Advanced Practice Forum with Wendy Lucas

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Every time a staff member leaves, you're the one that shows stays late uh to cover their shift.
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Wendy used to be that person.
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It's a way where we can um scale, we can control, and we can grow without affecting patient care by changing the way we deliver that.
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Welcome to the Snap Scale Show, the podcast for healthcare leaders who want to grow their practice without the burnout, the chaos, or the staffing overload.
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Every episode, we sit down with the people figuring out how to build stronger teams, better patient experiences, and ultimately better care.
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Let's get into it.
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Next up is going to be Wendy Lucas, and she's going to show you what it looks like when a practice builds their operational infrastructure to actually protect revenue as it grows.
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Wendy built a PT organization from one location to ten before selling, and she knows what the costs are and how to scale.
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And when you do scale, what that saves.
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So we're super excited.
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And Wendy's going to share with you just some incredible strategies that you can use to streamline those operations.
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So we talked about revenue cycle management.
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We talked about a number of different things that you could look at.
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We looked at the payer system versus your system.
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We looked at the overall process within your business.
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We talked about, you know, how do you integrate clinical and admin staff together?
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And then one thing that really stuck out to me during Ryan's presentation, because I I also know Wendy's business really, really well because Snapsco works a lot with Hybridge on a variety of different accounts as we go as we work together.
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He talked about patient collections.
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And so Wendy's going to share with you some strategies and tools to help improve patient collections.
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So I'm going to bring Wendy to the stage.
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There is a version of practice ownership where you're always the answer to every problem.
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Every time something breaks, someone calls you, every time a patient complains, it lands on your desk.
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Every time a staff member leaves, you're the one that chose stays late to cover their shift.
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Wendy used to be that person.
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Then she built systems.
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She built systems that well, they were well enough to grow from one to ten locations.
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They were well enough to retain staff for 25 plus years.
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And eventually she sold her practice and moved on to the next chapter.
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Now she's a co-founder of Hybridge, which brings front desk technology to patient uh private practices.
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And her session today is on scaling systems that actually work.
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Not systems that look good on paper and fall apart the first time.
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Some when someone calls in sick, no, no, no.
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She's going to show you how things actually work in the clinic.
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Welcome to the show, Wendy.
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Thank you.
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Thanks so much.
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Yeah, it's good to see you.
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So, Wendy, I we we didn't coordinate too much ahead of time.
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Did you have a presentation today?
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I do, absolutely.
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Would you like for me to down on the screen?
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Yeah, go ahead and share your screen if you want to.
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There's that uh, it looks like a plus sign down on the bottom of the computer monitor.
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Perfect.
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There it goes.
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Everything.
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Perfect.
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Great.
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Well, yeah, it's a pleasure being here.
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And I actually was able to listen in on Ryan's talk there, some.
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So I think we're singing from the same hymnal.
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Uh, and really um, I think his solutions and his background are very similar uh to mine as you've kind of gone.
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That we're looking at what do we do to save private practice to make it um viable as we move through this new environment.
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Um, and as you said, in my practice, we actually started this these scalings of growing and looking at private practice in a different way back in 2015.
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So, kind of like Ryan, it's been now over 10 years where we've used this technology, it's just continued to grow.
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Um, we were looking at that point in time, knowing that costs for delivering care was rising, rising quickly, and reimbursement was going down.
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And as Ryan says, they not only going down, but trying to find ways to get it away from you when you've already earned it.
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Um, so we were looking at what we can do to get in front of that and look at how we can do things differently.
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Um, so as we've done this product over the years, most everybody has said, you know, that front desk is a no-brainer.
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We've got to do something up there because it's a way where we can um scale, we can control, and we can grow without affecting patient care by changing the way we deliver that.
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And I really have found, you know, you challenge me with like how do we help people grow?
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And what I found is that have success in growing means that you need to either know or learn how to grow without sacrificing those key elements, whatever they may be for you.
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I feel like I've touched on those as we go forward, but I think there are certain things that are important.
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So when you first talk to someone about that front desk, as he said, and then looking at what are we going to do with that, what we really don't want to do is lose that personal touch because as much as we talk about AI, we talk about systems, we talk about machines, we are in healthcare.
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And healthcare is a very personal thing.
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It's personal with the patient, it's personal to our providers, um, it's personal to even, you know, the people in the front.
