Paeds Biz E-Magazine - April Edition 2016

PAEDS BIZ ... HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR PRIVATE PRACTICE APRIL 2016

JOIN THE POW WOW

A six week virtual small group coaching program p.5

ADVANTAGES OF USING PRACTICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

What is the best software to run a private practice with? p.9

THE WAY OF THE FUTURE: MOBILE APPS

Apps designed for allied health professionals p.11

AN INTRODUCTION TO

CATHY LOVE Occupational Therapist Coach Speaker Author

For first time readers a quick intro, I am Cathy Love an Occupational Therapist, Coach, Author and Speaker.

I am the founding director of Nacre Consulting and I work with parents and disability service providers to achieve brilliant outcomes for children with special needs. I provide a range of services: • Family Service Coaching for parents to help them manage their child’s team and services • Clinical supervision to individuals and allied health professional teams • Service delivery consultation to disability service providers • Private practice coaching to business owners More to be read about all that over on my website www.nacre.com.au. Each month I write up news, useful information and pearls of wisdom for those working with children and families in the disability sector. Given that it is a rapidly changing landscape and one that is increasingly privatised there is typically lots of news to be shared.

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Welcome.

I hope that Easter was filled with the right amount of family, friends, travel and chocolate for you.

I am proud to say that only one, admittedly quite large, Lindt rabbit was harmed in my Easter escapades.

The series of three short weeks, school holidays, monster to do list and now sugar detox have left me wondering what day it is.

But all good, my calendar fills itself magic pudding style and I have incredible new clients joining my coaching services.

Paeds Biz has been launched. Thank you so much for your emails of encouragement during past weeks. Such a thrill to hear of the management actions you have taken and the positive outcomes you have experienced.

We are working really hard to promote Paeds Biz. Admittedly we wish our open and read rates were stronger. We would be chuffed if you could share the Paeds Biz to colleagues and suggest they click through and invest in the 15 minute read. We will celebrate loudly when our read rates are where we want them to be.

As promised in the March edition we have niche content on the art and scence of customer service and information on practice management systems. The promised feature on money management been bumped to the May edition as it will have an EOFY flavour.

So, grab a cuppa, some left over chocolate, you know you will eat it anyway and settle in for cosy read.

As always you’re invited to get in touch with feedback, future topic ideas and anything else at cathy@nacre.com.au

Cathy Cathy Love Director of Nacre Consulting

CONTENTS 02 Introduction Meet Cathy Love 04 Making Your Website Awesome The challenge continues SupportAbility 05 Pow Wow Private Practice Group Coaching 06 Upcoming Workshops Team Talk Teleconference - Exploring Different Approaches to ASD 07 Guest Writer - Cate Schreck, Lightbulb Training Solutions 5 Tips for Customer Service Success 08 Bookshelf 09 COVER FEATURE: Advantages of Using Practice Management Software Streamline your practice admin 11 COVER FEATURE: Guest Writer - Tom Cooper, NextIn Mobile Apps for Allied Health Professionals 12 The Wrap

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MAKING YOUR WEBSITE AWESOME The challenge continues...

I must confess that my website enhancements are rolling out slower than anticipated. I have added a Speakers page under the services that I offer, it details my speaking work, companies that have engaged me and typical speaking topics for private practitioners, clinicians and parents. My speakers bio is available as a PDF download, this helps those interested share their ideas to decision makers.

Soon a ‘book your complimentary 30 minute coaching session with me’ facility will sit on every page. This will save everybody time and patience by reducing the number of clicks and scrolls. I am adding a feature that enables curious visitors to read and sign up for my blogs and Paeds Biz. Once again the convenience factor at play.

What’s your plan for the ongoing development of your business website?

What will be the Top Ten things you need to do?

What’s already ticked off, and what’s next?

Ordering my book is about to become easier. I have hopes of a free two chapter sample and less hunting and clicking to purchase a copy.

Smartening up of my events and documents to go products is also urgently required. Fingers crossed that this too will soon look snazzy and inviting.

