Perhaps even more than most Sterling clients, Dr. Katie Bearden of Batesville, Mississippi, wanted to be independent in her practice. Even before she met up with Sterling, she never doubted that she would be able to do something to achieve that aim.
"I looked into some other consultants," says Dr. Bearden, "but I felt it made no sense to have someone come in and consult you in your practice and go away after a year, and you still don't know what is going on. If I want to hire someone to take over part of the responsibility and I feel I can delegate that work, then I need to know what goes on in that position. And I feel if I've got that knowledge, no one can take advantage of me." That respect for knowledge was always important to her. Nor did she believe that just because she was a dentist she was naturally a skilled manager. "I was always told if you don't know something, you should find someone who does. Just because you opened a business doesn't mean you know everything.
"When I started looking around a year and a half ago for a really good management company, I wanted to find out how to find an adequate staff, because I was having a lot of staff problems at the time. I figured if I was having those problems, I must have other problems, like money collecting, and the handling of patients by people other than myself, but I was basically looking for someone who would help me with the staff.
"Money-wise, I felt money was going to come anyway, so I wasn't worried about that.
"I had talked to other firms before Sterling, and these others wanted to come into the practice, take over the office management for X number of days or months, but I figured when they are gone things would be like a rubber band, they would spring back pretty much to where they had been. "Then I talked to the Sterling consultant and found out Sterling would teach me to take care of things myself, rather than put all my eggs in somebody else's hands. And that's what I wanted."
Dr. Bearden experienced what many Sterling clients say: that the Hubbard management technology brings together things which they may have known in fragments, but never figured out how to fit together.
"For me," Dr. Bearden says, "you can have lots of bricks, but it's different when you see them all put together into a building. And Sterling helped me put them all together; management-wise they made me see more and more how to manage people better and how to manage my money better. "What I wanted was staff who wanted to be responsible for themselves, that would do their jobs, and do them without worrying about, 'If I do this, she'll be mad at me.' I wanted people who would say, 'I'll do this and even if I make a mistake, we can always fix it.' I wanted responsible people, in short.
"I've gotten them. "My money situation has improved greatly; I found there were a lot of patients being undercharged or not being charged at all and others being overcharged to make up for it. Now everyone is charged fairly under one fee system.
"Money-wise things have improved just about 100%.
"I have recommended Sterling to people who are trying to increase income and find responsible staff and become better managers."
It's done excellent things for the work climate in the office, too. "The atmosphere is much better, first and foremost because I am happier. We can work better in a happier environment. We share things including knowledge and problems - what I don't know, if my staff know, they'll tell me.
"Also we all deal with people as a whole; the atmosphere is more pleasant whereas it was more strained before."
Sterling, Dr. Bearden says, helped her get the people she wanted, and the skill to manage her office for herself.
