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Attention to detail is very important in speech therapy private practice. In this podcast, I will discuss those “little things” that we as business owners do on a daily basis to set the standard of care in our speech therapy private practice. If these tasks are neglected, people will notice, and often the result is a complaint. As I work with other private practice owners around the United States, I hear similar feedback, and these similarities are addressed in today’s episode.

In this episode:

01:14 – + 13,211 listeners
01:50 – The Perfect Student
03:07 – PrivateSLP Membership Community: Now Open
04:38 – Attention to Detail
05:56 – Setting the Standard
06:08 – Cleanliness
06:53 – Consistent Treatments
08:18 – Timeliness
08:57 – Business as a Priority

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Also you want to keep the business as a priority instead of losing your professionalism and having confrontations with clients or employees. There are times when we as owners, will be tempted to let that standard of quality go down but we can’t. Even if we’re a Sole-practitioner we’ve got to understand that we have to set the standard.

[Commercial]

Well, Hello everyone! You’re listening to the Speech therapy Private practice Startup Podcast; this is episode number 25. My name is Kyle Meades and I’m a speech pathologist since 1993 and these podcasts are designed to help you improve your business and your life one podcast at a time.

Welcome back to the show everyone. Thanks again for all the emails, questions and mentions on Twitter. I really appreciate it, and as of today we have over 13,211 listeners to the show and I am really excited you guys are out there. I hope you are getting value and I always say value is what you get in the absence of money. These podcasts are free for you, so if you wouldn’t mind please go to iTunes and leave some good five star feedbacks, so the other people can gain these valuable information to start their own Speech therapy private practice. Also I want to say thanks for the other people out there who have left that feedback and its just nice to know you guys are getting that valuable information.

And also I want to tell you I have once space available for the Perfect Student. If that interests you please contact me, you can go to www.privateslp.com/coaching and you’ll have a choice their to apply for the Perfect Student. The Perfect Student is where you come in into Tucson, you work with me hand-in-hand and I will show you the innermost workings of a Speech therapy private practice outpatient facility or a Home Health agency or both. You’ll get all access to my forms, systems and trainings. I will show you how to bill it, how to collect it, how to get credentialed. I will show you all that, I will take you by the hand and just walk you through the steps. So it that interests you, go to www.privateslp.com/coaching there is a form you can fill out. There is an “Apply Now” button and once you hit that “Apply Now” button you’ll get taken to a Google form. And on that Google form its going to ask you for some specifics like your Email address, Name, Phone number, where you live, some questions about employees and insurances, about how many people you treat per month, how many patients you have, if you have a website, if you’re marketing. I wanted to know all about that so I could help you better. And that’s it www.privateslp.com/coaching.

Also I wanted to announce I have launched the membership community at PrivateSLP and we have some members in there. And last week we actually had a webinar and we spoke about credentialing, contracting and the CAQH database that’s been posted into the private membership form their and its actually being transcribed by the team. I have some members in there and they’re getting good valuable information and have access to me pretty much 24X7. There are three ladies in there right now and I know they’re getting good information. We’re talking about many topics from the things that you need to start up, CAQH database, contracting, credentialing, insurances, marketing; all that’s being discussed in the form.

So if you’re interested in that there is also a button to join the community. Once you click that button you’ll be taken to a sales page where it kind of describes what’s going on and there’s a video there and then there’s a thrive card there at the bottom. So if that interests you, if you can’t make it to Tucson, if you can’t take off work and fly out to Tucson and work with me hand in hand, you also have the ability now to work with me via the private form setting and you have direct access to me via the form. You’ll still get all of our trainings and training videos, forms and all the things that we use in our clinic. And again if there’s something in that form that you don’t see, all you have to do is ask and I’ll create it for you. So yeah, that’s out there for you.

And today I want to talk about attention to detail. Today’s topic is Attention to Detail. Those are the constant consistent everyday thinks that we as owners must do to have a successful Speech Therapy Private practice. And when I say successful Speech therapy Private practice, I mean a business that pays for itself; a business that generates income for the employees and the owner, a business that self-supporting. So I don’t mean just a one-person show seeing a few clients during the week and on the weekends. I mean having employees and paying taxes now sooner or later in that business venture you’re going to have some issues and I wanted to talk about these issues because they are important. Because a lot of times these issues will come up in the form of complaints and this is what I’m hearing from the Private practice community out there in the United States. So I wanted to just to share with you some of these complaints that are coming through so you can work on those and address these as well when you’re starting and growing and scaling your own Private practice.

