Eyeworld

by Bill Gardner Jr. How productive is your optical dispensary staff? I want to take a look at how you should determine, find, and re- tain the correct number and quality of optical staff. This may seem evident to some, but it has been my experience that many ophthalmology optical dis- pensaries are incorrectly staffed or have the wrong people in place. I want to give some simple guidelines that hopefully will help you deter- mine how many employees you need, but also what you should be looking for when you need to hire someone new. First, let's discuss the number of optical employees needed to operate your optical dispensary efficiently, effectively, and profitably. There are a number of different methods to determine what the size of your op- tical staff should be. Here are my two favorites. You can use the num- ber of orders produced on average by each of your optical full time equivalent (FTE) employees, or you can track the revenue generated by each staff member. I track these val- ues with my different consulting projects. Tracking optical staff pro- ductivity is or should be a regular part of the management plan for your optical dispensary. I have used this method to determine staff size for over 30 years with great success. Either method works to help you de- termine the number of FTEs needed to produce your desired result. When you use the number of units to track productivity you will need to set some expected level of achievement in order to be able to evaluate progress. I use the goal of producing five new orders per day per FTE. This goal includes the process to produce the order, deliver the order, make adjustments and re- pairs, and prepare all of the required paperwork to ensure that the order gets completed. If you have one FTE in your optical then your optical should be able to produce up to 100 orders per month. If you have two FTEs then you should be able to pro- duce 200 orders per month, and so on. There is one caveat, however. That caveat is that if you are a prac- tice that has a large managed vision care (MVC) population as patients, achievement at this level may be more difficult. I will save the discus- sion of what I believe MVC has done to productivity in the optical dispen- sary for another day, but the higher the percentage of MVC, the lower your goal will need to be. If your volume of MVC exceeds 60% of your optical orders then your pro- ductivity will struggle to be 60-80% of this ideal level. Sometimes a good optical administrative assistant can work wonders to improve optical productivity. That essentially takes the paperwork burden off of the op- ticians and allows them to spend more of their time with patients. I also make sure that I set a goal for average selling price when I use this method to improve the productivity level of an optical staff. This ensures that you will produce enough rev- enue to cover your overhead and provide for a reasonable return on the practice's investment. The second method used to im- prove optical productivity is to set revenue goals for each optical FTE. There are many different sources for this benchmark but most set the an- nual level of revenue generated by each optical staff member at $200,000-250,000. It should be rela- tively easy to break that value down to a daily, weekly, and monthly goal for each FTE. Once you have done that, monitoring progress toward this goal should be your next step. I have found that managing goals and communicating those expectations to your optical staff is the best and easiest way to ensure your continued success. Whatever method you use to manage productivity, it is important to reward overachievement. Set real- istic goals for productivity and rev- enue generation and reward your optical staff when they exceed those goals. The old adage "what gets re- warded gets done" certainly holds true for almost all optical dispen- saries as well as any sales organiza- tion. Finally, let's look at what it takes to retain a productive optical em- ployee or to find another. There are several key issues that need to be un- derstood to retain good employees or attract good potential candidates. First, they need to be able to see a path for advancement. Many good employees have been lost because they see no path to advancement. Good employees want to take on more responsibility and have a higher income. If there is no oppor- tunity then your optical is in jeop- ardy of eventually losing those indi- viduals to businesses that allow for and encourage advancement. Sec- ondly, they need to be rewarded fairly. Remember that your opticians are revenue generators for the prac- tice and as such they need to be able to participate in the optical's success. That may be by having a sound compensation plan that includes in- centives for overachievement or other forms of compensation that reward and encourage excellence. When searching for new optical employees, you need to make sure that the applicants have the neces- sary skills to perform at a high level, but they also need to fit into your practice culture. Spend some time in the interview process trying to un- cover whether or not that is likely to occur. Most practice managers, ad- ministrators, or owners who have been doing this for awhile know what it is like to have someone in the practice who is so far removed from the values and work ethic of the rest of the staff that it becomes very difficult to make any progress. Avoiding hiring those types of em- ployees in the beginning is easier than trying to remove them later on. Remember that helping each pa- tient see as well as possible should be the primary goal in all ophthal- mology optical dispensaries. If you improve your optical productivity then you ensure that your optical staff can help even more patients achieve their best vision. EW EW Ophthalmology Business 66 May 2011 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mr. Gardner is the owner of Gardner & Associates LLC, which specializes in oph- thalmology optical dispensary manage- ment consulting. He can be reached at 502-797-7785 or wgardner@ insightbb.com.

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