Growth can be viewed as an important factor for any podiatry practice. More clients, referrals, and appointments mean that you are probably doing something right. However, growth often reveals deficiencies that have not previously been apparent, making operational support increasingly important as the practice expands.
What used to work at your front desk just fine when you had two providers will most likely fall apart once you add the third. The number of phone calls becomes too much to manage. Insurance verification takes more time than ever before. Your providers are dealing with operational questions rather than helping your clients.
And so most podiatry practices do the same thing. They simply bring on more staff members. That may be the correct action sometimes. However, staffing will not always solve the problems that arise with growth. Most of the time, the solution is to provide operational support, not extra staff.
Realities of Growing a Podiatry Practice
People usually associate growing their practice with statistics: the number of patients, income, referral sources, new locations, etc. Less talked about is the burden associated with such a process.
With the growth, all procedures get affected as well. Things, which used to be completed quickly, now take a lot more time because there is more work involved: there is more scheduling to be done, more insurance plans to verify, more authorizations to get, and more communication to maintain.
Consequently, minor inefficiencies become regular annoyances. It starts with practice managers, then spreads to the front desk, and finally involves providers themselves. This means that to grow your podiatry practice successfully, you need more than just hiring more people.
Why Staffing Alone Cannot Replace Operational Support
Increasing the headcount is usually the go-to move for practices that feel overwhelmed. It seems to make sense. If the problem is an overwhelmed team, adding another worker will help relieve the burden.
In some cases, it will work. In other cases, the same practice may run into the same problems a few months down the road but with even more people involved.
Why?
Because new employees join the same culture and workflow that was causing issues before.
Inconsistent scheduling processes? Adding another person will not change much in many cases.
Poor insurance verification process management? Bringing in yet another person may only compound the chaos on the inside.
Continuous interruptions in communication due to exceptions and questions? This can create an even bigger headache for the practice by increasing coordination needs.
Sometimes, the problem is not about volume; it is about organization.
Staffing Solves Capacity Problems. Operations Solve Process Problems
Both staffing and operations play significant roles in a podiatry practice, although they have different purposes.
While staffing boosts capacity, meaning that a practice will have additional people to perform tasks, operational support deals with how these tasks should be done, followed, and improved.
Consider a crowded front desk. Adding an additional team member who could answer calls and make appointments would be a way to increase capacity. However, if there were any inconsistencies related to confirming appointments, referral processes, or call routing depending on the person picking up a phone, then these problems would remain unresolved.
This is where operational support comes into play, providing the necessary consistency. Only this way, growth becomes sustainable.
Operational Challenges Faced by Growing Clinics
While each clinic is unique, growing podiatry clinics have challenges that are relatively common.
Administration of Front Office Activities Becomes Tougher
The front office influences almost all aspects of the visit. Scheduling, scheduling confirmation, intake of new patients, patient referrals, and patient communication pass through the front office.
With increased patient traffic, inefficiencies in procedures will result in:
• Appointment errors
• No-shows
• Communication delays
• Staff and patient frustration
A lack of procedure documentation results in each individual employee coming up with his or her own way of doing things.
Insurance Verification and Prior Authorization Are Bottlenecks
The tasks involving insurance management tend to become more complicated with an increase in the number of patients. Eligibility verification, benefit check, and prior authorizations demand meticulousness and regular follow-up.
If such processes aren’t well-managed by practices, then there will be a high chance of encountering:
• Delays in appointments
• Increased issues in claims processing
• An increased number of patient complaints
• Extra burden on the administrative team
Tasks pile up, but so do errors.
Providers Tend To Solve All Administrative Problems By Default
It is obvious that when providers get involved in solving problems related to administration, there is a strong need for external help.
Questions related to:
• Scheduling
• Workflow organization
• Employee responsibilities
• Patient relations
Although each problem might look minor on its own, their accumulation can result in numerous distractions.
A lot of podiatrists get caught up dealing with management-related issues due to the lack of a proper system for that. This works fine for small companies, but not anymore once they grow.
Training Becomes More Challenging
As organizations grow bigger, remaining consistent becomes harder. New hires require orientation. Existing staff members need directions. Procedures tend to change over time.
Without proper training and supervision, operations usually suffer from:
• Employees doing things their own way
• Mistakes becoming more frequent
• Patients having inconsistent experiences
• Increased amount of time fixing errors
Growth tends to become far easier if everything is done in the same way.
The Reality Behind Operational Support
Operational support is not about adding more levels of management and bureaucracy. Fundamentally, it revolves around ensuring that the organization continues to function consistently.
That may involve:
• Streamlining procedures
• Writing down processes
• Enhancing communication protocols
• Tracking key performance indicators
• Helping trainings happen
• Promoting accountability among all involved parties
Perfection is not necessarily the ultimate goal here. It is all about ensuring that certain systems remain in place regardless of growth.
Sustainable Growth Needs Infrastructure
In medicine, one of the most frequent errors made is thinking that the practice will keep growing as long as there are enough people hired.
Actually, all practices hit a stage when infrastructure matters more than sheer numbers.
The ones that succeed usually possess:
• Good processes in place
• Assigned roles
• Regular training
• Oversight
• Quality control measures
This generates stability. Lack thereof usually makes growth seem messy. People get confused, providers get irritated, and patients notice the difference. Having them makes growth more sustainable.
Why VPP Can Help Your Podiatry Practice Expand
At Virtual Podiatry Partners (VPP), we consider expansion to be not just about staffing, but operations. While supplying skilled virtual assistants is one element of that process, it’s equally about helping the practice develop the infrastructure to take full advantage of them.
This involves such things as:
• Hiring and training podiatry-specific virtual assistants
• Training them for their roles
• Managing their performance
• Ensuring consistency of processes
• Helping maintain your operational standards as you expand
We aren’t about putting more people into your practice. We’re about helping put you in a position to leverage them.
Signs Your Practice May Need Operational Support
Some things to watch for may include:
• Increasing patient numbers, yet inefficiency remains a problem
• Busy staff members but important tasks never seem to get done
• Doctors spend valuable time sorting out operations
• Employee turnover is disrupting your business on a regular basis
• Different processes depend upon which team member performs the job
• Even with additional hires, administrative work piles up
This could be an indicator that what you need is a system.
Concluding Remarks
Growth is an exhilarating experience, but it affects how the business operates. Something that works when the patient numbers are lower might no longer be effective as the numbers increase twofold or even as more professionals are hired.
Adding more hands definitely goes a long way. But there is something more fundamental required for sustainable growth in podiatry practices. This lies in having the correct procedures, training, accountability, and infrastructure in place.
Those clinics which do so well in terms of growth tend to do so because they know this early enough and put in both resources and personnel to ensure it happens.
After all, growth is much more than simply hiring more employees.
