Many chiropractic practices operate in an ad hoc manner. It is a “Do as I say not as I do” environment where everyone makes it up as they go. There is no overall purpose and no purpose broken down to every action. There are few if any written policies, procedures and scripts and the people who work there and worse still, the people who are serviced there just go with the flow and go by their own rules. Practice members come and go as does the staffs. This equates to high stress and huge lost opportunity not to mention the destructive effects it has on the practice members lives due to incomplete or improper care.
People leave practices because of perceived indifference and it is a lack of absolute standards that drives this.
Edwards Deming suggested that breakdowns and problems in small businesses are due to the worker 15% of the time and the system 85% of the time. This would hold true in my experience in chiropractic practices. Of course the blame is all too often laid on the worker (the CA) rather than an admission that the system is either non-existent or faulty.
Without systems and procedures people make up their own and this results in attention units going away from their sole purpose for being, that is servicing the person they are with.
Procedures give an unconscious competent component and contrary to many people’s belief it frees people up to be more spontaneous and be present to connect with the people they are serving
Your Office Policy Manual is the storehouse for your practice’s absolute standards, your document of excellence so this week go through your Office Policy Manual and make sure that you have the absolute standards totally encapsulated within those pages. If you have a ‘dogs breakfast’ or worse still a non existent OPM and you wan to really nail it then get the ‘Office Policy Manual Template’ (Link to the OPM Template on the QCC Website) and you will save yourself countless hours in getting this critical piece of office equipment sorted.
Remember, excellence happens in an environment of absolute standards.
