Practice Improvement
Helping your practice work better
As a practice grows, the way things are done doesn't always grow with it.
Processes that worked when you were seeing fewer patients or had a smaller team can gradually become time-consuming, inconsistent or overly manual.
- Your practice-management system may be capable of doing more.
- Your team may have developed workarounds.
- Patient communications may have been added piece by piece.
And sometimes the change hasn't come from within the practice at all.
Private medical insurers, regulatory bodies, suppliers and software providers can change their processes or requirements, leaving you having to adapt the way your practice works — whether that's around authorisations, billing, portals, information requirements or everyday administration.
What worked perfectly well six months ago may suddenly need reviewing.
And when you're already busy treating patients and running the practice, finding the time to understand what's changed, decide what needs to happen and then actually implement it can be difficult.
Practice Improvement is about identifying those frustrations and turning them into practical improvements that make the practice easier to run.
I don't just tell you what could be changed and leave you with a list of recommendations. Depending on what you need, I can help understand the new requirement, work out what needs to change within your practice, design the improvement, make the changes, test them with you and show you or your team how to manage things confidently afterwards.
When the practice has evolved but the processes haven't
“We’ve always done it that way” can quietly become expensive
Practices rarely sit down and deliberately design every process from beginning to end.
They evolve.
Something is created because it solves a problem at the time. Another step gets added later. Somebody develops a workaround. The team grows. The software changes. An insurer introduces a new requirement.
Before long, a simple task can involve far more work than it really needs to.
You might recognise things like:
- Information being entered in more than one place
- Forms being manually sent, chased or uploaded
- Patient communications relying on somebody remembering to send them
- Cancellations and DNAs creating avoidable gaps in the diary
- Referrals or recalls being tracked manually
- Reports that take too long to produce or aren't trusted
- Practice-management software being used for only a fraction of what it can do
- Processes that work differently depending on who is doing them
- Private medical insurance requirements changing and the practice needing to adapt its authorisation, invoicing or administration processes
- Tasks continuing simply because “that’s how we’ve always done it”
None of these things necessarily feels significant on its own.
But across a busy practice, they add up to lost time, unnecessary administration, inconsistent patient experiences and less capacity to grow.
Free Practice Efficiency Calculator
Before you decide what to fix, understand what it could be costing you.
Use the free Practice Efficiency Calculator to estimate the value of lost clinical capacity, owner time and inefficient administration within your practice.
Start with the size of the problem
Sometimes you need two hours. Sometimes you need the process rebuilt.
Not every frustration needs to become a major project.
That's why Practice Improvement has two different ways to access support.
Practice Systems Power Session — £195
For one specific issue where you need focused expertise.
You may already know what isn't working and simply need help figuring out the best way to improve it.
The two hours are used flexibly rather than automatically meaning two hours sitting together online.
Depending on the issue, that might involve:
- Two shorter working sessions
- An initial conversation followed by time for me to investigate or make agreed changes
- Working through something together so I can show you how to do it yourself
- A combination of advice, practical implementation and guidance
The aim is to use the time in whatever way will create the most value for your practice.
And importantly, the goal isn't to make you dependent on Done Virtually. Wherever possible, I'll help you understand what has changed and give you or your team the confidence to manage it yourselves going forward.
£195 fixed price
Explore the Practice Systems Power SessionPractice Improvement Project
For a bigger issue that needs more than a couple of hours to properly improve.
If a process, workflow or system needs redesigning, configuring or implementing, we'll define the outcome before the work begins.
I then help turn that improvement into something that actually works within your practice — not simply something that looks good in a recommendation document.
Depending on the project, this can include making agreed system changes, developing processes, testing how they work, creating relevant guidance or documentation and showing you or your team how to use the improved way of working.
From £495
You'll know the scope, intended outcome and price before the project begins.
Book a Practice Discovery CallFocused on the outcome
You're paying for what improves, not how long I sit at my desk
Practice Improvement projects aren't charged as an open-ended stream of hourly work.
We'll agree what needs to change and what the project is intended to achieve before I start. You'll then receive a fixed price for that agreed scope.
That gives us both clarity and means the focus stays on making the improvement happen, rather than counting hours.
If we uncover something outside the agreed scope, I'll talk to you before doing any additional work.
There are no surprise invoices.
Common areas of support
What could work better in your practice?
Practice Improvement projects are built around the issue you need to solve rather than a standard package.
Common areas include:
- WriteUpp, Cliniko and practice-management system optimisation
- Online booking and appointment workflows
- Patient or client journey
- Forms, templates and communications
- Cancellations and DNA processes
- Recalls and follow-up processes
- Incoming and onward referral pathways
- Private medical insurance processes, authorisations and billing workflows
- Invoicing, payments and credit-control workflows
- Reporting and KPI dashboards
- Administration and practice workflows
- SOPs and operational documentation
- Automation and removal of repetitive manual work
- Team processes and onboarding
- Patient experience
- CQC-related operational processes and documentation, where relevant
This isn't an exhaustive list.
If something within the day-to-day running of your practice is taking too much time, creating frustration or simply doesn't feel as though it's working as well as it could, it's worth having a conversation.
