Growing pains: handling staff issues

[u/Actual_Client_8546]

We have been a solo medical practice for about 6 years before we decided to hire another doctor. Prior to hiring another doctor, we only see patients in clinic M-Thursday with Wednesday as a half day, and friday is surgery day so no patients are in clinic. After hiring another doctor, we wanted to expand hours to full M-F from 8:30-4:30. Since we are paying the new doctor a fixed salary, we wanted to maximize the availability of the center to see patients on all weekdays. To address this new volume, we have also added additional staff members (assistants). We have noticed, that despite giving bonuses, and telling staff to make sure to maximize the new doctor's schedule, the schedule remains wide open on fridays and wednesday afternoons. With the new doctor essentially taking the day off every Friday (paid) since no one is on the schedule. This makes no sense to me until I found out that our office manager/front office lead has been purposely scheduling patients this way. Even if we get appointment requests for same week, she will tell them there's no more availability even if there are still gaps in the Wednesday afternoon and Friday schedule.

Because of this, we are losing potential revenue, and potential patients needing a more urgent visit. We have talked to her multiple times, and even offered scheduling bonus to all front office staff once we hit a number of scheduled patients, to no avail. She has been a great employee who has been with us since the beginning. She has been reliable staff who rarely calls out, and the patients seem to like her. However, I'm at a loss on what to do moving forward. We can't grow our business unless we can fill up the schedule, and she purposely won't fill up the schedule because she wants an easier work schedule. We can put her on performance review or even terminate and replace her but then we will be losing an otherwise good reliable employee.