RICHARD LERNER IS TRYING to make a point about how distracting it can be for the owner of a relatively small home care business to keep several balls in the air at once. The trouble is, he keeps getting interrupted by employees who need to interact with the boss. "You could listen to the knocks on the door all day and tell my story," jokes Lerner, president of Allcare Medical, Old Bridge, N.J., and Galloping Surgical, Union, N.J.

Since joining the family pharmacy business in 1987, Lerner branched out into home medical equipment, acquired another business and sold off the original drugstore his father opened in 1962. His staff has grown from five employees to 35, and his two retail outlets and a rehab division, which annually pull in combined revenue of $4.5 million, are housed in three separate locations. Growth is good, concedes Lerner, but sometimes it gets in the way of good management.

"When you are a big enough company, you can rely on more levels of management to handle the different aspects of running the business," Lerner says. "We're growing quite rapidly, but we still haven't gotten to the next phase of management. Most of the people who work for me are hands-on. Even the managers I have aren't able to do the best job they can in managing. We feel like we are pulled like yo-yos."

Or perhaps like performers in a juggling act. To streamline the way he runs his businesses, Lerner has put policies in place that, ultimately, could help all employees achieve a measure of independence. Here are some tasks that have been checked off his must-do management list:

* Set up a solid corporate structure: An emphasis on department managers is helping to better organize the business, Lerner says. For instance, the time-intensive rehab division now has a director of rehab who handles all of the retail programs and manages the employees in that area.

* Establish policies and procedures: A policy manual that Lerner wrote walks employees through the steps to ensure payment. For example, when rehab cust omers place orders, they must sign a form verifying they placed it and agree to accept it upon completion. "These are really tiny safeguards that we didn't have before," Lerner says. "But they will help us get paid."

* Make a quality control list: Shop supervisors and sales reps can consult a product checklist Lerner recently put together that should help everyone get it right the first time. "So many times, we've gone out and haven't delivered a manual on the product, and we've had to go back 20 miles," Lerner says.

* Work on training and retention: Even after six months on the job, employees still turn to managers to answer questions at least half the time, Lerner says. That's why it's so important to aving ongoing training-and to work on keeping employees around. Last year, a 401(k) savings plan with a company match was established. Lerner says it is already improving employee retention by 25 percent, because staffers must stay with the company for seven years to be vested.

And on tomorrow's to-do list? Consolidating Allcare Medical and Galloping Hill into one company-once Lerner can find the money, and time, to do it.