It's a classic dilemma when scaling up your health services: Provider first or patient first?
On a recent CEO Connect Boot Camp coaching call, we tackled this question: 'Which comes first: Hiring another provider or bringing in more patients?'
It's a great question because hiring a new provider is expensive, especially when starting slowly and building a patient panel from scratch. However, you also don't want to bring in a lot of new patients and then have them waiting weeks or months to be seen because you don't have enough providers!
My advice? Do both in tandem. Recruiting providers is generally lengthy, so start the recruitment process early and the marketing and outreach efforts to attract new patients. Go through your current provider schedules to see where some of the anticipated influx of patients can fit and increase new patient spots with your current providers.
When you hire a new provider, have them do community outreach during their downtime - attend staff meetings, provide training, or host lunch-and-learns for local businesses. This is an excellent way for them to get to know people in the community, use their downtime effectively, and build trust from future patients.
Don't let the 'chicken or the egg' problem stop you from scaling up. Start recruiting both a new provider and new patients, and you'll reduce the costs and introduce your new provider to many more potential patients.
How have you handled this in your organization? Email me your thoughts at [email protected].
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