How Doctors can Track Their Medical Practice’s Progress to Grow Further

Many healthcare professionals consider themselves to be doctors first and businesspersons second. While providing quality patient care should always be a priority, doctors must give business operations equal weightage. While it can seem like administrative tasks eat into precious time, measures such as tracking the practice’s progress are crucial. In fact, this is especially important to maintain a constant inflow of clients.

When doctors track how their practice is performing, they can improve efficiencies, streamline processes and build a robust roster of repeat patients. In other words, they can scale business success exponentially, and make sure that they’re not losing out to competitors.

Easy ways to track progress and performance 

Appointments made 

To track a medical practice’s progress, there are several aspects that a doctor can look into. One simple metric is tracking the appointments that have been made. Doctors can evaluate how many new patients they are getting each month, and the source from which they are getting them, be it digital marketing, social media or word-of-mouth. They can also check how many cancellations they’re getting. [1] If this number is high, it is worth contacting patients to understand why.

Payments and charges 

For a doctor’s business to be successful, it must always be in the green. To this end, doctors have to evaluate their payments and charges. Questions doctors must find answers to include the following.  

• Are payments being received on time? 
• Are patients paying in full?
• What is the average treatment/consultation charge? [2]
• How do the charges compare to that of other doctors in the same locality?
• What quantum of time and resources are being spent in dealing with insurance claims?

Patient experience 

The experience that a patient has at a doctor’s clinic goes a long way in determining whether he or she will turn into a returning customer. So, doctors must take the time to evaluate the patient’s experience.

They can do this in two ways.  

• Survey patients: The simplest approach would be to ask patients to fill out a feedback form. This form should feature questions about the waiting time, comfort of the waiting area, demeanour of the support staff and quality of care provided by the doctor. Doctors can ask patients to fill out this form after their consultation, while ensuring that it isn’t too lengthy.  
• Create a simulation: Another effective option is to create a simulation. Along with the clinic’s staff, carry out a run through of a patient’s visit to the clinic. [3] This will highlight any inefficiencies or staffing issues that are coming in the way of an excellent patient experience. It will also help doctors understand the changes they need to make, to the layout of the clinic or billing procedures, for example, to optimise the number of patients that the clinic can serve in a day.

Costs vs profits 

There is no denying that healthcare professionals want to provide patients with the most comfortable clinic experience. However, they must also make profits to be viable. So, it’s necessary for all doctors to routinely take a look at their costs, and compare them to the profits. This will help them understand where the clinic is spending excessively. For instance, it will highlight whether or not they need to find other vendors for certain supplies.

Once doctors track their performance, they should follow it up with an action plan that will help them grow and progress. A few things that they can consider include: 

• Investing in adequate staffing 
• Spending on staff training 
• Prioritizing building client relationships

In addition to this, doctors should also consider signing up with a practice management platform such as the one offered by Bajaj Finserv Health. The all-inclusive platform helps doctors to attend to more patients, maintain records and access patient information seamlessly, issue prescriptions, conduct tele-consultations and manage appointments. Doctors can even take care of invoicing and payment collection at the click of a button. All these features and a host of others come with end-to-end security. This is vital, as it means that there is no risk of a data breach.

Spending for the betterment of a healthcare practice can seem like one more cost to budget for. However, doctors must view this as an investment rather than an expenditure, as it will help them grow their bottom line in the long term.