To ensure your flu clinic runs as smooth as possible, we’ve put together our top 5 tips to help you better prepare and manage your patients and staff in the lead up.
1. Set up a ‘flu clinic practitioner’ in your booking software
The easiest and most efficient way to run a flu clinic is to set up a ‘flu clinic practitioner’ in your booking software. A ‘flu clinic practitioner’ is essentially a doctor’s profile set up in your appointment book named ‘Flu Clinic’ or any other name you would like to call your flu clinic. This makes it easy for patients to book in directly for a flu vaccination, while allowing you to manage all of your flu clinic bookings in one place. This gives you the flexibility to switch your nurses and doctors in and out of your flu clinic without disrupting your flu clinic schedule.
Pictured: How a ‘flu clinic practitioner’ appears to a patient when set up in HotDoc
2. Put up posters and Facebook posts
Let your patients know they can book in for a flu clinic by putting up posters and Facebook posts. If you are a HotDoc clinic and you need posters you can download our 2019 Flu Clinic Kit.
For help with running a Facebook Ad campaign read our guide: How to Run an Effective Facebook Ads Campaign for a Medical Centre.
3. Keep doctors and nurses in the loop
To reduce the chances of conflicting information being delivered to patients, give the doctors and nurses providing the vaccinations all the information they need well in advance. This means keeping them informed on, not just vaccination guidelines, but how the administration side of things will work.
For example:
- How many patients are expected?
- How long will the clinic run for?
- How many doctors or nurses will be involved?
- Are you charging or not charging?
- When is stock expected to arrive?
- Who is supplying the stock?
For the most up-to-date training on vaccination guidelines, you can watch our free webinar on Webinar: Flu Vaccine Update 2019.
4. Educate reception staff on FAQs
To reduce the chances of your reception team being caught off-guard it’s a good idea to provide them with the answers to your patient’s most frequently asked vaccination questions.
Here are a few of the most common questions:
- What is in the flu shot?
- How long does the flu vaccine protect me?
- Can I still get the flu after getting a flu shot?
- Can I get a flu shot if I’m on antibiotics?
- How much does it cost?
- Are there side effects?
5. Use online booking software
To save your reception staff the time and hassle of manually processing bookings, use online booking software that allows patients to make bookings on their own.
Some solutions, like HotDoc Online Bookings, allow patients to book in for specific services like flu shots and only see availability on the days or times preset by you. You can even create five minute time slots. This makes it super easy to automatically group flu vaccination patients together.
Above: HotDoc Online Bookings explainer video
A select few software solutions, like HotDoc Inform Broadcast, also allow you to send SMS messages to patients encouraging them to book in for specific services, like the flu vaccine. The SMS message includes a link that allows patients to book direct from their phone. This helps not only manage your bookings, but also encourages more patients to make bookings.
Above: HotDoc Inform explainer video
