Easy Ways To Upgrade Your Medical Services
The days of a doctor with handwritten files on each patient in a filing cabinet, and a nurse/ assistant who helps him are long gone. In its place are glossy new clinics which run efficiently on computers and staff who are task oriented. Forget the big hospitals with their fancy PA systems; even the small family clinics around the corner are now super sleek. If you’re looking to upgrade your medical services accordingly, here’s how to do it.
Streamline the Processes
Are your nurses taking appointments and filling out patient histories, when they should be helping you in examining them? Are they also sweeping the floors afterwards and getting rid of the garbage? Are you dealing with accounts, financial issues, tax forms and whatnot on your own? Streamline your clinics. First hire separate people to do separate jobs. Make everything task- oriented. A doctor should examine patients, a nurse should help, a receptionist/ accountant can take care of appointments and fix accounts, and a cleaner should dust the place down after hours. Trying to do too many things on your own to save money is counterproductive as it leaves no one time to do their own. So hire the right people for the right job.
Use Technology to your Advantage
Don’t be one of those places that still haven’t moved out of the Mad Men era. Technologies have improved so much since; there are so many different equipment and appliances that can make your life easier, so incorporate them into the clinic. Start by installing medical management software.
This will give you a user- friendly interface to book your appointments, have soft copies of patient files that can be easily accessed by any of the doctors in the clinic when necessary, and protect sensitive info with logins and passwords, use accounting and budgeting software in tandem and a whole lot more. Medical management software can be customized to suit any type of clinic or hospital, so call a company and have them install it on your computers.
Don’t Overcomplicate Things
In the process of upgrading, some clinics go overboard and overcomplicate things. For instance, a 3- doctor clinic will decide to buy an X- ray machine because X- rays are used by all doctors. However, in addition to the machine you will need a technician, then maintenance and regular repairs etc. which will strain your budget unnecessarily. After all, the patients can get an X- ray from elsewhere can’t they? Same goes for scanning machines and other pieces of expensive equipment that you do not need. Invest instead in ergonomic chairs, a good patient examination table, strong headlamps etc. that will actually contribute to the betterment of the clinic.