There are specific times when medical practitioners should seek help with their doctor marketing and advertising. Outsourcing is an essential strategy a physician can use to control the rising costs of providing services. In outsourcing, an external contractor assumes responsibility for managing one or more of your healthcare services. This can also include clinical or hospitality services. If you have a growing clinic as a physician, you need to hire a workforce continually. Sometimes, internal hiring can lead to higher expenses in renting, utilities, or labor costs. With outsourcing, you can keep expenses at a minimum while giving your clinic access to a skilled workforce. This article covers six essential services every physician should outsource. Let's dig in!
1. Market Research
As a physician, you have a lot on your table, from treating patients to administering drugs and prescriptions to growing your business. These tasks are too demanding for you and your in-house team to handle. Freelancers can research different aspects of your business. Additionally, you can use a medical marketing agency for doctors; these agencies contain professionals who have a wealth of experience in market research. They will help you identify potential customers, collect market data, and research industry events you should attend. Such research work is usually tiresome and time-consuming. This is why these tasks need to be outsourced to dedicated freelance experts.
2. IT
What do companies like Google, Skype, Facebook, and many other companies have in common? Besides being successful, they all outsource IT tasks to remote workers at some point. Research even shows these companies have seen massive success with hiring remote developers. Most of them end up hiring their remote IT workers to join in as full-time employees. If you run a clinic, you might have services that require outsourcing, such as IT support services. Outsourcing is cheaper compared to a full-time employee. You can let the remote team handle some of your IT work while administering services to your patients. What's more, they'll be available 24/7 in case you need anything.
3. Virtual Assistant
You can work with a remote virtual assistant to help you perform tasks or projects. You may have heard of people who use personal assistants. However, with advances in technology like video conferencing, artificial intelligence, and shared documents, these tasks can be done remotely. So, why hire a virtual assistant? Let's face it; you might not be used to working with an assistant in your daily life as a doctor. However, there are multiple reasons to consider hiring a virtual assistant. One of the main reasons is to free up mental energy. You want to avoid channeling your energy to mundane tasks that can be outsourced. This is where a virtual assistant steps in.
4. Accounting and Finance
Finances are tricky to handle, especially when you're doing it alone. Did you know the earliest processes to be outsourced by businesses were accounting and finance? Today, many companies even outsource their entire finance departments. Outsourcing such services come in handy for a physician. An external agency will provide expertise in strategic functions like forecasts, budgets, and internal audits. Under accounting, you can outsource accounts payable, payroll accounting, and account receivable. With these areas having someone to handle them, you can focus on treating your patients. Also, the outsourced team will prepare financial statements so you can better track your expenditure.
5. Public Relations
You want to have someone to protect your reputation if something goes wrong. However, this doesn't mean you need to hire a full-time PR professional. Your best strategy is to hire a PR person on an as-needed basis to help with your marketing efforts. Many PR providers can cater to your small business. They offer services such as writing press releases and public service announcements. As a physician, you can use PR when you want to promote new services. You can cut down on expenses by only using the service when you need it.
6. Social Media
As a physician, you can leverage the power of social media to create awareness about your services. With a social media strategy, you can grow your brand, find clients, and connect with your audience. Consider outsourcing tasks such as creating social media posts to a virtual assistant (VA). They can prepare reports based on performance data and offer better recommendations. Your VA will also update you on current consumer trends to help you deliver your services better.
Hopefully, this guide offers you the basics of how to get started with outsourcing. You can use platforms such as Upwork or Fiverr to hire freelancers. Outsourcing these services will lift off a load from your busy schedule. This means tasks get done faster while you focus on other issues. Remember to set a budget for what you want to outsource and choose the best candidate. Over to you!