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They uh create a very important role for us.
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Uh, as everybody says, they are the they are the face of your practice.
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So I think maintaining that personal touch, but figuring out how do we leverage that personal touch without the cost that we have, and we're gonna talk about that more as we go.
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Controlling variables.
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Ryan hit on that as well.
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Uh, we really do need to look at what those variables are and we have to control them, and we have to have insight.
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I think that's the biggest thing when I went from our first office to the second office.
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Well, you're in your first office and you know everything that's happening, you know.
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Every practice owner has eyes and ears all over the place, you know.
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My kids used to come home and say, How did you find out that I did such and such?
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It's like, well, you know, it's the neighborhood that tells me everything.
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Oh, my patient's seeing you somewhere.
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So everybody knows what's happening.
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But when you go to that second location, you can't be in both places.
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And the third and the fourth, it just continues to get diluted.
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So you have to have insight into what's happening, or you feel like that that growth is out of control.
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Cost controls, we'll talk about that more too.
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Um, I'll mention this later.
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But I remember when the first time that you know uh we started talking about growing, I'm like, how in the world I'm gonna how are we gonna open another office?
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I'm barely making it with this office.
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And as Ryan said, you work your butt off, and all your providers are working their butt off, and then you sit there on Sunday night and wonder how you're gonna make payroll.
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Well, we have to figure that out, or you can't grow.
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You feel like that you're paralyzed.
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And then a big part is eliminating that drag, and that you know, that's that's the drama.
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We always tell people uh you have to budget at least 10% for drama because it's gonna be there, it's gonna be a part of it.
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So let's dive in a little bit, let's talk about these processes and stuff.
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Personal touch.
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Um, we think when we think about outsourcing a front desk solution, we think, oh gosh, what are we gonna do?
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We think about those cold, I call them cold kiosk where you walk into, we should probably shouldn't mention them here, but you walk in somewhere and you know you put your name in and your date of birth, it tells you have a seat.
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And if you ask for help, it basically tells you your ticket number, such and such, have a seat, somebody will be with you.
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There's never really a person that greets you, and you start to feel like more of a number in healthcare than actually a patient and someone caring for you.
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But our system, when we designed it, that was the number one.
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I said, we cannot lose the personal touch.
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Uh, just as background, our practice has won practice of the year in our area since it was in the inception of that award.
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Uh, we actually entered into it.
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Only medical offices were in that um, that publication for best practices, and then we were the we got physical therapy in there and we won it, and we have won it every year thereafter.
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So for since 2015, we have not had a physical person sitting at any of our offices, and our customers, thousands of customers across the country and into Canada, don't have people sitting at their front office.
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Uh, one of our clients, I thought, said it very well.
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It's a person, it's just 1D versus 3D.
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So we still have that personal touch, and this is kind of how it looks in the uh clinic.
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That camera allows them to see those patients and talk to them the same way they always did.
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So we want to maintain that as we go forward because it's an important part of healthcare.
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I think we will get AI intervening some on that, um, but you still have to have some of that personal touch, and we're even seeing it in medicine.
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We love that AI writing our notes, but we also have to be careful because on the back end, you know, we have to make sure that it captured the right things that we said and not the wrong things, and that, you know, what patients hear or what we want them to hear and not the things that may be going in our brain as other diagnosis for them.
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Controlling variables.
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I love this.
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The best way to control variables is to minimize the number of variables.
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And when I was preparing this, I started thinking about McDonald's and Burger King.
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I know that is a hamburger chain and not healthcare, but if I said to you, I'm gonna give you one of those two hamburger chains as your retirement, you get all the profits off of one of them.
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I would dare to say that anybody in this group would pick Burger King over McDonald's.
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You may like the burgers at Burger King better, but we all know that by and large, McDonald's profits are better.
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And why is that?
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And why is it that when you go to McDonald's here or in England, the burger tastes the same, everything looks the same.
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And I would say to you is because they control their variables.
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It's the same thing everywhere, everybody does things the same way, and it's not the Burger King, have it your way.
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And while we may think that sounds harsh, but Ryan spoke to it as well.
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We have to have processes in place.
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Now we're gonna treat patients based on their conditions, we're talking about administrative things.
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Those have to have processes in place, and they have to be the same across all of your locations.
