4 Signs Your Medical Practice Needs Some TLC
So many doctors, administrators, and others in the healthcare industry have grand dreams of running their own practice. They envision a smooth process with patients pouring in and walking out with their health improved and their concerns resolved. In reality, a smoothly running practice isn’t that easy to come by. Our skilled medical office consultants at McCauley Marketing Services have helped a wide range of practices identify the roadblocks that are preventing them from reaching that dream and clear those roadblocks out of the way.
- Appointments Regularly Run Late
There is a long-running joke about waiting times at medical offices. Patients joke among themselves about waiting half an hour for two minutes of a doctor’s time. Unfortunately, too many medical practices have come to assume that this is normal, so they don’t think it is a problem if most of their patients’ appointments don’t start until 20 minutes after their scheduled time.
In truth, this is a problem for multiple reasons. First, it means that you have a problem in your patient flow process. Perhaps you’re overscheduling your providers and you need to schedule more time for each appointment. Maybe your providers have enough time, but you don’t have enough medical support staff to take care of the initial stages of each patient’s appointment before the providers see them. The second issue with late appointments is that it will cost you many patients over time, even if the patients don’t complain to you directly. One way or another, you need to resolve your patient flow.
- Your Online Reputation is Trending Downward
Online reviews are a crucial part of any medical practice’s business, which is why reputation management is so crucial. Choosing a doctor is a vital decision, and patients tend to do their research. While you need to know your overall review ratings online, you also need to look at the current trends. You could have a 4.5/5 rating, but if your rating was 4.9/5 a year ago and most of your recent reviews have been less than stellar, it’s a red flag.
Our medical office consultants can identify the ways you can improve your practice to make your patients happier, but your recent reviews can give you helpful insights as well. In addition to a downward trend, there are other ways your reviews can give you hints that your practice needs improvement. If your ratings aren’t already very high and they’re remaining steady, it’s a sign that your practice could be doing better. No matter what your current rating is, you also need a change if you haven’t received any positive reviews in the past few weeks. This means you aren’t impressing anyone enough for them to boast about you online, so chances are that they won’t be recommending you to their friends, either.
- Your Employees Have a Lot of Free Time
No manager or employer wants to police their employees like a drill sergeant, and you don’t want your employees to push themselves so hard that they burn out, either. Still, if you walk through the halls and see employees browsing Instagram multiple times every day or you hear them having lengthy personal conversations on a regular basis, you need to recognize that it’s a problem.
This does not necessarily mean that your employees are lazy or that they aren’t doing what they should be doing. It may simply mean that you’re missing opportunities to improve your business and to improve your employees’ professional growth. Your staff needs tasks to do when they aren’t busy with patients, such as making follow-up calls or making lists of patients who may be interested in the newest service you’ve added.
- Your Calls, Schedule, and Revenue Don’t Match
This is one of the most common questions we hear from healthcare practices. They say, “Our phones ring off the hook but we can only fill up half of our appointment times,” or “We’re packed with patients every day but our revenue is barely breaking even.” If you’ve noticed these types of inconsistencies, it means something is missing.
If you aren’t booking as many appointments as you believe you should, it’s likely that your reception staff does not know how to “sell” callers on booking medical appointments or properly educate those callers about your services. It could also mean that your internal marketing is lacking so patients come in for one appointment each rather than returning for one service after another. If your calls, revenue, and appointment schedule doesn’t match, it may mean you’re pricing your services too low or that your expenses are too high.
Another common problem is that patients see hundreds or thousands of patients in their tracking software, but they don’t have the type of revenue they should for having so many patients. In these cases, your patient retention rate could be the problem. In any of these cases above, it takes a thorough look through your books and your office’s workflow to track down the problems.
You wouldn’t ask your patients to diagnose themselves, so why try to do the same for your medical practice? If you have noticed any of the problems above, call McCauley Marketing Services to find out how our medical service consultants can identify the issues and help your practice be the best it can be.