Did you know that staffing is the #1 stress for physicians? Other issues include employee well-being, safety, being valued and employee finances. Staffing stress contributes to healthcare professionals having the highest level of dissatisfaction of any industry.
Employee turnover can be a major detriment to your medical practice and your time. The higher your employee turnover, the higher your costs of business time, money and especially your time.
One of the best ways to reduce employee turnover, is to have fewer employees! Consider what you can outsource, including your medical or dental transcription. When you outsource, you no longer have to take time to screen applicants, interview and onboard a new employee. Training new staff takes up not only your time, but other employees time. And not every new hire is a good new hire. You may end up starting all over again if the new hire doesn’t work out.
The costs of employee turnover aren’t all you need to consider. If you have high employee turnover, it could indicate that there are other issues. Do you have a toxic employee? Or one that is a problem for the other staff, but totally good with you, their employer? Do you have a poor workspace, such as old furniture and computers, dated décor, poor lighting? Do you have poor employee benefits? There are even instances where a spouse can cause significant challenges for employees and the smooth running of your medical or dental practice.
All that can add up to not scheduling patients efficiently and more missed appointments, which can hurting your overall revenue and profitability.
And there’s lower morale for those employees who do remain. Usually employees don’t quit before making their grievances known. And it increases the workload of other employees until the new hire is fully trained.
There’s also the issue that you may not be able to find someone with the right skill set. Canada’s unemployment rate is low, and skilled workers are in demand. 2Ascribe has had phone calls from cities where they can’t fill a union position for a medical transcription and are looking at what their options are for outsourcing.
While Canada is experiencing a physician shortage, patients still vote with their feet and may request a referral to another physician’s office if they have a bad experience with your staff.
How much turnover is too much? Anything more than 10% is too high.
For a small solo physician’s office, there may only be one employee. If that one employee leaves, there’s not even a person to answer the phone and greet patients. Is your one employee happy? Or are you expecting them to work unpaid overtime? If so, consider outsourcing part of their responsibilities, including finding a reliable and competent medical or dental transcription company.
There are strategies to help reduce employee turnover. 
- Ensure your employees have the tools they need to perform their jobs effectively and efficiently.
- Ask them for feedback on how they enjoy their jobs and for suggestions on improvements.
- Make sure they feel valued.
- If they work as a team, ensure there is not just time, but also systems to allow them to communicate and collaborate.
- While physician burnout is a major issue today, overworked physicians also mean overworked staff. Plan ways to ensure both you and your employees don’t experience burnout.
For information or help on reducing or preventing burnout, read this article.
2Ascribe Inc. is a medical and dental transcription services agency located in Toronto, Ontario Canada, providing medical transcription services to physicians, specialists (including psychiatry, pain and IMEs), dentists, dental specialties, clinics and other healthcare providers across Canada. Our medical and dental transcriptionists take pride in the quality of your transcribed documents.
WEBshuttle is our client interface portal for document management. 2Ascribe continues to implement and develop technology to assist and improve the transcription process for physicians, dentists and other healthcare providers, including AUTOfax. AUTOfax works within WEBshuttle to automatically send faxes to referring physicians and dentists when a document is e-signed by the healthcare professional.
As a service to our clients and the healthcare industry, 2Ascribe offers articles of interest to physicians, dentists and other healthcare professionals, medical transcriptionists, dental transcriptionists and office staff, as well as of general interest. Additional articles may be found at http://www.2ascribe.com. For more information on Canadian transcription services, dental transcription, medical transcription work or dictation options, please contact us at info@2ascribe.com.