Have you heard of this product? I am actively following it with interest.

SupportAbility is a client management system to help Disability Service Providers manage their businesses and deliver best possible outcomes to clients under the NDIS. It is cloud based and has full mobile applications.

It is software that assist providers

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assess medical records, reports, goal progress, support need changes as well as plan, monitor and report on client funding.

Google maps is integrated to assist calculate travel time and costs, documents can be uploaded into file structures and it all sits within government grade audit-ability.

I am keen to tour the product and am still waiting for my request to be

replied to.

The product is described as a complete toolkit for organisations reporting to NDIA and it has impressive accreditations and affiliations.

I would love to know if any readers are using it and if so what they think about it. Certainly a big one to watch.

POW WOW: PAEDIATRIC PRIVATE PRACTICE GROUP COACHING Here’s what’s inside the Pow Wow box: Three fortnightly 60 minute group teleconference coaching calls.

Coaching Call One – Define your product and match it with great customer service Get clear on what you do, why you do it, how to price it and how to exceed your client’s expectations.

Coaching Call Two – Recruit, retain, reward and release your people Better understand employee vs contractors, position descriptions, recruitment, on boarding, performance development and releasing staff. If you are flying solo now, you may well need to know all this in the NDIA future.

- Need a bit of help running your business?

- Love to talk with some like-minded private practice owners?

- Keen for niche paediatric private practice information and advice?

Read on…

Cathy Love is running a six week virtual small group coaching program.

Private Practice can be lonely and it can be hard to find information and advice specific to the delivery of awesome services to children and families in the disability sector. Working with clients is often the easy bit.

Managing the business, leading your team, forward planning, getting the money right and marketing tends to be the hard bit.

So let’s jump on the phone and share up the wisdom.

No travel, no accommodation, no signing your life away. All calls are after hours so no client time is lost. Invest in your best business self and take this opportunity to hear niche information, participate in Q & A, enjoy awesome conversation and boost your management skills and confidence.

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Coaching Call Three – Boost your profile to attract your ideal clients Easy ways to spread your personal fabulousness and that of your team and services: Website, Facebook, blogging, newsletters, partnerships & more.

But wait, there’s more…the Pow Wow private practice coaching program also includes, on the alternate week: Three fortnightly 30 minute one on one coaching calls with Cathy Love Discuss the specifics of your current business challenges in order to generate solutions and actions.

The individual calls will be booked for mutually convenient times, and yes after hours is possible.

POW WOW: (continued)

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS

The May dates for the Pow Wow private practice group coaching calls are: Tuesday May 10th : 7.30 – 8.30 pm Melbourne AEST Tuesday May 24th: 7.30 – 8.30 pm Melbourne AEST Tuesday June 7th : 7.30 – 8.30 pm Melbourne AEST

TEAM TALK TELECONFERENCE

Your tax deductable investment $540 including GST Early bird special $490 including GST until COB 29th April 2016 Limited numbers Register here.

so

please

register

early.

The conversations won’t be recorded, the value of Pow Wow sits in the content, group conversation, personal task setting and accountability. The program is structured to gather in momentum and value during the three group and three individual coaching sessions, for this reason it isn’t possible to ‘split’ sessions and just purchase one or two. All in on this one!

Contact Cathy Love directly for additional infomation cathy@nacre.com.au

3rd May @ 12.30pm (Melbourne time)

Exploring Different Approaches to ASD (ESDM, ABA + others) Megan Ingram and I, along with special expert guests will present and discuss topics central to contemporary multi-disciplinary service delivery to children with special needs. The series is perfect for occupational therapists, speech pathologists, special educators and psychologists.

There is room at the virtual lunch table for all. Think convenient, niche, bite sized, Q&A professional development without the internet, accommodation and travel hassles.

