Before you begin holding huddles, determine your purpose. Is your goal a review of the daily schedule to identify and thwart potential problems? Is the focus on how to maintain a calm atmosphere and deliver quality service and care, no matter how chaotic things get during the day? Is the objective to inspire and motivate staff? Or is your huddle intended to be an opportunity for team members to connect and determine how they can support one another throughout the day?

The purpose of your huddle will drive the agenda. For example, if the focus is on keeping patients and staff moving efficiently, then the main item for discussion each morning would be a review of the appointment schedule, looking for gaps and potential bottlenecks and assigning someone to make needed adjustments.

If your goal is to provide support and motivation, use the morning huddle to acknowledge staff members who went out of their way to support a co-worker or patient the day prior, share positive feedback received from patients and report on small successes. Something as simple as, “We were all out of here and on our way home at 5:15 yesterday,” or, “Mr. Gomez had tears in his eyes yesterday because he so appreciated how Carol took care of him,” can work wonders for staff morale. If your team doesn’t think it’s too hokey, take turns bringing in motivational quotes to read during each huddle.

On the logistics side, the morning huddle should be short (no more than 10 minutes) and it should be held in the same place each morning, and start on time. If your huddle is scheduled for 7:50 a.m. in the break room, starting at 7:52 and arbitrarily moving the gathering around for the convenience of one or two individuals will result in the process being taken less than seriously.

Keep in mind that the huddle is not the proper venue to discuss conflicts among staff, why collections are down, how to convince Dr. Smyth to get to the office on time, or solve other major practice problems. The huddle does not take the place of regular staff meetings or meetings between the practice administrator and managing partners.

And, finally, here’s a twist on the morning huddle: It doesn’t have to be held at the start of the day. Some practices find that huddling mid-day to regroup is even more effective than a morning meeting. Another option is to hold both a morning huddle and also a quick mid-day check in to get everyone on the same page and work out any kinks that may have emerged during the first half of the day.

If you think you don’t have time for a morning huddle, consider the possibility that investing 10 minutes a day has the potential to improve efficiency and effectiveness and provide a return on investment that far exceeds the cost of those few minutes.

Make your practice accessible.  If patients consistently have to wait days to be seen for an acute problem or weeks (if not months) to get on the schedule for a non-emergent issue, you are at risk of losing patients to a practice that has openings within a more reasonable time frame. We live in a world of instant everything. Even though, most likely, no harm will come from a patient waiting a couple of weeks to have a suspiciouslooking mole checked out, if you’re that patient and anxious about the mole, every day of waiting matters. Take a look at your scheduling procedures with an eye toward getting patients in sooner rather than later. If it’s genuinely impossible to streamline your scheduling, it might be time to consider recruiting another associate into the practice.

Assume patients are smart.  One of the most common complaints that patients have about their doctors has nothing to do with the quality of care they receive. Instead, it’s that they feel like doctors (and sometimes nurses and other staff) are condescending or “talk down” to them. Patients today are savvy. Before they pick up the phone to make an appointment, it’s likely that they’ve carefully researched their symptoms on the Internet (which, granted, is a double-edged sword) and they show up armed with information and pointed, well thought out questions. Pity the practitioner who doesn’t take his or her patients seriously. Not only are they at risk of losing patients to competitors, but they might also find themselves with one star on the “rate your doctor” Web sites or, worse, being Tweeted about (and not in a good way).

Don’t make them wait.  Yes, we know, it’s an old, tired line: Patients don’t like to be kept waiting. It’s such an old line that it’s rather interesting that “how to shorten wait times” remains such a popular topic in practice management circles. It’s still the talk of the town because the problem persists. In the same way that patients don’t want to be kept waiting to get on the schedule, they don’t want to be kept waiting once they’re in the office. If your practice–despite all of the information, tips, tricks, and ideas that are out there on how to be more timely–is still struggling with this issue, consider hiring a practice management consultant to come in and see where your bottlenecks are and how to correct them. The investment you make in an expert to help you solve the age-old wait time problem will pay dividends in the form of patient retention.

Is your practice ready to get serious about wellness? If so, re-read the post linked above, poll staff about which health and fitness goals they’re most interested in, determine a start date for your program, and then make it stick throughout 2012 by following these guidelines.

Encourage office-wide participation. Hopefully, not everyone in your office needs to lose weight, stop smoking, and reduce their cholesterol numbers, but it’s likely that everyone in your office could benefit from improving their health and fitness in at least one area. Your wellness program will be more sustainable over time if the majority of your staff participates. It is especially helpful for practice administrators, department managers, and, yes–even doctors–to take the lead and set a good example by choosing at least one aspect of the wellness program to engage in.

Set up incentive programs that include both short-term and long-term rewards. If six of your employees declare weight loss as their goal, arrange for rewards to be given throughout the year. You might offer cash bonuses (e.g., $5-10 per pound lost) divided equally among the six employees based on their collective weight loss each month, paid hours off calculated at the end of each quarter for each individual’s weight loss, and one big celebration or group outing at the end of the year if weight loss goals are achieved.

