What makes one healthcare practice more successful than another? How to run a clinic successfully

Every provider wants to run their clinic successfully. The 5 differentiators discussed below can mean the difference between a thriving medical practice and one that is merely surviving.

As costs continue to escalate, payment models change, and patients gain more control over where and how they spend their healthcare dollars, building a healthcare practice focused on clinical and financial performance becomes more crucial. With so much upheaval in the healthcare industry, practices cannot afford to rest on their laurels. To survive and ultimately thrive, they must adapt and be nimble.

But what makes one healthcare practice high-performing compared to others? Here’s how to run a clinic successfully.

Healthcare practices need to attract new patients to thrive. More than half of respondents look online to find new doctors, dentists, or medical care, and 1 in 4 do so regularly, according to a recent survey by Tebra. That’s why successful healthcare practices focus their marketing efforts on successful search results, as well as other popular web destinations like social media, rather than pursuing traditional marketing tactics like local newspaper or magazine advertisements.

Once a successful healthcare practice has gotten new patients in the door, they work hard to keep them. Although delivering quality care should be at the top of a practice’s patient experience checklist, keep in mind patients also value good communication.

Patients are more likely to be loyal and compliant when a practice communicates with them in the manner they prefer — be it via a phone call, text message, email, or patient portal message. As an added bonus, offering the convenience of online appointment scheduling and digital check-in to reduce the amount of time a patient spends on the phone or in the waiting room will go a long way to creating satisfied patients.

Successful practices understand that having happy healthcare providers and front office staff requires them to create a team-based approach where everyone does what they are uniquely qualified to do. This means:

Taking this approach reduces staff burnout and creates an environment that fosters patient loyalty.

Patients once visited their doctors for all of their non-emergency care needs. But now, patients have more choices of where to spend their healthcare dollars. A flu shot, for example, might be done at a retail clinic. Or a child’s back-to-school sports physical at a local urgent care clinic.

Some successful practices have extended their hours or expanded their offerings to keep pace. They have walk-in clinics or after-hours appointments so patients don’t need to miss work or school; they offer lab services on-premises so patients don’t need to schedule a follow-up appointment; or they offer a range of specialties, so the patient’s care can be coordinated appropriately.

In healthcare, change has been rampant in the last few years, and there’s no way to predict how accelerated processes, procedures, and expectations will become in the future.

Adopting healthcare technology that is flexible and improves the efficiency of your practice is one of the surest ways to deliver a more modern experience. Your patients are not only expecting it but are demanding an experience similar to what they get from Airbnb, Venmo, OpenTable, Facebook, and other everyday apps and services.

Keeping these five differentiators in mind will help you run your clinic successfully and go from good to great.