Positive outcomes include: - Deeper understanding of core concepts relevant to working with children with special needs - Spring boarding into new ideas, resources and practical strategies - Expanded knowledge and application of team work, family centered practice and coaching - Building professional networks nationwide - Re-energise your professional practice Read and register here: http://www.nacre.com.au/ event/team-talk-3-may-exploring-different-approachesto-asd-esdm-aba-others/

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GUEST WRITER - CATE SCHRECK

5 TIPS FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCCESS Your customers may have come to you for your treatment programs, specialist knowledge or specific products and services but did you know that they decide if they will do business with you based on the customer service skills of your team?

Here are my 5 Tips to help you build a culture of service excellence.

1. Visual Communication

Everything a customer sees will be assessed to determine if they will do business with you ie: employee body language, office presentation, website & social media platforms, brochures and staff interactions.

“Wave the professional wand” over every aspect of your visual business.

more, better, different or less in relation to providing excellent service.

If you would like help to build a culture of service excellence in your team, give me a call or go to our website to book your free Customer Service Analysis.

“PASSIONATE about helping individuals enjoy workplace interactions”

2. Telephone Communication

It’s not what you say, but how you say it. Concentrate on your tone of voice when using the phone. Pitch, speed and volume tell callers if you are too busy, tired, disor ganised or disinterested.

3. Written Communication

It can be efficient, but it is the least effective way to build rapport with your customers. Too many or too few words, poor spelling, bad grammar or unclear messages gives the impression of an unprofessional service.

4. Embrace the complaint

Complaints are compliments. Your customers are telling you because they believe you can help them – that’s a compliment. Give staff the skills to handle complaints with grace.

5. Team Work

Service excellence is everyone’s responsibility. Schedule regular one to one or team Service Excellence Conversations. Seek and share ideas on how to do

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Cate is the Founder of Lightbulb Training Solutions (LTS) and is known for designing and delivering workplace training programs that educate and motivate staff to work together in harmony and provide consistently excellent customer service.

With over 30 years of experience working in the finance, retail, employment and training industries, Cate is passionate about sharing the skills that create harmonious workplaces and delighted customers.

Cate Schreck - 0422 476 070 www.lightbulbtraining.com.au

BOOKSHELF “How to Thrive under the NDIS. A pathway to sustainability for service providers.”

Author: Fran Connelley Fran Connelley is the director of FC Marketing a business that specialises in helping non-profit organisations build their brand and diversify their income. We spoke several times during the writing of this book and it was a pleasure to read it hot of the press in early March. Although primarily written for the NFP sector there is still lots of terrific practical and digestible content for private practitioners between the covers.

Available at www.fcmarketing.com.au

“The Boomerang Effect.”

Author: Tim Reid Tim Reid is the entertaining Melbournian mastermind behind one of my favourite business podcasts, The Small Business Big Marketing Show. He has recently turned his talking talent into works on pages in his new book “The Boomerang Effect.” His book is being well received and has glowing reviews. It is near the top of my reading pile, I hope to report on it soon. Check out his podcasts if you haven’t already, his content is relevant to a wide variety of business styles and sectors.

“The Decision Book, Fifty models for strategic thinking.”

Authors: Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler This International Best Seller is absolutely fascinating. It is written for anybody who has to deal with people and make decisions on a daily basis. Yep, that covers us all. It summarises the fifty best decision making models with succinct test and great visuals.

Maslow’s Pyramids and SWOT analysis will be familiar but how about the Swiss Cheese Model or the Black Swan models? All the decision making models are then allocated into a bigger framework designed by the authors. This consists of four quadrants which gives you decision making models that best help you to Improve yourself, Improve others, Understand yourself, Understand others. Hopefully I haven’t lost you. The book offers tremendous know how and application for our personal and professional lives.

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ADVANTAGES OF USING PRATICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

I am frequently asked “what is the best software to run a private practice with?” it arose again last week during a business coaching call. Brilliant question with a complex ‘depends what you want to achieve’ answer.

In my mind every single private practice regardless of size and lifecycle stage requires practice management software. They are critical to the efficiency of our business and your mental health.