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I would say anyone in the audience that has more than one location, you start to say, well, this location does this really well, and that location does the other thing very well.
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Well, we have to have everybody doing the right thing all the way through, and we want our best people at every location, particularly when we're talking about front desk.
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Whoever collects the best, whoever greets the patients the best, whoever makes the patient feel most comfortable, they should be the person and the face across all of our locations.
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It's kind of like when your kids are in school and everybody's fighting for the best math teacher.
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I used to always say, Why do only 30 kids get the best math teacher?
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Everybody should have access to the best math teacher.
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And we can do that today.
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Technology allows us to do that.
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So leverage your people over your platform so that everybody gets your best person, everybody gets the person that collects the best, and then use those systems.
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Insight.
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That was a very big part of what um Ryan was talking about as well.
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And I find that when we talk to clients, their their fear is well, how will I know what's going on, or how will I know what's happening if I don't have somebody up front, or if I don't have, if I have more than one location, how do I know what's happening at each of those?
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As Ryan said, you need a reporting system.
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This is just an example of ours.
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This allows people to know how many uh video calls each, how many patients were uh received at each office, how many video calls each receptionist did, how long they were, if they had to wait, how long did they wait, how long was the call, and most importantly, a net promoter score.
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We talked about those net promoter scores about what people were getting through our clinicians, and it's very important.
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But we said our front desk is our front face, so why shouldn't we know who's doing very, very well with that?
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So that net promoter score allows us to get insight into what's happening.
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We also say, you know, golly day, it doesn't seem like they're hardly doing anything up front, or they'll say, I'm so busy, I don't have anything else to do.
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Well, how do we judge that?
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If we want to grow, we need to know how many people do we need to cover these offices.
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So this, along with your phone logs, will pretty much tell you how much time a front desk person is doing the tasks that we have assigned to them.
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So we're able to actually digitize and uh qualify what amount of time that they are actually doing tasks that we need them to do versus being busy to be busy.
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We all know that.
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We have our clinicians that'll tell us, Oh, I'm so busy I can't see any more patients.
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And you look at what they're billing, and you know, they're billing for like six hours a day and they're working 10.
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Well, something's wrong there.
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So we need to figure out what that is because otherwise we can't grow.
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We can't leverage people and utilize the things that we need to do to be able to help more people within our communities.
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Cost controls.
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This goes back to I know, uh, I love this saying when you stop growing, you're dying.
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And some of us feel like we're dying and we're still not growing because it's painful.
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You're thinking, what am I gonna do?
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How can I go forward?
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I can barely make payroll where I am.
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How am I gonna take on a new office?
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What am I gonna do for staff?
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Well, what we found is that when you can control these things and you can minimize those, it makes growth so much easier.
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One of the things that we found with our system, obviously, is that you know, being able to leverage that person over a bigger space.
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But what we also found is that we didn't need that front desk space anymore.
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The average in the nation is that front office space occupies between 100 and 500 square feet.
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It's actually not billable space.
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So take that space back in your current locations, reclaim it, put something else in there so you can get increased growth on your same stores.
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And then in your new clinics, don't build out that space.
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Real estate is very expensive.
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Building costs, I just heard this morning, have gone up like 30% on building costs.
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Let's not build out a front desk space that's not doesn't have any return on investment for us.
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Let's make that a smaller platform, a smaller space for our clinics and be able to leverage our ability to greet patients.
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We all know that patients aren't driving long distances.
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Whenever they're seeing a provider, particularly in PT, Urgent Care, a lot of other markets out there, if they are looking for convenience.
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They want whoever's closest to them.
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Even if the best therapist or the best provider is all the way across town, they're typically not going to do that unless it's a one-time visit for a surgeon or something like that.
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Anything that's repeat visits, they are just in the mode of consumption.
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So let's get there and be the person they can consume versus having to pull back.
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You also don't have the problem of hiring and training new staff.
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You can leverage your existing staff, and when you use snapscale, you don't have to worry about training them again.
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Once you have your first VA in place, all of that training is taking care of you.
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So we get rid of some of the other things we can talk about.
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It also is a problem you're thinking, okay, how what am I going to do?
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I'm going to open this office.
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Maybe we're only seeing a few patients, but I'm paying someone to sit up front for 40 hours or more.
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Get rid of that cost.
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You can just leverage your staff you have and grow with them.
