether it’s the patients or staff. But they are what makes it wonderful and challenging at the same time.”

Peer-to-peer sharing is the key. “Review of Optometric Business has always been a friend of LeadershipOD because of this shared concept of peer-to-peer sharing. So many great ideas from across the country on how we can learn from one another. This conference and ROB working together to share those ideas and collaborate together on accomplishing these issues together. We all have to work together if we’re going to be able to accomplish these giant goals, and we want to remain strong, viable practices,” Dr. Rothschild says.

Technology is the key to delivering compassionate care. “If I’m not on top of what’s going on, if I haven’t the technology in my practice, it’s hard to be compassionate,” Lisa M. Green, OD, Asheville, N.C., notes.

Survey your patients often to keep pulse on practice. “Surveys are something a lot of people use, and I think that’s a great mechanism. In our office, a lot of times through different checkpoints, we have whoever is taking patients from one department to the next ask patients: ‘How that previous step go?’ So, when somebody checks in, our technicians could ask, “How was your check-in experience? How were you welcomed to the office today,'” says Scott Huffer, OD, of Nashua, N.H.

Enhance communication between doctor and opticians. “In the exam room, I am a very relationship-driven doctor, and we talk and we make recommendations, and I’ve found it very difficult to then take it and convey what I spent the last 20 or 30 minutes saying in the exam room in a matter of a few words to my optician who knows nothing about the history of that patient necessarily, and then have them turn it into something of an amazing product that the patient will love. We’ve had some issues with how to improve on that. We have great service, and we do amazing things, but there’s still this communication meltdown,” says Katherine Witmeyer, OD Jessica Gonzalez, Carlsbad, Ca.

“On the front end, I feel that we pride ourselves on great customer service, we want to do well by the patient,” says Dr. Witmeyer’s optician, Jessica Gonzalez. “We happen to be a very cohesive team and enthusiastic bunch, but there’s some translation that’s just a miss and that’s the secret sauce of how to gain that capture rate that our practice is looking for. I feel if we were able to grab a little of what goes on in the exam room, cohesively bring it into the experience in the front, that’s the key, and we struggle with how to do that in a very quick amount of time.”

We’re all the same yet different. “At our executive retreat, there seems to be a recurring theme—we’re all the same, but different,” says Dr. Rothschild. “We have many of the same challenges, and we’re talking about it in the five zones, with our little building blocks that are all unique when we talk about the details and the things we’re trying to accomplish within those, and the strengths and management styles that we have. So, we’re all the same, but different.”

Create a culture of trust. “I was thinking about why one person would take all of my recommendations, and this other person would take none of them. It really comes down to trust. It got me thinking about, would I be more successful if every single person who came into my office trusted me, including my staff? Would that be beneficial? Clearly it’s beneficial when people trust you. They will do what you say or ask of them because most of the things we ask of our patients is in their best interest, and our staff as well,” says Michael Kling, OD, of San Diego, Ca.

Supporting each other to achieve excellence. “Any time I come to a Leadership OD retreat, I leave rejuvenated,” says Dr. Rothschild. “I’m worn out because we’ve worked so hard for several days, but I also feel inspired because I see how many people are working together striving to achieve excellence in their practices.”

Mike Rothschild, OD, is the owner of West Georgia Eye Care in Carrollton, Ga, and the founder of Leadership OD. To contact him: mike@leadershipod.com

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