You Could Be Losing $100k's! Tips For Creating An Amazing Front Desk With Stacey Fitzsimmons

The importance of the front desk, and the experience that patients have there, can never be overestimated. Stacey Fitzsimmons of Account Matters, Inc. has witnessed this time and again through her work with PT clinics across the country. Considering that the patient’s assessment of your clinic (and not the therapy you provide) could hinge on those interactions, you have to make sure that the person at the front desk fits the bill and gets properly trained. Having a natural people-person and problem-solver and someone who is positive, encouraging, and straightforward is essential. Far more than we give them credit for, they have a direct connection to the revenues of your company. Now the question remains, are they more important than the PT’s in the back? It’s worth considering. Follow today’s episode as Stacey sits down with Nathan Shields to tell you.

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You Could Be Losing $100k’s! Tips For Creating An Amazing Front Desk With Stacey Fitzsimmons

I have Stacey Fitzsimmons of Account Matters. She’s been in the physical therapy space for decades. Thanks for coming on and joining us. I appreciate it. We’re going to talk about some important stuff.

You’re welcome. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Tell us a little bit about you and Account Matters, what you have done in the physical therapy space here in the last couple of decades and what you’re working on. What’s gotten you to this point as we’re speaking?

Account Matters has been around for a few decades. The original founder of this company is my partner, Diane McCutcheon. She has been in this business for more than two decades. I came on board in 2003 in a consulting manner specific to the PT/OT world. That’s what Diane’s background was and me coming on board with her, I followed suit. The difference between some other owners out there of billing companies and me personally, is I went into a physical therapy clinic and got hired and I’ve done every one of the jobs at the front desk, the billing and collecting. The only thing I haven’t done myself is the actual treatment because I’m not a physical therapist. Everything that I’ve learned when I was on the job and then everything I’ve listened to from people through the years of consulting was how I formed my billing company, Account Matters.

I tried to take all of the complaints of what people hated. I didn’t want to do that in my billing company because I keep hearing people complain. That’s how we formed ourselves. Going back to the 2003 time, we were forming ourselves of not just a consulting company, but let’s open up and give this industry what they need and that’s all admin support. Front desk right through your collections getting your money in. That’s what we did in this business is we started the billing company. We started adding on, we started training programs and it was all geared towards the front desk and billing department. We offer all of those services here at our company that we can certainly do for people but we took it one step further where if you don’t want to outsource your billing and front desk, you don’t have to.

We do have trained professionals here that will teach the right person on your side in your practice. For some of those things is I’ve always tried to set myself a little bit different. There’s certainly a ton of billing companies out there. There are a lot of good ones as well as bad. I like to be a little different. I like to try to capture things that I’m not your typical billing company that only knows how to bill, push your payments and collect. I do understand the entire private practice section for physical and occupational therapy.

You initially started off as business consultants and have worked your way over to the billing side a little bit more, from what I remember. When you talk about the billing cycle, you’re talking not just about the billing department, but you included the front desk in that. That’s a misunderstanding that some physical therapy owners have is not recognizing how much the front desk impacts your collections.

That’s where my passion comes in. I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t walk. I couldn’t work because I was always in pain. I went to a physical therapist. For the reason you become a physical therapist, I didn’t become a therapist, but I can appreciate the gift that therapists have to get people pain-free and live their lives. I also understand that you went to school to do that. That’s your gift. I don’t have that gift. I don’t want to touch a human in pain. My gift is business and figuring out how to make sure that what you’re doing is going to get reimbursed. A physical therapist by nature, you will do anything for anyone. You love helping people or you wouldn’t be in this business.

The only way you're going to continue seeing people is if your doors are open. Click To Tweet

If you have a private practice, it’s hard for a therapist to remove the heart. It’s hard for them to say, “I’m going to treat Stacey because I know she can’t walk and I don’t care if I get paid,” which I understand from a therapist. That’s your heart. That’s you saying, “I need to get Stacey better.” I look at it from you’re valued and you won’t be able to keep your doors open if you keep doing this for people. I understand it, not from you just have big hearts that you want to help. I’m taking it more like you do, but you should get paid for it because the only way you’re going to continue seeing people is if your doors are open.

