During this moment in history where many of us will be affected personally and professionally, I did not foresee a world where the private specialist medical practice will be brought to a halt in Australia.
This has been hard to comprehend for me let alone you, the doctors and practice staff at the cold front who know and understand the direct impact on the patients affected and the re-precautions to you and your practice.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, there were 2.2 million elective surgeries 2017 to 2018 and 66% of those were completed in Private Hospitals translating to 1,452,000+ surgeries.
This equates to an average of 121,000 surgeries per month. One would hope and assume that most people that require those surgeries will be OK to hold off the surgery until the lockdown is over which could be between 3 - 6 months.
After 3 Months:
Let's look at the amount of surgeries banking up: 121,000 x 3 = 363,000 elective surgeries will be banked up.
After 6 Months:
121,000 x 6 = 726,000 elective surgeries will be banked up.
This is not to mention that the waiting list is already 750,000+ people. That is a total of 1.5 million people that will be waiting to have surgery and our system will not cope or be prepared. However, it is critical that you start to prepare your practice.
It is safe to assume that most surgeons will be overwhelmed with work and one of the most important aspects of your practice will be efficiency and your software will play a big part in creating efficiency. It is now timely for you to explore options to prepare and support you.
At Clinic to Cloud we are familiar with the process of receiving a referral, investigating and managing the patient all the way to post-op recovery. The new world post COVID-19, your patients will expect more online engagement and an element of telehealth.
One of the most under-utilised resource in healthcare is the patient and every patient wants to be more involved in their care journey and ensuring the patient is involved at the right level, reducing a significant administrative burden for your team and creating loyalty. Imagine a world where the patient is pre-registering online so your team are not entering data manually, uploading their referrals and other documents securely online to avoid extra scanning by your team and the patient is reviewing the fees estimate and clearly understanding what the procedure means to them because of the telehealth consult you had with them.
Here are some specific tips that you may want to consider:
In order for you to make up for the losses post COVID-19 it is important to review your processes and introduce some smarter and more efficient workflows that will help you maximise your practice, create efficiency for your team and better engage your patients.
Clinic to Cloud is equipped to operate well in this unforeseen situation, all our people are equipped with mobile devices and cloud-first tools that will allow them to complete a demo for you and even on-board and train you and your team.