Being a bit of an organisation and business systems freak I have always used practice management software, (affectionately known as PMS from here on). It is vital to have all clinical and billing information efficiently and organised and integrated in one application. Clinicians, admin and management all need dial in mobile access to records, report formats, funding details and more, and it’s essential to set differing security and access levels per users.

There are many products available. Cliniko, HealthKit, My Practice, Power Diary, Core Plus and Front Desk are the main products. SupportAbility is new and unique, it deserves its own Paeds Biz write up, please refer to the start of this issue. For over ten years Front Desk was the backbone of my first multi-site, multi-faceted private practice. I continue to use it today in my second business Nacre Consulting. Yes it has been an investment, but one with many benefits.

Using a PMS is not about going paperless. It’s about being super-efficient, saving time, money and stressful late nights, getting all your information in one functional place in order to provide excellent customer

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service and brilliant client outcomes. How can you achieve the later if your client documents are in clumsy file structures on hard drives, your e-mails and communications aren’t recorded centrally, your billing is awkward and distant to your calendars, or you can’t get any financial reports or other business metrics? Gulp, sounds exhausting.

Private practice life could be easier. Imagine having all your client data in one place. Your team’s clinical decision making, client tasks and professional communications being streamlined. Client contact details, clinical reports, session notes, scanned referrals, goals documents and more are all electronically stored on a client card and accessed remotely. Billing codes and amounts are set up and invoices generated and emailed in a couple of clicks. Phone calls, emails, SMS, letters etc. all dated and stored under the clients card.

Funding reminders and alerts prompt you when referrals expire, funds or remaining sessions are running out.

Reports on many aspects of your businesses performance generated in a couple of clicks. Revenue, services or products sold, new referrals, productivity reports, GST and much more. Inventory management for all the products you sell and product sales integrated to your clients therapy invoice.

These features help stream line your practice admin.

Freeing your clinicians to do what they do best and your admin team to more easily manage invoicing, receipting, enquiries, banking, refunding, documenting and all the other admin verbs.

If the data going in is clean then accurate reports about your business reports are easy to get. I could go on, but these are the key features I have noted during the ten plus years I have worked with a practice management system. For me it is better to have a system that you can grow into rather than struggle on, make do and make errors that ultimately only serve to compromise your personal and your business brand. BE bold and do your homework on which product best meets your current and future needs. Go on, book a call, download the free trial and sign up.

After a quick web search on the most frequently used products here is a snapshot of each.

We are not in a position to endorse any specific product, nor do we receive a kickback if we do. The aim here is to make it as easy as possible for you to step forward to the PMS that changes how you do business.

Front Desk – by Smart Soft

Front Desk Practice Management System is one of thebest software packages available for running a health practice. The package is a receipting/billing system with an integrated appointment book, practice accounting, clinical notes, practice management reporting and marketing tools to help service and stay in contact with your patients. With the reminders and recalls via mail, email and SMS feature this system will help streamline your business. https://www.smartsoft.com.au/products/

Cliniko

Cliniko is web-based software meaning you can work from any device, at anytime, from anywhere with an internet connection. It’s comprehensive, easy to use and very reliable.

It takes care of all of your practice management record keeping needs in a really enjoyable cloud-based solution. When it is trusted by thousands in over 55 countries and features integration with third party software such as MailChimp, it really is a dream in a box. https://www.cliniko.com/

Power diary

If you have used Outlook or Google Calendar before you already know how to use Power Diary! Appointments are created with a single click, and can be dragged, dropped and edited easily. A great feature is their client Portal which you can embed Client Portal directly into your website and take client bookings 24/7. http://www.powerdiary.com/

My practice

Every profession needs different features. You can choose your practice type from their eight modules and you’ll find everything you need, from templates for particular letters to specific fields in client notes and you can even fine tune myPractice even more, so it works just how you want it to. With this complete PMS system you don’t need several programs to run your practice. http://www.mypractice.com.au/

Core plus

Discover what it means to practice happy! Sync your appointments from coreplus to your Google Calendar, Hotmail, Windows Live and Microsoft Outlook. If you have multiple sites, you have the ability to access Coreplus on any computer system without the need for expensive software installations at each site. http://coreplus.com.au/

Health kit

For practitioners, HealthKit is the first practice management software customised to any practitioner of any profession in any country in the world. HealthKit doesn’t just reduce your administration - it removes it, so you can focus solely on patients.

