Are you an Urgent Care Doctor looking to secure the best job offers in New Zealand?  Discover the key practices that can help you stand out in this competitive field. Urgent care plays a crucial role in providing immediate medical attention to those with minor injuries and illnesses. Patients seek prompt care without needing appointments or long waits in emergency rooms. To thrive in this fast-paced environment and maximize your career opportunities, consider the following best practices curated by Medical recruitment firm Medfuture.

1. Exceptional Patient Care: In urgent care, patient satisfaction is paramount. Friendly and efficient patient care is essential for both clinic success and industry reputation. Urgent care clinics often offer extended hours, accommodating walk-in patients. They are well-equipped with the latest technology, ensuring faster diagnostics and test results.
2. Operational Efficiency: Efficient processes are vital to manage the influx of patients. From registration to billing and treatment, the entire patient journey should be seamless. Some clinics even employ a system where nurses attend to the next patient while doctors treat others, ensuring minimal waiting times.
3. Financial Sustainability: Patients are cost-conscious, making transparent pricing essential. Urgent care clinics often handle negotiations and price inquiries directly, striving for financial sustainability. It's crucial to collect payments and bills efficiently while maintaining a patient-friendly approach.
4. Empowered Employee Culture: Create a work environment where employees feel valued and encouraged to contribute ideas for improvement. Understanding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and their impact on the clinic's success can motivate staff to provide better service and patient care.
5. Employee Rewards: Motivated employees perform better. Consider rewarding your staff with salary increments, performance bonuses, or team outings for achieving targets. Recognizing their hard work and dedication boosts morale.
6. Medical Practice Management Software: Embrace technology for efficient patient check-ins and check-outs. Streamline registration processes, minimize duplicate records, and verify patient insurance. This not only enhances the patient experience but also improves operational efficiency.
7. Vocational Training: To become a recognized urgent care specialist in New Zealand, you need to apply for vocational training. Whether you hold local qualifications or international postgraduate medical qualifications, meeting the standards of RNZCUC is essential.
8. Government Support: New Zealand's government encourages International Medical Graduates to join the urgent care field. Financial support, covering salaries during internships, and induction courses are part of the package. This enables doctors and nurses to provide efficient and safe care to New Zealand patients.

With these best practices, you can excel as an Urgent Care Doctor in New Zealand.

What is urgent care?

Oftentimes, individuals find themselves faced with unexpected injuries and illnesses that, although are not life-threatening, require immediate care. In such cases, it is generally too late for them to book an appointment with their primary care doctor. Some may even consider rushing to an emergency room, despite the injury being minor. As a result, after the assessment of their condition, they would most likely be made to wait for an extended period of time, as priority is given to patients based on the severity of their conditions.

To overcome these conflicts, individuals should look to urgent care clinics. Urgent care clinics treat patients with urgent minor injuries, without the requirement of a booking made prior to the visit. All urgent care patients are given equal priority, based on the time of visit.

Best Practices for urgent care centres

In order to ensure the smooth running and relevance of urgent care centres, a number of practices can be implemented:

Meticulous care and excellent patient experience:

Urgent care clinics have to deal directly with patients, and therefore, friendly and satisfactory patient-care is essential to the success of the clinic and the industry overall.

Another factor that facilitates an exemplary patient experience, is the convenience of urgent care clinics. Most operate during hours that primary care doctors would not, and the fact that they are open to accommodating walk-in clients, without appointments is an added benefit.

Urgent care clinics are well-equipped and have the latest technology. This allows patients to get tests and diagnostics done faster and more easily, and patients would not have to wait an entire day to get their results back. Generally, this is something that would only be expected in an Emergency Room or Department.

Although urgent care does not work on an appointment basis, setting up an online reservation/registration system where patients can reserve slots or wait in line through an online booking of a slot gives them the ability to work around their schedules and gives them the flexibility to arrive right on time for their turn.

Operational Efficiency:

While the factors of patient-care and convenience encourage a higher return rate of patients, importance has to be given to managing the incoming flow of patients who visit as a result of it.

Every process has to be conducted efficiently, and patients must move through the stages quickly enough for them to remain interested and patient, and prevent them from leaving. For example, as soon as patients are registered and billed, they must be guided to a room, or space to establish their preference over the other patients that walk in after.

When customers feel that they are being treated in an efficient environment, they are less likely to leave and more likely to return. This is an issue that Emergency Departments have faced for years.

