Running a clinic is perhaps one of the more impressive business practices you could invest in, because not only is the work highly regulated and technical, but your caregiving duties are immense. As such, you have little room for nonsense, improper planning, and poor staff management.
On the contrary, you have to perfect these things, especially the latter point. Empowered staff who feel capable, supported and willing are going to help you exceed patient outcomes or more appropriately handle the intensive work they focus on daily.
Yet it’s also important you don’t pay sole lip service to the idea of clinical staff empowerment, and learn to embody it in everything you do. In this post, we’ll discuss ssome habits and practices you can put in place to help you avoid a poor outcome, and develop a more capable approach:
Outsourcing Administration Where Suitable
When your day-to-day is packed with pretty intensive appointments, follow-ups, consultations and maybe even surgery depending on your clinic, you don’t need to be tied down by figuring out the phone system or chasing emails you missed during a busy hour. Admin work is essential of course, and it must be done properly but it doesn’t always need to be handled in-house by your most skilled clinical staff. That’s just not an effective use of their time when they need to be applying intensive medical assistance on the daily.
In your case, you may find outsourcing some of that work can help keep your team focused on what they do best. Depending on your needs, that might be that’s patient appointment setting, hygiene practices, or simply managing your waitlist more capably. There are many wonderful options, including a dental virtual assistant for front-of-house coordination or hiring an external billing team to chase down insurance payments. This way you’ll be clearing up headspace for your staff to actually focus. They’ll thank you for it.
Streamlined Security Processes
Security in a clinical space is of course essential, and it means more than simply locking the doors at the end of the day, even though that’s obviously important too. It’s also important to ensure you know who can access patient records, how lab results are stored, who’s allowed where and when, and how you keep sensitive information from leaking through casual conversation or a misfiled document.
If your staff have to jump through hoops just to access the system they use all day, or they’re not 100% sure how to report a data issue, you’ve already got a problem on your hands. Streamlining these processes could mean setting up smarter boundaries and making sure they’re actually followed. Having frequent training or a short onboarding session, clear protocol sheets, and access logs will matter, as does working with the managed IT service with a specialism in this field.
Time For Documentation & Paperwork
A common complaint in any clinical setting is that paperwork seems to pile up constantly, and there’s never quite enough time to get through it all, especially if your staff are juggling a packed calendar already. Now, most clinicians accept that documentation is part of the job, and more importantly, it protects everyone involved, especially in high-stakes environments. But there are better ways to do it.
For instance, if you’ve noticed your team staying late just to update files or frantically typing between patients, it’s a good idea to begin reassessing your scheduling. Build in proper admin time, and give people breathing space, while letting them catch up without pressure. Maybe you’ll afford those periods in session breaks as part of your staff rota or time assignment.
Consistent Staff Training & Placement Opportunities
The best way to empower staff is to show you believe in their long-term value to the clinic. Training is a huge part of that, and not just the standard annual health and safety refreshers. If you can provide them real development, courses they’re interested in, progression plans that wil help them feel empowered to further education where appropriate, and sustain a genuine interest in helping them do more with their role if that’s what they want.
Now, not everyone wants to climb the ladder, in the medical field especially some people just want to be good at their job and go home on time while really feeling they can affect patients for the better, but the point is giving them the option, the encouragement, and the tools. You don’t want your clinic to feel like a dead-end job, especially when most healthcare workers could walk into ten different positions elsewhere if they felt like it.
With this advice, we hope you can more easily empower your clinical staff at all levels of the organization!