Practice Manager

Are you looking for a new job opportunity (perhaps in an entirely different field from your current one) in which you work with wonderful colleagues, experience challenge in your work, have excellent work-life balance and derive a sense of purpose from your work?  If so, our Practice Manager role might be just the right fit.  We need a quick thinking, friendly and empathic professional to lead our team of 5 part time receptionists and support our 23 part time child/adolescent psychologists and executive team as we provide therapy services to children/teens in our Aberfoyle Park and Wayville clinics.

About us

Over the last 25 years, Developing Minds has been providing psychological therapy services to around 200 children and teenagers per week, as well as provide speaking/training, supervision, group and online services to families around Australia.  We are a group of caring and committed professionals who genuinely like each other, laugh often and care deeply about the families we work with.  We were awarded first place in the Australian Allied Health “Paediatric Private Practice” Excellence awards, have very high staff retention rates, and have achieved National Mental Health Services Standards accreditation.  We have extensive and detailed policies and procedures, our clinical executive team provide teaching and supervision to other psychologists both in Australia and internationally and we strongly value inclusiveness, equity and kindness.  Of course, there are still things that go wrong here – all of us make mistakes and we often have tricky situations to manage – but we try to learn and grow together every day (coffee helps!).

About the role

The Practice Manager will be on site at both our Aberfoyle Park (2-3 days) Wayville (1-2 days) clinics each week in a permanent part time position working between 24 hours and 30 hours each week.  

The Practice Manager will work closely with and report directly to the director/owner of the practice, manage the day to day (non-clinical) operations of the practice, manage the reception team, support our psychologists, respond to complex client concerns, provide support to the executive team and generally be the “go to person” for all of our team to trouble shoot many and sundry (non-clinical) problems.

More specifically, on a week to week basis, the Practice Manager will:

-          Support and supervise our receptionists (including running meetings, oversee admin team capacity and rostering, do “fill in” shifts on the front desk to cover receptionist sick/annual leave, do annual self development reviews, and help receptionist problem solve client issues, medicare claiming, and the application of our policies and procedures)

-          Provide assistance and advice to the director – on a variety of matters related to efficiency, strategic direction, appointment numbers, marketing and community education, support for our team and other matters related to the provision of effective services to families.

-          Ensure psychologists have the appropriate number of families on their caseload (including allocation of new client and overseeing the waitlist), manage clinic room schedules, assist them with policy/procedure/non-clinical client queries and be a listening ear to assist them with (non clinical) stressors and worries.

-          Talk to clients who have concerns about our services, complex queries (or difficulties with payment) as escalated to you from the reception team.

-          Help the director and our clinical systems manager ensure our practice is compliant with all relevant legislation (eg Fairwork/National Employment Standards regulations, Medicare legislation, SafeWork Australia policies, Ethical guidelines and others)

-          Co-ordinate team social events, team meetings and other functions

-          Co-ordinate teaching and speaking engagements and events for our executive team

-          Oversee community education and marketing

As well as engaging in a range of other tasks/projects which might come up on a day to day basis

You might have done this type of work previously but not in a health setting - this might be okay – we can teach you a lot of what you will need to know. But there are some essential criteria you will need to be able to do this role – this includes:

-          Tertiary training (this might in a range of fields) at diploma/advanced diploma or even degree level with a high GPA/strong academic achievement record

-          At least 10 years work experience in a team orientated work environment (this might be in health/education/HR/business/administration or other fields)

-          At least 2 years of experience managing and leading other people in some form.

-          Management/business/marketing acumen and knowledge

-          Outstanding communication skills – with a friendly, positive and authentic style – so you are able to quickly establish rapport with families, our admin team and our clinicians

-          A high level of genuine empathy and concern for others

-          Extremely high levels of tact, discretion and commitment to confidentiality principles

-          Quick thinking, cognitively agile and energetic enough to manage a fast paced work day

-          Organised, efficient and with excellent task and time management skills (and basic IT skills)

-          Excellent initiative and ability to see the ‘big picture’ when thinking about what to do next

However we also have a list of desirable characteristics – we would also love to employ someone who has:

-          Experience in working in a health or allied health setting

-          Knowledge of Medicare, MBS and NDIS guidelines and regulations

-          More advanced IT skills (ie trouble-shooting server/internet issues, Excel skills)

-          Previous receptionist experience

-          Experience developing practice procedures and policies

-          Experience with medical practice/allied health practice software

If this sounds like you – please apply!  If you are unsure, feel free to contact us.

The benefits of working with us

-          FTE of 5 weeks paid annual leave plus standard sick/personal leave entitlements under the Health Professionals and Support Services Award

-          Work with a team of 30 welcoming, kind and friendly people – who all like and care about each other, check in with each other’s well-being and regularly make each other laugh.  The 5 part time receptionists you will manage (around 2.8FTE) are all lovely and an absolute delight to support.

-          Interesting and challenging work – no day is the same, there are many different problems to solve and many people to talk to (across two sites/teams)

-          Flexible work hours – potential to work “school day hours” some days per week, ability to adjust work hours on a week to week basis in order to accommodate your appointments etc, and to work from home occasionally.

-          No after work/end of the day work to do (absolutely no need to check emails after hours and weekends) and an executive team who prioritise work life balance for the whole team.

-          Extensive support and training – lots of written policies and procedures to guide you, up to 6 months of regular training in the role and encouraging people around to help you work out what to do on a daily basis as you get to know us

-          Having children and teens in our clinics all day means there is a sense of fun in our clinics.  Kids here sometimes have big feelings so you’ll definitely hear the sound of that! – but you’ll also hear lots of laughter and much playing of Uno

- Parking is easy, and it is a 3 minute walk to coffee shops (at both clinics)

-          You will have the support of our practice administrator who is responsible for all finances, payroll, book-keeping, IT and facilities/property management and you will not need to be responsible for these areas of the practice.

-          You will also have the support of our 2 clinical team leaders and our clinical systems manager (who are responsible for the clinicians/clinical therapy delivery) so although you provide general support to our clinicians, our other executive team leaders are responsible for all clinical issues.

-          Having said this – your role is nevertheless pivotal.   You will see tangible results of your input and contributions - we are a responsive organization and make changes quickly when needed so you will feel as though you can contribute meaningfully to what happens here.

-          Finally, we hope you will also experience a broader sense of purpose in the work you do with us – you will be helping us support the mental health of South Australian children and teens, which is a privilege for all of us and we trust it will be for you too.

Dependent on previous experience/qualifications we are anticipating that our Practice Manager will earn between $35 and $39 per hour plus super.  

If you have questions about this opportunity or would like to have a chat about whether it might be worth you applying, feel free to please contact Amy on ***@developingminds.net.au

Or if you are keen you can just go ahead and email your Cover Letter and CV to amy via the email address above.  ***Please note, in your cover letter, it will be essential to address how you meet each of the essential criteria as outlined above***.

Applications will close March 30th 2024 - but we will processing applications as soon as they are received and may interview earlier so please apply as soon as possible if you are interested.  You should know that we will undertake some psychometric assessment (eg verbal and abstract reasoning) as part of the selection process.

Please note due to conflicts of interest, unfortunately we cannot employ parents/caregivers who have children who attend our clinic.