Blog Level Up Your Clinic Management (1/3): Run an Automated Front Desk

When you automate work using the right clinic software, you save hours not only for yourself, but also for your doctors and your frontline team. In part one of this blog series, Plato shows you three ways to speed up work at your clinic’s frontline by standardising processes, automating your front desk, and improving decision-making with data.

1) Standardise Processes

Does your team miss key steps or data when delivering care? Without structured workflows, staff may process patients based on inconsistent standards of care. Standardisation brings efficiency and consistency to your clinic’s operations, reducing costs, increasing competitiveness, and simplifying replication for scale (Knowledge@Wharton, 2013). For example, when staff follow a triage checklist to collect uniform data and cover identical steps, your triage process is consistent, no matter which team member performs the process.

Use Plato to build structured workflows and standardise care at your clinic. Create a template once in Plato and use it an infinite number of times. For instance, build a triage template to collect key data easily and speed up documentation. Then, save the completed triage form to your patient’s casenotes in Plato for easy reference. Or, create a care plan template that your team can easily modify to suit patients’ needs. Share care plans from your Plato with patients or caregivers and improve care adherence.

2) Run an Automated Front Desk

A manual front desk forces you to prioritise paperwork over patient care. Imagine you’re a front desk employee. You spend your days scanning hardcopy lab/radiology results, and transferring data from paper to software. Day in, day out, you complete repetitive tasks that chip away at your job morale. Your slow front desk also leaves patients dissatisfied due to long wait times. As a clinic manager, you want your staff and patients to be happy. Improve job satisfaction and the patient experience by automating work. 

Run an automated front desk using Plato. Allow your team to cater to a higher volume or value of patients with less effort. For example, Plato’s online appointment booking automates scheduling for your staff and lets patients book their appointments at your clinic — anytime, anywhere. Invite patients to register automatically by submitting their verified biodata from Singpass to your Plato, eliminating data entry for your team and patients. Instead of scanning results, get direct lab/radiology results in Plato. A clinic that automates work also makes patients feel more valued. For instance, send your patients personalised, automated recalls from Plato, reminding them to book their next appointment at your practice. Plato’s automated front desk empowers your team to focus on more meaningful tasks and helps you build stronger relationships with patients.

3) Improve Decisions with Data Analytics

As a clinic manager, your responsibilities include business development and financial management. Without data analytics, you end up making business decisions based on intuition rather than facts, creating more room for errors. A study by PwC found that data-driven organisations are three times more likely to see major improvements in decision-making (Stobierski, 2019). 83% of executives from top-performing healthcare organisations in the US also consider business intelligence and analytics as their top priority to stay competitive (Cortada et al., 2012). Quickly generate the data insights you need using Plato, so you have time to focus on other key responsibilities.

Measure, manage, and grow your clinic using insights from Plato’s “Intelligence” reports. For instance, monitor the financial pulse of your practice, track your clinic’s marketing performance, and improve inventory management. If you want answers specific to your practice, go further with custom analytics. Deliver value-based care by collecting structured data to monitor patient outcomes, allocate resources, set budgets, and coordinate care. Value-based care insights could also help you win better contracts with corporate partners. Imagine you run a joint pain clinic. Custom analytics tells you your clinic’s non-surgical care is not only cost-friendly, but also reduces joint pain and improves joint function in over 50% of your patients, six months after their first visit. This proves your clinic delivers better care outcomes at a lower cost. You take this data to your corporate partner to negotiate a better contract and more patients from them.

If you can automate your front desk using Plato, how about work in your consultation rooms? In part two of this blog series, you’ll learn how to speed up work for your doctors by letting them work the way they prefer using Plato’s integrated EMR.