Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

Adapting Your Growth Strategy to Meet the Needs of Aging and Racially and Ethnically Diverse Patient Populations 

By Michael Shipley
Senior Product Manager

Tags: Blog, physician referral, Stratasan, strategic growth, strategic growth planning, strategic planning, data analytics, data-driven decisions, data strategy, growth planning, health care, health data, health strategist, health strategy, health system, health systems, healthcare, healthcare budget, healthcare planning, healthcare strategic growth, healthcare strategic planning, healthcare strategy, healthcare systems, hospital, hospital planning, hospital strategic planning, hospital strategy, hospitals, Inpatient Statistics, markeitng, Market Share, nashville, Physicians, Population Health Management, referral data, referrals, healthcare market share, marketing research, patient population, service area growth, service line growth, strategic growth plan, physician outreach strategy, Hospital growth plan, healthcare leadership, healthcare market data, hospital growth, physician patterns, patient experience, customer experience, physician strategy, diversity, data confidence, outmigration, physician referral leakage, outpatient, HOPD, 2022, Patient Origin, Syntellis, healthcare annual planning

Tags: physician liaison, Physician Pathway, physician recruitment, physician referral, physician referral tool, physician relations, physician tool, strategic growth, strategic positioning, health care, health strategy, health system, healthcare strategy, hospital strategy, pathways, physician patterns

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

Stratasan’s Physician Patterns to Offer Expanded Physician Referral Insights

By Dave Sellers and Jason Haley

As you may have heard, CMS Administrator Seema Verma announced that The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is making Medicare Advantage encounter data, which covers provider identifiers, diagnoses and date and type of service, available for the first time to researchers.

This new effort is part of the CMS and White House patient data collaboration, known as MyHealtheData. CMS also plans to encourage Medicare Advantage programs to use release platforms that meet the capabilities of CMS' Blue Button 2.0 feature, which allows patients to access their own claims data. A patient-centered system requires focus on "data, quality data, cost data, a patient's own data," Vema shared.

How does this update affect Stratasan customers, and particularly, those in Medicare-only states: Alabama, Arkansas, South Dakota, Idaho, and Hawaii?

Tags: physician referral, data analysis, data analytics, healthcare data, medicare, healthcare market data, healthcare data analytics, 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

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

As a Physician Relations Rep, data is the foundation upon which your entire outreach strategy lives or dies. Without a reliable data source, a trustworthy physician referral tool, and a system for tracking and measuring initiatives, your strategy will lack the full depth of understanding needed to meet your annual growth goals.

The goals of a Physician Relations program are to:

• Promote physician engagement in order to grow volume in alignment with the hospital's strategic plan.
• Engage and connect physicians to other physicians and to support key hospital services.
• Unearth any quality, customer service, or access issues physicians may be experiencing.

Tags: Blog, physician liaison, Physician Pathway, physician recruitment, physician referral, physician referral tool, physician relations, strategic growth, strategic planning, health care, health system, healthcare, healthcare strategy, hospital strategy, Physicians, physician patterns

Tags: Blog, physician liaison, physician liaisons, Physician Pathway, physician recruitment, physician referral, physician relations, data sensitivity, department of justice, doctor, health care, healthcare, hospital, Pathway, physician, referral data, physician patterns