Systems That Serve: Fractional Administration as The Missing Piece in Your Practice Featuring Sarah Clark, EP 178

Episode Overview

In this episode of Thriving Practice, I speak with Sarah Clark, founder of Sarah Clark Consulting, who helps medical, dental, and chiropractic practices transform operational chaos into sustainable calm. Sarah's approach combines fractional practice administration with process improvement strategies that allow providers to focus on patient care rather than administrative burdens. We explore how small, intentional changes in technology and workflow can dramatically improve both the patient experience and staff satisfaction. Sarah shares concrete examples of how simple solutions like automated appointment reminders have freed up staff time and improved patient punctuality by 30% in one practice. Her compassionate, results-driven methodology emphasizes that providers don't need to make sweeping changes all at once – even incremental improvements can lead to significant positive outcomes for practice efficiency and provider wellbeing.

Featured Quotes

"What I do is I help private medical, dental, chiropractor, anything in that field...turn their chaos into calm. And I sort of make a joke of, well, not all the way calm, more like calm-er. Because if it's really quiet and it's really calm, that's probably also like it's never really gonna happen that way."

"Burnout is not just taking care of the patients and dealing with that burden that gets put onto their shoulders, but having to run an office when a physician did not go to business school becomes really difficult...It's overwhelming. That's a full-time job."

"There are ways that you can do that and take some of the manual part of the stuff that leads up to that diagnosis...once the clients, once the business owners understand that it's okay to elevate something else off of you, to give it to somebody that has the experience and the time and the understanding to do it, it is, I mean, I have two clients that will just send me a text message about whatever it is and they used to say just handle it, now that just handle it is understood."

What You'll Learn

Listen for these key insights:

• How the "Four P's" framework (People, Paperwork, Processes, and Patients) can transform your practice
• Why technology adoption doesn't have to be overwhelming—and how small changes like automated appointment reminders can have outsized impacts
• The surprising connection between provider burnout and patient experience
• How fractional practice administration can provide expert support for practices that can't justify a full-time administrator
• The critical importance of developing a strategic plan for your practice, including your eventual exit strategy
• Why compassion isn't just good medicine—it's good business (with scientific evidence to back it up!)

Resources Mentioned

• Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence that Caring Makes a Difference - Book recommendation from Sarah about the impact of compassion on patient outcomes and provider burnout

Thriving Practice is hosted and executive produced by Tracy Cherpeski. Our mission is to help healthcare practitioners build sustainable, impactful businesses while maintaining their own wellbeing.

Bio:

Sarah Clark is the founder of Sarah Clark Consulting, where she helps medical, dental, and chiropractic practices transform operational chaos into sustainable calm. With a Master's degree in Kinesiology from Indiana University, Sarah built her career spanning both corporate healthcare with the NFL and independent medical practices.

This diverse background gives Sarah a unique perspective from nearly all roles in a medical office, allowing her to identify pain points and implement collaborative solutions. She specializes in helping independent practitioners who often wear multiple hats without adequate training for all their responsibilities.

Through fractional practice administration and process improvement, Sarah guides healthcare providers to become the best versions of themselves while improving operations and increasing profitability.

Sarah lives in Huntersville, North Carolina where she enjoys outdoor activities, RV travel, cooking, and kickboxing when she's not transforming healthcare practices.

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