It’s common for owners/founders to wear all the hats in the early days of their practice. They’re the practitioner, but they’re also the bookkeeper, head of HR, marketing lead, and even the receptionist.
That entrepreneurial can-do spirit is what gets your practice off the ground and running. However, once you start running, you need to hand off some of those hats. For your business to grow, you need to spend as much time as possible with your patients.
You need to actively try to remove all non-clinical tasks from your day. Of course, that’s easier said than done. But it’s important for you to remember that these tasks aren’t just time-wasters, they’re growth killers.
Today, we’re going to take a look at four tasks that overworked practitioners spend time on every single day, and how you can go about delegating them.
Of all the things on your to-do list every day, this is probably your least favorite.
You may find yourself deeply entrenched in another task, and suddenly you have to drop everything to answer the phone. You know you have to answer it because failing to do so could cost you an appointment. Or even worse, a patient.
Other times, you may find yourself with several back-to-back appointments on a good day, only to be greeted with an inbox full of emails when you’re done. Once again, you know that you need to respond to these messages in a thoughtful and timely manner, or it will cost your business.
Customer service is incredibly important and a growth driver. But you shouldn’t be the one taking care of it.
The good news is that there are a number of solutions to this problem.
Your first instinct may be to hire a receptionist or office assistant/administrator. That certainly could help you, but there are actually a number of technological solutions that you could leverage, without the expense of adding a new employee.
First of all, you could consider consolidating all of your messages into a single patient portal. For example, Cerbo’s patient portal gives you a streamlined way to interact with your patients, without having to sort through various messages on platforms like email, text, and voicemail.
At the same time, offering the ability to request appointments online is a game-changer. Not only does it take a lot off of your plate, but it also makes your practice more attractive to the younger generation.
In fact, according to a recent survey:
You can also consider adding an AI-trained chatbot to your website to handle basic inquiries and book appointments.
Did you know that primary care has the highest rate of no-show appointments?
According to recent data:
How much is this costing you? Recent data shows us that:
Patients will no-show their appointment for any number of reasons that may include not being able/not wanting to travel a great distance, bad weather, forgetting, or simply seeing it as easier than calling to cancel.
No matter the reason, you’re not just losing the income from the missed appointment, you’re also losing time trying to track down no-shows and rescheduling them.
You can’t control all of the factors that lead to a patient missing their appointment, but you can ensure they don’t forget and ensure there are no misunderstandings about the day and time.
Automated texts and phone calls can go much further than you might expect. In fact, one studied practice was able to reduce their no-shows from 20.99% to 7.07% with the application of telephone reminders.
That same study also showed that a vascular laboratory struggled with a no-show rate of 12%, which cost them $89,107 annually. Reducing the no-show rate to 5% translated to increasing the revenue by $51,769.00.
Also, consider that 85% of millennials like receiving appointment reminders via text and over 50% are already receiving them from various providers. If you can introduce this technology, you’re not just helping your own operational efficiency and slashing sunk costs, you’re making yourself more marketable to a younger demographic.
If you’re spending more time on paperwork and admin tasks than you are with your patients, you’re far from alone.
According to The University of Illinois College of Medicine, an extensive study of 474 primary care physicians revealed that:
Too many practitioners see this as an inevitable part of the job. To them, these tasks don’t simply need to be done, they need to be done the right way. This is true, but…
Cerbo’s EHR and Practice Management tools can help you slash the time you spend on activities such as charting, managing perspectives, patient communication, scheduling, and even payments.
We’ve helped our clients achieve:
A lot of our clients have also experienced the incredible results that virtual assistants can make. We recently published a blog where we interviewed Sebastian Gonzalez, Sales and Client Success Manager of Virtue Ally. His business helps overworked and understaffed medical practices by matching them with enthusiastic and reliable VAs.
He told us that VAs can have an immediate impact on your practice, but not always in the ways you first imagined.
“I focus a lot on the pain points. Maybe you're telling me, ‘I'm stressing too much with handling bookkeeping.’ But when we dig a little deeper, we may learn your actual pain point is taking phone calls, or answering those messages in the portal,” explained Gonzalez.
“We may learn that delegating those messaging tasks will free up more time than handing off bookkeeping right now.”
If you want to see what adding a VA can do for your practice, we highly recommend you reach out to the team at Virtue Ally as soon as possible.
Or, if you’re looking to add a new full-time staff member…
A lot of stressed practice owners may see their overworked staff and their growing waitlist and think that they really need to bring in another physician to ease the burden.
The first problem with that is hiring a new physician is time-consuming and expensive. This includes everything from coming up with a suitable job description, to posting the listing on any number of industry sites, to interviewing and vetting your candidates.
At the same time, studies show that a bad hire can cost a company:
Here’s an even bigger problem: In far too many cases, bringing a new physician to help overworked physicians simply creates another overworked physician. This is because there was a larger problem within the practice.
We highly recommend working with a specialized medical staffing agency, like MindBody Talent.
They do much more than simply match you with another physician. They can actually take a look at your entire practice and your bottlenecks to show where you truly need the most help. For example, if all your physicians are currently overwhelmed with non-clinical tasks, bringing in someone to handle those tasks will have a far bigger impact than a new physician, at a lower cost.
As they wrote in a recent blog, “Sometimes, hiring another doctor isn’t the right answer. The real issue might be inefficiencies in admin tasks, patient flow, or marketing strategy—which could be solved by hiring an operations manager, a patient care coordinator, or even implementing automation before adding another physician.”
They added, “The practices that scale successfully don’t just hire reactively, they hire strategically with a plan in place for onboarding, retention, and long-term growth.”
If you’re thinking about hiring for any position in your practice, we highly recommend starting a Discovery Discussion with MindBody Talent as soon as possible!
We provide a do-it-all EHR, practice management, and patient portal solution that helps you slash the time spent on administrative tasks, freeing up your time to work ON your business instead of being trapped by tasks IN your business.
“While it takes a while to customize Cerbo to fit your practice, it is well worth the investment and ultimately saves time and money. The best part is that this translates into successful patient outcomes while minimizing the burden of charting, educating, and day-to-day administrative tasks on the practice team.”
— Dr. Kristann Heinz, MD, RD, Red Hill Medical + Wellness, Pennsylvania.
