Is Your Medical Practice as Healthy as It Should Be?

Running a medical practice comes with a ton of responsibility, especially in a day and age where the Internet has so many people checking up on their medical well-being.

That said is your medical practice as health as it should be?

If the answer to that question is no, there are means by which you can improve it.

Give Your Business a Checkup

So that you can be as sure as possible that your medical practice is operating at full efficiency, check-off the below items to see where you’re good and where you need some work.

These include:

• Documentation – Any medical practice has mounds of mounds of documentation, but is it in the form of a long paper trail or along the lines of electronic documents? If your medical practice is the former, it wouldn’t hurt to consider changing that way of doing business. When it comes to your medical billing services, are you still doing things essentially the old-fashioned way, meaning lots of paperwork? If so, the transition to electronic documentation doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming for that matter. In fact, you will find in most cases that the switch will benefit your practice over the long haul. With electronic documentation, both you and the patients can track the charges in an easy-to-follow format. No need for delving through paper after paper to look up a specific charge etc. If you are a medical practice using mobile payments, you can also send a patient their receipt via texts or emails, yet another updated feature that removes the need for an endless paper supply;
• Scheduling – Yes, many medical practices still do appointment cards (typically the size of a regular business card), not to mention send out a reminder (sometimes the size of a postcard) when a patient is due for an upcoming appointment. That said many doctor’s offices are emailing and even texting patients to remind them of upcoming visits. This is a yet another means whereby medical practices are catering to the wishes of many patients, alerting them on their mobile devices and lap or desktops instead of more traditional means;
• Privacy – With turning to technology to handle your documentation needs, you do run the risk of potential hackers getting their hands on some of that private information. In order to decrease the odds of that happening, it is imperative that you put an emphasis on privacy. More and more customers these days read about the hacking cases going on worldwide, not to mention right in their own backyards. As a result, they want a medical practice that not only gives them the best medical care available, but one that also puts a high priority on keeping their informative private. Review your privacy practices, making sure you are not letting in any loopholes when it comes to keeping data confidential. Make it a focal point to have your staff practice Internet security at all times too. When dealing with personal patient information (medical, financial, etc.), it can be very easy for a computer server to be compromised. If that happens, a patient’s data can be stolen in a matter of no time. Also make it clear that employees are to only use patient data strictly for work-related purposes, meaning not to share with others and/or take it outside the office. If the latter happens, there should be plans in store to either discipline the employee or employees and/or terminate their jobs;
• Growing – Given there are no signs of the technology world slowing down anytime soon, your medical practice should continue to look at how you can not only use more technology, but how to use it even better than you do now. With both staff and patients leading busy lives, turning to technology to cut down on waste and wasted time proves more important than ever. Using computers and other electronic means can allow your medical practice to expedite much of what you already do, so make technology a key component of your business operation.

When you stop and think about it, is your medical practice as healthy as it should be?