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Who may operate each device, and with what accreditation
In an aesthetic medicine clinic, many pieces of equipment and medical machinery can be operated by professional profiles other than the physician. To do so, those professionals must receive the qualification provided by the technology supplier itself and always work under strict medical supervision.
The technical data sheet decides who operates each device: the nature of each machine and its specifications determine which professional must perform the treatment. A treatment reserved for the physician takes up hours of their consultation time; in the hands of an accredited nurse, those hours are freed up.
In other cases, depending on the qualifications and experience of the staff already hired or still to be hired, specific, intensive and extensive training is required. Its scope depends on the functions or tasks each professional will carry out. The inventory is done machine by machine: what each technical data sheet requires, who is accredited on that device and what training is still pending.
Employee or commercial contract: what a labor inspection looks at
To assist the aesthetic physician during treatments, the usual practice is to hire a nurse or, failing that, a clinical assistant (auxiliar de clínica). Because they are healthcare staff, their hiring must be reported to the health authorities.
Anyone who works with the clinic’s schedules, equipment and resources must be registered as an employee under the general Social Security scheme (régimen general). It is the valid arrangement in this setting, as opposed to commercial contracts with external collaborators who invoice as self-employed workers.
The difference shows up in a labor inspection: those collaborators are considered, for all purposes, “bogus self-employed” workers (falsos autónomos), and the penalty for that irregularity falls on the company. The review is done role by role: whoever works the center’s hours and uses its equipment goes on the general scheme.
Records, invoices and quotes: the training that completes the clinical assistant
Purely administrative, sales or management tasks are frequently the ones that receive the least attention in aesthetic medicine clinics.
The first is keeping patient records, with their filing and their periodic purging. An orderly archive speeds up the search for the clinical material used to prepare each day’s schedule and gives full control over the treatments performed on each patient and their progress over time. A disorderly one costs minutes of consultation time.
A clinical assistant’s training does not include administrative or sales skills. These cover counting, organizing and filing invoices, cashing up, defending the quote after the medical diagnosis, customer service and follow-up.
Defending the quote is the task that shows most at the cash desk: the medical diagnosis ends in a treatment proposal, and whoever explains it at the front desk decides whether it becomes an appointment. The division of tasks is best written down role by role: who files, who balances the till, who explains the quote and who calls the patient who has not come back.
Medical ethics and the bottom line: the clinic moves forward with both
Those tasks sustain the business side of the clinic. Opening an aesthetic medicine clinic demands a major effort in advanced training and investment, and that effort justifies managing the business side of the center with the same rigor as the medical side.
It is taken for granted that physician-entrepreneurs provide the pillar of clinical practice. The clinic also works as a business unit that needs to sustain itself and generate income that secures its continuity. The team’s administrative, sales and management training is as indispensable as its technical qualifications, because the clinic moves forward with both areas in balance.
It is worth keeping in mind: medical ethics is fully compatible with business profitability. In fact, in hundreds of thousands of companies, higher revenue widens the room to devote part of the profits to social initiatives, and so give back to society part of what they have generated.
Training the staff and covering the clinic’s training needs is straightforward with qualified professionals who have extensive experience in clinics. The starting point fits on a single sheet: each role in one column, its device or task in the next and the pending training in the third.
Your clinic’s training plan, area by area and role by role
Knowing who should be trained and in what is half the work. The other half is organizing that training without emptying the schedule and measuring its effect on the bottom line.
Within our Growth line, our team of consultants trains clinic owners, managers and staff across every area of the business, with a plan built on your figures.
It is part of the method we have applied in more than 1,050 projects since 1999.