Grow by Embracing Change

Embracing change to keep your business cutting edge is essential for success in private practice; otherwise, you may become obsolete. I am the Queen of Change. I am easily bored and pretty consistently looking for new challenges. Being adaptable and looking for better ways to do things is key for business. You can fight change and stay stuck and miserable or embrace change and move forward. Learn to love change. Being flexible, learning, growing, and taking calculated risks are unavoidable if you want to be successful. Here are some ways that I have embraced change to help grow my private practice.

o  Always search for ways to make things better. Running a successful business requires keeping current clients happy while attracting new clients to allow for growth. Even if growth is not a priority you still need to attract new clients to replace the ones who “graduate” from your services. Make changes, but be sure to communicate and document all changes made with your team and anyone else involved. For example, we have a communication board/ calendar in our office, we send out weekly email update to our team and we send out monthly electronic newsletters to our clients.

o  Keep a policy and procedure manual to document the tasks required by each team member. Checklists work well for daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks so you can be most efficient.

o  Streamline your systems. Take a look at each task required of your team members, and figure out how it can be done more efficiently. Stay focused. Weekly and monthly meetings with various team members keep us on target to meet our goals. Yes, goal setting is also key to success and growth. I am a big believer in “if you don’t write it down and commit to it, it will rarely never get done.”

o  Embrace technology. Use excellent billing and scheduling software so you can keep track of the health of your business. Keep track of your numbers and be aware of trends and make timely adjustments.

o  Pay close attention to any insurance policy and procedure changes. I try to stay current, and as soon as I learn something new, I work to find a better way to help our clients and team. This is especially important with all the changes in the economy and the healthcare industry over the last decade and for helping to forecast the future.

o  Think about any problems/ challenges your clients have and how you can help them solve those problems. You might need to make adjustments in terms of what you offer/ specialize in order to meet the needs of your clients, which may require additional training for your team.

o  Think about “problems” that your team may be struggling with and figure out how you can help. Here are some of our recent solutions:

o  We needed strong admin staff so we put into place a lead student position and training protocols.

o  We were drowning in paperwork so we converted to Electronic Health Record and designed templates for efficiency and quality assurance.

o  We needed someone to coordinate our social media, so we appointed someone to help us stay organized and focused.

o  We needed someone to keep up with the billing changes so we appointed someone to be the billing manager and set up procedures and checklists.

All of these changes take a lot of work but the more time and energy you put into changing and evolving, the better. Also, the more problems that you solve, the more empowered you will be able to look proactively at the next challenge. 

If you are interested in finding out more about our practice and how we can help you as a Registered Dietitian or a client, visit us at www.rbitzer.com or call us at 301-474-2499.

Rebecca Bitzer, MS, RD, LD, CEDRD