How to Sustain in Your Hospital Business
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive but the ones most responsive to change," said Charles Darwin and this is the right answer to the above question.
Yes, improvement is the only way to achieve sustainability in the hospital business. And this improvement has to be on all fronts- right from patient management, hospital staff efficiency, response time, quality of healthcare to even inventory control and budgeting. Only such multifaceted improvement can really make your hospital sustain itself in the current competitive scenario.
Sustainability has become the major challenge for hospitals in today's market scenario. Many hospitals including prominent hospital chains are incurring heavy losses and some are even closing down. To avoid such dire circumstances, a hospital must set itself on the path of continuous improvement.
To begin with, a hospital must focus on improving its internal setup using the "lean" system. The "lean" concept focusses on eliminating waste, organizing resources and streamlining the processes to achieve overall improvement.
A hospital's profitability can be improved by keeping its internal expenses in check and this is possible only with the optimum utilization of hospital resources. By ensuring full bed occupancy, maximum use of ORs, correct deployment of nursing staff and physicians and regular maintenance of clinical equipment, hospital expenses can be definitely slashed by 50%. Hospital overheads can also be reduced drastically by efficient energy management, planned utilization of in-patient consumables and increasing patient response time.
Budgeting can be improved by cutting down on inventory and staffing costs. Inventory control can be strictly enforced by automating the ordering and stocking system using a hospital inventory management software and by the regular analysis of usage vs. order frequency of hospital supplies. Staff utilization can be optimized by scheduling round-robin shifts, shifting excess staff to priority areas and avoiding duplication of tasks.
Coming to the external aspects of a hospital's establishment, the hospital must improve its efficiency by enhancing its quality of healthcare service. This can be achieved by a two-pronged approach- improving patient response time and physician efficiency.
Accelerating the patient response time can be done by the online appointment scheduling and tracking, the use of EMR and use of patient self-monitoring systems. Physician efficiency can be improved by equipping them with updated equipment, constant training programs and effective use of their time only for diagnosis and therapy.
Apart from this, a hospital can also strengthen its sustainability through aggressive marketing and branding. Creative digital marketing planned PR events and participation in community outreach programs can build your hospital's reputation and get you more patient leads.
Above all, the main way to sustain a hospital business is by ensuring its profitability through the influx of more patients. One way of doing this is by opening our doors to international patients by offering quality healthcare services on par with global standards. The other way is to widen our local network by targeting remote rural areas through monthly medical camps. Opening up new and unexplored medical service lines is another way of generating revenue for the hospital.
Sustainability is the secret of success and the foundation of progress for any hospital. The best way for a hospital to learn to be sustainable is to seek the counsel of professional healthcare consultants who offer such fruitful tips.
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