The clinic was constantly reacting to crises generally revolving around limited staff or inadequately trained staff. The group saw themselves as persecuted by the local community. Providers were continually told they would make more money if they were not part of the organization. No one attended staff meetings held at the main campus. On the flip side, the main campus viewed the satellite group as held hostage by the local community, lazy, and taking advantage of the system.
Secretaries save the day To increase patient volumes, more appointments needed to be scheduled.
After conferring with the physicians, it was agreed that a patient load of 20 per day was not unreasonable. Simple templates were developed and the appointment secretaries were told that if they didn t have 20 patients scheduled, the schedule was not full. Salaries for the secretarial staff were marginal and a central appointment program was initiated to both increase the pay scale and provide additional training. Plans were made to get the phones answered while simultaneously developing tools to give more people the ability to handle calls. At one point, the physician administrator actually became the supervisor for the secretarial staff.