Running a successful medical practice of any size is a major accomplishment. Providing high quality care and support for existing patients demands hard work and dedication. And, while the priority will always be helping your patients to the best of your abilities, it is also essential that you effectively grow your business.
So, when you’re ready grow your medical practice, the first step is to choose clear, quantifiable goals. This is true of any business, but even more true when you’re balancing medical duties and management duties at once. To start, we’ve compiled some basic tactics that will help you meet those goals.
Optimize Your Revenue Cycle + Scheduling
When you embrace automation and AI for administrative tasks, you’ll eliminate wasted time and wasted reimbursement opportunity.
Claim management, billing, reminders, collections, and processing can be automated with a cloud-based platform, allowing you to increase your collections while decreasing the time you spend on submissions (and re-submissions) and error correction along the way.
You can optimize scheduling, patient engagement, and medical record access with a practice management platform. A cloud-based platform is automatically updated, which helps your practice stay ahead of rapidly changing regulations.
Empower Patients With Tech
The easier it is for patients to see your practice and connect, the more likely it will be to increase revenue. These days, people see the world through their smartphones. Last year, half of all web traffic worldwide came through personal phones. You need to work with this fact if you’re looking to grow your practice.
On the most basic level, a mobile-friendly website makes it easy for new patients to engage.
But mobile tech also allows patients to take a more active role in their own healthcare. Online appointment management and reminders help reduce patient no-shows. A patient portal streamlines administrative tasks, including billing. The easier it is for patients to pay their bills, the more your practice will be able to collect.
Chronic Care Management programs encourage vulnerable patients to take charge of their own health regimen on a daily basis. It’s a relatively low-touch service that promotes preventative health among vulnerable populations and provides a reliable revenue stream for any general practice.
Remote Patient Monitoring is another service you may elect to offer to provide additional care and attention to a larger number of patients outside the practice office, while minimizing the load on your clinical staff and increasing revenue.
Engage Your Community
One of the best ways to attract new potential patients is to bring value directly to their lives, for free, with no strings attached. It’s also a great way to strengthen relationships with your current patients – and word-of-mouth is one of the most reliable marketing tactics for any business.
Digital Engagement
Put health education resources online. This might come in the form of blog posts, FAQ pages, video tutorials, or social media posts devoted to popular health concerns. Providing these resources will establish your expertise and accessibility.
In-Person Engagement
Offering free monthly health classes to the public will bring new faces to see you. By choosing themed events like ‘Women’s Health’ or ‘Self-Care For Seniors’ you can target specific demographics. Alternately, volunteering with local organizations will give you and your staff a chance to give back to engage individuals while establishing your medical office as a community-minded resource.
Make Care More Accessible (Especially During A Pandemic)
COVID-19 has quickly proven the dynamic value and utility of telemedicine. At a time when many patients are postponing doctor visits altogether due to the public health crisis, telemedicine is a way to keep them connected – and keep a physician’s appointment book full.
With remote patient monitoring services, doctors can assist patients digitally, even with issues that normally require on-site visits, such as blood pressure checks. Plus, once the pandemic is finally over, the perks of telemedicine will remain.
The same is true of electronic prescriptions. With an effective prescription management platform, a practice can serve all qualified patients from any location, knowing that the exchange is secure and in accordance with the latest legislative guidelines.
Invest In Your Team
A medical practice is only as strong as the staff running it, from the front desk to the examination room. Ideally, everyone should be performing to the maximum of their abilities. This means training, encouraging, and delegating the most ambitious possible roles to every member of your staff.
For your staff, time is the most important asset that they negotiate every day. The more that you can automate low-level administrative tasks, the more labor hours you can spend on training and performance. When your staff can rely on cloud tools, it not only cuts down on your overhead operating costs, it also simplifies data collection and management. Expert consultants can guide you to the most economic systems. Assign as many lower-order tasks as possible to technology so your people focus on patient care.
Conclusion: Spend More Time On Fundamentals
On the most basic level, the tactics for growing a medical practice are the same as most any business: improve your revenue cycle, streamline the workflow, hire great people, diversify your offerings, and make it as easy as possible for clients to engage.
But medical practices are subject to regulations and protocol that set them apart from the average business. The administrative tasks are numerous and highly detailed. By embracing cloud computing and automation, you can increase security, accuracy, and profitability for all of these operations. Steady revenue and savings are an investment in your practice’s continued expansion. They also add up to a greater wealth of time to focus on what’s most important: providing the best possible care.