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You can also avoid the costly mistakes they make.
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They forget to get authorization for a service.
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They didn't verify the benefits right, they aren't comfortable collecting.
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Whatever the problems are, you don't have to relive those every time you open a new office.
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Use the people that are doing that very well for you now so that they can continue to do that as you grow and then move on from there.
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This will allow you to tap into profitability much faster.
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We found that as we opened offices, instead of looking at a three to six to nine, some people are at 12 plus months for profitability, we were able to get that profitability within about six weeks, depending on our pay resources in those contracts.
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But we were getting paid and we were getting paid right.
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We were also utilizing systems through our kiosks that we were able to collect.
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Um, I was on a recent podcast and I thought they said it well.
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It's, you know, it is healthcare.
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People uh understand that they do have to pay something for that.
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If we create barriers to that payment, it makes it hard.
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But when we make it like the Amazon model, where they are just collect clicking and collecting those goods that they want, it makes it much uh much more smooth.
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Eliminate the drag.
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I love this picture because most of us would say, as practice owners or any business, they'll tell you, if I didn't have to have employees, this would be a great business.
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Well, unfortunately or unfortunately, we do have employees and we know we have to deal with those, but a lot of times we can get rid of that drama.
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The workforce problems are very real, they've become more real since COVID.
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Um, as I prepared for this, I did some national research.
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So I wanted to share these numbers with you because I feel like that they have a huge impact in us, not feeling like we're the odd man out.
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I've talked to clients over and over and like, I don't know what I'm doing wrong, what's wrong with me, you know, all of those woes that we find.
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But I think once we look at some of these numbers, we'll feel a little differently about that.
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First and foremost, is currently there's over 118,000 open healthcare reception businesses.
00:17:26.319 --> 00:17:32.640
This isn't receptionist for anything else, this is no other workforce, but just someone to sit at a front desk.
00:17:33.039 --> 00:17:43.039
Of those, the cost, most practices are paying$5 plus per hour over minimum wage in order to have a baseline person sitting at their front desk.
00:17:43.359 --> 00:17:47.440
Even at that, turnover rates are running 40 to 45 percent.
00:17:47.599 --> 00:17:59.759
Most of our clients, and Nathan may uh share differently, but most people are seeing it at a 50 plus turnover rate per position, not over their whole workforce of front desk people, it's per front desk person.
00:17:59.839 --> 00:18:05.519
They're seeing that turnover, and typically they're seeing that turnover between two and four times a year.
00:18:05.599 --> 00:18:07.359
So it's it's significant.
00:18:08.160 --> 00:18:09.119
Turnover costs.
00:18:09.200 --> 00:18:11.599
I think sometimes we'll think, oh my gosh, here we go again.
00:18:11.680 --> 00:18:14.880
I gotta run an ad, I gotta interview, I gotta retrain.
00:18:15.119 --> 00:18:20.559
But we fail to put cost to that, and I think that's a misnomer on our part not to do.
00:18:20.799 --> 00:18:27.680
So the national statistics are that every turnover costs between one half and two times that person's salary.
00:18:27.839 --> 00:18:31.599
So depending on what part of the country you're in, I made these very small.
00:18:31.759 --> 00:18:37.279
It's anywhere between$21,000 to$83,000 per turnover.
00:18:37.440 --> 00:18:50.559
So if you look at those at at least one to two turnovers per position per year, you're talking about a lot of money that's just walking out the door because we don't control that variable, as Ryan said.
00:18:51.279 --> 00:18:52.160
Workforce.
00:18:52.319 --> 00:18:56.720
We also know that there's a substandard quality of many of our current candidates.
00:18:56.799 --> 00:19:12.720
And you know, you look around if somebody's able to make$20 working at you know your local convenience store, it's very difficult to pay them$20 to work at a healthcare facility and know authorizations, verifications, answer phones, greet patients, be nice every day when they're yelling at you.
00:19:12.799 --> 00:19:14.319
It's pretty hard to come by.
00:19:14.400 --> 00:19:16.160
So it's very difficult.
00:19:16.720 --> 00:19:17.920
We also know drama.
00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:25.200
There's a lot more drama in the world, uh, whatever you want to call our new generation and the good and the bad of them, but there's a lot of drama that goes with that.
00:19:25.359 --> 00:19:32.000
So once you outsource that front desk and you get it away from the clinic, it takes a lot of that out of the clinic.
