Creating your Procedure Manual

  1. Create your centralized Procedures Folder

  1. Go to your Google Drive.  If you don’t have one, sign up HERE(drive.google.com).
  2. Click on New, then Folder
  3. Name your folder as Procedures and click Create.  
  4. Double-click on your newly created folder to open.  All your documents will be stored here for easy reference.

  1. Create your individual Procedures

  1. Click on New, then Google Docs.
  2. Click on Untitled document on the upper left hand side to rename your Procedure.
  1. I start each title with the area of the practice. If you need some ideas, take a look at my Practice Management Mind Map.  

  1. Here are some example procedures:

  1. Clinical - Doctor exam charting
  2. Clinical - Procedure & Medical Coding
  3. Clinical - Pre-testing Operations
  4. Dispensary - Ordering & Processing Contact Lenses
  5. Dispensary - VSP Interface: Frame & Lens Orders
  6. Front Office - Phone Operations
  7. Front Office - Making Appointments
  8. IT - How to Properly Restart the Server
  9. Lab - Final Inspection
  10. Lab - Stock Lens Inventory
  11. Social Media - Posting Schedule
  12. Social Media - Reputation Management
  13. Website - How to Edit Doctors & Staff Website
  1. At this point, you have two choices:
  1. Create. You may begin editing your specific procedure guide.  Please refer to my Guide on Making a Guide 
  2. Delegate. You may delegate your guide creation to a specific person.  Click on Share and send to a specific staff member for them to edit.  See Section 4b for more info on privacy.
  1. You may also import and rename any existing documents by dragging and dropping any existing files into your Procedure folder.

  2. Repeat Step 2 for each new procedure

  1. Create your Procedure Manual

  1. Create a new Google Docs document named Procedure Manual

  2. LIST all of your documents

  1. Type a simple list of all the titles in your Procedures Folder. Example:
  1. Clinical - Doctor exam charting
  2. Clinical - Procedure & Medical Coding
  3. Clinical - Pre-testing Operations
  4. Dispensary - Ordering & Processing Contact Lenses
  5. Dispensary - VSP Interface: Frame & Lens Orders
  6. Front Office - Phone Operations
  7. Front Office - Making Appointments
  8. IT - How to Properly Restart the Server
  9. Lab - Final Inspection
  10. Lab - Stock Lens Inventory
  11. Social Media - Posting Schedule
  12. Social Media - Reputation Management
  13. Website - How to Edit Doctors & Staff Website

  1. LINK your titles to the document list

  1. Please read my Guide on Making a Guide, Section 5b.  You will be linking each listed title to the actual document.  When you’re finished, it should look something like this:

  1. ORGANIZE your procedures.

  1. You may organize your procedures in any way you choose.  I categorize office operations in two ways:
  1. Departmental Duties
  2. Patient Workflow
  1. Copy and Paste the procedure into the appropriate Department.  Every procedure will belong to a department.
  2. Copy and Paste the procedure into the appropriate Patient Workflow.  Your procedure may coincide with both a Departmental Duty and a step in your Patient Workflow.
  3. Here’s an Example of what your Procedure Manual may look like:

The arrows show some procedures that belong to both.

  1. Advanced

  1. Use Folders.  If you find yourself with 50+ procedures, it may be a good idea to organize them into folders for easy management.
  2. Privacy in Google Apps.  If your organization is on Google Apps, you may choose to limit access to users within your domain.  For example:
  3. Get Creative.  I combine and link my Procedure Manual with Policies, Fee Schedules, and Software Vendor Manuals to have one centralized document that links to anything related to office operations.  You can see an example of this in action in my last article, A Clickable Procedure Manual.
  4. Use Comments 
  1. Use and encourage comments to refine procedures.  
  1. Your employees have hands on experience with their assigned duties.  If they are not in charge of editing your procedure manual, they can still contribute by allowing them to comment.  
  1. You can use comments to flag and track changes to procedures.
  1. Example:

Index

Create your centralized Procedures Folder

Create your individual Procedures

Here are some example procedures:

Repeat Step 2 for each new procedure

Create your Procedure Manual

Create a new Google Docs document named Procedure Manual

LIST all of your documents

LINK your titles to the document list

ORGANIZE your procedures.

Advanced