Judy Capko

Every urology practice faces this situation eventually: a difficult employee who demands disproportionate time and attention from management.

Storing data remotely allows for access from anywhere using the Internet, so, for example, a cloud-based EMR allows urologists in your practice to access and update charts from home or on the road using a smartphone or tablet.

Whenever an employee leaves, you incur expenses to advertise the open position and set up and train a new employee. And, of course, there can be productivity losses in the interim.

Using manufacturing principles might seem like an odd fit for your practice, but they can help your practice move more efficiently.

Medical practices around the country face continued challenges with managing a diverse work force that spans three generations.

Managing a medical practice is a business proposition, and part of doing it right is being prepared for a new year.

This article helps you identify the signs of poor scheduling and offers helpful tips to keep you on time.

With a tight economy making patients more reluctant to seek medical care, marketing becomes appealing for even stable practices to have a good foothold in the community.

Urologists around the country lament the difficulty in finding and keeping good employees, and even gripe about the deteriorating performance and attitudes found in some of the more demanding positions. My advice: They're your employees, so it's time to take ownership of the problem.

Here are some smart steps physicians and managers can take to make performance reviews easier to conduct and more effective, ultimately paving the way for higher productivity.

You know it's important to keep a pulse on the business performance of your practice, but how do you do it when time is never on your side?

Retention of staff in the medical office is emerging as a difficult challenge, and urology practices are no exception.

Calling it quits in any relationship is a source of discomfort, but when it's the physician-patient relationship, it must be handled precisely and with caution. You want to avoid angering patients or leaving them without the urologic care they need. By the same token, if you or your patient are disgruntled with the relationship, there may come a point when you need to fire the patient. Here is some advice to help you through it.

Looking at your practice's monthly finances, focusing on big expenses, and wondering how you can cut them is a response typical among urologists concerned with a shrinking bottom line.

Managers and the billing departments of most urology practices strive to get the money off the books and into the bank, but managing accounts receivable continues to be a daunting task that absorbs a fair amount of resources. This article offers a few practical tips that will make managing accounts receivable a lot easier.

It's easy to spot the complainer, but that is the exception.

If your turnover on a rolling 3-year average reaches 20%, you will need to explore how you contribute to this.

Whenever the needs of the practice change, job descriptions should be redefined to reflect those changes so that you achieve optimal staff productivity.