Certain urgent care clinics have adopted the practice of having the nurses attend to the next patient while the doctors treat one. In order to ensure the smooth sailing of protocols and processes when dealing with customers, urgent care clinics have to successfully manage their resources so as to prevent a shortfall of staff when needed.

Promote Financial Sustainability:

Patients are generally more conscious of the price they have to pay at urgent care clinics than they are when at emergency departments. Since clinics face consumers directly, they are often faced with negotiations and queries on the prices of their services.

Medical facilities are generally unable to quote prices beforehand. Rather, they do it in real time, verifying coverage of the entire service. In order to promote financial sustainability, especially in cases of part-payments, clinics must try to collect as much of the bill as possible before the customer leaves the premises. Simultaneously, they must also guarantee that they tread carefully and do not disappoint or upset the customers in their dealings.

Engaged, Empowered and Motivated Employee Culture:

Creating a bottoms-up culture - At this time in life, the current workforce predominantly belongs to a generation that thrives in a bottoms-up workplace, rather than one that conducts themselves in a workplace practising the top-down management style. In a work space where employees feel confident enough to voice their opinions, ideas, and suggestions on how to improve operations or other factors of work, without having to face consequences from the management for doing so, there are greater opportunities for growth, and an increase in commitment to the long-term success of the clinic. This is because the employees understand the impact of their specific roles, and decisions, and how they collectively support and lead to the growth of the company.

Employee engagement through KPIs - A company must do their best to engrave an understanding of the Key Performance Indicators of the company. When members of the clinic understand KPIs, their effect on the business, and how they can each influence their roles and do better in order to increase the overall performance of the company, they become motivated by the feedback that they too can contribute. This ultimately leads to brainstorming sessions, and other discussions on how to improve their service, and treat customers better.

Employee Rewards - Employees will be highly motivated to do better if they are being rewarded for their good work. It could be in the form of salary increments, bonuses for their performances, or even a team treat such as an outing or meal when they successfully accomplish their targets.

Using Medical Practice Management Software for Patient Check-ins:

With advancements in technology, the use of practice management software’s in order to promote a more efficient and smooth registration process for clients, as implied earlier, could play a major role in keeping up the standards of the clinic and maintaining customer satisfaction. To begin with, there must be a clear distinction and explanation of the registration steps so the employees thoroughly understand the process before going through with it. Afterwards, patient forms must be collated and regular reviews must be done in order to prevent the existence of duplicates on the system. Patient insurance is then verified. Clinics must ensure that staff at the front desks have established and clear roles, and all of their staff are thoroughly trained in the processes of the system.

Using Medical Practice Management Software for Patient Check-outs:

In order to allow an efficient post-treatment process for patients after they are done with their sessions, check-out processes can be made easier using practice management software. A check-out process that identifies cash-paying customers as opposed to credit ones can be enabled by identifying the distinction prior to the appointment in itself, when the customer checks in.

Without a doubt, the urgent care business is becoming increasingly popular, and the industry is doing well as a whole. However, being able to stand out in a competitive industry such as this one, would mean making amendments to cater to the current consumer’s needs.

The ultimate goal is to achieve excellence in the operational conduct of the company, as well as give customers the best possible patient experience, both physically as well as financially.

In order to become a recognised urgent care specialist in New Zealand, one would need to apply for vocational training in urgent care. They can do this if they either have one of the following qualifications - The FRNZCUC [Fellowship of the Royal New Zealand College of Urgent Care], The FCUCP [Fellowship of the College of Urgent Care Physicians] or the FAMPA [Fellowship of the Accident and Medical Practitioners Association] - or if they have an international postgraduate medical qualification in urgent care. In the case of the latter, the standard of an individual’s qualification, experience and training will be assessed against that of RNZCUC.

There is an increase in demand for practitioners specialising in urgent care. Urgent care is a fast-growing industry, and as these clinics become increasingly popular for their ability to efficiently treat all walk-in customers, some places are doing their best to keep up by increasing staffing levels and keeping up resources. For this reason, the government of New Zealand has come up with strategies to encourage International Medical Graduates to join them. The government offers financial support for nurses who match the qualifications required to gain registration in urgent care in New Zealand. They also cover the salaries of international doctors during internships, as well as induction courses that they might need to complete. International medical graduates who wish to pursue careers in urgent care, are given training that teaches and enables them to work independently, so as to successfully provide effective and safe care to the patients of New Zealand.

Medfuture, a reputed medical and healthcare recruitment agency, connects qualified and experienced healthcare professionals on a global scale. For more information on the open vacancies in healthcare administration, visit the Medfuture job board.