Revenue Cycle Insider

Take your professional fate into your own hands.

During the HEALTHCON 2025 presentation, “Demand Excellence in Everything You Do: Your D.E.E.D. to Success,” Dee Maddox, CEO and founder of DMX Consulting, LLC, encouraged the audience to take charge of their own workplace achievements through personal responsibility, teamwork, and documentation.

O.W.N.ing Your Outcome and the D.E.E.D to Success

“When you OWN something, you Overcome challenges, Welcome innovation and Nurture growth, and you also have the DEED to something that you own,” said Maddox.

D.E.E.D. stands for Design, Education, Execution and Documentation. Maddox stressed that everything begins with a plan — whether that be your finances, your healthcare, your career, or your relationships. However, she makes the point that when you are too focused on doing one particular thing, you can lose sight of the bigger picture and no longer be focused on the right thing. This can cause you to waste time and money. “We’re wasting time and money when the plan that’s been designed doesn’t fit the capability of the task at hand,” she said.

Design: Set Clear Goals

It’s important to set clear goals and involve your entire team. “Weigh-in equals buy-in when you let them be involved in the goals that you are setting,” she said. Your team will naturally want to be more involved when you include them in the decision-making process. For example, Maddox pointed out that your staff can tell you which codes are used the most, which ones are rarely used, which codes or types of claims are denied most often, and things of that nature. Using the expertise of your staff can cut your time in half. “You have to incorporate feedback from the people who are actually doing the work,” said Maddox.

To implement these goals, Maddox suggested the following:

• Collaborate with employees to design roles that tap into their individual strengths and interests.
• Create a workspace that encourages creativity and collaboration.
• Set clear and challenging goals that inspire motivation.

Educate: Set Expectations

As an example of how modern employees need to embrace change and be open to learning new skills as they come, Maddox explained: “AI [artificial intelligence] didn’t just get here. We have to welcome innovation. Once we recognize that innovation is happening all around us, we have to nurture it through growth. You nurture that growth through learning.”

Maddox stressed that it’s important to educate yourself on the steps to become better at what you are trying to accomplish. “For example, AI is not going to take your job; someone who knows how to use the prompts to get what you need from AI is going to take your job. You need to educate yourself on what you need to do to be better,” said Maddox.

To educate your team, the key is to set expectations by:

• Creating organizational alignment,
• Including key competencies,
• Enforcing accountability,
• Providing regular feedback so your team can correct errors or issues immediately, and
• Fostering motivation.

Executive: Continuous Improvement

This step focuses on empowering the employees to take ownership of their tasks and to excel in their performance. To implement this step with your team,:

• Foster autonomy and trust in decision-making,
• Provide regular feedback and coaching for performance improvement, and
• Recognize and reward contributions to boost morale.

To recognize and reward contributions, Maddox suggested sending out emails pointing out something positive an employee has accomplished each week, as an example. She also stated that when problems or problematic behaviors do arise with employees, they need to be given a realistic timeframe to correct that behavior with clear expectations as to what needs to change. “Remember that it takes 2.5 times their salary to replace them, so it’s cheaper to keep them,” said Maddox.

Trust is also a huge part of a successful team. Maddox told the audience, “The number one dysfunction of a high-performing team is the absence of trust. This takes a long time to build and can be taken away in an instant.”

Document: Record, Review, Revise

Having documentation creates proof and a timeline. “When you document something, it becomes a record of what actually happened,” she said. This underscores the significance of accurate documentation: If information is documented incorrectly, it may also be processed and billed incorrectly.

To use this task in your office, your team should:

• Implement a performance management system to track progress,
• Regularly review job descriptions and performance expectations, and
• Keep records of achievements and improvement areas for evaluation.

“These areas are your responsibility. [Your boss] knows the last fire you put out, but you’ve been putting out fires all year. You should be keeping your own log of your achievements and accomplishments as they relate to your performance metrics,” said Maddox. She also stated that employers should encourage their employees to document their successes throughout the year on their own.

Key takeaway: Effective feedback, recognition, and goal setting are essential components of motivation. “Highly motivated employees contribute significantly to organizational success,” said Maddox.

Lindsey Bush, BA, MA, CPC, Production Editor, AAPC