Is that how you train your front desk people and your billing people? Not to necessarily remove the heart, but training them from a perspective of, “We provide a valuable service and we deserve to get paid as much as possible for the service that we provide. That is your responsibility to ensure that the collections come through at 100% so that we can be reimbursed adequately, if not more so, for the services that we provide,” right?

Absolutely. The part where we’re working with the front desk and why I keep bringing your front desk person is because, in my opinion, your front desk person is the most valuable person that you have working in private practice. The reason is they’re the first person to answer the first phone call from a patient. Nathan, you might be the best therapist on the planet. If I’m hurt and I’m calling your clinic, I’m not going to talk to you. I’m going to talk to your front desk person. If she or he is rude, they don’t pick up the phone, they give me non-complete answers, I don’t know’s, I will most likely pick up the phone and go to the next person on my list. It makes good sense to bridge the gap between your therapists, therapy owners and the front desk that is typically, “We just need someone to sit in that seat.” It’s a lot more than sitting someone in the seat.

If you have the right people, you, as the therapist, with your heart of gold, don’t have to answer your patients about their bills and what’s going on because you have people to take that hit for you. That’s where it’s very important to get the right people at your front desk in your billing department. Those are the people that you, as the therapist, “I don’t know what’s going on with you. I don’t do billing. Go see Stacey in the billing department. She can tell you what you need.” It takes you right out of the equation and it will help your practice to be viable and profitable versus I want to help someone because you are helping them but you should get paid for it.

A good front desk person is like gold. They can set the tone of the clinic. They are the customer service arm of your organization if you will. As you said, you could provide the best therapy on the planet but if they get a bad interaction with that front desk person, either coming in or going out, they’re going to remember that more so than the care that you provided. They’ll find somewhere else.

Back when we were doing the consulting, we used to travel around the country and we would assess a private practice. What our findings are. We would go through everything down to when I walked through your front door, is it clean? Some places are dirty and messy when you walk in and me as a patient coming in here, “This is dirty. I don’t want to be laying on this equipment.” It’s very important to think beyond, “I have the absolute best therapist in the world.” It’s almost where I can appreciate it if you’re going to open a practice, the first thing on your mind is getting therapists in there but it should be getting your admin staff and then adding the therapist. The therapist already knows what they’re doing. They need a bench, a table and equipment. It’s about your admin staff.

How do you find, recruit or hire the right person for the front desk? What are you looking for? How do you train owners to find the right person?

I like to find and ask people certain questions about where they came from. I don’t care if someone came from the local coffee shop and they’re coming in here applying for a job to be my biller. I want to know, at that coffee shop, give me one of your worst days where every time you turned around, there was a problem, and tell me what you did to fix the problems. I want to know what you did at your last job. What was the perfect job you had? Tell me the one thing that you did to make a difference in the company you worked for. I’m usually the one to ask not so much specific questions about the job you’re trying to hire them for, but I want to know what you do in your jobs. If you’re a hard-working person, it doesn’t matter what your job was. If you’re a cashier, be the best cashier out there. If you’re a therapist, be the best therapist. I’m always looking for the person to be the best of what they are. Not everybody has the education to be a therapist or a doctor. Some are truck drivers, and they’re the best truck drivers out there.

PTO 136 | Front Desk — Front Desk: It makes good sense to bridge the gap between your therapists and therapy owners at the front desk.

What you’re trying to key in on is to get the best front desk person. When they come into the interview unless it’s COVID time and you have a mask on, are they smiling? Do they smile at you? If your patients are coming in, they’re not coming in because they feel great. They’re coming in because they don’t feel good. Is someone going to greet them with a smile? “Hi, Stacey. It’s nice to see you. Hold on. We’ll be right with you.” In the interview, how did they dress? They knew they were coming to an interview. Were they sloppy? Because they’ll do that at your front desk. Again, we’re not looking for models. We’re looking for a clean-cut, for someone that can speak clearly, someone that can smile, make people feel happy, warm and welcomed. Typically, what I look for when I’m going for new candidates, it’s not so much, “Do you have a degree and what’s your experience?” It’s, “What can you bring to us? If we give you the right tools, will you learn and be able to do this job?”

