For many small businesses outsourcing can be incredibly valuable. It frees up time and resources that can then be spent in places that are more valuable. Whether you want to or not, there’s no denying that a medical practice is a business and, because of that, it can benefit from outsourcing in the exact same way.
The time and energy that you would have spent on the things that you’re outsourcing can then be focussed more strongly on improving patient care. Patient care is, of course, going to be your main priority, so it only makes sense to try and avoid letting anything else get in the way of it.
However, it’s not always quite so cut and dry. As useful as outsourcing can be, there are a lot of things that you need to consider before you start thinking of it as the solution to all of your problems.
Like anything else, it can have its drawbacks, and it’s important that you consider exactly what those drawbacks are and whether they’re worth it. With that in mind, here are some things to consider when asking if your practice would really benefit from outsourcing.
Can you afford it?
This is likely to be the first question that jumps into a lot of people’s minds when the idea of outsourcing comes up. Outsourcing tasks to external agencies might be a great way to free up time and resources, but that is always going to come at a very literal cost. Many of the agencies and professionals that you may be outsourcing things to aren’t going to be cheap, and you need to make sure that you can afford the trade-off.
How will it improve patient care?
As important as it is to think about your practice as a business, you also need to make sure that you’re never neglecting the single most important thing of all: patient care. If you’re considering outsourcing a particular task, then one of the first questions you should ask is, how does this improve my ability to care for and treat patients.
Some things, like outsourcing the marketing or accounting of practice, might not seem like they benefit patients but actually, the time and energy they free up allows you to focus more heavily on your patients.
Likewise, outsourcing things like PACS Solutions allows you to store and share important information with physicians no matter where they are, greatly increasing their ability to treat patients while working remotely.
If you can’t come up with a decent reason why the task you want to outsource benefits your patients, then you might want to figure out how important that task is at all.
Is it the most effective solution?
Outsourcing is an incredibly effective solution to many of the problems businesses have, but it’s certainly not the only one. Ask yourself, is outsourcing a particular task the best way to deal with it? Things like staff training are a great example of this.
It might seem obvious that you would outsource your training needs to a professional, but employees often respond much better to training provided by their team leader or employer.
This is because, that way, they can connect the training that they’re doing with the business as a whole, rather than just thinking about it in an isolated way.