Six Tips to grow your Medical practice

Do you want to expand your private practice and attract more patients? The six changes listed below are a good place to start:

Focus on what you are good at

if you’re wondering what it’s like to be a clinician, look no further! It is a false economy to believe that running all aspects of your practice yourself will save you money. You didn’t spend years training to type letters or chase down insurance companies for payment.

Ensure you have outstanding secretarial and typing support

Your secretarial support is the front door to your private practice, attracting (or discouraging if you get it wrong) potential patients. According to a recent survey conducted for private consultants, only 66% of patient phone calls were answered. You could lose a new patient for every call that goes unanswered. Are your clinic letters typed and sent to GPs and co-workers on time? It’s extremely inconvenient for GPs to not know what’s going on with their patients if they don’t receive your correspondence for weeks on end.

Make sure your invoices are sent out on time

You should have a process in place for chasing insurance companies for unpaid invoices…… what is the point in building your practice in the first place if you’re not going to be paid?

Don’t try to be a “jack of all trades and master of none”

Make it abundantly clear to your referral sources and patients what your area of expertise is. For example, if you are an orthopaedic surgeon who specialises in knees, you should concentrate on this area, talk to your referrers, and write patient-friendly blogs about knees. Pretending to be an expert in all orthopaedic conditions is not appealing to referrers.

Treat your patients like royalty every time you see and communicate with them

Patients talk to their friends and your referrers and they feedback on their experience with you. Ensure you give your patients your full attention for their full appointment time. Even if you can get through the appointment quicker as it’s a straightforward patient, try not to herd the patient out the door too early – the patient will feel short-changed and won’t leave with a good warm feeling about you. As the well-known phrase goes – people won’t remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel. Happy patients = more referrals.

And finally, there is no point in being good at what you do, if no one knows about you

You need to market yourself and your practice and there are many ways in which you can do this. A great way to start is by asking patients for reviews and adding these to your website. Don’t have a website? This is then the first thing you should do.

If you need help with your practice, contact us now to see how we can help you.