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How to stop feeling overwhelmed with admin in your clinic

By Lucy Galloway
Last updated: August 29, 2024
Efficiency and work/life balance, Practice Management Tips

Running your own clinic is hard work. Really hard work. Whether you’re an owner/operator or manager of an aesthetic practice, GP surgery or physiotherapy centre – or any other clinic – staying on top of all your duties is extremely tough.

At times, it’s exhausting, especially when you’re doing everything yourself. Taking bookings, managing client on-boarding, carrying out treatments, sorting payments, checking files and compliance, chasing payments and much much more…

It’s easy to feel completely overwhelmed with all your clinic admin.

But it’s also easy to stop that feeling.

You just need some help.

The help you need to stop feeling overwhelmed with clinic admin

If you want to stop feeling overwhelmed with admin in your clinic, the easiest way is to stop doing said admin. To eliminate it or pass it over to someone else.

But of course, that’s easier said than done.

When you’re running your own clinic, all the admin, all the paperwork, and all that accounting is all your responsibility. You can’t ignore it. You can’t put it off it. And you can’t expect anyone else to do it for you.

But you can expect help.

Help from clinic management software like Pabau.

Because clinic management software is designed specifically to help you reduce admin. It’s designed to make your life easier, to streamline processes, automate boring, repetitive tasks, and free up your time.

In fact, clinic management software can do more than just help.

It can transform your entire approach to managing all your day-to-day tasks, so much so that you’ll wonder how you ever coped without it.

It brings an almost unimaginable amount of benefits to your clinic as you’ll see, but first, let’s make sure you know exactly what clinic management software is.

What is clinic management software?

Clinic management software is exactly what it sounds like – software that helps you manage your clinic! It comes in many different shapes, sizes and types, but at its core, it’s a single platform that helps you run all your typical day-to-day practice tasks.

It’s often known as practice management software.

You and your team log into a single, central platform, and you’ll find a wealth of tools that help you organise and run your clinic – from booking systems to treatment plans, client file storage to stock management.

How does clinic management software help reduce your admin

Now you know what clinic management software, the real question is – how does it work?

Does it really reduce your admin and save you a load of time? Does it actually give you more freedom to treat clients? Can it genuinely stop you from feeling overwhelmed and even help you enjoy running your clinic?

Yes. Absolutely.

The right clinic management software does all of this and more. It helps you:

1. Eliminate physical paperwork

Paperwork of any kind quickly becomes overwhelming, especially when it literally stacks up. New client records, new medical history questionnaires, new consent forms, referral forms, receipts, invoices, purchase orders… the list is never-ending.

And filling them all out manually takes a hell of a lot of time. Then you have to check you haven’t missed a section, spelt something wrong or made any other mistakes.

And then, you’re still not done. Then you have to file it away somewhere, ideally in a logical way so you can find it again when you need it. That means more time, and lots of clutter.

Imagine if you could get rid of all those filing cabinets? Imagine if completing forms was just a few simple clicks? Imagine if all your paperwork was digitised? Easy to add, easy to check and cross reference?

That’s how clinic management software helps. Say goodbye to that paperwork for good.

2. Save time looking for important medical files

When you’ve digitised all your client records and all their medical history forms, you no longer need to spend hours every day pulling out key files before each treatment.

You don’t need to rifle through filing cabinets, hunt down folders and dig out forms… only to find they were missing in the first place.

All that important information you need before any consultation or any treatment is available at your fingertips. It’s linked directly to your client records, or you can simply use the search bar to find the exact file you need.

Seconds, instead of minutes and hours.

3. Book in clients automatically

Without practice management software, when your clients want to book an appointment with you, they need to speak to you. They need to email, text or call, then you need to pull out your diary and check for suitable dates.

Then you need to get back to them. Then they need to confirm. Then you need to book it in. It’s very long-winded. Very ineffective.

With practice management software, you don’t need to do anything. All that admin, all that wasted time, all in the past.

All your clients need to do is go online and book their own appointments. You don’t need to act as a receptionist (or hire one). And they don’t need to wait for your opening hours. They just browse your appointment diary (which you can edit and customise any way you want) and book whenever suits them.

4. Automate reminders and follow-ups

Similarly, one of the biggest administrative headaches for any clinic is those appointment reminders and follow-ups.

The last thing you want is for your clients to forget their booking. So you have to remember to remind them. To send an email the day before, a text on the day. Then if they need regular treatments as part of their course, you need to book all those appointments in and do the same over and over.

It’s so tiring and time-consuming.

