50 AE Fall 2011

Cover Story Fall 2011

The Age of Amy Souza

Tools, electronic and otherwise,can assist in your informationmanagement efforts, but thereal key to staving off overloadis behavior.

AE Fall 2011 51

Chances are goodthat every aspectof your jobinvolves gather-ing, synthesizing,or disseminatinginformation. Notonly do you need

to keep track of vendor details, newtechnologies to add to your business,and regulatory and insurer informa-tion, you’re also responsible for thenuts and bolts of running a busi-ness—HR, accounting and billing,training, IT, emergency planning,and long-term strategic goals. Oh,and a nonstop flood of email. Nowonder you feel overwhelmed.

The bad news is there’s no quickfix. Tools, electronic and otherwise,can assist in your information man-agement efforts, but the real key tostaving off overload is behavior. Toefficiently manage data and avoidfeeling overwhelmed, you have tomanage yourself.

The Importance of Boundaries“There’s a perception that [informa-tion overload] is a new problem, butit’s really a very old problem,” saidJohn Pinto, an ophthalmology prac-tice consultant and principle of J.Pinto & Associates. “As long asthere’s been such a thing as business,people have realized they never haveenough time to do everything theycould potentially do. They have totriage and set boundaries.”

Attempting to do everything atonce, or to be available to everyoneall the time, is in fact a recipe fordisaster. Doing many things simulta-neously sounds good in theory, but

reality tells a different story.“Multitasking taxes the brain,”

said Craig N. Piso, a psychologist andconsultant with Piso and Associates.“Think about your computer. Whenyou have too many applicationsopen, it works slowly. The brain isaffected in the same way and it’seasy to use up bandwidth. We slowdown. We start to forget things ormake bad decisions, or we becomestressed.”

Because administrators’ dutiescross so many functional lines, thelure to multitask is ever-present. Inorder to better compartmentalize—and thus focus on one piece of herjob at a time—Cortney Burden, prac-tice administrator at Kentucky EyeCare in Louisville, uses low-techtools to keep herself on track. Burdenmaintains three whiteboards in heroffice—one for EHR transition issues,one for billing, and one for generaladministrative tasks—and carriesaround a notebook with tabs and herown color-coded system.

“I’m a note-taker and a list-maker, and at the end of the day Itake everything I’ve jotted down inmy notebook and add it to thewhiteboards,” she explained.

The whiteboards are structuredby month, week, and day, soBurden—and others—can see what’son her plate at any given time. Notonly does this help physicians andstaff know when they can interrupther or add something more to herplate, it helps Burden conquer apotentially unwieldy To Do list. Theother key? Determination.

“If I have my EHR hat on, Ifocus on that; billing hat, I focus on

that,” Burden says. “It’s really theonly way I can handle it. If you tryto do a little here, a little there, thenyou spend ten times the amount ofenergy and resources on the samesubject and don’t get as much done.You have to focus.”

Piso agreed. To achieve thepower of focus, he noted, you mustput up a firewall by saying “no” tointerruptions or disruptions. Thenyou can turn your full brainpower tothe problem at hand and, in turn, bemore creative in your decision-mak-ing and clearer in your thinking. Todo that, you must prioritize, and todo that you must figure out how tospend your time.

Sandy Boles faced this problemwhen she worked in practice man-agement for 25 years. Today she’s arefractive business developmentmanager for Abbott Medical Optics,helping clients grow their LASIKbusinesses. “Delegation was a hugepart of the solution for me as anadministrator,” said Boles. “I neededto decide what were my key respon-sibilities and spend my time onthose. If a decision was about bene-fits, I’d pass it on to my humanresources personnel.”

To help maintain focus, shekeeps her job description printed outon her desk or tucks it into a note-book when traveling. “I don’t lookat it all the time, but if I’m feelingoverwhelmed I read it over,” shesaid. “It reminds me what I’m sup-posed to be doing and helps to reelme back in.”

Information Overload

continued on page 52

52 AE Fall 2011

Cover Story Fall 2011

Online OnslaughtThe term “information overload”was used by social scientist BertramMyron Gross nearly 50 years agoand popularized by Alvin Toffler inhis 1970 book Future Shock. A recentHarvard Business Review blog post byHarvard history professor Ann Blairsuggests humans felt overwhelmedby the amount of data and ideasavailable in the world as far back as2,300 years ago (http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/information_over-loads_2300-yea.html). What’schanged, of course, is the ease withwhich we can search for, access, andshare information.

Today, ideas and data fly at youvia email, Twitter, and RSS feeds.Perhaps you market your practice(or yourself) on Facebook orLinkedIn. Plus, you follow mailinglists and forums and read newslet-ters and journals. Most of us knowwell how quickly we can get suckedinto the ether—in seeking one finalpiece of data, we end up sidetracked,and soon an hour (or more!) haspassed.

“The internet has a motive tokeep you there forever,” said Piso.“If we’re not the drivers of how wego after and use information, wewill potentially be rendered uselessand the search itself can becomeaddictive. People lose theirfoothold.”

For many, email is theirAchilles’ heel. The ability to quicklyand easily communicate online canbe a godsend or an ever-present frus-tration, and yes, it all depends onbehavior.

“Again, it falls into the broadcategory of boundary setting,” saidPinto. “People easily get 100 or 150emails a day, but a lot is spam oryou’re being copied when you don’tneed to be. If you’re getting emailswith a long string of dense text,

TIPSUse what works for you. Don’t go for the latest and greatest gadget

if paper and pen are what you prefer. Read print magazines if paper’s yourthing; if it’s not, go for the online version. Rule your tools; don’t let themrule you. Schedule times to read email. Manage your email using rulesand folders.