Now one of the first complaint is “I didn’t get a callback when I schedule my appointment or evaluation”. That’s a big NO NO. I’ve talked about that many times in another Podcast you know you can’t be flaky. If you’re going to offer the service you need to be there, show up, suit up and provide that service.

Another thing that I’ve heard from other Private practice owners in the community: the office was dirty; there was trash in the parking lot, cleanliness; that’s a big thing with me. You always find me out in our parking lot picking up trash, going into the bathrooms, emptying those trash cans, making sure there’s lots of toilet paper in there. I know it sounds crazy but hey, it’s the truth. You know there’s got to be soap in the dispensers, there’s got to be extra towels in there when you wash your hands and dry your hands you know, kids can be kind of messy. And so, I was cleaning the floors and sweeping out the lobby. Sometimes around lunchtime when our caseload drops off a little bit I’ll open up the doors and air it out. So that’s another thing just making sure your office is clean, that your bathrooms are clean.

Another thing that I’m hearing and again attention to detail; your treatments have to be consistent; the treatments have to be consistent. Something that starts out great it fades over time. We have to make sure as providers; service providers we have to provide the best highest quality Speech therapy treatments known to man. We have to give that service and we have to make sure it’s consistent and consistently great because again this is our product, this is our service and once the physicians and pediatricians starts referring to us, if a patient goes back to that pediatrician and says, I didn’t get the service that I wanted there. I get it sometimes we have to take people off of our schedule because they don’t show up. We have to get them off the schedule and they’ll go back to their doctors and complain. However, what I do in our office if someone inconsistently shows up for his or her appointment or they fall off the schedule because of increased absences or no-shows we send that doctor a letter. We always say thank you for all your referrals we really appreciate it. You’ve sent this patient to us “Patient X” we had to remove them from the schedule because of increased cancellations or no-show. Those doctors know because they have the same problems too. But it’s always nice to know and cover yourself when you have to take somebody and remove them off the schedule. But also you know make sure your treatments are consistent.

Also another big thing that I’m hearing in the community is the clinician was late or we started the session late and ended the session early. People want their full treatments. They want value to it. They’re paying their co-pay or their cash rate to see you. You want to give them what they paid for and sometimes you have to give it away. And when I say give it away I mean sometimes you might have to refund someone. I had a lady once who was seeing one of our Speech Pathologist and one person was covering for that patient. The mom was just really unhappy and so I refunded her the money and I said you know, we’ll give you an extra treatment and she was pleased. But it’s the cost of doing business sometimes you have to do that.

Also you want to keep the business as a priority instead of losing your professionalism and having confrontations with clients or employees. There are times when we as owners, will be tempted to let that standard of quality go down but we can’t. Even if we’re a Sole-practitioner we’ve got to understand that we have to set the standard. Now what all that means is basically if you’re having a bad day as a business owner whether it’s just you or you have many employees. You can’t go off on the patients or the employees you have to set the example, you have to show up with a smile on your face, you have to be respectful; you have to be the person in-charge. And sometimes the person in-charge it’s difficult because things happen in business (that’s another podcast) but things happen sometimes and it’s not all happy, joyous and free and go-lucky. But we have to always remember to be grateful, to be thankful for the opportunity to serve others, serve our patients, serve our employees and do the right thing. And that means being courteous and saying thank you, “Look, I understand your child is sick today and I know they can’t make that appointment but look we’ve got two make up appointments this week later in the week; which one would you like?” Instead of, “we’ve had this conversation before you’re off the schedule.” I mean there’s a nice way to do it and there’s a right way and there’s a wrong way.

Anyway, I hope this is a good Podcast for you because look when you start growing that Private practice you’re going to see some of these problems come up. So I hope this is been a good valuable Podcast for you guys and remember if you want some help with your Speech Therapy private practice, if you want me to coach you, go to https://privateslp.com/coaching you can reach me there. And as always if you have questions send me an email I will be more than happy to reach out and help you, and as always Thank you for listening.