10 tips to run a more successful clinic in 2023
By: UNO Technologies
Updated on: 29 Nov 2022
In a competitive industry like healthcare, the operational cost is always raising, and so are patient’s expectations. Many physicians often find themselves in a difficult situation where it’s getting harder and harder to operate a clinic.
The sustainability of the healthcare sector is more relevant today than ever since the advent of the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the sweeping digitalization that has transformed healthcare delivery in the past year alone. Effective clinic management organizes healthcare units to achieve patient-centered care whilst taking into consideration the rational utilization of resources. In this article, we offer 10 tips to help doctors solve their clinic operation problems, provide better patient care, and be more profitable.
Establish an Effective Scheduling System
Focus on your patient
Task delegations
Establish Clinic Employee Incentive Systems
Engage Mid-level Health Providers
Solicit Feedback
Establish Business Continuity
Forming Clinic Groups
Teleconsult and SmartCMS
Digital Marketing
Provide better patient care and focus on patient experience
As the healthcare industry continues to evolve, consultations and treatments are no longer all that matters to a patient, many of them also value the experience when visiting a clinic, from the moment they booked their appointment, to getting their invoice and medicine. This means clinics should begin focusing on improving the patient experience.
Patient experience means the convenience and accessibility of clinic service, the quality of care offered by the clinic, the accuracy of diagnosis, treatment, and medicine prescription, and patient satisfaction based on their waiting time and service quality.
In a 2019 study on customer satisfaction by the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG), the customer satisfaction score in the healthcare sector was 72.7, the 3rd lowest amongst all the sectors studied and was below the national average of 74.3. There is definitely plenty of room for improvement in the healthcare sector.
Source: (CSISG) 2019
1. Establish an effective scheduling system
Running an effective clinic is a balancing act between providing care to as large a pool of patients as possible without compromising on face-time with patients. Periodic process evaluations and reforms are encouraged to achieve this balance.
Clinics should move away from manual appointment scheduling systems and invest in a robust scheduling system. Good scheduling can increase patient load and minimize ‘dead-space’ caused by overlapping appointments and no-shows. Ideally, scheduling and billing should be expedited by the system.
Long waiting time in clinics had always been the major concern for patients and it’s also the main factor that led to unsatisfied patients and poor experience. This is especially the case if the patient is in discomfort or pain. Effective queue management and scheduling system can help you manage both walk-in and booked appointments, significantly reduce patient’s waiting time and their complaints. When the patients are satisfied and happy, it will make your work a lot easier.
2. Focus on your patient
Focusing on your patient no longer just means giving them treatments, consultations, and medicine. While the treatment part is definitely crucial, focusing on the patient means so much more in modern-day healthcare.
What the patients also seek are genuine care and concern, respect, and privacy from the doctors and clinic staff. Show your concerns for their conditions, that you care about them, communicate with them about the treatment process, and try to understand what they are going through.
It's true that providing high-quality treatments to heal the patient is your job and priority, but you can’t simply neglect the other aspects of the patient experience. If they feel disrespected or unsatisfied with the experience, they will just turn to visit other clinics, they are not short of options. Or worse off, leave a poor review of your clinic online, that’s something that can do serious damage to you and your clinic’s reputation, and you really don’t want that to happen.
Pay more attention to their experience outside of treatments, make them happy, show your care and concern for them, respect them, and in return, they will visit you again should they have the need.
Deploying a comprehensive Medical EMR software could provide you with more personalized patient care and a seamless patient experience.
Manage and treat your clinic staff well to improve productivity
According to A/Prof Fatimah Lateef, Adjunct Professor at Duke-NUS Medical School and NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine; ‘Productivity in healthcare can be defined as time, attention, and quality of care. Any past standards and metrics on productivity in healthcare is no longer relevant today.’
Dr. James Buchan suggests 5 factors may play a role in increasing productivity in healthcare:
Being there: Addressing staff absence and leave entitlement
In the right place: Issues of location, allocate staffs to other branches when needed
At the right time: Matching staff with the workload, avoid overloading staff with manual labor
Doing the right thing: Being more responsive to patient needs, and making the best out of workers’ skills and competencies
Doing things different/doing different things: Improved training, management, and enhanced roles, etc
Efficient staff management and making your staff happy is crucial to improving your clinic’s productivity. Your staffs are 13% more productive when they are happy.
