4 Small Changes That Can Drastically Improve Your Clinic’s Workflow

The healthcare business is one of the most complex businesses you can become part of. You have to juggle both the well-being of patients and the ability to stay profitable. Simply managing a clinic in and of itself can be very difficult on a technical level. If you don’t run it correctly, it’s not only your revenue that will be harmed. It’s also patients. Overall, you need to do your best to create an efficient and productive workflow that produces the best result for patients.

Use the Right Software

One of the most obvious healthcare workflow solutions you should take advantage of is implementing the correct software to allow you to make your clinic’s workflow more efficient. You’ll want to invest in clinic management software. Such a software suite should allow you to access electronic medical records, schedule patient appointments, verify the eligibility of patient insurance coverage, manage payment collection, store medical documents, send out prescriptions and more.

Outsource When Needed

For most companies that implement outsourcing, it’s not mostly about slashing costs. It’s actually about refocusing your efforts on tasks more directly related to your core business functions. With a medical clinic, that core business function is obviously providing care to patients. Outsourcing things like accounting and payroll is standard practice. It will allow you to better focus resources on things that directly affect patient care.

Communicate with Patients via Text and Email

Part of your clinic management system should be software that automates sending either emails or text messages out to patients. A common example is sending out an email or text message to remind a patient of an upcoming appointment. This way, patients will be less likely to forget about their appointments and more likely to call to make changes if they can’t make it. This can make scheduling much more efficient since there will be fewer last minute changes.

Try to See Things from the Patient’s Point of View

In regards to workflow in a medical clinic, the most important thing you should be trying to improve in terms of efficiency is the patient experience. For example, patients may feel that they’re waiting too long to see their doctor after showing up on time to their appointments. You should not be ignorant of this fact. Instead, you should be actively tracking things like patient wait times so you can make adjustments to improve the patient experience.

Overall, managing a medical clinic is difficult. If you aren’t careful, serious inefficiencies will develop that harm the patient experience as well as your bottom line. Do what you can to make sure you are running a tight ship in your clinic while preserving the quality of care that patients receive.