Visualizing practice management: what makes my team tick?

Data, facts and instruments on the German health system

What it’s all about

This question is relevant to every practice owner: what makes my team tick? The easiest way to answer the question is with the Practice Management Comparison’s Team Member Typology.

Finding clues with the TQS

If the employees‘ assessments of collaboration quality are set in relation to the best practice standard, i.e. the basic requirements for optimally functioning collaboration, the resulting Teamwork Quality Score (TQS) can be used to derive an assessment of collaboration quality. This can be easily determined with the help of ten simple questions, which are anonymized and used to generate the score without the possibility of drawing conclusions about individual team members.

The typology of team members

The graphic on the cover shows an example of the team member typology of a conservative ophthalmology practice with seven MFAs. From the data it becomes clear that the cooperation of the staff in this case is clearly disturbed, because

• There are no female staff members who act as bearing pillars. This type stands unreservedly and sometimes somewhat uncompromisingly behind the team and also carries the idea to the outside. The team is a kind of ideal home for such members.
• The two keepers cannot compensate for this missing effect. These employees are characterized by the fact that they stand behind the team idea, but they also have aspects that they do not like and that should be changed from their point of view. Often they cannot change anything because other, less committed colleagues prevent them from doing so or because they do not want to become active themselves for fear of getting into conflicts.
• Three doubters also characterize the team structure. For them, there are many points of departure that they do not like about working together in the existing constellation. For this reason, they only contribute themselves and their work to the team to the extent that is necessary, but do not commit themselves beyond that.
• The two critics work in the team, but without contributing anything to the cohesion. They have no interest in this. In the tendency they see their job rather negatively and practice service after regulation.

Simple for status determination

For GP and specialist practice owners, it is extremely important to determine the structure of their workforce, as this largely determines the efficiency, productivity and success of the work. Once it is known, simple measures and tools can be used to counteract it. Physicians who would like to carry out such a status determination, which also determines the corresponding change measures if necessary, can use the Practice Management Comparison© for this purpose, with the help of which all other action areas of practice management can also be analyzed and optimized.