Quality Begins With Understanding The Purpose Of Your Job

QUALITY BEGINS WITH UNDERSTANDING
THE PURPOSE OF YOUR JOB

The purpose of every Healthcare Financial Manager's job is to contribute to the provider's mission.

Good financial managers are often the linchpin in showing employees how they contribute
to the provider's mission. Tying financial and operational information together tells where the company has been and points directly at where it is going. These indicators are used by leaders to guide the company through difficult external decisions. They also show workers opportunities for improved efficiencies. Both are necessary in a competitive marketplace that is coming to demand quality and in some cases even recognizing it.

One of the first guiding principles in pursuing quality either as an individual employee or as an organization is to understand the purpose of your work. Organizations must know it. Bosses must teach it. Employees are empowered by understanding it.

Employees must understand the mission of the company. What exactly is the company's business? Who are our customers? How do we exceed their expectations of our service? How do we get our revenue?

Most of this can be articulated in a mission statement.
Employees must understand the purpose of their department. For what work is the department responsible. How do we interact with other departments? How do we contribute to the function of the whole organization?

Individual employees must understand the reasons their job exists. What is expected of me? Why? How do I contribute to my department? Why do I do things the way I do?

Finally, each employee, manager, and leader must put the big and small pictures together. Every individual must know how his efforts contribute to the outcomes of the whole. This understanding empowers people to create and look for more ways to contribute. It creates a corporate culture that gives everyone a chance to improve things. Through this, the organization itself improves.

Acquiring the Skills

How can an individual create this opportunity for himself even though corporate culture
doesn't support it? How can a person gather this knowledge when it's not offered? Fortunately, this is one area where every employee has the necessary skills if he'll just apply them.

Work hard and ask questions. Stay late. Get to know your co-workers. In your
department. In other departments. Understand what you are doing and why. Understand what others do and why. Look for solutions that will work in a changing environment. Think of new incentives that could improve outcomes. Suggest changes. Be willing to change yourself. Ask yourself if a different effort will give more efficiency or more value. How can you do more in less time for less cost with greater customer satisfaction.
Begin to think with a customer service orientation. Identify and understand your customer.
Whether it is a patient, a doctor, a boss or all of these. Find out what your customer wants. Become responsive.

Most of all, use this customer-driven quality orientation as an underlying principle to
exercise independent judgment. It is the successful application of this skill that will take your career farther than any other.

The healthcare industry will continue to be pushed more and more by this sarne customer
service orientation. Customers who pay most times respond to cost. Hospital care is expensive. This has exposed an opportunity for home healthcare, urgent care centers, day surgeries, etc. Small rural and exurban free-standing, not-for-profit hospitals have turned to for-profit management companies to find efficiencies. Physician clinics are scrutinized, acquired and managed by for-profit companies with experienced healthcare financial managers. Innumerable consulting firms will study any aspect of your delivery system. Managed care companies tie it all together and manage the risk.

All follow the same guiding principles: know the mission of the company and the purpose
of each individual's job. Then show where the costs are, what outcomes are derived with these costs and gauge the value of these outcomes to the patient and the paying customer. This new healthcare industry is built on finding more efficient, less expensive, quicker ways of delivering quality care.

With that foundation of change, it is impossible to predict which technical skills will have
more value for employers five years into the future.

But what can be predicted is that the same guiding principles will matter. Really
understand the purpose of your work. Look for ways to increase efficiency and lead to higher quality. Your work will improve. Your company's service will improve. Both reputations will improve. You'll be doing for yourself what you're doing for your company, positioning yourself for improved outcomes.

That's career enhancement.

Entrust your confidential search to us.

Vickers Chambless Managed Search
400 Perimeter Center Terrace, NE
Suite 900
Atlanta, Georgia 30346
Phone: (404) 365-0030
Fax: (404) 231-1351