Are you getting more than you bargained for with your practice management company?If you believe what you see on the Internet, you might read that a few practice management consultants are allegedly trying to recruit and convert practitioners to Scientology. Is it true?
“No,” says optometrist Mira Swiecicki, of Lynden, Wash. “Their techniques
are teaching you how to be a manager. It’s not like they’re teaching you how to do voodoo.”Dr. Swiecicki is a solo practitioner and past-president of the Optometric Physicians of Washington. She hired Silkin Management Group (formerly Hollander Consultants) in 2003 and again in 2008.
“It was the best thing I’ve done for my practice, ever. Before I had done the program, I was having a lot of staffing issues. I had cash flow problems. I was considering selling my practice or leaving because I was stressed out and didn’t feel like coming to work, and it’s not like that anymore,” she says. “I now know how to manage my staff, and we know the techniques and things that you can do to get referrals and to have a stronger, more successful practice.”
The Silkin consultants never approached her about Scientology, Dr. Swiecicki says. “I wasn’t religious when I started. I’m still not religious. And they don’t care that I’m not. It’s not part of our relationship at all.”
But there is a connection between Silkin (and other practice management groups) and the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard.“A portion of our management training and consulting program consists of the materials we have developed over the 27 years of being in business delivering to the health care field. Another portion uses the fully secularized management principles written by Mr. Hubbard,” says Larry Silver, president of Silkin Management Group. “Again, these materials are fully secularized and have nothing to do with the religion of Scientology.”
L. Ron Hubbard was a prolific author in a variety of fields. In addition to the books that became the foundation for Scientology, he also wrote books on business management, drug rehabilitation and even science fiction.“Not only does the management technology we teach include no religious materials whatsoever, we are in fact prohibited from using any religious materials at all,” Mr. Silver says. “We simply teach a very workable practice management system, of which some of the material is from Hubbard’s management writings.”
Mr. Silver says that Silkin is very upfront about this association with L. Ron Hubbard. “We attempt to make it very clear from the start that we use some of Hubbard’s secularized material. There is no hidden surprise about this. In fact, our contract clearly states: "Doctor understands and acknowledges that Silkin uses secular administrative technology developed by L. Ron Hubbard, author, educator, and founder of the religion of Scientology, in Silkin's program of business consulting and training. Silkin is, however, a privately owned company, separate from and not part of any Church of Scientology."
However, Mr. Silver also explained that “some clients do get interested in and inquire to us about Hubbard’s other works, including Scientology, his literacy and study methodology, his drug rehabilitation programs as well as his published fiction works. Since this happens not infrequently, the Church does provide a staff member to be available after hours … to answer any questions about Scientology or provide lectures on the subject,” he says. “This could be the reasoning behind someone thinking we were a ‘front group’ for the Church.”
L. Ron Hubbard’s business principles have also evolved into the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises, or WISE. Although “Scientology” is in the organization’s name and “thousands upon thousands of Scientologists [have] joined the organization,” the stated purpose of WISE is to help “business people of all religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds … in virtually every nation on Earth [to] attain new levels of sanity, productivity and affluence.”
You can do a Google search for “Scientology,” “WISE” and “Silkin” and find any number of sites that accuse these businesses of being secret Scientology recruitment operations.But none of that matters to practitioners like Dr. Swiecicki.
“When people say that Silkin is teaching something that’s radical, it’s not true. They’re teaching management techniques that work,” she says. “Business is business. No matter what type of business you’re in, you run into the same problems. If you’re an MBA, you would probably know these techniques. But we’re optometrists, so we don’t know them.”