How Modern Tech Can Revolutionize Your Phlebotomy Business
Part 1 of our 2-part series features helpful tips for phlebotomy business owners. Tomorrow’s blog post will highlight recommendations for independent phlebotomists.
Let’s cut to the chase. If you operate a business in the healthcare industry, you’re likely in a pickle. On one hand, your goal is to always help improve patient outcomes and experiences. But you also have a business to run, which means you have to spend just as much time working to reduce waste, improve team efficiencies, and ultimately grow your business. Nowhere in healthcare is this more evident than the phlebotomy sector.
The majority of care plans today begin with a blood draw from one of the 100,000+ phlebotomists working as independent contractors and employees throughout the U.S. Though the specimen samples they collect serve as one of the most important aspects of care, securing contracts and running a phlebotomy business can feel like an uphill battle. Some of our most valued healthcare professionals must wrestle with a patchwork system of phone calls and spreadsheets just to source, secure, and dispatch the talent needed for a blood draw to occur. As a result, phlebotomy labor providers struggle to manage and send appointments to their phlebotomists performing draws in the field and in offices. In addition to organizing their teams, they face patient cancellations, missed appointments, and documentation challenges.
But there’s good news: Technology can help. The right platform can not only boost the way phlebotomy teams operate, but it can also help grow a phlebotomy business at large.
Tech designed for phlebotomy business owners
There are phlebotomy labor providers of all shapes and sizes. The owners of these organizations do everything in their power to grow their businesses and to earn more money despite the challenges in today’s market. While it’s tough out there, one thing is for sure — for a good phlebotomy business, there are a growing number of blood draws and insurance examination opportunities up for grabs! The hard part, however, is when a phlebotomy business owner attempts to sell their services to the physicians, labs, health systems, and insurance groups. There’s competition around every corner for phlebotomy businesses and the good ones know they must always be on the lookout for a competitive advantage.
For most phlebotomy businesses, performing the actual blood draw is the easy part. Their phlebotomists are expertly trained and are pros at what they do. The hard parts are (1) earning contracts and (2) managing a team of phlebotomists. This isn’t easy.
With customers, it’s relationship building, it’s developing trust, it’s having a good bedside manner with patients, it’s making life easy for a patient. With staff, it’s about being flexible, being fair, and having work for them.
There are numerous steps that successful phlebotomy business can take to set themselves apart from the competition and make it easy for both customers and staff to work with their phlebotomy business. If you’re a phlebotomy business owner or part of a phlebotomy team, ask yourself — do you ever miss calls? Get to emails/faxes late? Forget to respond to texts? If so, you’re not alone.
So here’s where the tech part comes in. Smart phlebotomy businesses can gain the upper hand by seeking platforms like Workpath, a new technology designed to make life easier for phlebotomy business owners and others performing specialized services in the healthcare industry. When a phlebotomy business owner signs up with Workpath, they are given a unique ordering link. This link, which they can give to any of their customers or patients, allows customers to directly send appointments to a phlebotomy business at any time. Phlebotomy business owners can put this link on their business cards, on flyers, and in emails. It doesn’t matter where you put it, all orders come directly to the phlebotomy business. Have multiple services (blood draw, insurance exam, swab, etc.)? No problem! The phlebotomy business owner can easily customize their offering through the Workpath platform.
Once a business owner has the order, the fun begins. Using Workpath’s technology, which was designed specifically for healthcare jobs like phlebotomy, business owners can send their new appointments directly to an app on their phlebotomists’ mobile phones (assign them directly or throw it up first come, first served) and then receive status updates for their appointments (the patient even gets automatic appointment reminders from you).
Once a business owner or their staff completes the appointment, they can then use the Workpath system to bill their customer and keep a database of all their work. All of this is done right in the business owner’s personal Workpath portal. And when that happens, phlebotomy business owners and their phlebotomists can get back to what’s really important — creating exceptional patient experiences and helping improve outcomes.
In Part 2 of our series on the phlebotomy industry, we’ll dive into ways technology can help individual phlebotomists perform their tasks more efficiently. Phlebotomy business owners can learn more about Workpath at http://www.workpath.co/customers/phlebotomy.