Make more of what you already have
Before changing software, let's see whether your current system can work harder
It's easy to assume that an inefficient process means you need a new system.
Often, you don't.
Many practices are using only part of the functionality already available within their practice-management software.
Features may have been postponed when the system was originally set up. The practice may have grown since then. New team members may have introduced different ways of working. Or existing processes may simply never have been revisited.
Before suggesting a migration or another piece of software, I'll look at whether what you already have could be configured or used more effectively.
Where a different solution genuinely makes more sense, I'll tell you that too.
Explore Practice SystemsExplore further
Two areas where small changes can make a big difference
Booking & Patient Journey
From first enquiry and online booking through reminders, forms, appointments and follow-up, the patient journey touches almost every part of the practice.
Improving how those stages connect can reduce administration while creating a smoother, more consistent experience for patients.
Billing & Income
Completed clinical work should turn into collected income without creating unnecessary administration.
Improvement projects can look at the processes surrounding invoicing, payments, private medical insurers, authorisations, reconciliation and outstanding balances.
Practical implementation
From “this isn’t working” to a better way of doing it
You don't need to arrive with the solution.
You simply need to know what is causing frustration or what you'd like to work better.
We'll agree the issue, the intended outcome and what is included in the project.
From there, I'll do the work needed to develop and implement the agreed improvement, involving you or your team where input or decisions are needed.
Before anything significant changes within the live practice, we'll make sure you're comfortable with what's being introduced.
And once it's ready, I'll make sure you understand the new way of working rather than leaving you with something only I know how to use.
The aim is always to leave your practice working better — and your team more confident — than when we started.
Building capability, not dependency
Improvements should make your practice stronger, not more reliant on me
One of the principles behind Practice Improvement is that you shouldn't need to keep paying Done Virtually simply because I was the person who set something up.
Where appropriate, I'll explain how the improved process works, show you or relevant members of your team what they need to know and provide practical documentation or guidance.
Of course, if you'd rather Done Virtually continue managing something for you, that can be discussed separately.
But the choice remains yours.
My role is to help your practice work better — not make myself indispensable to it.
Start with the bigger picture
When there are several problems, start with the Practice Performance Review™
Sometimes you can clearly identify the problem.
Other times, everything simply feels harder than it should.
There may be issues with the diary, team, systems, reporting, cancellations, capacity and the amount that still depends personally on you — and it's difficult to know what deserves attention first.
That's when the Practice Performance Review™ is a better starting point.
Rather than immediately investing in individual improvements, I'll look across 13 areas that influence how well your practice runs, identify the connections between them and give you a prioritised 90-day improvement plan.
A simple way to choose
Start with the problem, not the package
£195 Practice Systems Power Session
You know the issue and it should be possible to make meaningful progress within two focused hours.
Find out morePractice Improvement Project — from £495
You know what needs improving, but it requires more substantial design, configuration or implementation.
Find out morePractice Performance Review™ — £995
You know the practice could work better, but there are several issues or you're not sure what needs fixing first.
Find out morePractice Operations
The challenge is no longer one individual process. You need an experienced operational partner alongside you on an ongoing basis.
Find out moreMore than knowing which button to press
Improving the process behind the system
Knowing how to configure software is useful.
Understanding why the process needs to work differently in the first place is where the bigger value lies.
I bring more than 25 years of experience across administration, customer service, systems, processes and operational management, including over 15 years in management and four years at Director level.
That experience is now combined with hands-on work across healthcare and wellbeing practices.
It means I can look at an everyday frustration and consider not only how to fix the immediate issue, but how the change fits with your patients or clients, your team, external requirements, the rest of the practice and where the business is heading.
I bring ideas and proven operational thinking from larger organisations, then adapt what is genuinely useful to the size and culture of your practice.
Better structure without unnecessary corporate complexity.
What we're working towards
Less friction. Less unnecessary admin. More room for the practice to grow.
A successful Practice Improvement project should leave something noticeably better than it was before.
That might mean:
- Fewer manual steps
- Less duplicated work
- A smoother patient or client experience
- Better use of your existing systems
- Fewer things relying on somebody remembering
- More consistent ways of working across the team
- Better information available when you need it
- Greater confidence in how a process works
- A clearer way of meeting changing external requirements
- More time and capacity available elsewhere in the practice
Sometimes one relatively small improvement can remove a frustration that has existed for years.
And sometimes fixing one process reveals just how much more effectively the rest of the practice could work too.
Free 30-minute Practice Discovery Call
What's the thing in your practice you keep saying you need to sort?
Tell me what's taking too much time, frustrating the team, creating unnecessary admin or simply not working as well as you know it could.
Or perhaps something outside the practice has changed — an insurer, system or requirement — and you're now trying to work out how your own processes need to adapt.
We'll use the call to understand the issue and work out the most proportionate way to tackle it. That might be a £195 Power Session, a fixed-price Practice Improvement project, or — if the issues are wider — a Practice Performance Review.
And if I think you can solve it perfectly well yourselves with a little guidance, I'll tell you that too.
No charge. No obligation. No hard sell.