In the first of a two-part series, Alex Fairweather presents a blueprint to business improvement through modern technology.
“Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds.” Norman Vincent Peale. This two-part mini-series breaks down the most common issues facing private practice today, gathered from conversations with doctors, practice managers, patients and reviewing online forum discussions, proposing solutions combining improved business processes and application of AI and other modern technologies. Here are the top five pain points in UK private practice:
Administrative burden and fragmented systems
Doctors and clinic staff often spend a disproportionate amount of time on low-level administrative tasks such as paper records, discharge/referral/clinic letters and individual private medical insurance (PMI) invoicing between multiple providers. In existing electronic systems, there’s little interoperability between different systems, meaning patient record transfer is often processed manually – both slow and open to error. Self-pay patient invoicing and payment reconciliation is also often individually processed. Integration with NHS and large practice management systems is often prohibitively expensive.
Chaotic referral pathways and a lack of technological integration
Standard NHS to private and vice-versa referral processes is a written letter between respective clinicians. While emails speed up the process, data duplication between patient records systems still consumes time. Requests for private sector referral can be refused by GPs, though becoming less common, and still delay the patient’s healthcare journey. Lack of a defined pathway and communication inefficiencies create confusion for patients.
Unpredictable patient acquisition rates
While some clinics embedded in PMI referral flows can often forecast patient acquisition, many practices, especially private GPs, cannot. Self-pay private healthcare is ultimately discretionary spend – which is squeezed in the current economic climate, exacerbated by an unclear journey into and out of private care. Though demand for private healthcare is increasing, as is the willingness by consumers to pay, creating an online presence to capture new patients is increasingly challenging and expensive in a competitive market.
Staffing and recruitment difficulties
The NHS and private sector compete for the same pool of clinical and administrative staff. Smaller private clinics may find it hard to offer the same employment benefits as larger private groups or NHS trusts, and job security is often a concern for employees. Furthermore, smaller private practices lack the recruitment teams of larger groups and NHS trusts, further increasing relative salaries for similar positions.
Cost pressures and demand volatility
Cost of living isn’t limited to households. Businesses feel it too, with higher rents, equipment and consumables costs, salaries – secretarial and personal assistant positions in particular are reported to have risen significantly – and revenue volatility contributes to significant pressure on practices of all sizes. Self-pay patients, who are already reigning in spending, are contributing to no-shows and missed or late payments, which increases administrative burdens further.
Smaller practice owners may be reading this, thinking how they can do more with an already lean team, but as the opening quote suggests, the seeds for change are already within. Though it’s easy to say from the outside, often some directed reflection aided by professional oversight can unlock solutions that, when realised, may seem obvious.
We’ll explore some solutions in Part 2.
