Digital Innovations for Clinic
You may have spent countless nights planning out the layout of your clinic and what equipment you’re likely to need by studying the most successful private practices around you. But just because your clinic was running efficiently for anywhere from a year to a decade doesn’t mean upgrades aren’t necessary.
Your previously satisfied patients now have to wait for too long before their appointments, you have trouble managing your patients’ records, and you have difficulty aligning appointments with your staff’s schedules.
Fortunately, not all is lost. Your clinic isn’t doomed just because it had a few rough months. It would help if yInstead, you started considering implementing a handful of digital innovations for your clinic to ease your processes.
Mobile Devices
Mobile devices are the new clipboard for working professionals in the healthcare industry. Consider providing your staff members with office-issued tablets or specialized apps on their smartphones. Not only is it easier to pull up necessary patient information and records, but it also allows them to stay updated with alarms, notifications, changes in schedule, and emergencies.
Mobile devices in place of paper notebooks aren’t only more useful, but they’re also more efficient. They allow staff members to keep moving without checking up on various clinic sections to collect documents, records, and patient information. Tablets and smartphones are beneficial if you offer home visits for your patients. It ensures your staff doesn’t leave any necessary documents behind and wastes time retrieving them.
EMR Software
While portable digital devices are essential, they fall short without the proper apps and software to run on them. One software that’s indispensable to the modern clinic is EMR or electronic medical records software. As the name suggests, EMR software effectively creates digital versions of your patients’ medical records and documents.
Having the critical parts of your clinic’s operation digitized improves your workflow and allows for quicker access to patient records at urgent times. It also ensures a safe and secure transfer of patient records between healthcare providers and departments and a way to write and share electronic prescriptions. Clinics often find NextGen EMR software to be an easy solution to going digital.
Website Upgrades
A website is no longer an element that you cross off of your clinic’s to-do list. An early 2000s website with limited functionality and an outdated theme doesn’t cut it. Nowadays, having a strong website can be just as important for medical clinics as other businesses. A modern website should be both aesthetically pleasing and functional.
Create custom patient portals that are easy to use. Those can work for all types of patient-clinic communication, from sending messages to booking appointments to rescheduling and canceling them. Another essential element is including a FAQ page to explain how your website and clinic work—like your work hours and days, how far ahead patients must book appointments, and your stance on emergency visits and home visits.
Consider investing in a regularly updated blog for your website. Be sure the blog layout is also compatible with mobile devices and tablets. A blog can make your clinic more trustworthy in the eyes of your clients and act as a digital marketing method.
Social Media
Social media is no longer just for individuals and consumer brands. Nowadays, even medical clinics need to use social media for marketing their business and connecting with current and potential patients. Not only does social media help form online partnerships and communities, but it can also award you social credibility. People are more likely to trust a clinic with a higher number of followers.
As a clinic, you can still use social media for its original purpose—sharing updates. But instead of sharing personal news and life updates, you can share announcements, new services, and updates to your clinic’s processes for your patients to read and share with their social circles.
Digital Innovations for Clinic: Staying on Top of the Latest Tech
Technology is constantly changing and evolving. Just because you upgraded your clinic this time around doesn’t mean you won’t have to do it again in a few years. Instead of letting your clinic become outdated and suffer from financial reputation damage before your upgrade, you should implement small changes and upgrades regularly in your clinic.
