You are either starting or have started your business and should have spent some time on the basic start-up elements (mission, services, pricing, brand, financing, revenue and expense projections) As your practice matures, don’t let the execution of your operations overtake your planning. In the United States, our business culture tends to be fast moving and dwells in “doing.” That’s how we get things done! But don’t leave out the thinking and the planning as you move your organization into new realms. Differentiate your healthcare organization by asking these essential questions:
1) What makes (or will make) your healthcare organization unique for your patients? Perhaps it is your service delivery or maybe it is your brand, but make sure that you come to your prospective patients mind in an un-aided fashion – essentially you want to be on their short-list for the service you offer. You want to know that your patients or prospective patients want and need your service.
2) Do you have good knowledge of the healthcare market? Not only do you want to know what works best for your patients but you also want to know what your competitors are doing and offering. You want to know everything that is happening in your specific market. And you want to be able to know why your patients prefer you or why they don’t.
3) In tandem with knowledge of your market, you want to know as much as possible about your existing patients. What do they appreciate about your service and are there areas in which you can improve? Having a deep sense of your service prowess will aid in stable patient retention.
4) How will you communicate with your customers and keep them in the fold? You want your patients to think about you beyond when they obtain their bill for your services. How often will you communicate? What will be the purpose of these communications? How personalize can you make them?
5) What type of customer relationship management (CRM) system will you use to keep track of your healthcare customers? You can keep track of your patients as well as the physicians who refer patients to your service. Learn about them and collect information to help enhance your relationship development.
6) What benchmarks are you going to set to help you recognize progress? As you plan, you want to make sure you have metrics in place that can help you assess your success. Your metrics may change as you grow. You may start with website hits or patient volume but as your processes mature, you may refine the metrics to help you assess your practices in more detail.
7) What is your organization’s culture? Developing a top-down and bottom-up culture that promotes the patient experience can help develop your reputation and reinforce your branding.