It’s maybe more at the front desk than from physical therapists, but we often talk about soft skills. Skills that have to do with personal interaction, feeling other people out, and becoming a problem solver because we can teach the technical skills like how to call, verify insurance, how to collect the copay, here’s the paperwork you need to fill out and here’s how you do the EMR. Those are all hard technical skills. We can teach you that stuff, but you want someone who’s inherently what we like to call high tone. Someone who is naturally happy and excitable. They don’t have to rev themselves up to interact with individuals on a regular basis. They want to interact with people and get to know them.

They ask more questions. They’re involved. They know, just like the therapists know, all about the dog, the kid that’s sick, and the husband that’s hurting as well. They ask those questions. We like to look for people who are in a high tone. I liked the questions that you brought up about people’s past experiences because it sounds like you’re trying to figure out, number one, were they high producers in their previous jobs? Were they also problem solvers? There’s so much that comes out of nowhere at the front desk that if those people are going to be productive, they’ve got to be able to solve their own problems with the best knowledge that they have without coming back to talk to the owner every day or every second about, “I’ve got this. What about that?”

In any private practice that I’ve been in, they are busy. You’ve got people coming, do they have a copay? We’ve got people leaving, do you want to schedule an appointment? We’ve got referrals and OCS we need to get because this one is coming in tomorrow. “We can’t schedule an eval for the first visit because this therapist doesn’t like that.” They are answering phones so you don’t want to hire someone walking through the door, dragging the feet, and sloppy dressed. You’re like, “What’s your five-year plan?” “I just want to have a good job.” You’re not looking to better yourself. I always say, “I like the people that don’t try to be better than anyone else. I like the people that try to be better than they were the day before.”

You want that energy, but again, you don’t want someone coming and telling you their whole life story because that’s what they’re going to do when your patients come in. You don’t like your patients listening to me saying, “I know. I felt awful and this is happening because.” They don’t feel good. You want someone at your front desk, “How are you doing? It’s a great day. It’s sunny out.” It’s really important. You’re looking for an ambassador of your company. You’re looking for a professional person that you can train on the hard stuff like, “Here’s a book. This is how you build. This is how you do that.” You’re looking for more than that. You’re looking for someone that’s going to fit in and make your patients feel like, “I’m so glad I came here. Stacey was so nice when I walked in the door. She couldn’t have made it any easier to do my paperwork.” That’s what you’re looking for.

Many people that are reading might be thinking, “I don’t have that person,” or they’re thinking, “I’ve had a lot of turnovers and I can’t retain the people that I’m wanting.” What are your recommendations for such a position that can be a high turnover position?

We do have a turnover guide. It’s a free download that everyone, if nothing else, get your free Turnover Guide. It’s a Bit.ly/turnoverguide. Hopefully, you can read some things that will help you out right off the bat. It’s not science. Sometimes, people leave for reasons we can’t predict or out of the blue, your best person found the dream job down the street. That’s always a tough one to swallow. If you don’t give the right person the right tools to succeed, they’re going to leave because if you find the right person and you stick them at the front desk to figure it out, they’re looking for guidance, a leader, and they will leave you.

Once you do find the right person or if you’re reading and you think, “I know that I have the right person. She just doesn’t know what she’s doing.” It’s up to the owners. It’s up to you to get out there and find the tools to give to them. We have all kinds of training programs here at Account Matters that we work with a lot of clients on basic data entry. How do you put a person complete into the software? What is it that you’re looking for? How do you call and check on benefits? They should be done before you have the patient in for their email. If you hire the right person and they don’t know any of this, you’re going to lose a lot of money. They’re set up to fail. If it’s the right person, failure is not an option. They will leave and find a job with a leader that will give them the right tools.

