3 TIPS FOR MANAGING THE SPECIALIST MEDICAL PRACTICE
1 – Take all the necessary measures to limit missed appointments as much as possible: they are a cost If a patient makes an appointment and does not show up, it is a cost to you . It is a “hole” in your working day and in that of your staff that you cannot always use for other activities related to the medical practice. The reasons why a patient misses an appointment can be very different from each other and in most cases it is a forgetfulness.
How to stem the problem?
Notifying them in time.
It is not always necessary to ask your assistants or the secretary to phone each individual patient to remember the appointment. a phone call is certainly the fastest way to communicate, but for younger patients or those open to new technologies, today there are automated systems designed to help you manage this task simply and quickly.
The most advanced software for the medical practice , in fact, are equipped with messaging services to send reminders via SMS that not only warn the patient before the visit, but integrate with his / her calendar, so the appointment with you!
2- Manage documents digitally, but pay attention to security!
How many documents are produced every day in your doctor’s office ? Many.
Some are closely related to your clinical activity (reports, prescriptions, diagnostic images, informed consent, medical records …), still others, however, concern bureaucratic and tax obligations mandatory by law (patient invoices, supplier invoices, privacy …). Until a few years ago they all had to be printed and archived, taking up a lot of space and weighing (not a little) on the costs of your study.
According to an estimate by the Polytechnic of Milan, in fact, the cost of a print on A4 sheet is about 10 cents, but if you also consider the cost of archiving and conservation (for example 10 years for invoices), the cost increases up to 30 cents!
Today, however, with a management software you can create and archive documents following a digital process.
You and your staff can attach, scan and save at any time and without limits all the documents required by law and the clinical documentation of each patient: once saved in a digital archive they can be viewed from any location in your medical office and be reprinted to obtain a hard copy of the original.
If you decide for this solution, however, inquire about the level of security guaranteed by the management software you plan to use: is there a backup? How often is it done? Is the software in the Cloud?
In this regard, if you are thinking of choosing a GIPO software, you may be interested in knowing how we store your data .
3 – To improve communication with your patients, sometimes an image is worth a thousand words: organize diagnostic images clearly
Whether you are an Orthopedist, a Sports Physician, an Ophthalmologist or an Endocrinologist, it can sometimes be difficult to explain to your patients what exactly their pathology consists of and with which therapies it can be cured. In these cases, photographs and videos are often very useful .
If the diagnostic images of your patients are kept in a digital archive, well organized and easy to consult , it will take you a few seconds to find the most useful ones to inform him about his illness, how it is evolving and how the treatments proceed.
Not to mention that an image archive is also very useful for you , because you can extrapolate them and use them in your diagnostic evaluations or in the reports that you will present at medical and scientific conferences.