How can you tell if a practice is successful? Easy: It’s growing. At Practice Perfect, we specialize in helping practices like yours reach their full potential, and in this article, we’ll be sharing 5 practice growth hacks every clinic owner needs to know. Check them out below:

 

1) Build a strong referral network

 

Nearly all progressive clinic owners are devoting a healthy chunk of time to expanding their referral network. They’re frequenting industry events, sending gifts to family doctors, and taking every opportunity to introduce yourself to potential referral sources.

 

Want to learn more about the role of referrals in PT practice growth? Click here.

 

2) Be in a busy location

 

Location is, without a doubt, one of the most important considerations when opening a new business. When deciding where to open your practice, you must consider two things:

 

Is there a viable market?

 

Your clinic needs be in a location where there are a significant number of people in need of your services. Many industry veterans will recommend that you rent an office in the same building as a family physician. This way, the physician will be more likely to refer their patients to your facility if they know that you’re just down the hall. In many cases, proximity to a family physician is directly associated with practice growth.

 

Is there a viable workforce?

 

Can you ensure that you will be able to find individuals with the skill-set necessary to treat your patients? A large part of practice growth revolves around hiring new staff members to oversee day-to-day operations. That said, be mindful of the area you’re in and whether you’ll be able to attract talent to your facility.

 

3) Hire and train competent staff members

 

As mentioned above, a viable workforce is one of the keys to practice growth. But in today’s job market, you’re liable to receive a few hundred replies within the hour that your job opening was posted. If that’s the case, how can you be sure that you’re only inviting the best candidates for an interview? To start, you may want to look them up on LinkedIn and see what their former classmates, colleagues, and employers have to say about them.

 

Once you find the right person, it’s up to you to ensure that there are systems in place to help them get going as soon as possible. This can be achieved by letting them shadow some of your senior staff members, or compiling a document with the methods and procedures employed by your facility.

 

4) Have an active web presence

 

In 2016, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who will take your business seriously if they can’t find it online. That said, you don’t have to be an internet pro to launch your web presence.

 

Start by creating a page for your business on all of the major social networks. That includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Then, you’ll want to be sure to create a Google My Business page. This will ensure that your clinic, and its location, will appear at the top of the Google search results—because people will inevitably Google you. To that point, you want to be sure that when the look you up, there are plenty of positive reviews waiting for them. An easy way to guarantee positive reviews is by offering your patients an incentive for writing one!

 

5) Harness your EMR system

 

Your EMR software is more powerful than you think. It contains all of the information about your patients’ attendance, fall-off, and cancellations. But, an EMR’s true strength lies in its ability to export this data into meaningful reports.

 

Practice Perfect comes equipped with a number of canned reports that were designed to provide clinic owners with key operational data. One of my personal favourites deals with referrals. This report can show you exactly where your patients are coming from, whether they’re friends and family members of current patients, if a certain facility is sending them to your clinic, or if they simply found you online. This data will inform your decision when it comes to developing a business strategy that will encourage practice growth.

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