September 23, 2024
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Clinic Management Apps
Important Note: This blog has been written by humans in natural language and no AI tools were used to prepare this content.
Many new doctors find it overwhelming to start their own clinical practice. It is tough, yes, but not impossible! A nicely setup clinical practice is a highly rewarding process in a doctor’s life.
When my wife initially started her clinical practice, she went through multiple ‘months’ of very limited footfalls. But her focus towards ‘helping a patient solve their health problem’ has helped her establish a successful clinical practice in the long run. My wife started as a general practitioner and kept studying and networking with senior doctors to solve complex health issues. She uncovered many amazing health solutions and formed strong bonds with many other senior doctors.
In a doctor-patient relationship, patients will usually ‘stick’ to a doctor irrespective of the travel involved. This is an important aspect of growing your clinical practice, since it is very important to “establish trust” and “improve your credibility”. Hence, the best way for a doctor to get more patients is the ‘word-of-mouth’ publicity or ‘organic marketing’.
Typically, doctors who have just started their clinical practice face these top 3 most common issues:
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Low or No Footfalls: This is typically due to low or no awareness of prospective patients on the doctor’s capabilities (we usually call this – ‘credibility’).
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The Appearance of being Naïve: A lot of young doctors definitely go through this, as they ‘appear’ low in confidence due to how they approach the patient Or their appearance Or how they ‘explain the treatment plans / options’.
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Lack of Communication Skills: A lot goes into a treatment for a patient. How the doctor communicates post the treatment is also very important to establish a deeper level of trust for a new patient.
We give you these TOP 3 immediate pointers that can help you overcome the above issues:
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Develop a high-level of TRUST with your walk-in & existing patients by 'increasing your credibility'.
Patients thrive on deep levels of trust. Trust is the cornerstone of a doctor-patient relationship. Hence, it is important how you build this trust and not take your prospective patients for granted. With the advent of information technology and social media, getting health information is a matter of a click of a button. Hence, considering the 3rd party sources of information how the doctors guide patients to improve their health and / or lifestyle can help you establish a higher level of trust.
Trust can be built in many ways. Some of these are –
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How you make the patient comfortable,
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How you give them undivided attention,
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What is the total time you spend with your patient,
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How you help resolve their health issues,
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How you give them important tips to help with lifestyle disorders
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How you follow-up with them to ensure that your treatment plan is being followed
Please read our “additional blogs” (links given below) to learn more on the above aspects of clinical care.
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Develop a simple but highly effective process to 'Make it Easy' for your patients to 'navigate your treatment plan'.
In today’s world, what matters is ‘simplicity’. On top of this, people have low focus-levels and are looking for quick-solutions.
Among all the above high expectations, when the patient goes through a very complex treatment plan with no support on answers for their legible questions, the trust breaks and the patient’s drop-off. What helps the most is a simpler procedure / treatment plan. If you simplify complex jargon and the long list of to-dos to simple and to-the-point steps, it makes it easy for a patient who is already suffering to follow such a treatment plan.
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Manage highly optimized communication & follow-ups with your patients.
The right communication gives you the right results. I have seen multiple instances when the doctor’s assistant explains the drugs to be taken at a specific frequency, but the patient understands something else and ends up doing the wrong things with the prescribed drugs.When you do a follow-up you not only come to know such goof-ups, but it also helps you to better optimize ‘the way’ in which to explain your patients about medication and treatment plans.