Dermatology Practice Management: The Business Side for Dermatologists in 2018

Learn how the right dermatology software can help you optimize your practice

A dermatology practice should be managed like any other business if you want to experience financial success and a positive reputation among your patients in the community where you live and work. Success extends far beyond being a good physician and having impressive credentials and experience. A dermatology practice should be run by someone with strong business skills who can manage the staff and the technology to put you and your practice on the path for success. One way to stay up to speed on the latest and greatest dermatology trends includes attending industry events such as the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) conferences.

One trend across the medical industry includes implementing technology, specifically a dermatology EHR system and practice management solution. Utilizing the best dermatology EHR system for your practice should enable you to do business more quickly and efficiently from before a patient walks into your office until they check out.

In this post, I’ll discuss how dermatology software can positively impact the business side of your practice and hopefully get you thinking about potential areas for improvement.

All About the Aesthetics

Utilizing a suite of healthcare solutions such as a dermatology EHR system, dermatology practice management system, telemedicine, patient kiosk, etc. in a business that has a strong cosmetic component aligns well with the aesthetics of your office. It helps keep your office looking and feeling modern, sleek and state-of-the-art. This can position you as a provider who uses the latest and greatest technologies to help improve their care and really “wow” patients with your tech-savvy office.

Office Space: Help Create More

Many factors go into the process of designing an ideal and optimized office space for your patients and your staff. So how can one factor — technology — potentially help you maximize your valuable square footage?

By switching from paper charts to a cloud-based dermatology EHR system, you’ll help eliminate a majority of your file storage, saving physical space which may provide more room to expand your reception area, add a new exam room, a cosmetic treatment room or increase the staff area. Less paper equals less clutter and in turn more space to help maximize areas to treat patients and improve both patient and staff experiences.

Utilizing software as a service (SaaS) and a cloud EHR platform can help eliminate the need to house cumbersome physical servers in your office, so you can use that space instead for revenue-generating activities. Additionally, a cloud EHR system can provide benefits such as easier EHR implementation, enhanced accessibility and mobility, increased redundancies to help more safely back up data and reduced IT staff and device costs.

When designing or renovating your office, you should consider how the technology needed for your dermatology software will fit your space. How are desktop computers, laptops or iPads positioned at check-in, in the exam room and at checkout? Where are the electrical outlets located? How does this technology fit into your current workflow? Will you have to rearrange your office layout or purchase additional equipment?

If you use an iPad EHR system, this may help declutter your space and eliminate the need for a desktop or a laptop, specifically in exam rooms. Part of this decluttering involves purchasing far fewer pens, paper, file folders and other office supplies. Going digital has its perks. Spring cleaning is always in style, regardless of the season, as is saving money on office supplies and maximizing previously underutilized square footage.

Streamline Staff and Help Reduce Labor Costs

Why not make your current staff more efficient with the tools they need to help them and your practice succeed? And what if you could even possibly reduce the amount of staff needed? Having the best dermatology software for your practice can help. Once you have a solid team, proper training of any new technology is vital to maximize efficiencies. Let’s take your EHR and dermatology practice management system, for instance. Some staff members may be fluent in your current EHR system while perhaps others are more accustomed to another vendor’s system or even paper charts. It’s important for your employees to receive proper and continuous training. Not doing so may cause inefficiencies and may even result in a frustrated medical assistant in front of your patient — not the ideal situation. Invest in training offered by your EHR vendor, whether it’s on-site or web-based. Many vendors will offer a knowledge base and user forum with helpful videos, documents and webinars to keep staff updated with new functionality and any upcoming product changes. Utilizing a cloud EHR can enable multiple staff members to update patient information simultaneously if needed. This brings an added level of efficiency and time-savings to your team. Additionally, with the transition to value-based medicine and the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), you should ask yourself if your staff has the bandwidth to keep up with the changes and tracking your practice’s performance. Utilizing an EHR system with a built-in MIPS dashboard and working alongside a vendor which provides advising services can be more beneficial in the long-run versus hiring additional internal staff.

