Between now and 2030, most healthcare practices will be focused on one simple goal: providing better patient care.
Of course, this sounds easy on paper, but in reality, it can be quite a challenge – especially for smaller practices with less funding. If you rise to the challenge, though, you can start providing excellent care to your patients while simultaneously boosting your industry reputation.
With the help of this guide, you can set your healthcare practice on the journey to success. Here’s what you need to do:
1. Start using ‘The Cloud’
Cloud computing is fast becoming one of the biggest digital tools in the healthcare industry. From mobile apps to electronic health records software, the list is endless.
In 2023, it’s absolutely essential that you transition your healthcare practice into the cloud. This will make life much easier for your employees (such as the doctors and nurses), who will be able to use different applications to complete important tasks, whether it’s checking patient data or managing electronic bills.
To get started with this, the first step is custom healthcare software development. By working with expert developers, they’ll be able to help you create the tailored software and applications that your specific healthcare practice needs to succeed.
2. Collect Patient Feedback
Nowadays, it’s become very common for healthcare organizations, from public hospitals to private practices, to collect patient feedback after appointments. Usually, this involves them sending out email or SMS surveys asking them for their thoughts on the service they received. This can help healthcare practices to uncover all sorts of interesting trends and patterns, such as the fact their patients aren’t happy with the quality of the waiting room.
So, if your practice doesn’t do this already, add ‘collecting patient feedback’ to your 2023 to-do list. You won’t regret it.
3. Provide Video and Phone Appointments
Next, you should start providing video and phone appointments to your patients. The benefits of this include:
- Faster appointments
- Less stress on doctors and nurses
- A modernized practice
Typically, one of your doctors might only be able to speak with 10-20 patients each morning. However, with the help of telemedicine (video and phone appointments), they could potentially start talking to 20-40 patients per morning instead. Plus, this also eliminates ‘avoidable’ appointments, where people visit their doctors in person about an issue that isn’t severe enough to require it.
Your doctors and other healthcare workers might need a little training when it comes to virtual healthcare, but they’ll soon get the hang of it.
4. Hire Excellent Reception Staff
When patients enter a healthcare practice, the first people they see (and speak with) are the reception staff. Often, patients are nervous due to the fact they’re health-conscious and scared, which is why reception staff are so important. If they’re friendly, kind, and informative, it helps to put patients at ease and make them feel welcome!
5 Open At Weekends
Recently, it’s become more common for healthcare practices to open for one day at the weekend (either Saturday or Sunday). This usually involves staff rotation.
By opening at weekends, it provides your patients with extra peace of mind, which in turn makes them more loyal to your practice.
