Improving communication in your practice

When you're running any sort of medical practice, regardless of specialty, it's important to focus on the human element of the business. When you spend time thinking about effective patient scheduling techniques, maintaining accurate electronic medical records and optimizing billing processes, it can be far too easy to view your practice as a business first. The truth, though, is that being professionally successful in the medical field is contingent, at least partially, upon maintaining excellent communication in all aspects of your practice. Even if you feel that you've cracked the code, you may want to take a look at these tips for improving communication within your practice:

Have a standing morning meeting
We tend to think of electronic and technological advances as the best ways to increase communication in our practices, and these methods cannot be discounted. Nonetheless, there isn't any replacement for good old fashioned human interaction, and you should do everything in your power to maximize this in your practice. According to Physicians Practice, one of the best ways to do this is through establishing a standing morning meeting.

Have all of your staff arrive early enough to allow for five to 10 minutes of meeting time in the morning. This way, regardless of the size of your practice, you'll be able to ensure that everyone has a chance to voice concerns and reminders about the day. Over time, you may find that this optimizes workflow considerably.

Create written guides
The more we move toward automated and electronic processes within our own practices, the less need there will be for human training. Still, you can't undervalue the importance of having clearly defined instructions for some of the tasks that your staff engage in daily. Writing down simple, short instructions can lead to a reduction in errors and ultimately save your practice both time and money. Try speaking to different individuals from your staff - coders, billers, nurses, doctors, etc. - to determine which practices they engage in on a day to day basis and then have them write down basic instructions for them. This will also make onboarding far easier, as it will reduce the need for redundant training.

Optimize your internal schedule
Faulty internal scheduling can impede a practice's streamlined workflow. If you're blocking off time for something internal, it's taking away from time that you could be seeing patients and increasing revenue streams. With this in mind, you can't really afford to lose or have to repeat scheduled internal meetings due to conflicts. Make sure you have robust scheduling capabilities that can be synced with personal devices, such as Nextech's scheduling and NexSync solutions, to keep you and all of your staff members on the same page, especially with multiple locations. With the ability to update across both schedulers and mobile phones, scheduling tools can help keep your practice running smoothly and on time.