Tips to Be a Better Practice

Posted on by ASCENT: Administrator Support Community for ENT

In today’s highly competitive health care landscape, patients look at many factors when choosing a medical provider. A good practice manager understands that the smallest details can make a big difference in attracting – and keeping – patients, and will take a proactive approach to standing out from the competition. The following tips can help you become a better practice, improving your reputation in the community and ultimately leading to increased revenue opportunities.

  1. Value your employees. Your staff is ultimately the face of your practice; everybody from the receptionist answering phone calls and scheduling appointments to the nurses and doctors matters. Make sure to hire quality people who share your practice’s values, which might include friendliness, positivity, and compassionate care.
  2. Review and streamline processes. Periodically review your staff’s daily tasks to ensure their workload isn’t so busy that patients suffer. The operations in a medical practice rarely differ from day to day; look for ways to streamline those processes in order to improve productivity and efficiency. Areas such as claims, registration, and billing are easily standardized; consistency sets positive expectations and almost always results in improved patient satisfaction.
  3. Embrace technology. Implementing the latest technology is a sure-fire way to boost productivity and optimize workflow. Tools such as clinical management systems rely on software to coordinate and a wide range of medical office tasks such as billing, inventory management, and accounting. By incorporating electronic health records, these systems are able to digitally store and retrieve patient health information, making data easy to access and share among staff, and improving the security of this protected information.
  4. Don’t ignore your most valuable asset – your patients. Answer phone calls and respond to emails and voicemails in a timely manner. Don’t overlook reviews; whether positive or negative, addressing complaints and acknowledging compliments on popular review sites such as Yelp and Healthgrades will demonstrate you care about what your patients think, good or bad. Nowadays, the importance of reputation management cannot be overlooked.

By implementing the above strategies, you’ll be on your way to making your practice highly respected in your local community.