The right people want to know their scorecard and what does a successful front desk person looks like. If you can’t tell them, “Your job is to produce blank.” Most front desk it is, “Your job is to fill the schedules.” There might be some other iterations of that, but it’s essentially, “Keep the schedule full.” That’s their job. If they can’t tell you that, then you haven’t trained them on their basic purpose and product. Their job is not necessarily to collect all the copays. That’s a vital part of their job but their main job is to keep the schedule full. Number one, they need to know stuff like that. They need to know the statistics that you’re going to judge them by. That’s what I meant by the scorecard. Are they collecting 100% of the copays on the patients that are coming in? There should be benchmarks.

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Right off the bat, “You’re coming with us. In your first week, you won’t be very fast. The second week, we want you to go from 5 new patients in the system to 10 new patients.” You know your businesses. If no one has a benchmark, they’re going to do whatever they want. I’ve certainly learned my lessons in business as the years go by, “I gave them an open-ended window, how come they didn’t do more?” I gave them an open-ended window and they did what they wanted. It’s all about setting benchmarks in what is best for the company, not the individual people.

Are there certain benchmarks that you think are more important than others?

I do, especially when it comes to scheduling. The number one benchmark is to make sure that every new patient gets in your schedule within 24 to 48 hours. If they call on a Friday, it will be Monday. Because people are usually leaving a doctor’s office with like, “Go see a PT.” It’s top of mind, “I’m hurting. I’m in pain. I can’t walk. I’m going to call now.” “I can’t get you in for two weeks.” You all know PT places are everywhere. They’re going to call someone else. I would say a benchmark is a 24 to 48-hour window for any new patients coming in. They need to make sure they learn the schedule enough to leave those spots open and get your patients in.

The other one that you brought up that I’m very big on is the copay and patient money. I’m huge on that because the minute your patient is discharged, it dropped 60% of you collecting that money. They are out of sight, out of mind, “I’m not going back there again. I don’t have the money. I’m not paying it. I wanted to spend it on something else.” It’s very important to train your front desk person right away, “These are the reports from your software that you should be running every morning because this will tell you what you should be collecting. At the end of the day, did you meet that? Did you collect all of the money or did you not?”

My goal is always 100%. I almost find no one that can do 100% but if you keep it 100%, you will get the most you can get out of your front desk for collecting. Why aren’t they collecting? Is it because they’re asking the patients, “Do you want to pay?” If that’s what they’re saying, you want to train them to say, “How would you like to make your copay? Cash, check, or charge?” Not do you because if you say do you and you have a 21-year-old and it’s a Friday, he’s going to say, “No, I’ll pay next week because I’m going out tonight.”

Have you found a way for owners or front desk people to keep credit cards on file and make that transaction easier for copays?

I would say it’s a 50/50 out there with people wanting to do it and people not wanting to. It’s all above board and you can. There is a form that does need to be filled out from the patient because the patient needs to give you the okay. I do recommend trying to get the patients to leave a credit card on file. If they know it’s on file and they’ve signed for it, then you should have no problem every time they come in saying, “Hold on, Stacey. Let me finish running your card and give you a receipt.” It’s not a question and you’re not asking. It’s, “You agreed every time you came in, I was going to run your card. When I see you, I’m running the card.” It’s little tips like, “Don’t ask.” They already gave you their okay so run it when they come out, “I’m running your credit card. Your receipt is coming up in one minute.”

I came across a coaching client who used COVID as a nice excuse to minimize that hand-to-hand transaction contact and transmission or whatnot like, “We’re going hands-free as much as possible especially here at the front desk. What we’d like to do is keep your credit card on file. That way, we minimize that hand-to-hand transmission.”

That’s perfect because everybody is in the same boat. No matter where you live, you can use that as your excuse. Everybody is dealing with COVID so that’s a good one.

You could say an excuse. You could say, “According to our new COVID-19 guidelines, this is what we would like to do.” Make that part of simply how things go.

