How to Manage Your Expanding Health Practice

Your healthcare practice expansion process will take a lot of your time and focus. However, there are ways to reduce your time commitment and free you up for patient care. The administration is certainly a part of your job, but do what it takes to keep it from being your entire job. As your healthcare practice expands and becomes more popular, you need to increase your staff and general organization in order to take on more patients. This article will give you some great management tips for when your healthcare practice becomes a bit too big to handle alone. 

Digitize As Possible

Make sure that your current patients have the ability to make their own appointments online. If possible, include this option in such a way that your current patients can temporarily block out their intended appointment times so a member of your staff can contact them directly to

• confirm the appointment
• determine the reason for the appointment
• allow the patients to prep for the appointment effectively

However, make sure that your current clients know that they are only setting a preliminary appointment; without finalization from your office, the appointment is not certain. Be sure to also include multiple contact options so your staff doesn’t have to scramble to find them for confirmation and communication. With the pandemic raging for the last year, many healthcare practices have picked up the practice of online appointments with patients. This is a great way to keep your patients safe while still offering them healthcare. Be sure to be thorough in your online appointments, as sometimes patients may have more serious underlying issues that you may not be able to pick up on purely over Zoom or Skype. You may consider tailoring your questions for online appointments to be sure you cover everything. 

Outsource What You Can

Do your very best to work with a reputable outside company for as many aspects of managing your office as possible. From janitorial services to paper delivery, do not expect you, your office staff, or anyone else to do these projects. Hire a company, and if they don’t work out, be ready to ask around and hire another company.

Note-taking and charting can be extremely time-consuming. Outsourcing your audio notes to a professional medical transcriptionist can make it possible for your in-office professionals to focus on patient care. Notes are critically important, but outsourcing can free up those who are dedicated to patient care actually perform the work that feeds them.

Focus on Hiring

Put the time into hiring your outsourcing company, and make sure that you also put the same amount of time into hiring the right people. Personality can have a big impact on how people connect in your office. Caregivers are extremely focused on patients; having to deal with personality conflicts between staff members is a waste of your time. That time can be better used early in the hiring process.

Let new employees know that this is part of your office culture. Professional conflicts and disagreements can certainly crop up among caring professionals, but if the end goal isn’t focused on the best patient care, your culture can quickly turn toxic.

Plan for Expansion

As possible, hire early. Don’t wait until your office is inundated and your staff is exhausted. Anyone coming into such an environment may not appreciate a trial by fire; a rough experience in the first few months of their employment could lead to a serious attitude problem for the full time of their employment.

Tired people make mistakes, and overloaded people don’t have the best attitudes. Not only can this be hard when onboarding new employees. Poor communication will lead to limited buy-in. This is particularly important if you’re hiring young professionals right out of college. Their skills may be excellent, but learning the schedule and successfully maintain their energy levels over the course of a long day may require you to do some training.

Make sure that you always rely on and promote the many skills already available in your space. If you have new people to onboard because your staff is inundated, new employees need to be buddied up with your current staff so they learn to assist those who know your practice. The goal for your expansion is for new employees to grow, hand in glove, as your practice takes on new clients.