Take care of yourself. It sounds simplistic, but too many peopleignore the basics of self-care. To keep stress at bay and maintain anactive, nimble mind, you need to eat right, exercise, take breaks, andmaintain connections with the people you like best and who make youfeel energized and inspired.

With paper, apply OHIO (only handle it once), with a caveat.Some pieces of paper, like junk mail, are easy to discard. Others you’lllikely need to handle more than once. But it makes sense to schedulesome time into your day or week to sort through the paper in your officeand decide what to do with it—file for future reference; pack it in yourbriefcase to read at home; or take action this week or this month. Even inthis digital age, paper can quickly become a scourge, so be diligent aboutreviewing your various piles.

Ask yourself, Is this the best use of my time? If not, decidewhether the task can be delegated or perhaps not done at all.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Does someone else already gather theinformation you need? Make that person—or their newsletter or web-site—your trusted advisor.

Unsubscribe. “Sometimes I think, How many different ways can Ireceive the same thing? It gets frustrating to receive the same informationvia postcard, letter, fax, and email,” said Angel Misenhelter, practiceadministrator for Brian M. Brown, MD, in Downey, Calif. One solution?“Unsubscribe,” Misenhelter said. “A lot of information is redundant and Ihave found that requesting information in just one way works great.”

Avoid analysis paralysis. Making or guiding practice decisions isperhaps one of an administrator’s most crucial jobs, but unfortunatelysome people spin their wheels searching for more and more information.“It becomes a form of procrastination and avoidance,” said Sandy Boles.One problem, John Pinto noted, is using a doctor’s mentality to makebusiness decisions. “In a clinical setting, you need to be right 99% of thetime, but that’s not the standard that applies in business,” he said. “Inbusiness, you need to be 60% correct.”

Survey the broader landscape. Elaine Heffernan, CMPE, CPC, prac-tice administrator for The Eye Care Center of New Jersey, noted that it’sdifficult to compartmentalize the different parts of your job without theproper management and support structures in place. Obviously, suchchallenges do not have quick fixes, but it pays to analyze your organiza-tion to see where improvements can be made.

continued from page 51

ANDTRICKS

AE Fall 2011 53

that’s a signal you need to holdmore face-to-face meetings to hashstuff out.”

Email and internet use overallappeal to us at a limbal level, Pintoadded. “It’s exciting to send a mes-sage and get a response. It’s the samesort of excitement to a degree thatwe feel sending a letter and gettingone back. But physiologically it’sunhealthy to check email at 10 p.m.before bed. And if the first thing youdo in the morning while brushingyour teeth is check your email,you’re either in love or you need toset some boundaries and start beingappropriate. You need to start usingthe tool instead of letting the tool

use you.”One way to do that is to sched-

ule times throughout the day tocheck your email—say every 3hours—or to let technology help youmanage your Inbox. For example,Boles has created folders and ruleswithin her email software so whenmessages that meet the rules’ param-eters arrive, the software processesand files them in the proper folder—all without Boles having to do athing. This way, she can continue toreceive newsletters she enjoys with-out feeling as if she needs to stopwhat she’s doing to file them. Andbecause they’re tucked away in afolder for later reading, she does not

fall prey to “in sight, in mind” dis-tractions and can more easily remainfocused on her task at hand.

Nancy C. White, MA, COE,administrator at Great Plains EyeClinic in Sioux Falls, S.D., handlesthings a bit differently, but with asimilar result. “With [mailing lists],some people get the digests but Iprefer individual emails, whichmeans I get a lot of messages. I takesome time each day to sort throughthem. Often I can tell from the sub-ject line whether a message will beof use to me or not, but I’ve foundthat you have to be careful aboutdeleting to make sure you’re notmissing something.”

Staying Sane in anInformation-Crazed WorldNo matter what information man-agement strategies you employ,you’ll likely feel depleted at somepoint. Then it might be time forwhat Boles calls an old-fashionedcoffee break.

“If feeling overwhelmed, I getout of the office and take a walk. I’llpull some weeds in the garden orwalk the dog, or get up and play Wiifor 15 minutes. I change my envi-ronment a little and it breaks thecycle for me.”

If you think you can’t unplug orafford significant downtime, consid-er Boles’s “cool epiphany.” “WhenI’m in my car, I try not to use thephone, and after about 15 minutes Ifind I become more clear-headed.That’s when I get some of my bestideas.” AE

Information sources yourcolleagues recommendWashington Watch Weekly. “One of the best resources we have,”said Lisa Gangi, COE, administrator at Ophthalmic Consultants in Sarasota,Fla. “It gives a snapshot of what is coming at us and the opportunity to learnmore about timely topics in an efficient manner.”

Inside Counsel. (insidecounsel.com) “It’s written for corporate counsels,but it’s wonderful and free. I pick up a lot about what the regulatory environ-ment might be, and I spend about half an hour with it each month,” said NancyWhite.

Twitter. Sandy Boles follows a number of people who write about organiz-ing time and information. Her favorites include David Allen, Ray Edwards, TimFerris, John Maxwell, Julie Morgenstern, and Rory Williams.

Networking—in person via conferences or online vialistservs and forums. “One of my main goals at the AAO meetinglast year was to listen to people talk about EHR,” said Cortney Burden. “Youcan learn just as much from forums as you can from a class. I can find outwhat practices our size are doing and gain a perspective of where we want togo.”

Amy Souza (amy.souza@gmail.com), a freelance writerand editor, battles informationoverload from her home inArlington, Va.