The other benchmark you may want to keep in mind is cancel and no-shows. If your front desk person doesn’t know how to track them properly, you might think you have a lot more cancels and no-shows than you do. Make sure that your front desk person knows that if it’s not a true cancel, they’re deleting appointments rather canceling appointments because that’s a benchmark you can set not only for your front desk, you can set that for your therapists. I like to go, “How many? Why are they canceling? What are the reasons?” If you have a cancel no-show policy that has a payment associated with it and if your front desk is collecting, less likely your person will keep canceling and no-show. Those are my top three benchmarks I always give to people.

The cancel and no-show rate seems to be a team attack. If you’re below 90% arrival rate, the whole team has to be involved. One of my mentors has said in the past, “The patient will only take their therapy as seriously as the therapist takes it.” If someone cancels and on their follow up visit after that, no one says a thing at the front desk or the therapist about the cancellation, how important it was that missing that appointment sets back their care and the results they’re going to get with physical therapy, then the patient is going to think, “I can cancel. It’s no big deal.”

Being a billing company, we’ve seen mostly every denial, especially in the work comp insurance companies. We’ve had a few companies come after us for certain clients because they’re wondering why it’s taking so long to get better. When we send all of the documentation, they know that they’ve canceled and no-showed so many times that they stopped paying. It’s not only you at the clinic that’s like, “Now I have a therapist that doesn’t have an appointment.” You can tell the patient but sometimes, it comes to the insurance companies. If a twelve visit is the norm for whatever part of the body for this insurance company but you’re more like the ‘80s going another month that you may get questioned. These insurance companies are going to be mad at you because you’re not making it important enough to get the patient in there. You want the patients in there.

The front desk is so vital in that aspect because the therapists aren’t answering the cancel call that comes in. They’re not on the phone. It’s so important that the front desk understands exactly what we’re talking about now and how not coming in for therapy is going to inhibit their progress in care and prolong their care. Also, it’s imperative that the front desk also understands the purpose of the clinic and they buy into what physical therapy is all about. If they’re casual and laissez-faire about physical therapy and patients coming to physical therapy, that’s their attitude on the phone.

That’s why people get away with it because they’re calling your front desk. “Stacey, can you tell my therapist I can’t make it.” “No problem. Goodbye.” If the therapist doesn’t say anything, they’re like, “I didn’t have to talk to the therapist because I see him three days a week.” If you said, as therapists, “Stacey, you missed yesterday. That’s the third no-show you’ve had or the third cancel. We’re trying to get you better. I built this plan specifically for you. We want to get you better. If you need to cancel, maybe you could come in at a different time the same day.” If they’re not saying anything and your front desk doesn’t know, your front desk will keep taking the call, “I’ll tell them.”

You need both of them to come together to say, “I took a call from Stacey. She canceled again. Do you want to talk to her? Do you want to say something on the next visit?” They should be working together. Typically in the PT private practice setting, there’s always a wall built up in between the therapists and the front desk or your admin staff. I am one consultant that loves to go in with my big wrecking ball and break that wall because it’s very important that they communicate for the scheduling and for the no-shows. I can’t tell you how many therapists hate their front desk because they always schedule the new people for the last visit of the day. My answers are usually, “Have you told them?” “No, I didn’t.”

If you don’t talk to them, they don’t know. You want to make sure in your practices that there’s no wall being built and there’s complete communication. That will help your cancel, no-shows and anything else that has to do with your patients because if your front desk doesn’t feel that they are going to be undermined or not listen to, anything that comes up, they’re going to run to the therapist and say, “I just saw Stacey in the hallway. She said XYZ or whatever.” If there’s no bridge between the two sides, you’re leaving each one open to not say anything and your patients are doing whatever they want.

For those owners out there that have a front desk person that they’re questioning, “I don’t know if this is working out,” or they’re not fully satisfied, do you find that front desk personnel who has been there a long period of time, say a year or more, and then you try to implement this stuff, that it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks? Is it hard to push in some of these benchmarks, products, and training into people who have been there for a while?

