Domestic healthcare businesses are experiencing rapid growth given a new wave of health consciousness hitting the masses. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, healthcare job demand is likely to swell by 15% over the next decade.
Consumer demand is driving that job growth, and more consumers means more money flowing into companies like yours. If you want to benefit from that windfall of opportunity, you must start running your medical organization efficiently.
But what goes into medical organizations running efficiently? Which steps could you take today to streamline your operations?
Below, our team breaks down a bevy of strategies medical offices are instituting to achieve rapid growth. Keep reading to discover what they are!
1. Love Your Customer
Most successful businesses find efficient momentum by leaning on one core tenant. That tenant is loving customers.
If you come into work every day thinking to yourself, “how can I serve my customer”, you’ll find that your services will start driving more value, your interactions will become more positive, and you’ll inevitably improve your revenue.
Remember, there’s nothing more important to any company than the people that choose to shop with them. By putting those people into the driver’s seat of your practice, you can be sure you’ll always be driving in the right direction.
2. Take Time to Hire Right
Great medical organizations are comprised of excellent people. Is your team up to snuff?
If you answered no to that question, examine your hiring practices.
While how to hire successfully is a whole post in itself, we’ll share the foundational tip of needing to hire slowly rather than rushing to fill headcount. Companies that hire slow and fire fast tend to get great people into positions, and those people will continue to work hard far into their tenure knowing that if they fall behind, they’ll be let go.
3. Keep an Eye on Innovation
It’s easy to get complacent in medical practices. Oftentimes, organizations identify their most profitable services, push them as much as possible, and ride that train until it goes off the rails.
While leaning on what you do best is a great short-term success strategy, if your goal is to find success far into the future, keep investing in innovation.
Innovative medical organizations are constantly staying on top of new trends. They’re instituting new technology that speeds up services, increases their efficacy, and excites consumers.
Are you taking steps to bring those benefits to fruition in your organization?
4. Learn How to Market
You can make your practice as efficient as humanly possible and still fail if you don’t have enough patients coming through your doors. The best way to fill your waiting room is by marketing.
We get that most medical professionals are not marketing professionals. That’s why we’re strong advocates of bringing on agencies to help you manage your organization’s lead generating efforts.
A small investment in partnering with a marketing group can yield massive benefits that far offset the upfront costs of working with seasoned pros.
5. Generate Positive Word of Mouth
The kind of marketing that works for you while you’re sleeping is word of mouth marketing. That’s generated by doing good work and inviting people to share their experiences.
Word of mouth marketing sometimes manifests itself by a happy patient telling a friend or family member that they should visit your practice. On another level, word of mouth marketing manifests into positive online reviews on Yelp or similar services which can passively generate leads for years.
No matter how your word of mouth manifests, give it a boost by always inviting your happiest consumers to share their stories!
6. Become a Storyteller
Medical organizations have the power to change people’s lives. When they do, stories are born that can do wonders for catalyzing people to visit.
This is why embodying the art of storytelling is so important for successful medical offices.
In the context of marketing, imagine how impactful it would be to tell people about how one of your patients came in, consumed your services, was able to beat his/her chronic pain, and now enjoys their life to the fullest.
Sharing tales like that creates more of an emotional connection with onlookers than say, pushing a sale. Of course, there are HIPPA considerations to keep in mind when sharing other’s stories, so leverage resources like this service to ensure you’re staying in compliance.
7. Adopt Technology
People power successful medical practices, not technology. Still, by adopting technology within your organization, you can empower excellent people to do their jobs even better.
Whether you’re leveraging technology to track patient histories, streamline your billing, or even give patients easier access to their health data, small investments can make big differences in your productivity.
8. Think About Your Exit Strategy
You’re not going to be running your medical clinic forever. When you’re done, what’s going to become of your business?
Thinking about that question today will help you manage your exit in a streamlined fashion and will give you additional confidence in how best to position your company in the days ahead. So, whether you plan on passing your practice down, liquidating, or selling, take steps with your end in mind.
You Have the Power to Compete With the Biggest Medical Organizations
Small medical organizations often find themselves trapped servicing small markets and niche bases. We’re here to tell you that what keeps them stuck in that rut while bigger companies pull in billions of dollars is a handful of mindset and operational tweaks.
The suggestions we’ve shared, if adopted, should put you on the path towards getting the most out of your business. We hope you take them to heart and implore you to continue reading more of the guidance we have available on our blog as needed!