Scale to Prevail
In old-school medicine, doctors performed house calls. That practice evolved into patients going to the doctor’s office. The doctor scaled to have a nurse on staff. Today, doctors in clinics are supported by allied health professionals, auxiliary clinical team members, and administrative team members. Multidisciplinary and collaborative medicine is the new normal.
The scaling in staff has allowed that doctor to see more patients and it’s how we operate now. Population needs dictate the need for a clinic to scale as do the costs of delivering care. But without employing technology, you’ll be held back as a clinician. Without technology, you’re going to limit your career. You’re going to limit the complexity of the patients you can treat. You need the resources that help you schedule and communicate with patients and ensure that your treatment is the most up-to-date and current. This is changing every single week in medicine, and without using today’s resources, you’re limiting yourself and your patients.
Technology is the next evolution of humans.
Historically, it used to be just humans and humans with expertise. Now, we need more because we need information at greater speed, and the population has an elevated communication and reliance on technology. You’re out of date if you’re not implementing technology on a high level.
When it comes to providing the most up-to-date evidence-based care, how do you ensure your treatment plans align with today’s research? Many doctors I speak to before they join The Confident Clinician get their information from conferences, their own research and PubMed, and their favorite textbooks. But how can you deliver that to every single patient without it taking you away from your ability to treat more people or make it home for dinner? And what if the information you are looking for isn’t where you need it to be? What if the research was updated between the publication date of your favorite textbook and the day you saw your patient (quite likely it was)? And what if you had access to a community of integrative medical practitioners who were always available to collaborate, not just at your favorite annual conference?
Practice Management Software (PMS)
The right practice management software helps achieve scaling and automation. Implementing high-level software that supports scheduling patients, confirming appointments, sending invoices and email newsletters, and interprofessional communication helps build automaticity, allowing your team to focus on other tasks, including building relationships with patients. The right software will enable you to see more patients and provide instant access to your patient’s medical record, often including radiographs, ultrasound, and lab results.
You want practice management software that encompasses the patient’s chart and administrative touch points and billings. If yours doesn’t hit all three of those points, then you will have to employ two or three different software programs that will. In a nutshell, your PMS or electronic medical records (EMR) program should help in the delivery of care. In the words of Gino Wickman, “Systemize the predictable so you can humanize the exceptional.”
What Would Be Possible For You If…
It feels like it’s an industry expectation that the doctor does it all. Quite often, we are evolving without being aware of it. A century ago, patients were treated by their physician at a house call. By 1950, house calls were only 10% of doctor visits in the US and Europe. This evolution was attributable to technology, doctor specialization, and payment systems. As we reviewed earlier, this further evolved into nurses and assistants supporting the doctors in the office, leading to team-based approaches to care.
Each of these crossroads was demanded by population growth and the need to scale, supported by technology. Now, in the age of information and technology, where technological advances in the past week are more staggering than those in many years past, medicine is evolving again. Ready or not, having the resources available to deliver up-to-date, evidence-based modern medicine is what it takes to be the best. These resources involve being able to be in a community designed for you, practice resources to assist you from day to day, collaborations with your peers, and AI-integrated solutions.
AI isn’t going to replace you. It’s going to amplify your impact. We can lean in and swim with the current, or swim against it until we fatigue, and it pulls us where it’s going. Either way, medicine is facing another evolutionary frontier. And at TCC we are ready to face it with you.