10 Tips to run a more successful clinic.

The operating costs and patient expectations are constantly rising in a cutthroat market like healthcare. It's becoming more and more challenging for doctors to run a clinic, which puts them in a challenging scenario frequently.

Since the emergence of the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the profound digitization that has changed healthcare delivery in the past year alone, the sustainability of the healthcare sector is more important than ever. Effective clinic administration arranges medical facilities to provide patient-centered treatment while considering the economical use of resources. In this post, we share 10 suggestions to assist doctors in resolving issues with clinic operations, improving patient care, and increasing profitability.

1. Establish an Effective Scheduling System
2. Focus on your patient
3. Task delegations
4. Establish Clinic Employee Incentive Systems
5. Engage Mid-level Health Providers
6. Solicit Feedback
7. Establish Business Continuity
8. Forming Clinic Groups
9. Teleconsult and SmartCMS
10. Digital Marketing

Improve patient care and put the needs of the patient first.

As the medical field develops, patients increasingly value the entire clinic visit, from making an appointment to receiving their bill and medications. Consultations and treatments are no longer the only things that matter to them. Clinics should therefore start concentrating on enhancing the patient experience. Patient experience is defined as the ease of use and accessibility of clinic services, the standard of care provided by the clinic, the precision of the diagnosis, the course of treatment, and the prescription of medications, as well as patient satisfaction based on waiting times and service quality.

1. Establish an effective scheduling system

Running a successful clinic requires striking a balance between treating as many patients as you can while maintaining one-on-one contact with each patient. To achieve this equilibrium, periodic process assessments and modifications are advocated. Clinics should invest in a reliable scheduling system instead of continuing to use manual appointment procedures. Effective scheduling can boost patient volume and reduce "dead space" brought on by conflicting appointments and no-shows. The technology should ideally speed up scheduling and billing.

Long wait times in clinics have long been a key source of anxiety for patients and the primary cause of dissatisfied patients and a bad experience. This is particularly true if the patient is in pain or discomfort. You can handle both walk-in and scheduled appointments with the help of an efficient queue management and scheduling system, which will also greatly reduce patient waiting times and complaints. Your work will be much easier if the patients are content and joyful.

2. Focus on your patient

Giving your patient therapy, advice, and medication is no longer the only way to focus on them. While the therapy component is unquestionably important, modern healthcare places a much greater emphasis on the patient. The patients also want the doctors and clinic personnel to treat them with respect, privacy, and sincere care. Communicate with them about the treatment process, show them you care about their circumstances, and attempt to comprehend what they are going through.

It's true that your duty and top priority is to provide the patient with high-quality care, but you can't ignore the other elements of their experience. They have plenty of options and will just visit other clinics if they feel mistreated or dissatisfied with the encounter. A negative internet review of your clinic, which is even worse, can seriously harm both your reputation and that of your clinic, which is something you really don't want to happen.

Increase your focus on their experiences outside of treatments, make them happy, demonstrate your concern and care for them, and treat them with respect so that they will return to you if they ever need you.

You might get better individualized patient care and a seamless patient experience by implementing an extensive medical EMR software.

Manage and treat your clinic staff well to improve productivity

"Productivity in healthcare may be described as time, attention, and quality of care," says A/Prof. Fatimah Lateef, Adjunct Professor at Duke-NUS Medical School and NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. Any previous measures and criteria for healthcare productivity are no longer valid.

According to Dr. James Buchan, the following 5 elements could help boost healthcare productivity:

1. Addressing employee absence and leave entitlement.
2. In the proper location: Locational issues, allocating personnel to different branches when necessary.
3. When necessary: Aligning staff with task to prevent overwhelming them with manual labor.
4. Making the best use of staff members' talents and competences while being more attentive to patient requirements is doing the right thing.
5. Doing things differently/differently: expanded roles, better management, and improved training, etc.

Efficient staff management and making your personnel happy is key to boosting your clinic’s productivity. Your staffs are 13% more productive when they are satisfied.

3. Delegate some of your tasks

Delegation must be done well to be effective. Things that don't need a medical degree shouldn't be done by doctors. Delegating administrative duties shouldn't compromise one's comprehension of how a practice is operated. In order to concentrate completely on the consultation and treatment, doctors should always delegate irrelevant work to the clinic assistants and receptionists. While the CAs and receptionists are expected to undertake administrative duties, they should not be overworked with manual labor and should focus primarily on tasks that fall within their areas of expertise and core competencies.

