Need to hire a practice manager? Look for the three “Cs”.

If the thought of hiring a practice manager makes you anxious, your reaction is perfectly reasonable. Your practice manager is an incredibly important person in your life. You will not only spend significant amounts of time working with that person, you will trust him or her with the financial underpinnings of your livelihood. It’s smart to recognize the importance of this hire and give the search process the attention it needs.

So, then, how do you go about selecting the right person for the job? One good approach is to look for three “Cs”, chemistry, competence and craftsmanship (managerial craftsmanship that is).

Chemistry

Whether you like it or not, you will spend a lot of time with your practice manager. You will need to help her understand the goals of your practice, the financial structure you are using, how you (and your partners if you have them) need the practice’s operation to support your work and how you would like your patients’ issues (clinical, administrative, financial) to be handled. She needs to “get in sync” with you quickly and effectively so that you can let go of the day to day administration, feeling confident that your practice is operating the way that works for you.

You and your administrator don’t need to be best buddies but you need to like each other and respect each other enough to be stunningly frank about important issues. She may need to tell you that your favorite nurse is not salvageable or that unless you change your work schedule, the money that you expect to have is not going to be there. You need to be able to challenge each other’s thinking and work out solutions while remaining colleagues.

Chemistry is a hard concept to evaluate but here are some ways to get at it when you’re looking for a practice manager:

• Do you like the person? Does she seem like someone you’d be willing to spend time around?
• Talk about values with manager candidates. If your values are in sync, you have a very good start on a relationship of trust and respect.
• Ask her to describe her previous physician employer’s strengths and weaknesses. Are you comfortable with the way she discusses that relationship?

Competence

There’s no point in hiring a practice manager if she’s not competent. Competence can be judged in several ways. Look for someone who has a bachelor’s or master’s degree in healthcare administration. You’ll know that she’s made a commitment to the field and has been trained in the basics. Look for experience in another healthcare setting. A person who has been second in command in a larger or same size practice or manager of a smaller practice often makes a good fit in terms of experience and career move. Look for someone who belongs to a practice management association and/or has earned a practice management credential. (There are several available.) That connection shows that she recognizes the need to keep learning.

Don’t worry about matching your specialty to the person’s experience. While it would be terrific to find someone who worked in an orthopedic practice to run your orthopedic practice, you’re better off selecting someone with the general experience and/or educational background; she will learn the nuances of your specialty quickly because she has the background to do so.

Managerial Craftsmanship

Nothing destroys an office’s productivity faster than personnel problems. If your staff or your partners aren’t happy, you and your patients and your bank balance will suffer. Your practice administrator needs to be deft in handling personnel issues. She must be able to adjust her managerial style to help each person in the practice do the best possible job while demonstrating a consistency and even handedness that allows everyone to feel confident that they are in a stable and fair working environment.

This skill is also difficult to “test for” in an interview process. However, one way to learn about managerial style is to ask questions such as: “Tell me about one of the most challenging personnel issues you have handled and how you handled it.” Don’t ask hypotheticals. Inevitably, you can’t really give someone enough information to get a reasonable answer. Instead, spend time listening to candidates describe their experiences and decide if you feel comfortable with their approaches.

Bottom Line
If you can find a competent practice manager with a managerial style you like and values you can respect, you’ve probably got the right person.

Susan Brissette
President of SB Cass Associates
East Nassau, New York

1. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll plan on a female administrator so that we can dispense with “he or she” and “him or her”.