04 Jun Transitioning Your Practice Back To A New Normal
Until a vaccine is ready, COVID-19 is going to be affecting businesses and medical practices for the foreseeable future. However, with stay-at-home orders slowly beginning to be lifted, you must continue to modify a plan to continue to provide patient care. At Prescription PR, our goal is to help your practice succeed. For more information on how to properly transition and how we can help, contact us today!
Stagger Your Staff
As you begin to reopen your practice for more physical visits, we recommend staggering hours for your staff when possible. Doing so will limit the number of people that are in your facility at one time, which is beneficial to mitigate the chances of exposure to the virus.
Limit The Number Of Physical Visits
Having multiple patients come in for treatment at a time can be detrimental to their safety as well as your staff. Crowded waiting rooms will quickly become a breeding ground for virus spread. Consider alternating your physical appointments with telehealth appointments to allow for your staff to transition and sanitize the office for the next patient.
Communicate With Your Patients
Gone should be the days where you only connect with your patients at the time of the visit and to schedule another appointment. Over-communicating with your patients plays an important role in the protection of your practice. Examples of the communications that you need to make moving forward include the below:
- Call patients ahead of their scheduled appointments to ask if they have been displaying any COVID-19 symptoms.
- Ask if they’d like to have their appointment via telehealth whenever possible.
- Place signs around your practice detailing safety actions that should be taken.
Inside Your Facility
Keeping your practice into a COVID-19 free zone will be a difficult but attainable task. Below are some examples of what you should be focused on doing inside your practice once it is safe to reopen:
- Place all waiting room chairs at least six feet apart from one another.
- Regularly clean and disinfect any entertainment materials you have in your waiting rooms, such as toys, reading materials, or other communal objects. Consider removing these items entirely for the foreseeable future.
- Have trash cans, hand sanitizers, and soap readily available for all patients.
Sharing Your Updates
With uncertainty about the virus lurking around every corner, patients are subject to experience copious amounts of anxiety each day. This anxiety can have them not wanting to leave their home to seek the treatment they need from your practice. To limit the chances of this happening, you will need to utilize a sound marketing plan to let the public know the changes you’ve made to your practice and how it will keep people safe. At Prescription PR, our team of marketing experts will help you do just that. We take pride in always having a finger on the pulse of the marketing landscape, and will work with you to determine the best way to share your updates. This marketing plan can include:
- Creating detailed and visually appealing pop-ups/pages for patients to find easily on the website.
- Writing informative blogs.
- Posting on social media platforms.
- Sending out e-blasts and newsletters.
Contact Us
Although there is no set in stone way to navigate these uncharted waters, creating a detailed plan and sticking to it offers the best bet of being successful. At Prescription PR, we can help you in creating this plan and detailing it to the public. For more information about how you should begin transitioning your practice back to a new normal, contact us today!