There comes a point in most private practices where things are technically going well, but they don’t feel as calm and easy as they once did anymore. You’ve got more clients, more enquiries, and that’s great, but it all feels so much busier and harder to manage as well, and you might even start to wonder if growth is really something you want.
The answer is yes, you do want to grow, but you’ve got to do it in the right way, and you’ve got to do it without all that chaos. With that in mind, keep reading to find out how to make things easier.
Growth Changes The Pressure Points
When you first start out, you can manage most things in your head, including appointments, notes, invoices, follow ups, and so on. Basically, it’s all manageable, until, that is, the numbers increase just a bit and then the cracks really will start to show.
You’ll end up with problems like double bookings, missed emails, loads of notes piling up, and more, and it’s not because you’re doing things wrong, it’s just that the systems you were using when you were smaller aren’t much good anymore because they were never built to be stretched like you’re trying to make them do. Remember, growth doesn’t just add more clients, it adds more admin for those clients, and you need to be ready for all of it.
Systems Before Expansion
It’s probably fairly tempting to focus on marketing or hiring when you want to scale, but unless you’ve got the basics right, giving you good foundations, there’s really no point in trying to grow because it could all come tumbling down.
It’s a good idea to use specialist tools that were built to make life easier. One good example is practice management software for psychologists, which can collate all your practice information into one place, and give you a lot more control over everything. You might not like the idea of adding yet more technology to your business, but when it’s the right tech, and it saves you time and energy, then it’s the right choice.
Don’t Add Everything At Once
Another mistake people make is trying to scale in too many directions at the same time, adding more clinicians, new services, new locations, new systems, and anything else they can think of all one on top of another.
Growth actually works better when it happens slowly and bit by bit. So you’ll add one thing, let it work for a while and make sure it’s doing what you want it to do, then add the next, and so on. That way, you can see what works and what doesn’t, and only keep the good bits. Adding everything all at once is just going to get confusing.
Final Thoughts
Scaling a private clinic without it getting completely chaotic can be done, and you don’t have to change your plans – you might just have to slow them down a bit. Once you do that, you can see what’s right (and what’s not), make simple adjustments, and then move forward more easily.
