The staff of Twin Forks Optometry and Vision Therapy . Practice owners, Drs. Licausi and Zilnicki, say the staff has been cross-trained to maximize both the patient experience and profitability.
Cross-training employees to improve care and maximize profitability.
By Miki Lyn Zilnicki, OD, FCOVD,
and Jessica Licausi, OD, FAAO, FCOVD
August 16, 2023
Cross-training employees ensures that your patients will receive uninterrupted care and services, and that your staff will not be over-extended and burnt out. Cross-training can also make you more profitable. Here is how we prepare staff to do more than just one thing in our office.
Evolving Positions to Suit Evolving Practice Needs
We currently have four employees. Three of these employees are full-time and one is part-time. Our employees all have varying levels of cross-training.
Our most crossed-trained employee is our medical biller. She started in the office as a part-time vision therapist as her first foray back into the workforce after having her son. When our biller moved on to another position in a different field, we began the search for a new medical biller and were even considering outsourcing this position. Our vision therapist came to us and expressed interest in the position and adding hours to her schedule.
Now our vision therapist’s weekly schedule is a 50/50 mix of vision therapy and billing in which she has set days dedicated to each area. She is highly familiar with our EHR/insurance software, which lends itself well to the skills needed in the reception area, so she is also able to fill in for our office manager when necessary.
Our least cross-trained employee is our full-time lead vision therapist. She manages the vision therapy department, overseeing the tracking of equipment, patient scheduling and most other areas of our vision therapy services. She is trained to be competent in answering the phone and scheduling appointments to help cover on an as-needed basis, such for other employees during their lunch breaks. We found that she works best by having set, dedicated tasks that play to her strengths without too many extraneous distractions.
How to Cross-Train Without Taking Away from Primary Responsibility
We have found success by training our employees fully and well in their hired area first. Once they can efficiently and proficiently perform their duties we start to consider if and what areas of cross-training could be beneficial.
We are careful to set expectations and time frames for cross-trained duties. For example, if our office manager plans to take a day off, and another employee who is cross-trained in reception is filling in, we ensure our office manager communicates the needed coverage, and that the employee filling in sets aside other duties for that day to allow for them to fully focus.
Have Employees Train Each Other
When cross-training, we have the employees train each other in their respective areas. We set aside time for the two employees to meet and observe first, and then perform the new duties while supervised (akin to our initial training). Training continues until the employee is able to handle the new tasks independently.
Address Cross-Training in Performance Reviews
During reviews, we prioritize reviewing the employee’s performance in their core role. Secondary roles in the office are reviewed to a lesser extent. However, we make sure to touch base on what is or is not working in secondary roles. Part of our conversation during reviews is how full an employee’s plate is: sometimes we need to delegate a responsibility back to someone else in the office, sometimes an employee expresses an interest in growth and learning other areas.
Other Articles to Explore
Click HERE to read more about Drs. Licausi’s and Zilnicki’s approach to performance reviews.
Cross-Training Success Stories that Helped Patients & Profitability
One of our former vision therapy patients expressed interest in a part-time position as she had experience filling in occasionally in reception at another physician’s office. At the time, our staff had been calling in sick often, so we jumped on the opportunity for help! We did not anticipate how much her role would grow when she first offered to come on board.
We hired her one day a week and trained her in reception to be able to answer phones, schedule appointments, send out electronic paperwork and scan documentation. Since she had some experience, the bulk of her training focused on her learning the technology of our EHR system. She quickly became fully independent running reception. Once we saw how quickly she learned, and that she was such an asset to our team, we approached her to gauge her interest in training as a vision therapist. She was on board and her cross-training began.
We kept her in reception in the morning and then she shadowed our lead vision therapist in the afternoons. Both doctors also met with her weekly to teach her the background concepts of vision therapy. Now this employee provides a full day of vision therapy care, which helped increase our revenue by adding patient slots and availability, and she also is a wonderful asset to cover reception when needed.
The added benefit of her having gone through a therapy program herself is an invaluable tool as a therapist. She can see up to 10-12 vision therapy patients within a day, which translates into at least $1,000 extra in gross profit, depending on the type of patient (private pay/insurance) and reimbursement.
A second cross-training success story is our aforementioned medical biller/vision therapist, who has also been cross-trained in reception. Our office manager will be out on maternity leave later this year. In the discussions of how to fill her responsibilities while she is out, the conversation of having this employee help emerged. She currently works three full days and two half days in the practice. We are planning to expand her hours on her half days to full time with the plan to have her cover reception and concurrently work on her billing duties.
Our thought process is that while this pulls her from some of her allotted billing time to cover reception, the expanded hours should offset this. It also enables us to hire someone temporarily only three days per week instead of five! When discussing payroll costs, it made sense to us to utilize staff we already have rather than adding another full-time employee.
Miki Lyn Zilnicki, OD, FCOVD, and Jessica
Licausi, OD, FAAO, FCOVD, are co-owners of Twin Forks Optometry and Vision Therapy in Riverhead, NY.
To contact Dr. Zilnicki: DrZilnicki@twinforksoptometry.com.
To contact Dr. Licausi: DrLicausi@twinforksoptometry.com