HealthKit is tailored specifically for sole, group and multi-disciplinary practices. https://www.healthkit.com/au/its-free

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GUEST WRITER - TOM COOPER, NEXTIN

MOBILE APPS FOR ALLIED HEALTH PROFESSIONALS Over the last few years it has become commonplace to book a hotel room, restaurant or a taxi on your mobile.

So why hasn’t it become commonplace to book allied health professionals on your mobile? We believe that this is the way of the future. We have developed an App called NextIn a new product that helps your client’s book into clinic appointments quickly and easily saving you and your staff time.

The growth of mobile usage is staggering. 88% of Australians own a smartphone, with some Australians checking their mobiles up to 150 times a day!

This is a big reminder that your website needs to look great on a small screen. Your future clients expect to be able to find you and your service quickly and easily, to click through to call or email and better still book a clinic appointment. Does your current website or practice management software make it this easy?

Many small businesses think that mobile Apps are just for big companies. This is no longer the case, we enable practices of all sizes to have the very best App technology at a fraction of the cost. We hear that clients place greater importance on a mobile App that helps them book appointments or receive deals and news than a website that has no functionality.

We already have Apps to manage business social media posts and campaign success, provide tele-therapy, rate disability service providers, watch relevant videos and pay bills. Our hunch is there will be more designed for client communications, reporting, recording progress and more. How could a mobile App help your private practice?

So here is a bit of a sales pitch. An App like NextIn will help clients book quickly and easily and save you and your team time. No need to return calls or emails detailing availability then manage the to and fro, all available sessions are

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presented selecting their preference only a click away.

Following notification of a new client booking your usual procedures such as sending forms applies.

Once the new client attends for their first session, block booking of regular appointments can be made personally.

Innovative Apps will make you stand out from your competitors and reinforce your business brand.

Reminder SMS can be sent to your clients with their appointment details. Always good to reduce the rate of No Shows. New clients who would like a more personal experience will always phone, online App bookings will suit many others who juggle tasks out of business hours.

Find out more about our product and services at www.nextin.com.au You can email me anytime tom@nextin.com.au

Next month’s edition will include: Business Plans Money management 101

This Paeds Biz edition has had an IT focus including my websites facelift, practice management software, the future use of Apps and SupportAbility review.

I hope you found it thought provoking, please follow up relevant products mentioned.

I receive no kickback, my intention is to bring you the latest and greatest as it comes across my desk.

A huge thank you to Cate Schreck from Lightbulb Training Solutions. I hope to print more of Cate’s terrific content in future editions. Thanks to Tom Cooper from NextIn also.

Another massive thank you to my sensational Virtual Assistant Emma for keeping me on track and formatting the magazine.

As I write Victorian school holidays are in action.

This provides me with lots of lovely time for writing, meeting face to face with my local private practice coaching clients, reviewing my business goals and forward planning for the New Financial Year. I treat myself to eating lunch out, taking walks to café’s, reading and connecting with my business mentors. Whatever

As many of you know I am the founding director of Nacre Consulting.

A cool business with an unusual name. Nacre is the natural process of a little seed, held in an oyster shell whist it grows, layer by layer, into a brilliant unique pearl. This process takes time, special conditions and forces of nature. And so it is true for ourselves and for the children and families we serve.

More about my clinical supervision, parent coaching, teaching and private practicing coaching services on my (soon to be facelifted) website: www.nacre.com.au

April brings for you, enjoy, and be well and safe.

If you are curious about my specialist private practice coaching services you are most welcome to get in touch, find out more and experience a 30 minute complimentary session: cathy@nacre.com.au

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