Speak Out June 2018

in practice

Policies, procedures, and systems for your practice

A starting point to help you identify the essential policies and procedures to develop is to recognise and assess risks associated with your practice. These risks could have an impact on: • Employee relationships, • Your finances, • The reputation of your practice, and • The day-to-day operations of your business. When considering risks, you also need to be aware of your regulatory and legislative requirements (e.g. ATO, Fairwork, Worksafe, Medicare) as well as requirements around privacy, National Code of Conduct etc. Developing a policy and procedure manual that adequately covers the risks faced in your business can be daunting, but it will help you and your staff react consistently to all situations (from the mundane to the critical). A clearly written set of policies and procedures will also make it easier to orient new employees in your practice, show them how your practice is run and help them understand how they should behave and react in a range of different situations (e.g. from where to store clinical records, how to deal with a complaint and what to do if someone has an accident). Also remember your manual will also need to be updated depending on the changing needs of your practice as it grows and develops. Examples of different types of policies have been provided by WorkPlacePLUS and can be seen on the next page.

• What should I do if a client keeps cancelling sessions? • How do I ensure my administration support team send out the same information to potential clients? • What should speech pathologists in my practice do if a mother wants to leave the premises while a session is in place with their child? • What do I do if a client makes a complaint? • What do I do if I have a work experience student visiting my practice? • How do I ensure the safety of my employees if they are conducting speech pathology sessions in clients' homes? T hese are just a sample of the many questions that you as a practice owner will have to answer during the time you run your business. There can be different ways of appropriately responding to scenarios such as those listed above but it is important for your practice to have standardised answers to all of these, as well as many more, questions. If you want to ensure consistent responses to these types of scenarios then you need to have developed a set of policies and procedures that reflect all aspects of your practice. Too often we hear that business owners wait for something to go wrong before they think about having a policy and procedure and then the damage, be it small or large, is done to the practice you have worked hard to establish. Effective policies, procedures and systems are essential in any business and well-developed policies and procedures have the potential to provide so many benefits to your practice.

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June 2018 www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au

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