What Do Your Practice Results Say About Your Practice Culture?

Recently we’ve looked at the connection between staff and practice growth. This week we’ll look how practice culture impacts your practice including the bottom line.

Regardless of the size of your practice, you have a culture. Cultures are built intentionally or by happenstance and both are determined by a leader’s words and actions. When a leader is intentional with their actions, they build the culture they want and ultimately a stronger practice.

To evaluate your culture, consider the measurables: your bottom line, tardiness, absenteeism, and staff performance.

First, let’s look at the bottom line. Practice teams in strong cultures connect their daily responsibilities to practice results and make on-going efforts to improve outcomes. Employees that are part of an effective culture look for opportunities to impact revenue drivers- from the booking window to enhanced screening of patients. Employees in a strong culture look for ways to improve processes and ultimately results.

Next, let’s consider the effect of employees that are frequently late or call out for their shift. Patterns of tardiness and or absenteeism by even one staff member has a negative impact on the practice as a whole. In a strong culture, employees understand how their actions affect their peers and consider this when making decisions. Thriving cultures provide organic accountability, so negative patterns of behavior including tardiness and absenteeism are minimized and often prevented.

When your staff has clarity of your practice values and goals and understands how their daily responsibilities connect to these, they are more engaged. When your employees are more engaged, they enjoy their work and perform their responsibilities to a higher standard.

Culture is not just a word but a tangible component of your practice that ultimately impacts your patients and the bottom line.

As we end 2021 and move into 2022, it’s a perfect time to consider what you would like your practice culture to be. Start with identifying your values, your practice goals and build processes to support them. And if you’d like support, please contact me at smays@impactpracticeconsultants.com.