If you are running your private general practice in a private hospital outpatient setting, you are likely to have the support you need from the outpatient nurses and receptionists. If you are working under practice privileges at a larger organisation, they are likely to already employ support staff which you will have access to. If you are setting up your own practice, there are some key staff you may want to employ to ensure the practice runs smoothly.
To set up your own private practice, you may want to consider hiring some support staff or colleagues to help to service your patients. You may want to look at hiring an internal member of staff or working with an external agency for some of these roles.
If you are looking to run a busy private GP practice, support staff can be invaluable to free up your time to see patients and ensure the practice is running smoothly and can expand.
A practice manager is a great member of staff to employ to oversee the whole clinic. They can manage any other staff you employ, ensure the clinic is fully compliant, manage CQC inspections and be a point of contact for patients.
Receptionists and admin staff can deal with the day to day running of the clinic by keeping procedures up to date, issuing or chasing invoices and being the face of the clinic to greet and service patients.
IT staff can ensure that all the technology in the clinic is working at it should, develop more efficient ways to use technology in your practice and resolve any technical problems which arise.
Marketing professionals can promote and market your services, manage your website and run your social media channels to attract new patients to the clinic.
Depending on the service you are offering you may also want to hire some additional clinical staff. This could include other private GPs to expand the capacity to see patients and nurses to draw blood and administer vaccinations.
Some private GP practices offer other healthcare services alongside GP appointments. These can include mental health appointments with psychologists and psychiatrists and physio appointments with physiotherapists.
In some instances, you can use technology to improve a process meaning you don’t need as many staff members. For example, using a software such as Hero Health enables you to set up online booking and online payments.
If patients can book and pay for their appointments online, this minimises the need for receptionists or admin staff. Similarly, you may want to look at having a self-serve reception where patients can sign in using a tablet in your reception.
IT, HR and marketing support can all be outsourced using an agency. Using an agency over having an employee can have both benefits and limitations so it is worth looking at your needs for each of these functions to assess which solution is best for your practice.
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