Running a business is difficult enough, especially when you’re trying to run a fully functional medical practice that can handle patients and staff. Add a personal life and a family to the list, and you’re looking at an incredibly busy life and a full schedule.
Whether you’re changing your career or you’ve been building yourself up to running a medical practice, it’s important to figure out how to find a balance between your personal life and your business. Here are some tips to help you effectively manage your medical practice so you can control your business and your life.
Qualifications and Specializations
If you want to work in the medical field, you need to be properly qualified. If you want to own a private medical practice, you need to be a fully registered and qualified medical practitioner. Of course, depending on your local area, the rules and guidelines for what certifications you need might change, so it’s worth checking them out.
In any case, it’s important to make sure you have the right qualifications for the type of practice that you intend to run. You also need to be up to date on your training. Everyone in the medical field, including doctors, nurses, and technicians, has to undergo regular training to keep their license.
If you haven’t worked while you’ve been a full-time parent, you should still have made sure that you kept your registration over this time. This allows you to keep your qualifications so you can jump back into work.
There are a lot of different types of practices that you can run. A general practice covers a lot of different health problems and is often the first port of call for patients in your community. If you specialize, you will treat people with specific health problems. For example, a dermatologist has specialized in skin conditions.
As well as a practice that directly sees patients, you could also open a medical business that primarily deals with lab work.
Finding a Location
The first thing you should consider once you’re ready to practice is where your medical practice will be located. You need a place that provides privacy to your patients and that has the space and facilities for them to be treated comfortably and safely.
When choosing your clinic location, you need to balance a few different considerations.
First, think about where you want your practice to be. Ideally, it should be somewhere that’s convenient for you and your patients to travel to. Make sure that it’s near appropriate parking and, if possible, accessible via public transportation. This means that your patients can all reach your practice for consultations.
You can open up a private practice in an existing facility. This means that you already have the infrastructure in place to treat patients, and it can save money compared to buying or renting a property and then renovating it to make it appropriate for patient care.
Even the most simple private practice will need a waiting room, an area for reception, consultation or treatment rooms, storage rooms, offices, and staff and customer facilities like toilets and a staff room. It stands to reason that most new private practices open in existing facilities, or they take over locations that have been owned by a previous practitioner.
Once you have a location, you can move on to registering your private practice and reaching out to insurance companies. This gets you ready to treat patients and operate your business.
Stocking Your Medical Practice
It’s no surprise to learn that you can’t operate a medical practice with just your skills and nothing else. While some consultations and health conditions don’t need special equipment, tools, or supplies, you’re going to need some medical supplies for the vast majority of your work.
First, think about basic office supplies. Your reception staff, as well as you and your other medical staff, will need computers and electronic devices to handle patient schedules. You will also need other office supplies, like paper, pens, and whatever else your reception team will need.
Next, you should think about basic medical supplies. No matter what you specialize in, you will need some basic supplies like band-aids, cotton balls, bandage tape, over-the-counter medication, gloves, and whatever else you will need to examine your patients.
As well as basic medical supplies, you should be stocked up for your specialty. This depends on what your practice specializes in and what you often use during examinations, tests, and treatment plans.
We haven’t yet explored the different tools and equipment that you will need to treat your patients. Whether you’re thinking about general tools like stethoscopes, needles, vials, and equipment to monitor vital signs or specific equipment designed to test for illnesses that you specialize in, all of this is a significant investment.
It’s worth looking for reliable and affordable sources for these medical supplies, as this will often end up being a significant amount of your regular costs. It’s vital that your medical practice is properly supplied, so keep a store of the supplies you use all the time that’s ready to access.
Getting Help
As has been mentioned a few times, most medical practices don’t just have one doctor and nobody else. It’s impossible to run a practice without some help.
First, you should think about reception staff and assistants to help you schedule patients and other staff. This is what allows your medical practice to run smoothly, so you can see all the patients you need to see.
While it’s good to have in-house reception staff, a lot of practitioners find that a medical virtual assistant is a great way to organize their work and increase efficiency in the office. A medical virtual assistant isn’t an AI assistant, but a real person with real qualifications who can help you operate your business. As well as general assistant duties, these assistants can assist with reception duties, coordinate patient care, and act as medical scribes and coders.
Admin is what makes all businesses function properly, and this is no less true or important for the medical field. With the right administrative staff and assistants, you can ensure that your patients are treated and billed properly.
Even if you like to get hands-on and treat patients, you can’t do it alone. Even small practices often include nurses as well as doctors. While it’s good to have another doctor on the team, especially if you ever want to take a break, nurses are fantastic for reducing your workload. A nurse can see the vast majority of patients and, if you need blood draws or similar tests, a nurse is more than capable of checking on your patients.
This means that you, and other doctors that might be on your team, can focus on patients that need a doctor. As well as general nurses, it’s helpful to have a nurse practitioner on your team, because they can prescribe medications.
Other Medical Facilities
Speaking of prescriptions, while it’s good to be well-stocked, you likely don’t have every prescription medication on hand. This is best left to the local pharmacies. Most patients have their own pharmacies, so all you need to do is to write out a script and they can get the medication they need.
However, it’s good to build relationships with local pharmacies, as well as local testing facilities and other nearby practices. This allows you to make sure that your patients get the best care possible.
