by Lina Martinez
If you’re a medical professional and entrepreneur, your first big achievement was setting up your own practice. Congratulations! Now that you’ve managed to get your small practice up and running, your next big challenge is making your practice as successful and efficient as possible. These tips will help you cultivate an ‘onwards and upwards’ ethos in your practice and take things up a gear.
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Take Your Patients’ Data Seriously
One of the key factors distinguishing small practices from larger, more professional outfits is the treatment of customer data. If you’re using Gmail to correspond with your patients and storing their information on your personal computer, your practice is not going to feel professional and trustworthy. Outsourcing is a fail-safe way to go. Hiring experts means you get to spend your time providing your patients with world-class care, rather than worrying about data breaches. Check out www.umbrella-ms.com to investigate Healthcare IT solutions.
Start Delegating
When you first opened your practice, it’s likely that you wore quite a few different hats. Until you hired your first receptionist, you may have done everything that needed to be done, from ordering supplies to writing copy for your website. But as your patient numbers grow, “Doctor” will become the one and only role you will have the time to fill. Until that time, it’s worth getting your head around how your work hours would be more profitably organized, and either hire new staff or outsource to external services to cover the other bases. For example, hiring a social media manager to attract new patients to your practice is probably more sensible than spending your lunch breaks working on this yourself. And if you find it difficult to hand over the reins, remember that the consequences of trying to do everything yourself is often total burnout. Don’t let that happen—your patients need you!
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Look Ahead
As the owner of a small practice, your success will depend in large part on your vision for the future of your business. There will be good times, and there may even be times when you’re losing money. Throughout that journey, it’s vital to be able to picture how your business should look at various future intervals. What level of service and care would you like to be offering by the end of your first year in business? How many patients will be coming through your doors in five years’ time? How many staff members will you need to accommodate your growth? Would you like to partner up with other specialists, or peers in your field? Is the way you have branded your practice going to be relevant once you’ve reached the size you want to be?
If your small practice is going to grow at a rate that excites you, it’s important to remind yourself not to get too weighed down by day-to-day issues, and rather stay inspired and keep looking ahead.
Whether you’re in practice with a partner or have set up on your own, the next steps can be challenging. When you’re really busy, you may not feel like you have time to optimize every area of your business at once. These tips will help you take your practice up a notch.