Hi Pex MDs! Question about clinic business.

smilewarrior wrote: »

I'm a dentist.

Number of patients per day varies among clinics. It usually depends on the spending capacity of patients, which is affected by their other expenses ( for example, they are less eager to spend on health care during those times of the year when they have to pay for tuition fees of their children ). It can also be affected by the weather , as when we see less patients when it rains really hard and the streets are flooded.

Scheduling of patients are at times manageable and sometimes difficult. One needs to be patient and consider things such as traffic , delayed flights, or again because of the needs of their children ( because apparently for a lot of Filipinos, their kids come first ).

For clinic supplies we usually build partnerships with suppliers. It is in ones best interests to pay on time and pay in full as some materials are very hard to source . Some of the supplies we use are perishable. One needs to be prudent and know just how much of that particular supply needs to be procured to minimize waste. When supplies go bad, they need to be disposed of ... well that's the humane thing to do. When supplies are deemed disposable, they should be single use only, again for humane reasons.

I've said this before, I personally think the rules which govern advertising for dentistry are old. Unfortunately those rules still apply to the present, if memory serves me right. We are allowed to use calling cards. I've (conveniently) forgotten what exactly we can put in a calling card but from what I vaguely recall it usually includes doctor's name, clinic address and contact number. For those of us in health care, usually like-minded individuals come together and form groups. These groups are self-regulating, usually have websites with a list of a roster of members ( sometimes even clinic addresses and contact details are included). If we are to follow the old rules, the primary form of advertising that is encouraged is by word of mouth. Realistically if you set up a new clinic now and just rely on word of mouth alone it will take a bit of time before your practice gets up and running. Relying on word of mouth advertising, specifically by your reputation , can be challenging because of the fact that we are all human. Since we are all human, we ALL make mistakes ( as mentioned by someone much better and much wiser than me).

I don't have the statistics but for as far as I know most clinics still use physical records, as that's how it's always been done. There are a growing number of clinics switching to digital , the limitation being this would entail added office staff (hence added cost ). When records go digital, there becomes a need to back them up ( and keeping your fingers crossed that all your back ups don't go poof into the ether all at the same time).

smilewarrior wrote: »

The UP College of Medicine offers a Master of Science in Health Informatics . Thought I'd mention it as it is somewhat related to your second post.