Some Productivity Hacks for Direct Primary Care Doctors
How can we be more productive in our Direct Primary Care practices? That question came up on a recent forum about direct primary care, and I’m sharing some highlights here!
Dictating
Macros - using macros can save a ton of time! For me, I have a handful that I use just about every day, but they range from sending someone my calendar so that they can schedule their own appointment, to sending someone our signup link so that they can sign up for the service, to hashtags about common note templates. For example, if I type “#TwoMonths” into my medical record, I’ll get a note template with all of the developmental milestones for a two month well child visit
Watching videos at 2x Speed
Listening to Audiobooks or Podcasts at 1.5 or 2x speed
Listening to Audiobooks while driving, cleaning, walking, or washing the dishes
Having a paper shredder by the door so that you can immediately shred all the junk mail or non important documents. This can keep your mail pile manageable! Personally, I use a recycling bin for non-confidential documents and a shredder for any confidential or sensitive documents
Voice Dream App - I have this amazing app called Voice Dream on my phone that allows me to convert news stories or emails or PDFs or Word Documents into an audio format. I send the file to this app, and a computerized voice reads me the information. So, if I need to read an important news article, I can use Voice Dream and listen to it on my way into the office.
The Most Powerful Productivity Hack for Direct Primary Care Doctors
One of my favorite productivity hacks for my business has been leveraging Search Engine Optimization.
Basically, a lot of doctors think that they have to convince individual people to sign up for their practices, and that is somewhat effective, but hugely labor intensive.
The better strategy, and the one that saves me a ton of time, is spending about an hour each week writing about what our business does and how it helps people in the community.
Now, when people need that kind of help, they search for it on Google, and they find us! Which is amazing because we have a continual stream of new patients based on this traffic from Google.
I talk about how I do this via one of my courses on how to attract new patients, here: https://www.startupdpc.com/take-action
Streamlining Your efforts
Another way that I improve my productivity is by writing down or recording videos of frequently asked questions. If I find that I’m being asked the same question over and over again by patients, community members, or colleagues, I find that the best way to be productive is to not type out an individual response to each person, but to create an information tool - like a book, YouTube video, Course, or a Master Class on that topic.
For instance, when I first started my direct primary care practice, many people in my community and across the country asked me what it was all about. That led me two write my first book, Direct Primary Care: the Cure for Our Broken Healthcare System. Now if someone has a question about how my practice operates, I can direct them to this book!
Then, when I established a successful and thriving direct primary care practice, many of my colleagues asked how I was able to start and grow Plum Health DPC. I diligently wrote down all of my individual responses into a twenty-chapter book called Startup DPC: How to Start and Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice. Now, when someone asks how I created a thriving DPC practice, I direct them to this book.
For our patients, they have a ton of questions about Coronavirus, so I compiled an entire series of videos about coronavirus, COVID19, and the vaccines on my YouTube Channel.
Next, doctors started asking for more details beyond the book, so I put together my courses on direct primary care and I recently launched the Startup DPC Master Class event, happening May 14th and 15th, 2021. That way, I can explain things once to a group of people who are interested in learning, and they can learn from each other as they grow.
Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful day!
-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC