Too Many Variables
How can Dr. Ben effectively put his information and ideas into his chiropractic practice?
Ben closed his office door gently and pulled his chair up to the desk. He pulled his wife’s crayon-made chart from his pocket and smoothed it out on the desktop. Carmen knew a lot about business, he thought. He had to admit that he found that part of his job challenging, but he was also confident that he’d be able to take control of this aspect of the practice now that he had some direction.
With medical information, he could look at a few pieces of data and see what was going on — or what else he needed to know to find the answers to his questions. If he needed additional information, he knew where to look for it. And generally speaking, the patients’ charts had the data he needed in the places where he expected it to be. His own experience with that data made it instantly meaningful.
It didn’t seem to work that way with practice management. So Carmen had grabbed one of their son’s crayons and drawn him a chart. Ben chuckled.
Ben copied the chart into a spreadsheet and hit “print.” He heard “Dr. Ben?” at his door and just had time to put away the original chart before Pam entered. “Dr. Ben, we have another last-minute cancellation.”
Pam handed Ben the patient folder. “She’s done this before, hasn’t she?” he asked, checking the file.
“She does it pretty regularly,” Pam admitted. “She always says something about work, but I wonder whether maybe she just finds herself short before the appointment comes up, and makes excuses so she won’t have to pay.”
“Do we have other patients who work at the same place she does? Do we have the same kinds of problems with them?”
“That’s a good question. I’ll check on that. I hate to have to charge her if it’s work-related and she can’t help it.”
“If we take that position, though,” Ben pointed out, “we’d never charge anybody for cancelling, even though we have a sign out there explaining the policy. Everybody probably has a reason they think is important.”
“I know, but if the cancellations are caused by financial problems, then charging…” Pam continued, but Ben had stopped listening.
“This is paralysis by analysis,” he interrupted.
“What?”
“I mean, we’re looking at so many possibilities and so many hypotheticals that we’re never going to be able to make a firm decision. If cancellations are enough of a problem to us that we have a policy, we ought to follow that policy. She could go to her boss and explain that she’ll lose that