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Yes sometimes and no sometimes. What I will say is this is where the owner has to be a true leader. I know you’ve been with me for a year. We’re making changes. They’re non-negotiable. I am the owner. This is how I want it done. This is how it’s going to be done. When you do that, it goes pretty well. Your worker might be a little upset for a few days getting to know the new process.

They can’t control how they’re going to respond.

You can’t. You have to stick with what you say. What happens sometimes is this is how we’re going to do it. The next week you check-in, “It didn’t work. I know how to do it this way. I’ve been doing it this way for years.” If the owner says, “Okay, fine,” and walks away, you’ve not bettered your company at all. You’re staying the same and you’re probably missing things. There was a reason why you wanted to change something in the first place. If you stick to your guns and they will not change, they’re not the right person. If you stick to your guns and they’re like, “This stinks but I’m getting the hang of it.” The next week, “It’s a little better. I still don’t like it, but it’s better.” The third week, “It’s not that bad. I’ve figured it out.” That’s how you would approach your people that have been there. As an owner, when you make that decision, don’t go back on your decision. It’s this way. Once you do it correctly, prove to me that it won’t work and we’ll change it again but I’m not for changing until you prove me wrong.

I liked a couple of things that you said there. Number one, the leader comes in and says, “This is how things are happening. This is the structure that we’re going to use. These are the checklists that you’re going to follow. In the morning and the evening, you’re going to turn them in.” What you said inherently in there without saying it was that you were also following up on a routine basis. It’s not like, “This is how we do things. Good luck. Go do it and tell me how it goes.” No. It’s, “This is how we’re going to do things.” Follow up on a routine basis and say, “How did that go? Can you show me what you did? Did you follow the process? What did that look like? Here are the checklists that I expected out of you.” If you draw the line in the sand but then don’t follow up, then the front desk will go back to the same thing.

I can give you great examples because you’re all probably saying, “She just talked about me.” What I see is a front desk person that has had that job for years and they’ve always done things manual. I’m talking mostly about copays and they’re recorded on an Excel spreadsheet and/or a paper form that you have to fill out or a paper receipt. It’s then put into your new updated software that tracks everything for you. It happens to everyone. I’ll say, stop the manual systems. You have three systems for a copay. You have software. It’s 2021. It works. Use your software, “I don’t trust it.” If you do that, you will have discrepancies because you’re doing something three times.

If you have a patient asking you a question and you only did 2 of the 3, you’ll forget the third one, “How come my three balances don’t match up?” The perfect example would be, “Stacey, we’re stopping the written process. We don’t need the written receipts. They’re all on the computer.” If you’ve never checked back in with me and this has happened. I’ve checked a month later, “How’s your front desk doing after the training?” I’ll start asking questions. “We still have the written one.” “Why?” It is follow-up. You want to make sure, as the owner, to be a leader. They’re going to follow you. “This is how it’s done. Do it this way successfully for three months. If you still hate it and it’s not working, we’ll change it again.” You’ve got to stick to your guns. If it fails, it fails. Not everything is going to be a winner but you can’t let your employee tell you it’s going to fail without proving it’s going to fail. It’s all about the follow-up.

They’re not running the ship. They’re trying to and they shouldn’t be. You need to take the helm. You talked about it and while I have you, I also want to ask you about this. The communication and the relationship between the front desk and the billing department can sometimes have some animosity. How do you help that? Fortunately, we got to a point where the front desk love the billers and the billers love the front desk. They worked very cohesively and they share data. They shared their evening reconciliation forms on a regular basis. They were able to talk back and forth. The billing department could train the front desk on certain items and all that kind of stuff. For people who don’t have that type of relationship, where do you start in healing that animosity between front and billing departments?

The first thing is you have to set the company culture as you’re a team. I am passionate about communication and being a team. In my company, we all have hybrid schedules. The new people haven’t even met half of the other people that work here. I’m big on team-building events. It’s important to close your place down periodically to have your entire staff and forcing them to work together. There are a million things on the internet that you can get for, “What should I do for team-building exercises?” Pair people up with people they normally don’t work with. They don’t like each other because of their positions at their job. If you get that out of the equation, chances are they will like each other.

