Little Things Make a Huge Impact on Your Business
What Little Things?
When I started my own business, I thought I had a good grasp of what I needed to do to run the business. I still think I started with a good foundation. Sure, I learned some things along the way, but for the most part, I knew what I needed to do to run my business well; except for the little things I missed. You never realize what little things you need, until you run up against them. I know it sounds trite and self evident, but it's the little things that hurt the experience for the customer (or my case patient).
I missed some little things to make my patients more comfortable and at ease. The first thing I missed was music. I needed something in the waiting room and something on the way to the exam rooms to help the patients relax a little and feel a little more at home. The second thing I missed was smell. The waiting room needed to have some other scent than the typical sterile smell you normally smell in hospitals and clinics. To the last little thing that I needed; it was something for me. I needed a way to easily do my accounting and file my taxes, without having to have calendar reminders everywhere.
Little Thing: Music
One of the things that every clinic needs is music. I find that it calms the patients and it puts people at ease. It makes them feel like they are more at the mall or shopping somewhere than at the doctors office. I, luckily, had four speakers already installed into my drop ceiling, I just needed to wire it up.
That's far more difficult than it sounds. It turns out that I didn't have the budget to spend a lot of money on this project. So, we purchased a second hand amplifier and hooked the speakers into that. The next problem was where were we going to get music? Our IT guy had a brilliant idea. He had a Rasberry Pi that would be perfect for this. There is something called Pi Musicbox and it solved our problems. We had a number of choices for services and stations and it made an immediate impact.
Our patient population noticed. We got positive feedback and the best part is that it really did make a difference with our patients feeling more relaxed and at home.
Little Thing: Smell
A major gripe that we would hear is that clinics, including ours, smelled too sterile. That is it smelled like a hospital. Nobody feels comfortable in a clinic to begin with, and making them smell that bland hospital smell just adds stress to the patient.
We found that oil based plugins provided a nice pleasant scent and removed the clinical smell. We also purchased expensive air fresheners for the bathroom and waiting room. We would spray it twice a day. Once in the morning and once upon closing.
A major fear was that patients wouldn't appreciate the smells or would feel like it was just covering up the clinical smells. To our surprise, most people really liked the smells and were far more comfortable in our waiting room.
Little Thing: Accounting
Everything we've done up to this point was more for the patients, than for the doctor or staff. A little thing that could have turned into a big thing was a gap in the way we dealt with finances and accounting. Sure, our accountant would call us up before the end of the quarter, but it was always a scramble. Nobody thinks about money, when you have patients coming through your door, insurance issues to deal with, inventory problems, and so on.
Using Quickbooks solved some of the issues, but we needed a solution where we would be more proactive in our accounting and more automated. It turns our the EMR we use actually plugs into Quickbooks, but we weren't aware of that. Once we pluged the EMR into Quickbooks, a large portion of the little thing was solved.
However, we still had one outstanding issue, how do we know when to end the quarter? Did the quarter start in August or was it September? We needed to streamline what happens at the end of the quarter. Again, the EMR to the rescue! It turns out you can also set the fiscal year and near the end of the quarter, run the quarterly reports. It would even give the user a heads up the quarter was ending.
What's the Point of Solving the Little Things?
First of all, patient comfort. That was key. If a patient is comfortable, they are more likely to return for their follow up appointments and also more likely to recommend your clinic to their friends. It also stops what could be big things in their tracks. By being proactive and solving the little things, not only do you save time, but you also save money.
Did we change the world? Not at all, but we did manage to streamline the business and make our patients feel less like they were there for a scary medical procedure and more like they were just out at another shop.
