Every allied health business should be future-proofing its operations. These strategies will help you adapt to the challenges of the healthcare industry and build a thriving business.

#1 Refine Your Strategy

Future-proofing your allied health business begins with understanding your goals and strategies. When you have a firm outline of what you want to achieve as a business, it will be easier to know what to invest your resources in.

Your allied health business strategy will guide you as you decide how to respond to staffing shortages, changing regulations and more.

Key Questions for Reviewing Your Allied Health Business Strategy

What are your business goals? And what priority does each goal have?
Is your allied health business on track to achieve these goals? If not, why?
What, and who, do you need to achieve your goals?
Who are your ideal clients and what do they need?
Are you meeting your clients' needs? If not, what do you need to change to do so?
Are any of your current services and/or strategies distracting you from your goals?
What are your biggest challenges at the moment?
What role do you play in your allied health business? Are you primarily a healthcare worker or a leadership figure?

#2 Identify Your Bottlenecks

While refining your strategy, you should have begun to work out what's stopping your allied health business from growing as quickly as it could. However, there are some bottlenecks that might go overlooked.

A review of your data could help you discover, for example, that your appointment cancellation rate is significantly higher among new clients than older ones. Or, you could calculate that you're losing more time than you realised manually filing NDIS claims.

Removing these bottlenecks will help your business thrive, no matter what challenges you face in the future.

How to Spot Bottlenecks in Your Allied Health Business

Use your care management software to auto-generate reports into your allied health business' productivity levels, staffing levels and finances. Examining them will help you spot areas for improvement. In particular, look at:

Profit margins
Appointment cancellations
Staff absences
Expenses
Time tracked vs scheduled

Any time you notice a trend, whether positive or negative, work out why it’s happening and how you can adapt. This might mean asking your staff for input or running short experiments.

#3 Look After Your Cash Flow

Cash flow is essential for future-proofing your allied health business. A steady flow of funds will enable you to invest in your business, adapt to changes, hire more staff, pay for training and more.

As your business needs evolve, cash flow will ensure that you can react quickly. And as the healthcare industry feels the squeeze of regulatory changes, inflation and NDIS price controls, it will help keep you financially resilient.

Crucial Tips for Improving Your Cash Flow

Use your care management software to auto-generate accurate NDIS invoices so that you get paid correctly and on time
Ask your staff to attach expenses to their shift records so you can accurately predict costs and look after your cash flow
Build a buffer into your financial plans so that you always have cash you can access
Use the client funds management tools in your care management software to more accurately predict your future income

#4 Invest in the Right Technology

Allied health and care management software solutions can help you future-proof your business. Technology has an increasingly important role to play in allied health services, from client data management to billing and staff scheduling.

However, you should pick your technology carefully. Make sure it aligns with your goals and makes your team's workflow easier.

What to Look for in Your Allied Health Software

Ideally, your allied health software will:

Be easy to use
Contain NDIS integrations so you can comply with evolving pricing arrangements, regulations and more
Help you reduce your admin time and, in doing so, enable you to reduce your costs and focus on leadership decisions
Use secure, modern technology so you can better future-proof your allied health business

#5 Create a Staffing Strategy

Your allied health staff are key to your business’ success. But with Australia facing a skills and labour shortage, you can’t take your staff for granted.

Designing a staffing strategy will help you retain your most talented workers, recruit specialist staff as needed and support your team in being more productive at work.

Improved Rostering for a Better Staffing Strategy

Rostering should play a central role in your staffing strategy. Improving your rostering can boost your staff retainment rates, engagement levels and productivity levels. When your allied health workers have shifts that fit around their life, they’ll experience greater job satisfaction. They’ll also be less likely to look for additional shifts elsewhere.

Care rostering software can help you build better rosters in minutes. Invite your team members to set their preferred shift times so you can improve team morale and reduce the risk of no-shows. A job board will also help you to quickly find cover.