The healthcare industry has been digitizing rapidly over the past couple of years. Some hospitals are employing innovative technologies like AI and block-chain to better simplify their processes. Digital technologies are also being used to make healthcare more accessible and improve patient experience and patient outcomes.
But big tech isn’t reserved for big hospitals. Even small clinics and private practices can benefit from tech upgrades, particularly digital automation.
Some keys to a successful clinic or practice are patient retention, patient safety, and treatment success. And to achieve all these, it’s important to invest in equipment and software that simplifies your day-to-day processes. From appointment bookings to reduce wait times to calendar reminders for regular patients, there are plenty of efficiencies you can achieve with automation.
Read on to learn more about the best automation private clinics and practices can have to improve their health care experience and grow their business.
Appointment bookings
Booking appointments is traditionally made via phone call or text. But nowadays, you can use electronic appointment booking software that can be integrated into your calendar. This removes the grunt work of manually inputting appointments into outdated calendars, freeing up time for your staff to focus on more important things like taking care of patients and improving the clinic experience. Plus, you can automatically send out confirmation messages and reminders to make sure clients push through with their appointments.
Financial tasks
Financial tasks like payroll, expense management, invoicing, and payment collection can be time-consuming and tedious. Save your staff the headache of slogging through your finances by using accounting automation software. These tools can help you automatically create and send out invoices, compute staff wages, and calculate patient bills. All your data will then be stored in the cloud, allowing you to go paperless and easily find and sort records. Plus, accounting automation eliminates human error, reduces labor costs, and ensures consistency.
Email marketing
Sending out newsletters and direct email campaigns is an effective strategy for engaging with your regular patients and maintaining top-of-mind awareness. You can also use it to promote your services or inform them of events and initiatives. Fortunately, there are plenty of email automation tools that let you manage all these in one place. For example, automation lets you send automatic “thank you” emails or feedback forms to patients who have just visited your clinic. With just a mailing list, you can do all sorts of effective marketing and patient communications, all at a minimal cost.
Communications
Automation tools can integrate multiple communication tools like text, call, video, and chat into one platform. From here, they can track any potential patient who has inquired about your clinic and services. This is useful, especially if you have multiple touchpoints online like a website, social media, and business listings. This way, you can respond to queries and book more appointments more efficiently.
In addition to patient communication, you can also use automation to streamline communications with medical suppliers and agents, staff in partner clinics or hospitals, and other doctors in your network. This way, you can easily communicate referrals or second opinion requests to improve your patient’s experience. Plus, you can use these tools to securely exchange medical records between providers to make sure you get your patient’s most up-to-date information.
How Clinics Benefit from Automation
Automation can transform your clinic or private practice in several ways, but the most obvious benefits are the following:
- Increased productivity – because automation helps streamline workflow and reduce repetitive, manual tasks, your clinic’s staff can accomplish more tasks using minimal resources. This way, they can focus on other tasks like attending to patients and providing more personalized care.
- Reduced overhead costs – automation provides plenty of cost savings as it reduces the need to hire more people and use different tools. Plus, you’d only need to use a single platform to accomplish most administrative tasks.
- Better staff performance – automation not only makes work easier and simpler, but it also helps ensure that the work your staff produces is accurate and consistent. From generating reports to managing appointments, they can accomplish various tasks with minimal to no errors.
- Empowered employees – by removing the grunt work off your employees’ hands, they can focus on more important things like expanding their skills and advancing their careers. Plus, it makes their shifts more worthwhile as they won’t have to sit in front of a computer all day doing redundant tasks.
Running a clinic, whether it’s a small private practice or part of a network of gastro doctors, can be challenging. And complexities could make your clinic inefficient and costly to run. But with automation technologies, you can simplify your day-to-day operations so that your time and effort are spent improving patient outcomes.
