Doctors with administrative savvy are good for your practice

As soon as he or she is elected, every managing partner or department chair wants to make a difference. You can best serve your group, and launch your new role, by being administratively savvy. Don’t leave all the administrative work for your administrator.

For example:

Attend regular (at least biweekly) manager meetings
Volunteer for side committee work
Be on-call to your administrator to brainstorm HR and doctor performance gaps
Identify new and strengthen existing referral source bonds with regular contact
Guide the resolution of doctor-to-doctor conflicts
Provide strong assistance with doctor recruitment

The benefits of doing this will become clear once you dive in.

Along the way — because, after all, you are a professional doctor, not a professional business manager — identify your knowledge holes and fill in the gaps. Take administrator classes at national eye meetings, read management books and talk to colleagues who are in similar leadership positions.

Your administrator will appreciate the perspective and guidance you provide. It will help you meet your personal and practice goals better with this collaborative approach. And most administrators do their best work when they are not operating in isolation.

You and your administrative leader will learn from each other. Think of it in terms of a grand rounds experience. Multiple perspectives and opinions draw out the best solutions. And everyone in the room learns and grows.

And there is a side benefit: You’ll be better able to hold down the fort the next time you lose an administrator if you have been working together closely as administrative peers.

Although there are many long-term exceptions, the average administrator stays in place for only about 5 years, and it often takes 6 months or longer to find a replacement. An underappreciated role that every managing partner should play is to prepare yourself as your administrator’s understudy.