00:19:32.160 --> 00:19:39.680
There are no more, as I say, bad hair days, there's no more, you know, significant other broke up with me days, it's all taken care of.
00:19:39.839 --> 00:19:41.440
You also get rid of that call out.
00:19:41.759 --> 00:19:44.480
I mean, that used to be the most miserable thing in my life.
00:19:44.640 --> 00:19:54.480
You know, at one office it was one thing, but when you had 10 offices open more than 40 hours a week, you had, you know, anywhere between 15 and 20 front desk people.
00:19:54.559 --> 00:20:01.839
And, you know, for the most part, our providers came to work, but our front desk, it wasn't one a day, it wasn't like maybe one day a month.
00:20:01.920 --> 00:20:04.319
It was almost every day somebody was calling out.
00:20:04.400 --> 00:20:12.640
And I always joke and say, you know, if the phone would ring before six in the morning, I didn't say very nice words because I knew it was going to be someone not coming to work.
00:20:12.799 --> 00:20:23.039
I was gonna have to figure out how we were gonna cover it, pull somebody from doing their job to go to that office and work that, or leave it empty where the whole staff was gonna be upset.
00:20:23.200 --> 00:20:26.480
We would not be collecting over the counter as we should be that day.
00:20:26.640 --> 00:20:28.960
So the losses just continue to add up.
00:20:29.039 --> 00:20:33.680
And when you multiply that by number of locations, those losses get pretty significant.
00:20:33.839 --> 00:20:40.720
So it was really nice when we um created a virtual front desk product where we didn't have to worry about that anymore.
00:20:40.880 --> 00:20:42.319
You know, the staff could cover that.
00:20:42.480 --> 00:20:50.720
A lot of people that just had a sick child or you know, a GI bug or a cough or something, they didn't want to be contagious, they could they could still work.
00:20:50.799 --> 00:20:52.960
They could work from home and not use their PTOs.
00:20:53.039 --> 00:20:54.559
So that also helped as well.
00:20:54.720 --> 00:20:59.119
And then outsourcing that staff to a company like SnapScale, you don't have to worry anymore.
00:20:59.279 --> 00:21:04.079
When you've contracted that time and those days and those hours, there is as what would they say?
00:21:04.160 --> 00:21:09.599
There's pandy in the Z when they're supposed to be there with a smile on their face and ready to greet your patients.
00:21:09.680 --> 00:21:12.160
So you can just let that be taken care of.
00:21:12.640 --> 00:21:14.799
We also found the inefficiencies of phones.
00:21:14.960 --> 00:21:19.359
You've been in the office where you see or you hear the phones just ringing off the hook.
00:21:19.519 --> 00:21:25.519
I used to love one of the orthopods I worked with used to tell the staff all the time, answer the phone, there's money on the other end.
00:21:25.839 --> 00:21:28.480
And they would just sit there talking, not answer the phone.
00:21:28.640 --> 00:21:30.720
Well, we can do, we don't have to do that anymore.
00:21:30.880 --> 00:21:35.759
We can offload that, we can put that through systems, we can even do after-hour coverages.
00:21:35.839 --> 00:21:40.319
That's a great uh service that SnapScale has been able to give uh to a lot of our clients.
00:21:40.480 --> 00:21:41.519
It's a typical thing.
00:21:41.599 --> 00:21:45.039
You leave, and the next day your your schedule when you left, your schedule is full.
00:21:45.200 --> 00:21:49.039
You show up the next morning and 30% of it's gone because they've canceled overnight.
00:21:49.279 --> 00:21:53.440
Well, with phone coverage, we're able to take in those cancellations when they come in.
00:21:53.599 --> 00:21:57.200
We can automatically get them rescheduled and we can work through that wait list.
00:21:57.519 --> 00:22:01.119
So if you have a wait list of patients, which Most all of us do now.
00:22:01.279 --> 00:22:05.039
It's an environment, as Ryan said, we're not competing for patients anymore.
00:22:05.119 --> 00:22:06.640
There's plenty of patients out there.
00:22:06.799 --> 00:22:08.160
Everybody's looking for help.
00:22:08.319 --> 00:22:13.680
Well, when we get that cancellation, let's go ahead and try to utilize that wait list, get them scheduled.