But clinic management software does all that for you. It automates all those reminders – via email and SMS – so you never have to think about them. Any bookings made will get automatic reminders. Any treatment courses map out follow-up appointments or remind clients when their next treatment is due. You never need to lift a finger.

5. Share aftercare information without a second thought

Another important part of your treatment plan is aftercare. You want to deliver the best possible support to your patients even after they’ve left your clinic… but that’s another admin job.
More paperwork, more emails, more follow-ups and check ins.

But again, practice management software can do all of that for you.

All you need to do is tag or assign key aftercare information to specific treatments, and when that treatment is marked as complete, software like Pabau can automatically send out the aftercare pack.

6. Plan your day more effectively

A big portion of time running your clinic is spent mapping out your day – figuring out what treatments you have, where you need to be and what supplies, products and machines you’ll need at any given time.

That can take a lot of thought and a lot of running around to make sure you have everything you need.

Or it can be done at a glance. Clinic management software like Pabau gives you a crystal-clear, colour-coded calendar for your upcoming day – so you can see exactly what type of treatments are booked in and what you’ll need for each.

It might only save 5 or 10 minutes a day, but that quickly adds up.

7. Organise your clinic’s schedule more efficiently

The same applies to organising your clinic’s schedule, planning out staff rotas, sorting holiday leave and staff absences.

There are a lot of moving parts, but clinic management software helps you take a step back and see the bigger picture. It gives you all the info you need, right in front of you, so you’re not spending ages hunting around for holiday request forms and preferred hours, or working out which rooms need which staff at any given time.

It just makes everything a lot simpler.

8. Stop chasing invoices and payments

Getting paid for your work is obviously an essential clinic management job, but all too often it’s one that needs a lot of time and effort spending on all the admin details.

But with clinic management software, you can reduce that time and effort overnight. It streamlines all your payment processes, links invoices directly to client records and treatment plans and just simplifies the whole process.

Less work, more reward.

Plus you can automatically require deposits – or full payments – in advance, so you never need to chase clients or worry about no-shows again.

9. Eliminate human error

When you’re reliant on manual processes, you’re reliant on human nature. And humans all make mistakes. Missed information, incorrect data, a wrong number here or there.

One or two little mistakes are no big deal, but they all build up. And worse, it means you have to spend even more time trawling through files and records to double-check for errors and then fix them.

More time wasted, more effort drained. So when clinic management software eliminates human error by automatically populating fields, flagging missed information or highlighting areas, it’s a godsend.

10. Ditch the manual calculations and figures

If you’re not good at numbers, clinic management software is worth its weight in gold when it comes to calculations, metrics and reporting.

When your software can automatically report on sales figures, bookings, revenue and a whole host of other key figures for your clinic, you never need to worry about collecting all those numbers, adding them up and calculating those KPIs… it’s all done for you.

No more errors, no more hours and hours spent on accounting, finance and key reports.

When it’s all done in seconds, think how much free time you’ll have!

11. Streamline client communications and marketing

The best clinic management software can also reduce your admin time by changing how you communicate with your clients and market to your prospects.

Instead of needing to log into different systems, copy over client contact information, set up campaigns and all the rigmarole that goes with it, you can do it all from one place… all at the click of button.

All your newsletters, promotional offers, even a referral program – all managed simply and effectively.

12. Work from home or on-the-go

Last but by no means least, good practice management software can reduce the amount of time you spend in your clinic.

Because if you’re overseeing a team of practitioners and growing your business, you’ll want to take time off. You’ll want to have holidays, and not spend that time worrying about what’s happening in your clinic.

You don’t want to have to go into your practice to check on admin or fix a problem, and with clinic management software, you won’t need to.

A mobile app lets you log in and control every aspect of your business from home or on-the go, whenever you want.

Won’t finding and learning how to use practice management software take up even more time?

It should be clear now how practice management software can dramatically reduce all your clinic admin and stop you feeling overwhelmed.

But what if getting that software is time-consuming and hard work? What if you have to spend ages figuring out how to install and use that software, that it’d be quicker to just do the manual admin yourself? Then it’s not good practice management software.

The right software for your clinic should be simple and intuitive. It should take minutes to set up and be easy for your whole team to use. That’s the whole point – it should save you tons of time and effort.

With the right help and support, you’ll be up and running in no time at all, and soon, you won’t believe the changes good clinic management software brings to your practice.

Huge amounts of time saved. All that hard work and effort reduced. All that hassle and stress lifted off your shoulders.

All thanks to clinic management software like Pabau.

See how it could stop you feeling overwhelmed and transform your clinic management overnight. Book a demo.

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