I also have an army background and anybody that’s been in the military, it’s one big team. You’re not singled out. The goal of the company is to have 100% collections at your front desk and have your cancel and no-show rate at 0%, if possible. It’s the company goal. You can set individual goals for people, but you should be bringing your entire company together at least once a month for some type of meeting. More than just lunch to say, “Stacey at the front desk, what are some of your issues you’re having when it comes to scheduling with the therapist?” That’s the opportunity to get someone to say, “I think this one gets mad at me every day because of the evals but there was nothing available. I’m not sure what to do.”

That’s the opportunity for the therapist to say, “That’s really easy. Whatever the answer is, this is what I would rather you do. Come to see me. I’ll move another patient. Whatever the case is.” It’s all about forcing them to talk to each other. What we’ve done in other practices through the years is we would help host that first real meeting and almost force them. I would be bringing up, “When you’re scheduling, what do you have trouble with?” It gives the opportunity for everybody like, “Don’t take this personally.” We have one company goal in mind and what is the company goal? Everyone should be working toward the company goal.

Your personal feelings are non-existent. This is work. After work, if you don’t like someone, fine. If you want to go out with someone, fine, but during work, the company should be all the same vision. Where is the company going and what is the job? Have those meetings. Don’t have a meeting just for your admin staff and the therapist. You should at least do one company meeting and make it almost mandatory. Who are your managers? They should be getting other people to talk, “Didn’t you say last week you were mad about whatever?” Call people out on what they’re saying to get them to talk. You’ll find once the mouth starts opening, it all comes out. People are usually, “If you would have said this to me a week ago, I could have given you the answer. I would have told you don’t book my schedule XYZ.”

It’s all about communication. Communication is the number in any business. Communication is certainly key. To bridge the gap, I would strategically form meetings or events where you’re forcing them to work together. As I said, chances are they’re going to like each other. If you put them in an environment where they come in and they can see, “The wall is up. These are my people because the therapists are in the back.” That’s how they come on board. Your orientation for your new people whether it’s therapists and/or admin staff, you should be taking your new person, “This is Joe. He’s the new therapist.” “Hi, Joe. I do all the scheduling. If you don’t like what I’m doing, come see me immediately.” That’s when you set that. As your new people are coming on, make sure they meet. Everyone they are going to work with and open, “This is my job. If you see any problems, you come to talk to me. I’ll help you out.” That will help tremendously to bridge the gap.

Going back and thinking about it, the billing person was a part of the front desk training process. It wasn’t some office manager, the therapist training, or the front desk themselves. There was a portion of our onboarding and training where the billing person would get on the line or come in person and train the front desk person as well to know what was wanted and expected on the billing side. There was that clear communication and they understood, “She wants it this way and she likes it filled out that way because of this reason. That’s what I’m going to make sure I do.”

It’s funny you say that because I have a billing company. We have billers that come in and that’s all they do is billing. We have people that come in, they are payment posters and then we have collectors. They all know what each job is because what was happening early on in the billing company is you’d get complaints from one of them about, “The payment poster this and the biller this.” If you don’t know what they’re doing, you need to appreciate their position. It’s the same thing in an office and this is where your big company meetings come in. The therapist might be like, “This is an easy job. You’re sitting at the front desk.” They all think that.

If you said to Joe, the therapist out there, “Since you have a cancel, why don’t you come to sit at the front desk for the next hour? Listen to me answer the phone. I’m taking a copay. I’m scheduling. I’m entering new data into the software. I got a call on a referral because this one just left.” If they don’t appreciate or know what someone’s job is, it’s so much room for them to criticize about stuff they don’t know. You’re a front desk person. They’re not going to be a therapist but they should go back and see what they’re doing. What is it that Nathan does when he goes back there with the patient? Is he nice? How does he talk to the patient when he comes in?

