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Here are tips for choosing a good office manager

Practice Management. By Julie A. Jacob, amednews staff. April 23/30, 2001.

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What's the secret to a well-run office? Many doctors will say the key to a practice that functions smoothly and efficiently is a good office manager.

An office manager, also called a practice manager, takes care of all the nonmedical-related functions in the practice, explained Teri Arseneau, president of the Professional Assn. of Health Care Office Management (http://www.pahcom.com/).

Although specific responsibilities vary, office managers typically perform or supervise bookkeeping and payroll duties, prepare monthly profit and loss statements, hire and supervise nonmedical office staff, oversee the administration of employee benefits and arrange for office maintenance. In other words, they are in charge of everything not related to the practice of medicine. Said Arseneau, "An office manager allows physicians to lessen their involvement in day-to-day [operations] so they are free to treat patients."

Among the responsibilities of an office manager for a six-physician pediatric group practice in Milwaukee, pediatrician Catherine Slota-Varma, MD, notes, "She does payroll and our bookkeeping, she does oversight of our retirement plan, she monitors our costs for medical supplies and health insurance benefits and keeps up to speed on what our cost overruns are."

And Ross Black, MD, who practices in a six-physician family practice group in Akron, Ohio, describes his group's office manager's responsibilities like this: "Day-to-day human resource and personnel management issues ... ongoing oversight of maintaining office procedural compliance by the office staff, ordering materials, working with the accountant ... organizing monthly staff meetings, handling patient complaints, etc." [...]