3. Delegate some of your tasks
Effective management requires efficient delegation. Physicians should not perform tasks that do not require a medical degree. Administrative tasks should be delegated without impairing one’s understanding of how a practice is run. Doctors should always assign unimportant tasks to the clinic assistants and receptionists to focus solely on the consultation and treatment. While the CAs and receptionists are supposed to do administrative work, they should be overburdened with excessive manual labor and should be mostly performing tasks within their core competency and skillset
4. Establish employee incentive systems
Clinic employees should be motivated to maximize their productivity. An incentive system enhances cohesion, efficiency, outcomes, and makes them happier. Expectations should be transparently communicated to staff, training should be provided to facilitate their meeting of key performance indicators, and fair salaries and reward performance should be established. Furthermore, enhancing employee skillsets can significantly improve their productivity in terms of efficiency, innovation, thinking, and enterprising capabilities. A happy staff is likely to be more loyal to the company and less likely to fall sick and be absent from work.
5. Engage mid-level health providers
If your clinic is always crowded with many patients in queues and they have to wait a long time for consultations, you may have a big problem. The amount of time you have for each patient will be limited and the quality of care will drop as well. This can potentially lead to many unsatisfied patients and they can easily go to other clinics next time, they have plenty of options to choose from and that can be a big loss for your clinic, in terms of revenue and reputation.
Physicians could consider employing nurse practitioners to expand healthcare provider staff. Nurse practitioners have an expanded scope of practice and can function at a higher level than clinic assistants. Nurse practitioner possesses the skillsets required to provide adequate care for your patients to reduce some of your workloads and ensures each of your patients receive high-quality care in a timely manner.
6. Solicit feedback
Focus group discussions with healthcare staff should be held in order to solicit feedback and criticisms regarding inefficiencies or potential improvements that may not be obvious to clinic owners.
Seek medical allies or forms clinic groups if possible
Have ally clinics or join clinic groups can bring plenty of benefits when done right. Physicians and their clinics can expect the following benefits:
Medical expertise, improved diagnosis, and outcomes
Better equipment at a shared or reduced cost
Convenience and lower cost for patients
Better patient experience and care
7. Establish business continuity
Healthcare organizations should establish a fail-safe in the event of unanticipated clinic management software downtime; mission-critical functions of the organization must carry on and healthcare staff should be trained on these business continuity mechanisms
8. Form clinic groups
A well-organized and well-managed group can significantly boost clinic management. A group practice leverages several physicians and economies of scale because of the greater propensity to afford better infrastructure, facilities, and technology. Group practices also offer greater negotiating power with health plans and insurance. Performing similar tasks collectively is also more efficient. Vaccination clinics are one such example – groups of patients could be pre-screened as COVID-19 or influenza vaccine visits.
Leverage technologies in healthcare
9. Teleconsult and SmartCMS
Leverage teleconsultation to engage your patients. During a global pandemic such as the COVID-19, many patients may prefer to avoid going outdoors, especially health services such as clinics in fear of the virus.
Many patients with common conditions will still wish to consult a doctor and chronic patients will require regular follow-up sessions with doctors. You can leverage technologies to solve their problems by using a clinic management system with teleconsultation features to engage in a teleconsultation session with your patients.
Using health-techs in your clinic can bring about plenty of benefits, not only can it can make up for the loss of revenue during COVID, you will naturally have an advantage over other clinics that do not have teleconsultation services, and most importantly, you can continue to engage and provide quality care to your patients remotely.
10. Do some digital marketing for your clinic
The COVID-19 pandemic definitely affected many industries, healthcare included. Many healthcare services saw a drop in patients and revenue.
Besides the visible drop in revenue and patient traffic, clinics will have to expect an increase in inventory and equipment cost due to disruptions in supply chains, and loss of investments due to the unstable economy. All of which can badly affect your clinic, especially if you run a solo practice without the backing of allies and groups.
Engaging in some digital marketing campaigns can definitely help your clinic in many ways.
First off, set up a website for your clinic. Having a website is always beneficial. It can build up your clinic’s trust and credibility, specialist clinics can also do some search engine optimization (SEO) on their websites to rank for specialty-related keywords when patients search for those terms, which is great for attracting new patients.
Secondly, register your clinic on Google My Business. Registering on Google My Business can significantly increase your chance of appearing on Google search results when patients search for clinics online, especially clinics near their location.
Lastly, create social media pages on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. While the COVID-19 pandemic has restricted your opportunities to engage with your patients, social media have provided you with the perfect platform for engagements. You can engage your patients in various forms such as videos, photos, stories, and many more. But always remember, consistency is key, don’t just create a page and not posting anything for weeks or even months.
Conclusion
To summarize, in order to run an efficient and profitable clinic, we suggest doctors and physicians to focus on their patients, treat their staff well, leverage health tech, and do some digital marketing for your clinic.
At UNO Technologies, we believe in helping doctors and their clinics to provide high quality to their patients while maintaining a profitable clinic business. We hope these tips above can help you in your practice.