The Value Of Your Time

How to determine your next steps in business reflects how you value your time.

Providers can easily fall into the trap of spending time in activities that don’t generate business revenue. Let’s face it, when provider’s are not seeing patients, the business is not making money. Therefore, when you review the tasks and duties at your practice, consider the hourly value of the person who will do that task. 

For instance, if a medical doctor, being compensated $400 per hour, is washing dishes in the kitchen, are you maximizing that hourly investment? It doesn’t make sense at that dollar rate, for the doctor to wash dishes or check in patients. Rather, it would make more sense to have a staffer compensated at $15 per hour, to do those tasks. 

Consider a dish taking 5 minutes to clean, dry and put away. The chart below shows the hourly rate broken down into a segment of minutes. Referring to that chart, would you rather pay someone, $1.25 or $33.33 for 5 minutes of work?  This is simple math, and although it may not seem significant at the moment, over time these mini-decisions cost real money. Every day in medical practices across the country, tasks and duties are misaligned within the pay scale of the practice. And at the end of the day, week, or month your costs will be in the thousands of dollars. Taking this scenario of a staffer doing dishes instead of a provider, at 5 minutes a day, five days a week over 50 weeks, that's a $312.50 cost. If the provider does the same task, the cost escalates to $8,332.50!!!  

(Simple minute-by-minute breakdown)

So what do you do? Here are some simple guidelines when assigning tasks and duties within the business:

1. Make a list of all the tasks needing to be done at the practice.

2. Divide the list into two columns. Title “Provider” in one column and the other column “Support Staff”.

3. Sort through your list and assign those tasks only a provider can accomplish (e.g. seeing patients, writing prescriptions, etc…) in the Provider column. All the remaining tasks go into the Support Staff column.

4. Assign tasks appropriately according to job descriptions. (If you don’t have written job descriptions, use this list to start the process).

Now that you understand the value of your time, protect it. Put boundaries around the time that generates revenue. Put in writing, what expected of the staff to improve communication, work efficiencies and minimize surprises in the practice. This simple exercise will give you more control over costs, and greater freedom to do what you are meant to do - practice medicine!!!