The current dominant theme you will face as both an employer and health care provider is one of entrenched, unconscious entitlement. Entitlements have been a part of our social and legal landscape for a long time, but this feature has grown and become progressively more crippling and destructive to the normal course of business. Entitlement means a legal claim to receive or to do something, many times relating to money. It’s not the same thing as a right, such as those outlined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, or in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United … [Read more...] about The Sea of Entitlement
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A Culture of Service
All healthy businesses exist for the purpose of providing their customer base with goods and services that are sold at a profit. That much is fairly obvious and self-evident. Past that however, the concept of serving customers in an excellent manner gets murky and muddied. In many markets, including in health care provision, excellent customer service is the delineator between a thriving, high-energy practice and one that suffers from low exposure and utilization. This has little or nothing to do with the technical skills or knowledge basis of the doctor, and everything to do with the … [Read more...] about A Culture of Service
A Culture of Accountability
The dominant culture of America was a direct product of accountability in the post WWII years. President Truman’s famous dictum was “The buck stops here.” This means, in essence, “I am responsible for the decisions I make, my personal conduct and the results of my decisions.” There is no blaming, no finger-pointing and no externalizing of causes in this statement. Think of how rare this has become in current culture, three generations later. Assigning and spreading blame is a national pastime. End results are now thought to be a product of conditions, rather than personal or group actions … [Read more...] about A Culture of Accountability
Electronic Health Records
The transition to Electronic Health Records is already under way, but is messy, confusing and challenging for practicing chiropractors. While EHRs are clearly the wave of the future, we are a long way from a simple, accessible, cost-effective way to get there from here. The state of affairs now is similar to where workflow software was 25-30 years ago, with multiple incompatible operating systems, no standard protocols, no imposed guidelines, overpriced systems, and uncertain future of both hardware and software vendors. The standards and incentive programs are strictly the domain of … [Read more...] about Electronic Health Records