00:22:13.759 --> 00:22:15.920
They can call them up to certain amounts of time.
00:22:16.079 --> 00:22:22.640
After that, they can text, you know, we have an opening tomorrow, first come, first served, get those patients in and get them helped.
00:22:22.960 --> 00:22:25.279
We can also control poor patient flow.
00:22:25.359 --> 00:22:32.079
And this is a lot of, you know, we're all going to paperless, we're wanting them to onboard, uh, do their digital intake, patient portal, et cetera.
00:22:32.240 --> 00:22:33.920
But we all know a lot of them don't.
00:22:34.079 --> 00:22:36.000
Um or they can't or they won't.
00:22:36.079 --> 00:22:39.200
Uh, they show up with nothing done or incomplete.
00:22:39.359 --> 00:22:43.839
Well, when we create these systems that we're able to do things, we can get that consent to treat.
00:22:43.920 --> 00:22:49.279
We can get them back to the provider so the provider stays on schedule, and then we can complete those things afterwards.
00:22:49.440 --> 00:22:52.480
So we don't have to live with the world as it always was.
00:22:52.640 --> 00:22:54.720
We can just imagine it new and different.
00:22:54.960 --> 00:22:55.839
We can win.
00:22:56.000 --> 00:22:59.440
We can do all of these things through the system that we've talked about.
00:22:59.599 --> 00:23:01.279
We can have that personal touch.
00:23:01.359 --> 00:23:02.799
There's a person there to greet them.
00:23:02.960 --> 00:23:04.000
They will be personal.
00:23:04.240 --> 00:23:06.640
I'll tell a little uh story from our clinic.
00:23:06.799 --> 00:23:11.920
We used to have, obviously, I said we did not have people sitting up front, but they would patients would leave this time of year.
00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:13.440
We're coming into summer in my area.
00:23:13.599 --> 00:23:17.119
They'll leave vegetables by the kiosk for the for the receptionist.
00:23:17.440 --> 00:23:19.680
They will leave them Christmas presents.
00:23:19.839 --> 00:23:23.039
I've watched clinics that have snapscales uh staff in them.
00:23:23.200 --> 00:23:29.039
I've heard the personal conversations, they will talk to them, they'll see that they're no longer using their crutches.
00:23:29.200 --> 00:23:31.039
Oh, hey, I see you're off your crutches.
00:23:31.200 --> 00:23:35.200
You must be feeling better, or their slings off, or they've gotten a new haircut.
00:23:35.440 --> 00:23:40.319
The people will recognize they still create that personal connection, kind of like we're doing now.
00:23:40.480 --> 00:23:47.279
I mean, we've all been on a Teams call, a Google Meet call where the person doesn't have their camera on, and that's very impersonal.
00:23:47.359 --> 00:23:48.799
It's really hard to read their language.
00:23:48.880 --> 00:23:52.400
But when their camera comes on, you feel like you've met them, you feel like you know them.
00:23:52.480 --> 00:23:55.359
You can read their body language, you can see their expressions.
00:23:55.519 --> 00:23:59.920
So it becomes a personal relationship, even though it's 1D versus 3D.
00:24:00.559 --> 00:24:01.920
We can have insight.
00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:11.039
Um, the receptions, this is an example of the panel, they have continuous live streaming of your offices so they can see what's happening at every moment of the day.
00:24:11.200 --> 00:24:13.839
They can pop in without the person having to do anything.
00:24:14.079 --> 00:24:22.240
So it's not like at the laboratories where you want to be helped, no one comes in, or you're at the grocery store, you have to wait for someone to come over and help you.
00:24:22.400 --> 00:24:24.240
They are always readily available.
00:24:24.400 --> 00:24:26.720
They can pop right up and talk to you at any time.
00:24:26.960 --> 00:24:32.400
And as you see in this corner at that top right of the receptions panel on the left, they can help with forms.
00:24:32.480 --> 00:24:42.079
So if they're filling out a form for you, they didn't complete their digital intake or their patient portal, they need some information for them, they can assist with them to take over those forms, complete them for them.
00:24:42.319 --> 00:24:45.039
We can print and scan and take payment.
00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:47.680
Most importantly, you know, people are like, Well, how do you get paid?
00:24:47.839 --> 00:24:55.119
We can remotely activate those terminals and accept payment and again control local hardware such as printers and scanners.
