Managing a medical practice can be challenging as well as for clinics and for doctors. The main goal is to provide the best possible care for the patients. At the same time, you must juggle the administrative burdens of running a business. To focus on patient care, you need the best medical practice management software.
According to a recent study, 76% of patients believe that a medical practice software can help improve their experience and relationship with their physicians. Since it can perform various day-to-day tasks in the clinic, such as appointment scheduling, billing, organizing patient records, and reporting, you can unload a few responsibilities off your shoulders. So you can focus on providing the best care for the patients.
With that, here are some key considerations for a successful implementation of medical practice management software:
1. Evaluate Current Processes
Every business has its own set of needs. What works for one does not necessarily mean it will work for you. It means that first of all you should define the goals and needs you’d like to solve with medical management software.
Think over your current processes and operations, identify the challenges your business currently faces. Are you struggling to provide remote services for your patients? Do your healthcare professionals feel burned out? Are they getting the support they need to provide great patient care? Are patients satisfied with your services? Is it easy to schedule an appointment?
These questions will help you determine what software you will need for your business and understand whether it’s a ready-made white-label solution for managing your practice or it’s better to develop a custom medical practice management system to get all the features you need and scale easily in the future. For example, the software with extensive automated functions is great for those struggling with burnouts and insufficient administrative support.
2. Discuss It with Your Staff
Medical practice software can bring essential changes to your organization. So it is important to build a consensus with everyone affected by these changes. This means consulting with the professional, managerial, and administrative departments of your business.
Through this, you can pinpoint the various issues and challenges that your business currently faces. For example, doctors need administrative support to save time for patient care. Meanwhile, the administrative side of your business will need a software to streamline their workflows. This way, they can avoid bottlenecks in managing patient records and appointments. And finally, managers will need software to help them keep everyone on the same page and run all business operations smoothly.
By being inclusive with your consultation, you will get a well rounded view of the challenges that your business current faces. This narrows down the specific practice management software features you need to consider.
3. Compute Overall Costs
Developing or getting a ready-made medical practice management system will cost. It can be a fixed one-time payment or monthly subscription fee for the solution. Or it takes several tranches to develop a custom software. You need to set aside a certain budget from the initial payment for the solution itself to the actual implementation and maintenance.
Just keep in mind that the price reflects a software’s features, performance and scalability. You can sometimes sacrifice certain features or integrations to save money and launch healthcare practice management software faster.
4. Check the Integrations
Businesses nowadays use multiple software at once. To make sure that everything is streamlined and connected, you should consider the integration capabilities of all your software including the medical practice management system.
Integration capabilities make it easier to manage all your tools and data. This, in turn, can improve your staff’s performance efficiency. Likewise, it can reduce errors, save time and even the expenditure.
Compatible integrations can also make your software’s implementation easier and smoother. It ensures that you can seamlessly incorporate it into your current workflows. For example, if your business currently uses any billing or accounting software, you can integrate your medical practice management software to make the process of sending invoices and receiving payments from patients more streamlined.
5. Train and Educate the Staff
According to The Digital Skills Gap, 72% of large companies and 49% of smaller ones are suffering a tech skill gap. This is something you need to consider. You must ensure that your staff can successfully adapt to the software before the installation. This way, they can use it efficiently.
Ask the developers or a consultant to hold a training on how to use the healthcare practice management software. Likewise, make sure that they know who to contact in case they have any questions with the software.
Business Benefits of Medical Practice Management Software
The main goal of medical management software is to reduce the time doctors and support staff spend on paperwork and routine workflows. The software really helps focus on patient health that leads to practice improvement and patients’ satisfaction. Different ready-made medical practice management systems offer dozens of features, but very often small clinics look for features that can help cut down the time and money spent.
The main business benefits of implementing a medical practice software are the following:
- Faster payments and reimbursements
- Updated and accessible records
- Automated mundane tasks
- Advanced and easy scheduling
- Improved patients’ satisfaction
- Errors reduction
As a result you’ll come to the main goals every clinics set:
- Saved money on less staff hiring
- Increased revenue on getting more appointments
Off-the-shelf vs. Custom Medical Practice Management Software
The main question that arises when a clinic or a doctor decides they need a medical practice management system is whether to buy an off-the-shelf platform or a custom one. Here are some facts to help you make the right decision.
Off-the-Shelf Medical Management Software
There is a great variety of medical practice management platforms with different features, integrations, scalability options and for different prices on the market. To help you choose, here is a compilation of medical practice management software.
Ready to use. The one of the biggest benefits that you can see is that it’s ready for use. Just pay, install, setup and use. In case of custom software development, you need to wait for the software launch.
Cheap in a short run. Such software can be quite cheap because of its mass selling. Their aim is to embrace as many users/subscribers as possible. You are not the only one who pays for the product. Still, sometimes it can end up costing a fortune because of the subscription cost and maintenance.
High cost of setting up. There is no fits-for-all medical management software, so you should think about adapting it to your practice. As we already mentioned, it is necessary to think over the processes you have and integrations you need. It may require additional costs on customization.
Too many functions. Mind that sometimes you just don’t need all the features of a ready-made solution, so it’s the point to develop your own medical practice management system. A bunch of unnecessary features will just confuse and annoy the employees.
Not scalable. The majority of off-the-shelf medical practice management systems are not able to scale and grow together with your business. You should do your best to convince the solution owner to add new features or modify it.
Custom Medical Practice Management Software
You can also consider to develop a custom medical practice software that tailor-fits your business operations and workflows. There is also an option to hire a tech team to build as well as to implement a medical management software. Sometimes it can save more money in the long run. Things to consider are the following:
Features you really need. Consult with the developers in advance and discuss all the features and integrations you need. Such an approach ensures that you’ll get the medical practice management software that meets your specific requirements.
Software support. If you face any bugs or usability problems with the software, you can refer to the team that has developed the platform. The majority of software development companies provide clients with the maintenance, update the system regularly, and fix bugs.
Security. With an off the shelf solution there is always a possibility of hacker attacks. Since each development company is focused on long-term relationships with clients, the software security becomes the top priority. That’s why they pay special attention to security and data safety.
Flexibility and scalability. This is an important point for those who are still not sure which features they need. The in-house business analytic can offer a set of main functions to implement in a medical practice management software. After testing an MVP, you can always add or remove something. Finally, you will get your own medical practice software without unnecessary features.
Wrapping up
Running a private medical practice can be tough. You must provide an excellent patient care while also juggling the business side for your medical practice. And very often you’ll come to the idea to get a practice management system.
Think over all the processes and other other software tools you have and get a consultation on the medical practice management software on the market and consider the possibility of developing a custom medical practice management system for more convenience. Besides some software companies may sell a while-label medical management software with exclusive rights and they can customize it just for your business needs. If you have a certain need in any kind of medical software development or customization of your own solution, contact us for a consultation. We’d be glad to discuss it.