Practice Management Alert

Experts: A portion of all reviews should be about the future.

Tensions can run high when it comes time for the practice to evaluate the performance of the front-office staff. Many workers (and even some managers) will just want to get the review over with, but if you approach it correctly, you can use the performance evaluation as a jump-off toward discussing the employee’s goals and hopes for the future.

Front-office staff need consistent evaluation because the front office “is one of the most important areas of the practice, as it is the patient’s first impression of the practice and the initial link between patient and physician,” explains Maggie M. Mac, CPC, CEMC, CHC, CMM, ICCE, AHIMA-approved ICD-10 CM/PCS trainer and president of Maggie Mac-Medical Practice Consulting in Clearwater, Fla.

You need to know whether or not your staff is greeting patients appropriately and that they are handling patient information with privacy, Mac says. Performance evaluations are one of the most reliable metrics to evaluate the overall effectiveness of your front-office staff.

Check out these expert tips on how to optimize cooperation, and minimize desperation, in front-office performance reviews.

Consider These Employees ‘Front-Office’

Remember that these performance evaluations suggestions are only for front-office medical practice employees, not physicians or other clinicians. Performance reviews for physicians/clinicians is an entirely different topic.

According to Deborah Walker Keegan, PhD, FACMPE, president of Medical Practice Dimensions, Inc., in the Asheville, N.C., area, for your evaluation purposes, front-office employees typically include those involved in:

• patient access (telephone operators, schedulers, check-in/check-out staff);
• front-end billing (coders; employees performing charge capture, charge entry and time-of-service collections; financial counselors; employees who conduct insurance verification and benefits eligibility; etc.) and
• referral processing staff (such as prior authorization staff) and supervisors/leads for these employees.

Lessen Anxiety With Constant Performance Updates

An employee’s performance review should not be a “toxic event,” nor should the employee feel like they’re being “summoned meeting to the principal’s office,” explains Keegan, who is also a principal at Woodcock & Walker Consulting. 

You can head off any potential issues by giving the employee routine and regular feedback on her performance all year. The performance review should not be a time for surprises or breaking news; it should be a summation of the employee’s accomplishments and areas in which she might improve since the last evaluation.

If you give regular performance feedback before the review, you won’t have to devote as much time to “grading” the employee’s achievements during the review. Then, “you can devote a large portion of the formal performance evaluation meeting … to a productive opportunity to talk about goals and objectives for the next period,” Keegan explains.

According to Keegan, this discussion might address topics such as training or tools the employee needs to be more successful at her job, or how the supervisor can assist the employee in her professional goals.

“Enlightened organizations will utilize the performance evaluation process to ask the employee: ‘What can we do as an organization, or what can I do as a supervisor to help you to be your best self?’” says Keegan.

Bottom line: “The culture of the organization should focus on continuous improvement, both individually and collectively,” Keegan says.

Conduct Evaluations Each Year — Or More Often

Once a front-office employee is established, you should conduct formal reviews for her at least annually, although some organizations will conduct them twice a year, Keegan says.

With newer employees in the front office, you might want to evaluate them after about a month, Mac says. “This only allows an employee to correct improper behavior and improve” during their initial ramp-up time with the practice, she explains.