It should be, “This is what the therapists do. Every time a patient leaves, this is what the documentation is. When they’re complaining notes, ‘I hate doing notes,’ this is what they’re doing.” Otherwise, a new front desk person can be like, “What’s the big deal? Just write a note. Stacey came in and she feels better.” If you don’t know what someone’s job is, it’s very easy to criticize and point the finger until you sit in their seat. Going back to what I first said, I’ve sat in every one of the admin seats in a PT private practice. I 100% appreciate whoever is at that front desk with ten arms trying to get the job done. I sat in the back and watched therapists. If we’re going back decades, there was no documentation. It was all manual. “I can’t read your writing. What are you doing? Why do you have to write so fast? You have to do the whole SOAP. There is a lot of notes.” It’s all about trying to not teach someone, someone else’s job but to let them know what the job is so they can appreciate what each other is doing.

As we’re wrapping up here, is there anything else that you’d like to share that you might recommend owners consider as they’re looking at their front desk personnel?

Going back on everything we’ve touched on is look at your benchmarks. Start coming up with what you want to do because when you make the decision to make your changes, stick to your guns. Even if it doesn’t work out, prove that it doesn’t work out. Don’t give up on it. We did write a book and it happens to be all about the front desk to create your own front desk guide. Go to our website AccountMattersMA.com. We have a link on there. There’s a book on Amazon and it is tailored specifically for PT and OT private practice front desk.

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This will help you write a workbook that you can say to every new person coming in, “This is how we answer the phone. Everybody answers the same way. This is how we schedule and do the cancel and no-shows.” Go to our website and check it out. My biggest thing with owners is appreciating every person that’s in your business and getting them to appreciate everyone else’s position in your business. It’s a ship that needs to move together with nobody jumping off.

What’s the name of the book?

The name of the book is The Administrative Power Center because that’s what we developed. Under it, it’s billing for rehab private practices. It’s oddly enough hard to find on Amazon because if you type it in, it comes up with everything that does not say administrative power center. When you find it, we’re the only book called The Administrative Power Center. It’s your revenue cycle that we’ve renamed, we’d beefed up, and we made it a little more fun for people to learn instead of looking at your typical revenue cycle.

I love that you hit on reminding the owners that if they’re going to make changes, be certain and clear about it. Also, make sure you verbalize what your expectations are. Our arrival rate is 85%. Successful arrival rates are at 92%. Make sure that’s the benchmark. That’s what we’re expecting. Our over-the-counter collections rate is 75%. I expect it to be 100%. This is what my expectation is. Be clear about those and put it in writing. That’s part of the book that you’re talking about is to create that workbook, put it in writing and that workbook ends up being, “This is how you get to 100% over-the-counter collections.”

It’s your guide on how to run a front desk from A to Z. My partner, Diane, and I wrote it. We have close to 60 years of this particular business. Diane has only worked in PT/OT private practice as well as I. My final thought is to check the book out. It’s a great tool for you that you can use for your entire company.

If people wanted to reach out to you or Account Matters, what would you recommend? How do they reach out to you?

There are two different ways. You can go to our website. You’ll see a little Ask Dan A Question and you can click on there. There’s an info box you can send anything to. If you want to email me, my email is Stacey@AccountMattersMA.com and I will get back to you personally.

Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your years of experience in this space. You shared a ton of great value. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on.

You’re welcome. Thank you.

Have a great day.

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About Stacey Fitzsimmons

Stacey Fitzsimmons is the President and COO of Account Matters Inc. Prior to Account Matters Stacey served in the US Army as a paratrooper and a mechanic in the 82nd Airborne Division and then owned and operated a sporting goods retail shop for several years. Stacey has 18 years of experience working with physical/occupational Therapy private practice owners across the country.

Stacey along with her business partner Diane McCutcheon, have recently written and published the book “The Administrative Power Center” to help educate the importance of the front desk position in a private practice setting. Stacey’s mission is to provide the tools and or services of outstanding administrative support to physical therapists nationwide, allowing them to get paid right the first time.

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