Freedom comes from being free from stuff. Duh but true. It’s stuff that we worry about. If we face financial stress, we worry about it because we are not financially free. If we face relationship stress, it’s because we don’t feel free in that relationship. There could be operational stress, staff stress, federal stress, paperwork stress, administrative stress, educational stress, growth stress and nothing-to-do stress.
What Lean forces you to do is clean up at a fundamental level. In a medical practice that basically means taking care of patients and getting paid for it. Lean forces you to be disciplined about things that are critical to the health of the practice. This discipline offers you freedom. It offers you time. If you are constantly worrying about say getting paid correctly for your video capsule endoscopy from BlueCross, you are not going to have the time to focus on hiring that partner you’ve wanted to or going and speaking to more referral doctors. If you are constantly worrying about which staff member is pocketing cash from your practice, you won’t have time to play with your kids.
Pause for a moment and list down all the elements of your practice that bother you – your Bothers-Me list. Hopefully, it isn’t long. Wave the Lean magic wand and I assure you that your list will shrink. Why won’t it? Say, you are bothered about lost claims due to missing timely filing limits of insurances. After Lean, say your claims are submitted like clockwork and that would be one less thing off your list.
Lean isn’t about quick short term fixes. It takes time but it gives you long-term, continuing benefits. More than anything it offers you the freedom of time.