How many of your employees feel like they have clear, structured goals and expectations? By evaluating roles, management can learn a lot about the functionality of the organization. Meet with each department manager/leader to learn more about their impression of how well they are doing and their understanding of expectations. Further, have the department leader meet with each team member to determine what they do, how well they do it and how they can set concrete goals together for improved efficiency and productivity. Meeting regularly once objectives are set will help maintain momentum and make the changes needed to produce the desired results. It is clear that employees want to feel deserving of management time, earn credit and achieve a sense of worth/pride. A staff member who feels valued can be more easily motivated to improve performance. Let’s examine a few specific examples of companies that use staff to help set goals. Billers and goals—In one company, the billers/collectors were able to work only 8-10 accounts per day, and believed they could not get more done. They had no real structure or guideline and the expectation was to simply collect the money. By working with them individually to see what it actually took to get the job done, management was able to make them understand the importance of increasing the number of accounts worked per day. They eventually helped set their own standards of performance such as working 30 accounts, minimum, per day. Today, this same group is working a minimum of 50-60 accounts per day and some collectors are actually working up to 100 accounts per day. Shaving CPAP setup time—Another example is in the area of CPAP setup times. In one CPAP company, they took too long to set up each CPAP patient on the initial visit. Paperwork took 15 minutes and then an hour for the patient to grasp proper use of the device and its cleaning/maintenance. They felt pressure to perform and get to the next scheduled patient but they found themselves falling behind as the day progressed. The CPAP team looked at different ways to reduce the CPAP setup time, and the use of a video approach was suggested. This company created an educational video on CPAP setup for the patient to view prior to their appointment. It was either emailed or the patient opened it from their website (and possibly added a few other items to their basket). If this didn’t work, the patients were asked to come in for their appointment 15 minutes early and watched the video prior to meeting with their respiratory therapist. This proved so successful that they were able to shave 10-15 minutes off of every CPAP setup. Further, intake documents were added to the website, and if the patient preferred, they sent the forms via email. Finally, as the patient began to gain familiarity with the website, they started using the online bill pay portal which helped improve collections. Altogether, use of their website and email helped improve setup time, compliance and overall patient satisfaction. Add-on sales—In this final example, an HME company was looking for any alternative to third-party payer reliance, and looked to increase cash sale revenue. They examined their disease states and product mix and determined that they had complementary, non-covered sale opportunities that they were missing. They created an add-on sales sheet for each of their major products that showed which complementary items fit naturally with either a product or a diagnosis. By adding sheets and gowns to the hospital bed patient and other similar examples, this meant an immediate 20 percent increase in cash sales. Some of the biggest increases in revenue included selling pillows to CPAP patients and accessories to 4-wheeled walker patients. Their next step is to add these suggested items to their software prompts when someone orders these items. They will also track sales for other complementary items. Finally, they are now offering staff incentives for increased productivity and motivation. There are varied ways to improve bottom line performance. It takes sound leadership, problem solving skills and motivation from valued employees.
