Promised Land

My son's current bedtime book is a biography of Gandhi (his choice!) As I've been reading it with him, I've learned some things about Gandhi's struggle to free India from British colonialism. Previously, my understanding of his life came from the 1982 biographical film, Gandhi.

Born and raised in India, Gandhi studied law in England and then traveled to South Africa. There, as depicted near the beginning of the film, he suffered the indignities of racial discrimination. These experiences led him to develop his ideas of nonviolent resistance, the application of which improved the lot of South African Indians. He then returned to India.

And changed the world.

See the Light

Last time, I told you about our plan to record the number of new consultations seen by each urologist, and then share the results with the whole group. The number of new consultations seen could be considered the basic currency of our practice, that is, each new consultation holds the same relative value. Once we're confident that our data is representative, we'll share it with all the urologists.

We did the same thing with our patient recall rates. That project revealed significant variations in recall rates among our docs. Although we never set actual target rates, we did encourage docs to come up with their own ways to modify their practices to reduce recall rates. I think much of that project's success resulted from showing the frequent-recallers that there was another way to do business. Their peers, working in the same environment, shared their ideas on making changes to engrained practice habits.

I hope for the same success with the latest project. I predict that we will find (once again) a significant variation, this time in the number of new consultations seen per physician. (Yes, I have peeked at the preliminary results.) We'll circulate that information and let the docs with low numbers formulate their own plans on how to modify their practices.

That's the plan I put forward at our office meeting this week. Some docs' response to that plan was pretty pointed.

Goats and Apples

OK, one last post about our recall rates/internal demand. I’ve been fixated on this topic for many recent posts, and it’s probably time to move on… after I show you this chart:

Looking good!

In July, 6 out of the 8 docs who were working had patient recall rates in the single digits, and the clinic average recall rate was 6.8%. That’s the first time we’ve had a clinic average in the single digits. We need to maintain these gains, and I think we’ll be helped by a change coming to our office this fall.

Heaven

I’ve been to wait line heaven... it’s a Wal-Mart.

I studiously avoid shopping at Wal-Mart. I know it’s a popular spot, and that’s the problem – the more people who shop there, the longer the wait at the checkout. And I hate wait lines.

But, last month, while looking for a piece of summer camp equipment for my son, I paid my first visit to our local Wal-Mart outlet. They had the item in stock, so I prepared to brave the wait for the till. I headed for the express checkout line. There were over a dozen people in the first line. I looked around for a shorter line. But, there was only one queue for multiple cashiers. Now, that’s odd for a department store.

Whether by tradition, or based on hard statistical analysis and marketing research, various businesses manage wait lines differently; for example, grocery store lines vs. bank lines. At the bank, you form a single queue, at the front of which you look for the next available teller. At the grocery store (and most department stores), you size up individual lines, trying to judge who has the most groceries, which teller is the chattiest, and who will be paying with loose pennies dredged up from the bottom of their purse. Then, while standing in line, you kick yourself for not picking another line that seems to be zipping along. Queue-er’s remorse.