00:24:55.440 --> 00:25:00.559
We always have the ability to control these variables because we have reporting to know what they're doing.
00:25:00.720 --> 00:25:11.920
We know who's on, we can tell you when they're on the phone, when they're on video, we can tell you everything that's happening about them, and we can give everybody at all of your clinics the best people.
00:25:12.079 --> 00:25:20.079
So combining with an outsource staffing, your leveraging staff, utilizing technology, I always tell people you can wash your hands of it.
00:25:20.240 --> 00:25:21.920
Front desk issues are solved.
00:25:22.160 --> 00:25:30.880
Snap scale will take that on, they will train, retrain, always improving on the outcomes for you, and you really don't have to worry anymore.
00:25:30.960 --> 00:25:33.839
There's no more calls before six o'clock in the morning.
00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:39.359
There's uh no problems with the you know, somebody getting upset about XYZ person on the screen.
00:25:39.519 --> 00:25:44.400
Everybody gets the best math teacher, everybody gets the best component of what we have.
00:25:45.920 --> 00:25:48.960
Did I give it to you in a nutshell there, Nathan?
00:25:50.319 --> 00:25:51.759
Incredible, Wendy.
00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:56.559
And uh, you know, I can't say thank you enough for being a great partner of Snap Scale.
00:25:56.880 --> 00:26:02.480
Uh, we did have some questions that came in while you were speaking, and uh, would it be okay if we asked you one or two questions?
00:26:02.559 --> 00:26:03.519
You still have some time here?
00:26:04.319 --> 00:26:05.039
Wonderful.
00:26:05.200 --> 00:26:06.400
Um, all right, wonderful.
00:26:06.559 --> 00:26:10.640
Looks like our next speaker, Sean Healy, will be here in about five minutes, guys.
00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:12.079
That's when we're gonna bring him back up.
00:26:12.160 --> 00:26:16.559
But in the meantime, I'm gonna ask some of these other questions that were uh came in through the chat here.
00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:29.599
So it said you kept uh your admin staff really, really low, but when you went from your first location to two locations as a PT clinic owner, what did you find that broke first?
00:26:29.680 --> 00:26:31.839
And what did you not see coming?
00:26:33.119 --> 00:26:34.559
Uh, let's see.
00:26:34.799 --> 00:26:36.079
What broke first?
00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:38.160
That's kind of hard because it was a long time ago.
00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:41.119
So I'm trying to figure out what kind of happened.
00:26:41.279 --> 00:26:46.079
Um, I would say it was more uh we actually had outgrown our first facility.
00:26:46.240 --> 00:26:51.279
So going to a new facility, it really wasn't our front office staff that had issues with that.
00:26:51.440 --> 00:26:55.440
It really was our clinicians wanting to be at a clinic they were more comfortable in.
00:26:55.599 --> 00:27:00.640
Because I think all of us as practitioners, we know what we're doing, but you go to a new site and you're like, where's this?
00:27:00.720 --> 00:27:01.440
Where's that?
00:27:01.599 --> 00:27:13.440
Uh, and then like some of the I would say it would be better to hire new staff as you go because they wanted to be more with the clinicians they'd worked with before than moving on to their new offices or pick someone who's ready for it.
00:27:13.759 --> 00:27:15.839
It was more back office than front office.
00:27:16.480 --> 00:27:17.279
Awesome.
00:27:17.519 --> 00:27:18.000
Awesome.
00:27:18.160 --> 00:27:28.880
Here the next question came in and said, um, at what point in the practice does it make sense to stop with the normal front desk model?
00:27:28.960 --> 00:27:33.759
I guess that's in quotes, the normal front desk model and switch to like this hybrid style model.
00:27:34.079 --> 00:27:34.400
Yeah.
00:27:34.559 --> 00:27:40.000
I would say really at any point, if you are a single location, you need to outsource to do this.
00:27:40.319 --> 00:27:45.519
There's makes no point to add the technology of hybrid without outsourcing your labor.
00:27:45.599 --> 00:27:58.880
Um, and be that if you want to, you know, obviously with Snap Scale, most people are paying about when you start to think around$20 an hour with benefits and stuff, it's over$50,000 just for salary for that front desk person.
00:27:59.039 --> 00:28:01.279
With Snap Scale, you're looking at about half that.
