Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

More Efficiently, and Effectively, Manage this Valuable Resource

By Morgan Atkins 

A community Physician Needs Analysis (PNA) is a valuable asset for hospitals looking to meet the needs of their community through service line growth and physician and provider recruitment. But in order to successfully execute a PNA, you first need your physician database (or roster) to be accurate.

The details of a physician database—physician retirement dates, specialties, affiliation status, and so much more—provide a more complete understanding of what’s in your market. This database can help you answer questions such as: Where is there an oversupply (or undersupply) of physicians? What are the referral patterns of the physicians in my service area? Answers to these questions can directly impact your physician strategy.

Don't miss this related post: Top Methodologies for Determining Physician Need

Maintaining an up-to-date physician database can be a tedious, and often manual, process. The challenge? Collecting all the right information and ensuring that the data you have is current, since physicians are often moving or changing affiliations. In this post, we’ll share the sources we use, and strategies we employ, to make the process of maintaining an accurate physician database more feasible.

Tags: physician relations, healthcare physician strategy, physician outreach strategy, physician needs analysis, physician strategy

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

A Surprising Trend in Patient Care Patterns

By Dave Sellers

We recently tested a theory as to whether or not distance to a physician referral affects how quickly a patient seeks care.* All other factors being equal, we hypothesized that patients would not act as quickly in scheduling a physician visit if that physician is far away. Conversely, if the doctor is close by, we assumed patients would be more likely to book their appointment sooner.

In a previous post, we discussed a similar idea. Are patients more likely to go to the hospital closest to them when in need of care? In that case, tif all other factors are equal, then the answer was yes. But rarely are all other factors equal. Factors such as a hospital's CMI, their community perception, and relative patient satisfaction rates all come into play and can often be more important than proximity.

With this new theory, we were still considering the role of distance, but this time, we wanted to know how it would affect a patient’s responsiveness when needing to schedule time with a referred physician. Our findings surprised us.

Tags: physician referral, physician referral tool, physician relations, healthcare physician strategy, physician outreach strategy, physician retention, 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

Session Summary: Physician Relations Inside and Out—Launching and Fueling Your Program for the Long Haul

By Sean Conway

The first day of SHSMD Connections 2017 was jam-packed with excellent educational opportunities, just as you would expect. The SHSMD website promises a conference that will equip healthcare professionals with the information and resources needed to face the rapidly evolving future of healthcare, head-on. Day one of the main educational sessions lived up to this commitment.

The “Physician Relations Inside and Out” session was a perfect example of an instructional, learning opportunity created with future growth in mind. Carol Koenecke-Grant of Valley Health System has built a physician relations program from the ground up, using a well-planned strategy. In this session, she shared how to develop a business plan integrating communication best practices, gain ongoing access to physicians, and deliver results.

Tags: physician liaison, physician relations, conference, healthcare, healthcare conference, physician liaision, SHSMD, healthcare physician strategy, shsmd17, healthcare meetings, meetings

Why Patient Loss is More than a Calculation of Supply and Demand

By Lee Ann Lambdin and Jackie DeGroat

As you read in a previous blog, a Community Physician and Provider Demand Analysis is essentially a math problem—determine supply, determine demand, and subtract. Your facility’s growth or decline in market share is closely tied to the physicians who are available in your service area. If you don’t have the right number of physicians to support the number of patients in your service area, they will likely go elsewhere to receive care.

Tags: physician liaison, physician recruitment, physician tool, healthcare strategic growth, healthcare strategic planning, healthcare strategy, physician liaision, healthcare physician strategy, physician outreach strategy, healthcare data analytics, patient loss, physician retention

Why Having the Right Number of Physicians is Key to Retaining Your Patients

By Lee Ann Lambdin and Jackie DeGroat

Your facility’s growth or decline in market share is closely tied to the physicians who are available in your service area. If you don’t have the right number of physicians to support the number of patients in your service area, they will likely go elsewhere to receive care.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, patient demand is surpassing physician supply. In other words, there are more patients needing care than there are physicians practicing medicine. Hospitals that conduct a community physician and provider demand analysis, sometimes known as a Physician Demand Estimator or Medical Staff Development Planning, will be armed with the right intelligence to effectively recruit for the appropriate specialists needed in their service area.

Tags: physician liaison, physician recruitment, physician tool, healthcare strategic growth, healthcare strategic planning, healthcare strategy, physician liaision, healthcare physician strategy, physician outreach strategy, healthcare data analytics, patient loss, physician retention