Providing better care to your patients starts with being in your best possible mindset. For doctors who are burdened by long hours, unstable schedules, or the demands of a big box hospital, you can't possibly function at your highest potential. This affects your happiness, your revenue, and your ability to treat your patients and run your practice.
There are other alternatives, however—you can escape the bureaucratic red tape of a hospital and become an independent physician with your own practice that exemplifies your core beliefs and values. Ultimately, with the right tools and mindset, you can improve not just your life but the lives of your patients.
Let's take a look at the strategies and success that helped other physicians take charge of and elevate their practices and their lives.
Create a Schedule
If you are beholden to a hospital or other governing entity to set your hours and determine your clients, you're going to have feelings that you're not in control. A sensation of not being in charge of your life can lead to listlessness, depression, anxiety, and an overall lack of satisfaction with your situation.
Until you can strike out on your own, the best thing you can do for yourself is to create a schedule. Even if you're only governing your before and after work hours, you can still establish a routine that gives you structure and control. Morning exercise, time for reflection, meditation, and ensuring that you have breakfast are all critical to taking charge of your day, giving you a greater sense of purpose and structure.
Refine Your Processes
Many physicians report burnout and stress comes from not having enough time to see patients and for their own self-care. This often comes about when they spend too much time on non-doctor activities like finances, scheduling, ordering supplies, calling in prescriptions, and setting up referrals.
If every single aspect of your practice is piecemeal through different companies, processes, and with its own set of rules, you're going to pull yourself apart going in a thousand different directions. Having a streamlined platform that handles as much administrative overhead as possible is the first step to clearing this tedium out of your mind. Partnering with a medical platform like ViTel can improve your myriad processes in a way that makes everything significantly easier.
ViTel's platform creates an efficient financial system that links payors and patients through a robust network of insurance companies. Our system makes the process of invoicing payors or patients extremely easy and improves the process by which you track outstanding balances. Our system also uses advanced algorithms to track when you need more employee coverage based on historical trends in patient influx. This allows you to plan on exactly the amount of assistance you'll need at any given time, eliminating costly overhead from too much staffing, and preventing bottlenecks from insufficient employee presence.
Seek Financial Freedom to Improve Your Options
Many physicians stick with bad practices and frustrating hospital policies because they have a mountain of debt to pay down. Still, others live paycheck-to-paycheck because their lifestyle inflates as their paychecks do, leaving them hardly better than when they left residency.
You can use your money wisely, living in a manner that improves your timeline of becoming financially independent. When you're not beholden to someone out of fear of not having a paycheck, you'll not only be happier and less stressed, but you'll find you're more outgoing and willing to take risks to find a better job. Some things you can do to gain financial independence faster are:
- Create a budget that you stick to each month, and save enough money - at least $1000 - for an emergency fund
- Pay down your highest-interest debt first before you even consider investing or saving money(beyond your emergency fund). If you have a credit card that has an interest rate of 17% and you're considering investing in a mutual fund at 7%, which do you think makes the most sense?
- If you have the mental strength, work extra and earn extra to pay down your debt faster, but don't run yourself ragged. Your health is more important than some extra cash.
Consider Telehealth Consultations
More offices are offering telehealth options as they allow for remote connections with a physician without leaving your home. This is a great option for people with mobility issues, who are trying to avoid exposure to COVID-19, or who simply feel poorly and don't want to trek across town.
This is a great opportunity for you as a physician because it allows you to make extra money while still providing care for patients. Partnering with an experienced telehealth platform like ViTel provides a tremendous amount of benefits as well:
- A vast network of payors, specialists, and peripheral connections (diagnostics, supplies, physical therapy, and so forth) to make directing the care of your patient faster and easier than ever before.
- Options to use our network to get prescriptions ordered quickly and conveniently - no more playing phone tag with a pharmacy.
- AI-driven patient intake that not only gets their history and current symptoms but uses machine learning to help you diagnose them.
Others have done it and you can, too
Partnering with a system like ViTel can give you the tools to improve your practice and subsequently the lives of yourself and your patients. Better diagnostic tools, less administrative red tape and tedium, and faster care lead to better outcomes for your patients and peace of mind for you. Call us today for a free demo and see the difference having ViTel at your side can bring to your practice.