00:28:01.440 --> 00:28:03.759
So right there, you have a 50% spend save.
00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:08.640
And most of our clients are seeing between 50 and 70% spend save with the system.
00:28:09.680 --> 00:28:10.319
That's awesome.
00:28:10.960 --> 00:28:12.000
Yeah, incredible.
00:28:12.160 --> 00:28:13.359
Um, I one last question.
00:28:13.440 --> 00:28:26.960
This is a personal question that I wrote down uh as you were talking, because I remember from your bio that you had admin staff that you kept for 25 years in business in an industry where front desk turnover is constant.
00:28:27.359 --> 00:28:28.640
What was your magic trick?
00:28:28.720 --> 00:28:29.920
How did you do that?
00:28:30.319 --> 00:28:32.240
Uh well, you know, it was interesting.
00:28:32.319 --> 00:28:35.599
So I never did say we had 10 offices, we covered those with three staff.
00:28:35.680 --> 00:28:37.599
So just to kind of give you a metrics of that.
00:28:37.759 --> 00:28:44.559
But so instead of having to pay each of them, you know, 10 times as much, we paid each of them, you know, three or four dollars more.
00:28:44.799 --> 00:28:48.799
Most people are saying, you know, if you'll pay them about give them a 10% raise, they're amazing.
00:28:48.880 --> 00:28:51.759
When was the last time someone heard they were getting a 10% raise?
00:28:51.839 --> 00:28:55.599
Um, so then you can pay them a little bit more uh and they stay.
00:28:55.759 --> 00:28:58.799
They also really liked working remotely.
00:28:58.960 --> 00:29:04.400
It was very interesting that they did not want to be in the office anymore.
00:29:04.480 --> 00:29:10.640
Uh, we actually have people that worked in a facility, we had a central business office, and then we had some that worked uh sometimes from home.
00:29:10.880 --> 00:29:16.720
So either way it works, but they just like the fact that they didn't, they had a little bit more control over what happened with the patient.
00:29:16.880 --> 00:29:20.480
I think sometimes we forget that they get beat up a fair amount up there too.
00:29:20.559 --> 00:29:24.079
So you've got the patient that's yelling at you about their bill, and there's nothing you can do.
00:29:24.160 --> 00:29:25.039
You're not billing.
00:29:25.200 --> 00:29:34.480
So you can let them know, hey, I have message billing, they'll be back in touch with you, or hold on just a second, I can bring billing up on the kiosk so I can have the billing person talk to you.
00:29:34.559 --> 00:29:35.599
I and I'm out.
00:29:35.680 --> 00:29:42.480
You know, if the patient wants to sit there and yell at the screen all day, they can, but they're not gonna be abusing that front person anymore.
00:29:42.799 --> 00:29:43.359
Yeah.
00:29:43.599 --> 00:29:44.640
Awesome, Wendy.
00:29:44.720 --> 00:29:46.880
Well, thank you very much for being a part of the show today.
00:29:47.039 --> 00:29:52.559
If people wanted to get in contact with you or get a hold of you, what is the best process for that to happen?
00:29:52.880 --> 00:29:55.599
Uh yeah, so kind of like I said, I do have a LinkedIn page.
00:29:55.680 --> 00:30:00.000
It's you know, it's at Wendy Lucas or Hybridgeuh.live.
00:30:00.160 --> 00:30:03.440
Um hybridge.com, you'll get some drugs.
00:30:03.680 --> 00:30:06.640
So how about hybridge.live because we're lively there.
00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:15.039
So hybridge.live, and then also um through SnapScale, please feel welcome and you're welcome to share my email and um contact them as well.
00:30:15.359 --> 00:30:15.680
Awesome.
00:30:15.759 --> 00:30:18.079
Well, thank you very much, Wendy, for being a part of the show.
00:30:18.319 --> 00:30:18.799
Thank you.
00:30:18.880 --> 00:30:20.000
I appreciate it.
00:30:20.319 --> 00:30:22.720
Thank you for joining us on the Snap Scale show.
00:30:22.799 --> 00:30:33.599
We hope today's discussion inspired you to take your next step forward towards a healthier organization because healthier organizations create stronger teams, better patient experiences, and ultimately better care.
00:30:33.839 --> 00:30:40.720
If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, share it with another healthcare leader, and we'll see you next time on the Snap Scale Show.