How to Improve Efficiency and Reduce Costs at Your Healthcare Business

Multitasking is good as far as it is manageable at a small scale. To upkeep the quality and increase the efficiency of your growing healthcare business, it is imperative to delegate some tasks, identify the pain points, and implement systems that bring in improvements, success, and profitability. Here are a few more tips to run your medical office more efficiently. ~ Ed.

Running a medical office means that your attention is pulled in many different directions. You will have multiple tasks to juggle to keep your healthcare business running smoothly. While being busy and experiencing a demand for your services is really positive, there’s no doubt that it can also cause a few problems.

Firstly, as a doctor, the more time you need to spend on the business side of your medical office, the less time you have to focus on your patients. Secondly, having many tasks to perform and never enough time to complete them means that important jobs can be forgotten or overlooked. Thirdly, trying to juggle many different tasks is incredibly stressful and can take its toll on your physical and mental health, as well as that of your team.

Each of the above issues are things you want to avoid when running a medical office. The problem is that knowing how to manage the day-to-day running of your office better and without compromising on quality can be incredibly challenging. If you’re keen to improve the efficiency of your healthcare business and to reduce the costs associated with it, there are ways to achieve this. Keep reading to discover some ideas to help you better balance your workload without sacrificing the profitability of your healthcare business.

5 Tips to Improve Efficiency of Your Healthcare Business and Reduce Its Running Costs

Work efficiency of your healthcare business will increase with efficient scheduling to maximize time, managing your finances efficiently, delegating work, and more.

Understand Your Pain Points

The first step towards improving the way your medical office is run is to look at it with fresh eyes. When you spend all day working and thinking about your business it can be tough to get an overall picture of how it’s performing. Gaining a fresh perspective on your business and the way its run can certainly be challenging. One helpful way to do this is by looking at it in factual terms. Take a look at your accounts, your record keeping, and your current running costs. Think about your business’s current position and its performance. Once you have assessed these, ask yourself where your main pain points are located.

Are there aspects of the business that just aren’t viable long term? Do you have ongoing issues with the running of the business that haven’t yet been resolved? Where are most of your time and resources spent? Are these being spent efficiently? Which parts of the business cause you the most stress? Have you spotted any missed opportunities? What’s stopping you from exploring these?

Assessing your business in its current form and then asking yourself questions to identify your main pain points can deliver some unexpected results. You may find that areas of your business that you believed were performing well actually need some attention. Likewise, you may discover that the main drains on your time are completely different than you realized. It’s fine to be surprised by the results of your assessment. The main thing is to figure out how you can change these pain points and help your business run more effectively.

Enlist Expert Help

Trying to do everything yourself can become a major issue as your medical practice grows. While this may have been manageable at the very start of your business, over time, it can become increasingly difficult. This is often where issues with efficiency begin. The longer you attempt to try and manage everything yourself, the worse the issue usually becomes. If left, this can impact the entire running of your business, and even affect the standard of care and customer service your patients receive.

Working to maintain a high standard of care and customer service is a must if you are to retain your patients. Introducing some extra help is usually the best solution to this issue. However, you may feel concerned about the costs involved and whether it is affordable for your business. Concerns about cost can be easily avoided by using the services of an experienced medical virtual assistant rather than recruiting a new team member.

Hiring a medical virtual assistant is often far more cost-effective than employing a new member of staff. Choosing a specialist virtual assistant means they already have the skills and experience needed to carry out the tasks for you. They can hit the ground running and won’t require extensive training before they start working for you. An additional benefit of hiring a virtual assistant is you won’t incur any of the costs typically associated with recruiting new staff members. There’s no need to worry about the cost of their employee benefits or finding a physical location for them in your offices. Instead, they will carry out all the tasks you require remotely.

Tasks that a virtual assistant can tackle on your behalf include answering calls, scheduling appointments, general admin duties, and much more.

Keep on Top of Your Financials

For many business owners, it can be challenging to keep up with the management of their business finances. Medical practice owners are no exception. When your main focus is on treating patients, it’s so easy to fall behind on the financial side of the business. This may mean you fail to keep up with tasks such as billing and verifying medical insurance. This is easily done, but it can cause significant damage to your cash flow.

Putting systems in place to ensure your cash flow is managed effectively is an absolute must. Without implementing these measures, it will be hard for your medical office to sustain a profitable future, and could lead to some extremely stressful situations in the meantime.

Using an automated accounting system can make it easier for you to keep on top of the financial side of your business. This will make it simpler for you to monitor its financial performance at any given time.

In addition to keeping track of your accounts, it’s also vital to keep your cash flowing by sending out bills promptly and chasing payments if they are not received within the agreed terms. This can be a time-consuming task, but it is essential. Billing and chasing payments are tasks that can be performed by your virtual assistant if you choose to hire one.

Knowing that all the financial aspects of your business are being taken care of can bring peace of mind and greatly reduce your workload.

Maximize Your Time with Efficient Scheduling

Seeing the most patients possible without compromising on the quality of their care and treatment is a top priority. This boosts your practice’s revenue while ensuring your patients receive an excellent standard of care. One really effective way to achieve this is by focusing on scheduling your patients efficiently.

Some smart scheduling techniques can really help you to maximize your time. In turn, this helps to prevent wasted gaps in your daily clinics. Allocating clinic times for specific treatments and consultation types can ensure you see as many patients as possible in each clinic. This enables you to set up your treatment room ready for the clinic, and allocate specific time slots for each patient. Doing this minimizes the time it takes to prepare your room for each patient. It also means you can work through your list logically. For example, on a Monday afternoon once each month you may choose to host a vaccination clinic. All patients requiring vaccinations can then be scheduled into this clinic. If there seems to be a lot of demand, you might choose to add an extra day in the month to meet this demand.

When you schedule appointments in this way, you can help make your work day run a lot more smoothly. This system allows you to see the most number of patients in a short space of time, as the room will be setup for the clinic, and you will be able to work through your list faster.

Reduce Missed Appointments

When patients fail to turn up for their appointments, you lose both time and money. Both of these things significantly impact your business. It may be impossible to fully control the behavior of other people. However, it is possible to reduce the likelihood of your patients missing their appointments.

Ensuring that patients schedule their next appointment when leaving your clinic is a helpful way to get them to return. It is also really useful to send appointment confirmations either by email or SMS that your patients can simply add to their calendar automatically. In addition to these methods, it’s advisable to send out gentle reminders to patients when their appointment date edges closer. This should help to minimize the number of missed appointments at your clinic, reducing lost income and protecting your time.

Summing Up

Improving the efficiency of your healthcare business and reducing its running costs are essential for it to achieve enduring success and profitability. This can be achieved by assessing its current performance, identifying areas for improvement, and then implementing systems to help reduce pain points. Running your medical office in the most efficient way possible maximizes your profit, while also ensuring your patients receive the best standard of care and customer service. This is a win-win situation for you and your patients.

Over to you

What efficient system and ways do you use to proficiently manage your healthcare business and reap profits? Share your experiences and tips in the comments below.

Disclaimer: We're not offering any medical advice here. These ideas are for educational and entertainment purposes only. Always seek a professional medical opinion from a physician of your choosing before making any medical decision. The information provided here is not intended to be a substitute to the advice given by your physician or another healthcare professional.

Disclaimer: Though the views expressed are of the author’s own, this article has been checked for its authenticity of information and resource links provided for a better and deeper understanding of the subject matter. However, you're suggested to make your diligent research and consult subject experts to decide what is best for you. If you spot any factual errors, spelling, or grammatical mistakes in the article, please report at [email protected]. Thanks.