Hire a professional. Visit the International Coach Federation’s Web site to find an experienced wellness coach in your area who can work with your staff as a whole, in small groups, or even one-on-one. Having an objective professional on your wellness program team will increase accountability and the odds that employees will be successful in achieving their goals.

Go public. If employees agree–and only if they all agree–consider going public with your program as a way to draw attention to the fact that your practice is serious about health and wellness. Doing so sets a good example for patients and builds in accountability for staff. The way you go about making it known to those outside your immediate circle will depend on how open everyone is willing to be about their goals and progress. You might put up a small poster in the office with photos of staff along with quotes by each of them about why they’re serious about health and fitness or what they hope to achieve. You could post updates on your practice Web site or in your patient newsletter. If you really want to tell the world what you’re up to, notify the local media about doing a story on your wellness program.

Good luck making 2012 the year that you and your staff achieve your most important health and fitness goals.

Depending on the depth of clutter you have around your office, decide if it’s worthwhile to declare a “de-cluttering day” when everyone comes in to work exclusively on dealing with the mess, or if it makes more sense to direct each staff member to spend a set amount of time (maybe 20-30 minutes a day) to purge and organize their work areas over the course of a few weeks or a month. Take “before and after” pictures, just for fun.

Train staff to use the “touch it once” system. This means that mail, reports, files and documents should, ideally, be dealt with only once. Picking up the same item again and again before deciding to take action on it, file it or toss it creates unnecessary clutter, and it wastes time to boot.

It’s likely that your office is using an electronic medical record system, but what about all of that other paper that continues to mount up? Set a goal for 2012 to implement systems that will reduce the amount of printing and copying you do in your office. So often, hitting “print” is habitual. Encourage staff to consider saving a document to a computer folder instead of printing a hard copy .

Ask to be taken off the lists of companies that send catalogs you no longer use, magazines that no one reads and junk mail. Visit catalogchoice.org, 41pounds.org, or click here for information from the Federal Trade Commission.

Engage in cord control at each workstation in the office by bundling computer and phone cables with Velcro and, if possible, getting them up off the floor where they tend to collect dust. Go wireless wherever you can.

Once you’ve conquered office clutter, make it easy for your staff to keep their work stations tidy by providing enough trash and recycling bins, and making sure the receptacles are in convenient locations around the office.

Certain staff members may resist office de-cluttering efforts, claiming that they work better with everything imaginable strewn around their work area. In cases like this, you’ll need to reach a compromise because, it’s true that some people do prefer to have essential items in view than in a file drawer or desk-top organizer. Create and enforce rules about what an acceptable maximum level of clutter is for the office (i.e., a stack of files awaiting signatures is fine, but a week’s worth of empty coffee cups is not).

If your practice has become a genuine disaster area due to years and years of ignoring clutter and allowing disorganization to reign supreme, consider hiring a professional who specializes in office environments. Check out the National Association of Professional Organizers to find a reputable organizer.

Consider these questions as you think about what your 2012 BHAG should be:

• What one goal, if achieved, would have the greatest impact on the greatest number of people?
• What have we been putting off because it has felt too huge or overwhelming, but really does need to be done?
• What goal, if achieved, would set our practice apart from our competitors in the most positive way?
• What would we do as a team if we knew we would not fail?

Spend some time with your entire staff on these questions to determine what deserves your time and attention next year. Having everyone involved early in the process will bump up the odds that you’ll achieve your major goal.

Once you’ve decided on your goal, break it into smaller steps, and map out a timeline. For example, if your BHAG is to never have a patient wait (either in the reception room or in an exam room) for more than 10 minutes, your first step might be to thoroughly evaluate where the bottlenecks are now that hinder patient flow. Perhaps you decide that you’ll conduct a study over a two-week period in January. What you learn through that process would then dictate your next steps.

Let’s say your BHAG is to move to a newer, larger office by year-end. Your first steps might include coming up with criteria for the ideal new space (by January 31), interviewing real estate agents (during February), and beginning the process of purging files and storage closets in preparation for moving (March and April). Having a clear plan with dates attached makes a big goal feel more doable.

Set up a system to ensure that everyone involved in the BHAG process is held accountable to contribute to the process. That might mean weekly or monthly meetings to discuss the goal and how it’s moving along, or it could be a chart on the wall in the break room that outlines the plan and to-date progress. Consider building in incentives along the way to keep your team motivated. For example, if the goal is to decrease A/R by a certain amount each quarter, have lunch catered for the staff each time a milestone is achieved.

Getting started on a BHAG can feel a bit daunting. But remember the old saying–nothing ventured, nothing gained. Or, as businessman Charles M. Schwab once said, “The difference between getting somewhere and nowhere is the courage to make an early start.” How about starting this January?

Those who have already bought the posters  are in 100% compliance with the posting requirement.   This new posting is still expected to go into effect … just at a later date than expected.

Posters ordered at this time are in compliance with the requirement that nearly all private-sector employers  notify employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by posting a notice.