The way we relate to our patients is where most of our value lies! And social media can be an important professional resource for GPs, in this regard.
Every aspect of healthcare is being transformed by technology, and patients are naturally becoming more engaged as access to new health technology grows. Patients are more connected to health care providers than ever before – owing to remote health technology, and engaged patients not only have better health outcomes but are also more likely to have a positive experience with your practice.
As a result, it’s critical that you use social media channels to communicate with current and future patients on a frequent basis with valuable and interesting information, such as blogs, articles, infographics, videos, and more.
General practices can use social media to engage with patients and health professionals, and vice versa. It can be used to share information, ideas, opinions, and research, as well as to provide support and assistance. It’s also a fantastic tool for increasing patient enrollment and recruitment.
Each platform is unique, and they should complement and link with one another. For instance, you can use Twitter to connect with people but then link from Twitter to your LinkedIn profile, where you can upload more elaborate posts on issues that interest you. YouTube is a terrific library for all your video content, and Facebook – the world’s most highly used social networking service – can help you make an impact in your community and recruit patients.
Instagram users are the most likely to follow businesses or brands, and the platform’s demography, which includes Millennials and Gen Z users, is considerably younger. Regardless of how many social media platforms you use, your website will be the most crucial place for you to offer compelling messages and encourage your prospects to become returning patients. So, wherever possible, attempt to point them to your website from your social network accounts.
Of course, maintaining a strong and consistent online presence can be time-consuming Especially because the volume of work we put out there is key. You can be certain, though, that the more you do it, the better you will become at creating content. And if there’s one piece of advice I can provide, it’s to avoid letting perfection get in the way.
2. INCREASE VALUE
Costs and overheads in healthcare have been rising for decades and are likely to continue to rise. And we must account for those expenditures since the complexity of work today is far more than it has ever been. However, it is critical to remember that Price and Value are inextricably linked. So, before you boost your pricing, make sure that you’re increasing your value. And if you’re already delivering great value, make sure you’re presenting that to people so they can benefit from it.
Project X, Scale My Clinic’s flagship programme, helps clinics provide tremendous value to their patients by improving their engagement and enhancing the value of care that they deliver. The programme also trains its members on Price Mastery, assuring that no matter how high their charges are, there’s always substantially good value and patients receive the care they need and deserve.
3. OFFER FLEXIBILITY
The COVID-19 pandemic enforced a massive remote-work experiment, and the healthcare profession was not immune. Many general practice employees have found themselves working from home or in a practice where they need to work at a distance from the rest of the team. And statistics show that some degree of remote work may be here to stay.
Having a “Work From Anywhere” (WFA) policy and expanding your practice beyond your four walls can offer employees the freedom they need to create a better work-life balance, raise job satisfaction, boost productivity and efficiency, and cut expenses. However, to make this work, you must have the appropriate systems, infrastructure and support in place.
Flexible work hours are also becoming increasingly important to a company’s success since they help attract and retain the best talent.
4. SOLID FOUNDATIONS
Work has become a much more complex thing now, for the better. As a result, you must have solid foundations in place in order to guarantee smooth continuity in your practice.
As the machine’s complexity grows, the dashboard’s complexity also needs to increase in order to accurately display what’s going on. In other words, you need to substantially upgrade or modify your existing dashboards, as well as elevate your systems.
And the key here is to have only a few KPIs or metrics – that you can track and include into your management systems.
Scale My Clinic’s Project X program provides a wealth of information and guidance on ways to improve your foundations as well as how to identify the “numbers that count”, thereby reducing some of the complexities and removing distractions.
5. SLICK SYSTEMS
The half-life of any system is probably around 6 to 8 weeks before it’s broken, or adjusted, or the timelines are blown out by some announcement. So you need to be effective at capturing and offloading systems.
Systems are critical to delegation. If you don’t have a good system, you can’t easily delegate something.
At Project X, we’ve built our own systems to help GPs automate their tasks. For instance, we were able to make a huge impact on the community by using automation and systems built by our very own Project X experts which resulted in high volume vaccination clinics.
Our Project X members went from administering 300 vaccinations per week to delivering 300 vaccinations in just five hours. And some clinics used our Grid model to administer around 1200 vaccines per day with one-tenth of the personnel or resources at the vaccine hubs.
Slick systems can therefore provide extremely high value to patients while requiring the least amount of human intervention.
6. DISTRIBUTED TEAMS
Distributed teams are made up of team members and coworkers who are distributed away from each other and are not all based in the same physical location. While Distributed Teams can alleviate some of the workload (especially at the front desk in a General Practice setting), they won’t function unless you have solid processes, technology, security, and a team that uses an appropriate operating system.
Members of the Project X programme get exclusive access to the ‘GP OS 2.0’ – a new operating system tailored to HR structures, reporting cycles, meetings, focus, attention, and meeting attendance, among other things.
This solution helps Distributed Teams streamline their business processes and communication, resulting in a lot more tranquil and organised work environment.
7. RECRUITMENT
Attracting quality talent is pivotal to your clinic’s long-term viability and growth, and also helps foster a great work environment for you and your team. The recruiting process – for GPs, Practice Nurses and Practice Managers – is a vital element of a good business strategy that will help practices realise their full potential.
You can go about finding the ideal talent for your practice in a variety of ways. While hiring a professional recruiter is an option, you can effectively do this yourself with the help of our GP Recruitment funnel, which is one of the tools available to members of our Project X community.
One of our members used the GP Recruitment funnel to hire eight doctors in ten weeks, which is quite an accomplishment considering the fact that there’s been a severe shortage of GPs in Australia.
And the solution is so well-designed from beginning to end that the entire recruitment process (in the aforementioned example) required no interaction from the owner – other than turning up for the job interviews.
CONCLUSION
These are just some of the strategies and tools that will differentiate your practice and leadership from the rest and provide tangible results in the coming years.
You need to be a better leader if you want to play a greater game. And the moment to make that decision is now! It’s not enough to think differently. When we behave differently and truly do something different, that’s when the real magic happens.
To know more about Scale My Clinic’s Project X programme or any of the tools mentioned above, please feel free to write to us at