Automate Where and When You Can

Technology can and should make our lives easier. For example, we can re-order items from online retailers with the push of a button, ask our smartphone for the weather forecast and plug directions into our car’s navigation system.

With the right dermatology EHR system, you should be able to automate and streamline certain tasks. One example includes coding. It can take a substantial investment of time to train staff to manually enter information correctly when it comes to the proper diagnosis codes and modifiers and oftentimes errors still occur. It will not only give you peace of mind but also can help improve your practice’s operations to have a dermatology EHR system that can help automate such tasks. I’ve heard colleagues share that they have been able to decrease the number of staff at the front desk, providing the opportunity to allocate their resources elsewhere in the practice.

An adaptive learning engine in your dermatology EHR can help you increase practice efficiencies as well by automatically populating your preferred methods and suggest your top diagnoses and treatments. Using a dermatology EHR system, you can document a variety of procedures including injectables, laser treatments, aesthetician services and cosmetic surgery using built-in content and workflows.

Let’s also take a look at how a dermatology practice management solution fits into this automation puzzle. Take finding a follow-up appointment slot for your patient during checkout. We’re all familiar both as professionals and as a patient when the front desk staff struggles to find a future appointment that matches your request. It takes up valuable time for both the staff and the patient and oftentimes both parties become flustered with the back-and-forth. Dermatology practice management software has many benefits and eliminating the hunt-and-peck scheduling with a well-executed appointment finder is just one.

Look for a vendor that provides an all-in-one solution and offers an integrated EHR and practice management system. It can help you avoid costs and difficulties that multiple bridges can pose. An integrated solution can help optimize the clinical, financial and operational aspects of your practice.

Personalized Patient Marketing Adds Value

With so many advertising channels trying to sell products and services to consumers and seeing an increased number of dermatology and cosmetic centers, the more you personalize your messages to your patients the more you can stand out from your competition.

If your practice handles cosmetic procedures and products, inventory management could prove to be a vital tool in helping you to generate additional revenue and streamline your inventory process. By tracking any loyalty and reward programs you may have in place with an inventory management system, you may be able to better market your practice. It can help you identify patients who perhaps came in for an injectable in the past yet haven’t returned. Perhaps you have a promotion on a sunscreen or another skin care product, you may want to communicate that news to any patient who previously purchased those products. Want to wish a patient a happy birthday and send them a promotional discount on a new laser treatment? An inventory management system that integrates with your dermatology EHR system should give you the ability to help with marketing personalization.

Patient Engagement Tools

Oftentimes a dermatology EHR will have built-in patient education tools such as drawing boards, photo management, educational handouts and added features to enhance the patient’s overall experience. I have found that such features can help lead to a higher “close rate” when explaining a procedure. It enables a patient to fully engage in his or her healthcare conversation. You can once again “wow” them with your technology forward practice.

Additionally, using patient engagement tools such as a kiosk can benefit your patients and also your practice in more ways than one. Just as using a dermatology EHR can help reduce or eliminate the need for paper, so can offering a check-in kiosk for your patients. With a kiosk, forget having to print papers and hand out pens and clipboards. You’d have the option of handing over a sleek iPad for patients to fill out consents and their medical history. It’s an added perk if the information from the kiosk connects directly to your EHR system.

Using a patient kiosk can help reduce paper waste, eliminate time-consuming, manual and oftentimes error-prone data entry by staff and truly engage patients to participate in their care. The more intake that occurs before the patient arrives in your reception area, the less time the patient spends before coming back to the treatment and consultation areas, where the real care occurs. Plus, we all know that patients love leaving reviews on social media sites, so using such technology will further impress your patients and will hopefully encourage positive reviews and word-of-mouth which may generate additional business.

In short, technology should add time, efficiency and even physical space back into your day and office, making more room to help improve the business of your dermatology practice.

Jordan Miller, MD

Senior Medical Director of Dermatology