4. Establish employee incentive systems

Employees in the clinic should be encouraged to work as productively as possible. An incentive system improves teamwork, effectiveness, and results while also making people happier. Fair compensation and performance rewards should be created, expectations should be clearly stated to the workers, training should be made available to help them reach key performance indicators, and so on. Additionally, developing an employee's skill set can greatly raise their output in terms of ingenuity, creativity, critical thinking, and innovative talents. A contented workforce is probably going to be more devoted to the business and less likely to get sick and miss work.

5. Engage mid-level health providers

You may have a serious issue if your clinic is constantly busy, with huge lines of patients waiting for appointments. You won't have as much time to spend with each patient, and the standard of care will suffer as a result. Since they have many options, many dissatisfied patients may choose to visit other clinics the following time. This might be a major loss for your practice in terms of revenue and reputation.

To increase the number of healthcare providers on staff, doctors can think about hiring nurse practitioners. Compared to clinic assistants, nurse practitioners can perform at a better level and have a wider range of practice. In order to lessen part of your workload and guarantee that each of your patients receives high-quality care on time, nurse practitioners have the skill sets needed to offer adequate care for your patients.

6. Solicit feedback

To get input and criticism about inefficiencies or potential changes that clinic owners might not be aware of, focus groups with medical staff should be arranged.

Seek medical allies or forms clinic groups if possible

When done properly, joining clinic groups or having allied clinics can have a lot of advantages. Clinics run by doctors can anticipate the following advantages:

1. medical knowledge, improved results, and diagnosis
2. Better tools at a shared or cheaper price
3. Patient convenience and decreased costs
4. improved patient care and experience

7. Establish business continuity

In the case of an unplanned clinic management software outage, healthcare companies should set up a fail-safe; mission-critical tasks of the organization must continue, and healthcare workers should be trained on these business continuity methods.

8. Form clinic groups

The management of a clinic can be greatly improved by a group that is well-organized and controlled. Because a group practice is more likely to be able to afford superior infrastructure, facilities, and technology, it may take advantage of economies of scale and several doctors. Additionally, group practices provide you more clout when haggling with insurance companies and health plans. Collectively completing comparable tasks improves efficiency. One such instance would be vaccination clinics, where groups of individuals might be pre-screened like COVID-19 or influenza vaccine visits.

Leverage technologies in healthcare

9. Teleconsult and SmartCMS

Utilize teleconsultation to keep your patients interested. Many patients may choose to stay indoors during a global pandemic like the COVID-19 out of dread for the virus, especially when visiting health facilities like clinics.

Numerous patients with common ailments will still want to see a doctor, and chronic patients will need frequent check-ups. By using a clinic management system with teleconsultation features to conduct a teleconsultation session with your patients, you may use technology to solve their problems.

Utilizing health technologies in your practice has many advantages, including the ability to continue engaging with and providing high-quality treatment to your patients even when you are not physically there. It can also help you make up for any revenue lost during COVID.

10. Do some digital marketing for your clinic

Healthcare was undoubtedly among the numerous businesses that were impacted by the COVID-19 epidemic. Patients and income fell for several healthcare services. In addition to the obvious decline in revenue and patient volume, clinics should prepare for an increase in inventory and equipment costs as a result of supply chain interruptions and a loss of investments as a result of the unstable economy. All of which could have a negative impact on your clinic, particularly if you operate a solo practice without the support of groups and supporters.

Engaging in some digital marketing campaigns can definitely help your clinic in many ways.

1. Create a website for your practice first. A website is always useful to have. Specialist clinics can use search engine optimization (SEO) on their websites to rank for specialty-related keywords when people search for such phrases, which is wonderful for acquiring new patients. It can increase your clinic's trust and reputation.
2. Second, create a Google My Business account for your clinic. When people search for clinics online, especially clinics close to their location, registering on Google My Business can dramatically enhance your chances of appearing on Google search results.
3. Create social media pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, as a final step. Social media has given you the ideal venue for engagements, even though the COVID-19 pandemic has limited your options to interact with your patients. You can interact with your patients in a number of ways, including through videos, pictures, tales, and more. But always keep in mind that consistency is important; don't just start a page and stop publishing for a few days, weeks, or even months.

Conclusion

To summarize, we advise doctors and physicians to put their patients first, treat their employees well, take advantage of health technology, and engage in some digital marketing for their practice.