4 Essentials Your Medical Practice Needs
Around the world, the medical community has many similarities in the way individual practices run, but some practices go the extra mile to ensure a seamless and calm experience for their patients.
Medical examinations can be highly stressful for patients, particularly for high-risk patients or those with serious illnesses. Your medical practice should do all it can to ensure a smooth experience that alleviates stress, rather than creates it, for the patient.
Studies have shown that up to one third of patients across different backgrounds will avoid going to the doctor because of factors related to the doctors themselves or healthcare organizations.
This frightening statistic is proof that the medical community needs to do more for patients to feel comfortable and welcome when visiting any medical practice.
The coronavirus pandemic has placed even more pressure on medical practices to run efficiently and with care. This has, unfortunately, led to closures of medical practices around the US who were unable to manage the financial strain of COVID-19.
In order to weather the storm, your practice needs to pay more attention than ever to the essentials that will help your practice survive.
Without the right tools at their disposal, a medical practice will quickly fail, and/or lose the trust of their patients by putting people at risk. Although this sounds extreme, it only takes one safety incident or other malpractice incident to threaten any and all future plans for your practice.
Read on to find out four tools that your practice needs in order to best serve your patients by creating a safe, welcoming environment for all.
Four Things Your Practice Needs
1. Medical Chillers
Medical chillers are of paramount importance for practices that use large devices. These include X-Ray machines, PET scanners, MRI scanners, CT scanners, and oncological equipment. These devices require high power and can easily overheat if not installed with medical chilling equipment that can maintain the correct temperature.
If a medical device overheats, it not only causes expensive damages to the equipment itself, but it can endanger a patient or, indeed, the doctor. Creating an environment that keeps patients safe means committing to installing medical chilling technology to your devices to ensure overheating does not occur.
2. Cybersecurity
Of course, your medical practice will be host to a wealth of confidential patient information that must be kept behind rigorous walls of cybersecurity. Medical cybersecurity is one of the fastest developing industries in the world, with the majority of practices now storing their patient data almost entirely online.
In the USA, all medical practices need to be in compliance with HIPAA in order to protect the data of their employees and patients. A breach of sensitive information could be catastrophic for the future of your practice.
3. Quality Patient Exam Chairs
When it comes to giving your patients a high-quality experience in your practice, the devil is in the details. The quality of the patient exam chairs you choose for your practice can drastically affect the patient’s experience with you.
Patient exam chairs should be firm enough to support a sensitive or injured person, but soft enough to feel comfortable and relaxing for your patient while they undergo examination.
Particularly if the patient is highly anxious during their visit, a quality patient exam chair can be a huge source of support for their body and mind.
4. Calming Waiting Room
Having a calming waiting room is the perfect way to introduce a patient to your practice. The waiting room will be their first impression of the place, and will become either a positive or negative association in their minds.
In order to create a calming place for patients to wait for their appointments, make sure to declutter the space regularly. While the waiting room shouldn’t look bare, it should not be messy either.
Have real plants dotted around the space with natural scents such as lavender or peppermint gently wafting through via a diffuser. This will create a tranquil atmosphere for even the most anxious of patients.
Final Thoughts
Using this guide, you should work to ensure your practice has both the practical and aesthetic elements listed here. The listed essentials are a step in the right direction to creating a peaceful and safe environment for any patient to visit.
No matter their accessibility needs or stress levels, your practice should be able to accommodate them.
These elements not only alleviate anxiety, but they also shore up against cybersecurity breaches and safety hazards. Read further into these areas to make sure your practice is up to scratch!