The Dreaded Vacation Request - Lesson Learned

How do you get more new patients or hire more clinicians at your clinic and yet still remain profitable? This is the question and I'm on a journey to get you the answer. I'm going to interview the best marketers and clinic owners across the world to give you access to their winning strategies from recruitment, marketing, operations, finance and more. So you can easily take action on the secrets to grow your clinic. I'm Rick Lau. Welcome to Clinic Boss Secrets. It's vacation, summertime and it can be a crazy time for your clinic. You're gonna love this episode. My good friend Daryl Yard, he's going to talk about what to do with the dreaded vacation requests. Check it out.

I stopped worrying about coverage. I actually allowed it to be done by colleague to colleague to actually sort out the coverage plan. What now comes to me is like if I have to approve something, maybe that, you know, has to sort of change a little bit of the, let's say the parameters or who's going to work and how we're going to do it, let's say because somebody's sick at the same time. But the one thing I learned from nursing, if an, if a non clinical person calls a nurse and says, hey, can you actually, can you work today? We're actually short staff, unlikely that they may cover that if that nurse manager or that colleague calls. It's usually covered almost every time.

Yeah.

As healthcare providers will never leave a colleague like with their hands up. That's the one thing I learned and I watched it at the hospital. So as I bring it now into document, into the clinic for myself, I actually allow them to work it out to say, hey, look, we've got 40 patients that need to be seen in this caseload, this, you know, these two days. How are we going to do that? Right. And, and that's sort of that piece because it's, it's really getting people also to realize that it's not just about me dropping the ambulance. From a management or a leadership perspective, it's like, look, our prime responsibility is to service patients. How are we going to do that? Yeah, right. So, you know, you had some great learnings and I think a lot of us, so many of you are like close to a hospital. We all have colleagues that are actually associated with the hospital. Try to get the vacation policy from the hospital and work backwards to that as well. See how it works. Like what things can we learn from that and apply just like you do. That's excellent.

Yeah, very good, Darrell. I'm just curious then if you have him work out the vacation. Do you still have a process where it has to be submitted so it's tracked?

Yeah, everything's still like. And it's usually a little bit more on. On some of those. Like, oh, I need, you know, I need a vacation day because I graduate now, tomorrow. It's like, good. Tell me the coverage plan. Yeah, yeah, I'll confirm that those dates are available. The next thing, though, is that I have to approve the vacation plan.

Yeah, yeah.

Or. Sorry.

And I think that brings a good point too. And John, you mentioned this. Is that what is then? So you've got the, your vacation policy set. You've got the amount of time needed for request, et cetera, and all those details. What's your policy for coverage? You are on vacation. Is that clear? What are the expectations of yourself as a clinician to leave for your colleagues to cover your patients? Needs to be super clear. Like, your last chart note better have some indication in there where you're at with that patient. You know, don't do anything different with this person. Just do the same or please add this or something. I think it's to be set clear because I've had that blow up and clinicians come to me just irate because they're covering the staff person's caseload. Their chart notes are crappy. They didn't know what to do. They look like an idiot because they didn't know anything. And I think that's probably even more important, to be honest. At the end of the day when we talk about priority is patient care and continuity of care. So having that policy, and I have a training center, get your programs for your clients. You better have clear instructions of what the cues are that you're using with training, Mr. Smith. And that needs to be a seamless transition. And I think that's an important part of the vacation time off, whatever it is, if that person's away. Same thing with your admin.

Karen. I wanted to add here. Where does it start for the patient? Where does it start? Like, what, what should really happen is the plan of care. And the plan of care needs to be filled. And so I'm not sure if it was on one of these calls or Wednesday call where we had this discussion again of like, if they're set up to be seen twice a week for the first four weeks and once a week for four weeks after that. If you're gone for two weeks, then that patient just, hey, I'll catch you when you get back. Yeah, like, I don't know if that is commonplace for everybody. It's. It's sometimes not to adhere. Like, adhere to. Well, even for us. So we have to review it. Oh, I think it was. It was at a staff meeting just recently, but we discussed this very thing. Because it has to be seamless, because otherwise the patient is not getting the best experience possible. Which is what we're about. Right?

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