Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

Drive More Patient Volume and Improve Your Bottom Line

By Jackie DeGroat and Megan Reeves

Here’s something you already know: hospitals need physicians in order to drive patient volume. Opening a new service line or expanding an existing one is dependent on successful physician recruitment.

What you may not fully understand is how to involve physicians in a way that engages them at a strategic level. It can be a challenge to incorporate their input, even when you know it’s important to do so. And it can be a particularly difficult prospect for hospitals who have not prioritized this approach in the past, as it means a change to the status quo.

But the reality is that involving physicians in your planning can improve their connection to your hospital and their loyalty to your mission, vision, and values. It can also increase their buy-in, leading them to be more productive and willing participants in service line growth. Additionally, physicians have a firsthand understanding of your patient’s needs. Their input into your strategic growth strategy can lead to better alignment with the needs of your market.

Tags: physician relations, strategic growth, strategic growth planning, hospital strategic growth, physician recrutiment, strategic growth plan, healthcare physician strategy

The Right Methodology Can Improve Your Physician Recruitment Strategy

By Jackie DeGroat

Physician shortage continues to be a concern for hospitals and healthcare systems. To combat this shortage, it is critical to develop a physician recruitment plan that will best meet the needs of the community. Recruiting the right number and types of physicians will grow service lines where expansion is needed and add new service lines where needed services do not already exist. That being said, the recruitment process will take time and effort, but the result will be new physicians who fulfill community needs, succeed in their practice, and stay long term. You can improve your physician recruitment strategy in the following ways:

Tags: physician tool, physician recrutiment, healthcare physician strategy, physician outreach strategy, physician retention, physician shortage, physician needs analysis, physician strategy

Takeaways from the 2018 Healthcare Marketing and Physician Strategies Summit

By Jackie DeGroat

This month, several members of our team attended the 2018 Healthcare Marketing & Physician Strategies Summit in Salt Lake City, UT. This year, more than 800 executives attended The Summit, which is the leading conference for senior-level marketing, strategy, physician relations, sales, and business development executives from hospitals, health systems, academic medical centers, integrated networks, and medical groups.

Attending as sponsors, our team found the experience to be a rewarding mix of networking with peers and gleaning best practices from specialists in various arenas of the healthcare industry. Here are my key takeaways, summarized as a series of best practices for physician liaisons in the areas of sales planning and tracking and measuring results.

Tags: physician liaison, Physician Pathway, physician recruitment, healthcare, healthcare data, physician liaision, healthcare analytics partner, healthcare physician strategy, physician outreach strategy, healthcare market data, physician patterns

Physician Patterns and Loyalty

By Jackie DeGroat, Tony Camarata, and Rebecca Groner

In case you missed the earlier announcement, Physician Pathway is now comprised of two tools: Physician Loyalty and Physician Patterns. Here is a quick overview of what each tool offers:

• Physician Patterns shows you where physician referral patterns and any leakage is occurring.
• Physician Loyalty shows you where physicians are treating their cases.

Together, these tools provide focused intelligence around physician and provider relationships and uncover physician behavior in your market. Your team will spend less time mining data and more time strategizing.

Important note: For existing users, Physician Pathway has been renamed to Physician Patterns. It’s the same product, just with a new name!

Tags: physician liaison, Physician Pathway, physician recruitment, physician referral tool, physician relations, physician tool, healthcare physician strategy, physician outreach strategy, physician retention, physician patterns

Why the Right Referral Software is Necessary to Ensure Goals Are Being Met

By Jackie DeGroat and Sean Conway

Hospitals depend heavily on their referring physicians for patient volume and revenue, which is why developing and maintaining relationships with these physicians is so important. Physician Liaisons are the face, voice, eyes, and ears of this demanding effort. Physicians have a lot of options for referrals and this competition puts even more pressure on physician relations teams to effectively manage provider relationships.

Physician relations teams are responsible for strengthening relationships between physicians and their hospital or health system, with the goal of driving more referrals in-network. There are many components that make up a quality physician relations program, such as a strategic sales plan, effective encounters, and meaningful conversations. But to ensure program goals are being met, physician relations teams must track and measure their initiatives so they can successfully identify opportunities for improvement.

Tags: Physician Pathway, physician referral, physician relations, strategic growth, healthcare data, healthcare marketing, healthcare strategic growth, healthcare strategic planning, marketing, healthcare physician strategy, healthcare data analytics

Takeaways from the 2017 Healthcare Marketing and Physician Strategies Summit

By Jackie DeGroat

This past week, several members of our team attended the 2017 Healthcare Marketing & Physician Strategies Summit in Austin, TX. The Summit is the leading conference for senior-level marketing, strategy, physician relations, sales, and business development executives from hospitals, health systems, academic medical centers, integrated networks, and medical groups.

Attending as sponsors, our group found the experience to be a rewarding mix of networking with peers and gleaning best practices from specialists in various arenas of the healthcare industry. My greatest takeaways came from discussions on physician relations and strategy and below you will find an overview of what I found to be most helpful.

Tags: physician liaison, Physician Pathway, physician recruitment, healthcare, healthcare data, physician liaision, healthcare analytics partner, healthcare physician strategy, physician outreach strategy, healthcare market data, physician patterns

When patients require specialty care, a primary care physician (PCP), referred to as a “gatekeeper” in the healthcare industry, decides what specialist to refer the patient to. More often than not, patients must wait weeks, sometimes months, before being seen by a specialist. Lengthy wait times create frustration for both PCP’s and patients, worrying the delay will worsen the patient’s condition. 

These lengthy wait times can—and should—also drastically affect your physician referral strategy. Tracking physician-to-physician referrals over too short a time period will give you a limited and likely incomplete view of where the physicians in your area are receiving and sending their patients.

Tags: Blog, physician liaison, physician referral, physician referral tool, physician relations, health care, healthcare, healthcare strategy, healthcare physician strategy, physician outreach strategy, physician patterns