Setting up a private medical practice of your own takes a lot of funding. Patient acquisition, patient care, renting premises, buying equipment, and paying staff – these costs are the minimum requirements for your payroll.
It’s a lot for a new business to try and manage, and lowering these costs might seem impossible in the long run. But the more you work towards upgrading, improving, and automating your medical practice, the easier it’ll be to keep the lights on each month.
If you have private medical practice dreams, this is where you can make them come true, no matter how you choose to fund your enterprise. Check out some of the most effective methods for lowering the huge cost of running a medical practice.
Update Your Tech
The tech you use within your medical practice needs to be as efficient as possible. This means upgrading the hardware, patching the operating system, and ensuring you’re using the latest in medical tech lines. For instance, using medication barcode scanners can help improve efficiency as your employees can save time by not manually entering details into a computer system. Instead, the high accuracy of the scanners means they can read the barcode instantly and update a patient’s medical record in real-time with the correct prescription. Do some research into what you need to buy to ensure you’re not wasting money, but don’t hesitate to put in an order.
These costs may be large upfront, and you may have to use an initial startup loan to secure the right tech, but the ongoing costs are going to be very low. Working with the best means providing the best, and excellent service means more money, seeing as word of positive treatment travels very fast around a local area!
Share the Space
If you have rather large business premises, share the space and take a fee for the privilege. Rent out to other doctors, wellness practitioners, dentists, and even aesthetic and beauty businesses. Put out an advert as soon as you know you’re going to have more space than you need.
You have a clean, medically certified, and accessible room for any of these other businesses to use, and that could net you a big profit over the years. Spaces like these are high in demand, as it ensures other business owners don’t have to go through the same trouble you have, so be sure to price yourself and your needs fairly.
Hire a Virtual Receptionist
If you’re concerned, a virtual receptionist is a real person; you’re not investing in AI here. You’re just hiring someone to work as a remote medical assistant from their own base, usually their own home or a nearby co-working space. This can keep costs very low on the staffing front.
How does it work? Well, you only need to pay an assistant like this on a contracted basis, rather than issuing a salary all year round. You don’t necessarily need to outfit your practice with as much equipment either; you have a virtual reception desk, which frees up a lot of space and function. This can then give you the prime real estate to rent out that we mentioned earlier.
Automate Your Billing (and be flexible)
Automating your billing means you never forget to send out an invoice once someone has been treated. If you want to give your patients time and space after coming out of surgery, or after receiving a bad diagnosis, an automation system will take care of the hard part for you.
Flexibility is a factor you shouldn’t underestimate here either. If patients can’t pay all at once, it pays to be empathetic. Issue them a payment plan that’s personalized to their finances. Even in the early days, as long as you get paid, it doesn’t tend to matter how long it’ll take for the bill to fully clear.
Focus on Customer Experience
Medical businesses tend to thrive on repeat custom. Your own practice will be no different. If you want someone to come back when they’re worried about their health, you need to have an excellent bedside manner. This will take some practice.
The more a patient feels comfortable and at ease with you, the longer they’re going to be on the patient roster. Think about how to smooth a potentially worrying medical transition, and what you can do to ensure a patient feels valued and dignified within your practice.
Train Your Employees in Multiple Areas
This will save you a lot of money on hiring anyone else. When you’ve got multi-skilled staff in the building, you don’t necessarily need an extra pair of hands on deck. You already have someone who can see to an issue, albeit perhaps on a slower time scale.
This also means you won’t take a gamble on new hires. You can never be quite sure how someone will get along with the rest of the team before their first day! If you hire the wrong person, the mistake can work out to be very expensive.
Similarly, if you train someone already on the payroll, you give them greater career value. This reduces employee turnover, as it makes their job more satisfying and shows you truly value the work they do.
Have a Resources Section on Your Website
If you’re dealing with a lot of incoming calls from people with queries, but not looking to book yet, update your website with more useful resources. The more they know about you and your practice before they call, the further on in the ‘sales’ journey they’ll be when they do call you.
Indeed, they’re much more likely to book in for an appointment if they can use your website as a hub for their medical worries from the moment they notice symptoms. And if you regularly use calls to action in your articles, they’ll soon get the idea that you can really help them.
As a business in the healthcare sector, you often have to go the extra mile to provide a good service to your patients. If your costs are low, the prices will be too. But running a medical practice needn’t cost you the earth! If you want to help people and address medical issues in your local area, use ideas like these to keep costs as low as possible.