In a busy physician’s life, few thoughts conjure as much dread as wasting time in a pointless meeting where attendees are either aimlessly pontificating or complaining. This type of time-sucking meeting is all too common because the organization’s leader or meeting organizer hasn’t done the hard work necessary to make getting together effective. But it doesn’t have to be this way. With a few strategic adjustments, your meetings can become the backbone of your practice’s efficiency and success.
Ad Hoc versus Recurring Meetings
Most meetings should be recurring, aligned with the periodicity of getting things done. Emergencies aside, a well-structured recurring meeting should have a clear goal with associated milestones. Effective meetings can be as short as 15 or 30 minutes weekly, biweekly, or monthly. By investing time in planning these meetings, you’ll save time in the long run and avoid the chaos of ad hoc gatherings.
Setting Meeting Goals and an Agenda
This is where most meetings fall short. Without a clear agenda, the empty space is filled with a single person rambling while the other attendees barely listen. More time down the drain. Following the SMART goal framework and including KPIs for success will help keep the team focused. Start with the preceding items that require correction or improvement before addressing downstream issues.
Meeting Name: RCM Optimization Meeting
- Goal: To optimize the revenue cycle by removing the root causes of billing errors and systematizing and measuring key performance indicators of the billing process.
- Milestone 1: Remove causes of claim rejection so that the claim rejection rate is <1% by the end of the first quarter.
- Milestone 2: Optimize patient collections in the office, minimize patient statements to reduce patient aging, and ensure that patients understand their payment responsibilities clearly. Have a patient payment rate of >95% at the time of service by the end of the second quarter.
- Milestone 3: Insurance company aging over 90 days represents less than 10% of total aging by the end of the third quarter.
- Agenda short-term
- Optimize the registration process to ensure insurance information and demographics are correctly captured.
- Collect patient’s email and mobile phone number to enable online interactions and registration before the office visit.
- Attain an insurance eligibility check for over 95% of office visits.
Attendees: Practice owner, billing manager and staff, front desk manager.
Length: 15 minutes.
Invitees/Attendees: For the above meeting, the relevant leadership should be regular attendees and then stakeholders involved with doing the work should attend optionally depending upon their involvement with the project.
If this is just a meeting between the physician and office manager, then you are likely speaking and working in a silo. It’s better to invite all stakeholders, have clear and transparent communications, and have accountability at the meeting. That way, there is not a single point of failure with an office manager or billing manager. It also avoids the problems inherent in the game of telephone. You thought you communicated clearly with someone, and yet the simple result was not achieved.
Hold Attendees Accountable for Their Assignments:
Without clear assignments between the last meeting and the next, few will hold themselves accountable for getting the work done. Make sure assignments and follow-ups are clear. As the practice’s revenue engine, the physician’s time is best spent with patients, but involving the right people and setting clear expectations is crucial for success. Be clear about what you want done, how it is to occur, and why it is important.
Length of Meeting and Timing of Meeting:
To prevent interruptions, schedule meetings when physicians and employees are not actively involved in patient care. Waiting for someone to attend to a patient causes the entire group to waste valuable time.
How long do we need to continue this meeting?
The meeting can exist until it has achieved its purpose. If the goal is to systematize and optimize the revenue cycle, then the operational meeting for optimization can be discontinued, and the Key Performance Indicators for success can be followed on a monthly basis. If they remain in the optimized or acceptable range, it can be inferred that your system is running smoothly and your time and attention is better spent elsewhere.
What makes a good meeting?
The idea behind Scrum meetings is that they provide the benefits of regular meetings, without the perceived bureaucracy that often causes knowledge workers to say they dislike meetings. Scrum meetings achieve this by being short and to the point. If you want to embrace some of the beneficial ideas about Scrum meetings in your workplace, consider the following:
- Hold regular, short meetings because they’re usually more productive than longer ones.
- Have a clear agenda for each meeting.
- Set a time limit for each agenda point and stick to it.
- Have the meeting led by someone who’s good at keeping things on track.
- Use visual aids and charts where appropriate.
- Keep discussions aligned with sprint goals and objectives.
- Foster an environment of openness and honesty.
A good framework is encapsulated in Agile methodology. The SCRUM guide provides an operational toolkit for getting things done whether it’s software development or optimizing your medical practice. A more detailed description and explanation of SCRUM can be found in Jeff Sutherland’s book, SCRUM: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time.
What makes a good meeting?
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