Covid-19 and Communication

There’s consensus that Covid-19 isn’t going away anytime soon. And that means we need to adapt the way we work to the “new normal” we have right now.

Central to this is the importance of communication with your suppliers. It’s going to be vital for all clinics to open up dialogues with them. 

More importantly, you have to be ready to compromise and negotiate. 

There needs to be a give-and-take on both sides. And everyone should be flexible in this situation to come up with something agreeable to all. 

For example, you can forge new agreements with stakeholders. Come up with something more suitable for all during these trying times. Replace your old agreement, if need be.

Bring up the idea of using telehealth in your clinic to communicate with your patients. This is actually advantageous to both clinics and patients. It’s convenient to all and greatly lowers the risk of acquiring the virus. After all, social distancing is evident here.

No matter what kind of negotiations you’re doing, you need to be clear about your agreements. 

While we expect the pandemic to last for some time, it’s not going to be here forever. But still, many clinics won’t have a choice but to make changes to their practices in this period. They have to negotiate effectively with their suppliers to cover all their bases.

And your agreements with your service providers need to reflect this temporary state. 

You need to be clear about the duration of your agreements with them. Clarify the circumstances in which you will review your agreements. And you need this to be solid and legal.

Say for example, you can indicate that your new contract will be good for three months. Include a clause that requires both parties to meet up before that time is up. That way, you can review the situation at that point. See if the contract is still suitable even if you extend its duration, or you’ll need to make revisions.

Doing a great job at negotiating allows you to both get what you want out of the deal. Not only that, it also strengthens your working relationship. And you probably know how beneficial this can be.