By: Christine Dura
When you first open your healthcare franchise, you may be inclined to wear all the hats, jumping from PR duties to marketing to caring for patients. While this might work in the short term, you need a team to successfully build your business.
Your franchise is only as strong as the people behind it, and if you overload yourself, you aren’t able to be your own best teammate. If you have too many responsibilities, likely something will have to be sacrificed. So while you might think you’re helping your budget by not hiring more people, in reality, you’re hurting your bottom line.
When visit volume is between 40-50 patients per day, usually between the first and second year, it makes sense to grow a leadership team.
As you start forming this team, you want to determine what type of leadership structure makes sense for your healthcare franchise. The size of your clinic will help determine which positions you need to fill. Then, you need to find the best candidate to lead each department.
When perusing potential employees, you want to look for the following traits:
- Healthcare experience or formal training
- Strong communication skills
- Flexibility, adaptability, and a good organizational fit
- Dependability, good professional judgement, and strong character
- General managerial skills
You also want to make sure it’s someone who shares your vision, management style, and the company culture you’ve built.
The first leader you should consider adding to your team is a clinic manager. They can take care of day-to-day responsibilities including staffing, scheduling, inventory, paperwork management, and responding to patient inquiries. They may even be able to handle HR tasks, depending on the size of your business.
Next, hiring a marketing manager might be a good idea. As you get busy caring for patients, you need to be sure new customers are coming in the door. A strong marketing manager to focus on advertising, social media, and maintaining your reputation is key to your growth.
These leadership roles will also take pressure off your doctors, who should only be dealing with the medical side of your healthcare franchise. They are responsible for being the medical director, dictating medical culture and policies for how to care for patients.
Make sure you have a dedicated staff member to handle staffing, paperwork, marketing, and other tasks that are required to keep your clinic up and running.
As you search for candidates, find people you believe in, share your vision, and can trust their decisions.
While you never want to micromanage your employees, remember that you are still the leader of the team. Stay informed by holding regular meetings to keep in touch with each element of your business. Keep lines of communication open to ensure ideas, information, and concerns are getting to you and being resolved or implemented quickly.
When you are an open, approachable leader, your employees will feel valued, and excited about working together to grow your healthcare franchise.
With the right team, your business can be more efficient, provide better care, and eventually, grow to the level of success you’re hoping for.
OrthoNOW is the first and only Orthopedic franchise. Contact Christine Dura at Christine@orthonowcare.com for more information about franchise opportunities.
Christine has over 25 years of quantifiable executive management and franchise related leadership experience within the US and internationally with notable franchise startups in the service, technology, retail, food, health and wellness, financial service, medical care, technology and professional services. As a Senior Franchise Executive and Entrepreneur, Ms. Dura has been both an individual contributor and has successfully led world-class teams.
Ms. Dura excels at partnering with all core business operations to significantly increase the company’s foot print, expand market share, and generate sustainable revenue and EBIT gains. Her proven successes, combined with her Master Degree in Training and Development, have shaped Ms. Dura’s uncanny ability to identify opportunities, build mutually rewarding partnerships and produce remarkable results.
In addition, as a four-time Master and Unit Franchise Owner, Ms. Dura is in a very unique position to leverage her experiences and reputation at all levels in franchising along with her vast personal and professional investor network to drive immediate and long term results. As OrthoNOW’s Chief Development Officer her role is to identify critical gaps in franchise growth and implement strategies to drive results. Her unique background allows her to leverage past experiences and solid reputation to spearhead OrthoNOW’s national expansion plans.
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