Interviews with: Mitzi Kent and Dustie Maguire
Get an insider look at the organization of a successful physician relations program as shared in this interview with Stratasan and LifePoint Health. Learn about the goals and responsibilities, hiring and leadership, relationship building techniques, intelligence and information, and compliance needed to run a thriving and effective team.
Tags: Blog, physician liaison, Physician Pathway, physician recruitment, physician referral, physician referral tool, physician relations, physician tool, strategic growth, strategic positioning, data, health, health care, health strategy, health system, healthcare, healthcare strategy, hospital, hospital strategy, hospitals, medicare, pathways, Physicians, referrals
Whether it proves to be an opportunity or a curse, one thing is certain; today’s healthcare providers are living in interesting times. The US healthcare system is facing a monumental physician shortage due to population growth, an increase in the number of aging Americans, and the retirement of practicing doctors. Additionally, despite increased medical school enrollments over the last half decade, the physician shortfall is projected to grow to 100,000 by the year 2030, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Concurrent to these headaches has been the onslaught of big data—seen by many as a potential elixir to a myriad of problems, and seen by others as merely a new conundrum.
One thing is certain: hospitals and health systems have never had a more urgent need for accurate, actionable intelligence—especially with regards to fostering and maintaining their physician relations to drive strategic growth.
Tags: Blog, physician liaison, Physician Pathway, physician referral, physician relations, strategic growth, health care, healthcare, physician liaision, white paper
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
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:
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
We hope it’s been a wonderful year of growth and learning through Stratasan's Strategic Growth blog series. As we close out the year, we thought it would be helpful to share the 5 most popular blog posts from 2017. These posts received the most hits and seemed to provide the most helpful strategic growth guidance to you, our readers.
If you’re traveling over the holidays, this is a great way to review helpful blog posts that you may have missed or revisit your favorites for fresh insight.
Tags: Blog, physician relations, strategic growth, health care, healthcare, healthcare marketing, healthcare strategic growth, marketing, software, healthcare service area, physician recrutiment, service area, 2017
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
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
Note: this post is part 3 of a six part series. You can read the first, second, fourth, fifth, and sixth posts or access the whole series here.
As learned in the first and second installments of this blog series, it can be quite useful to use Esri's Tapestry Segmentation to target specific populations that your hospital, system, or physicians serve. Tapestry Segmentation was designed specifically to understand your customer’s lifestyle choices – what they buy and how they spend their free time. This information gives Stratasan, and our clients, insights that help identify facility’s patient types, optimal sites for hospitals, physician offices, FSERS, and urgent care locations. We use Tapestry Segmentation to help our clients get higher response rates, focus on the most profitable growth opportunities, and invest their resources in the best ways possible.
Tags: Blog, physician relations, Stratasan, strategic growth, strategic planning, consumer outreach, data, Engineering, Esri, esri tapestry segmentation, GIS, health care, healthcare, healthcare data, Market Share, marketing, Tapestry, tapestry segmentation
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
We hope it’s been a wonderful year of growth and learning through Stratasan's Strategic Growth blog series. As we close out the year, we thought it would be helpful to share the 5 most popular blog posts from 2016. These posts received the most hits and seemed to provide the most helpful strategic growth guidance to you, our readers.
If you’re traveling over the holidays, this is a great way to review helpful blog posts that you may have missed or revisit your favorites for fresh insight.
Tags: Blog, physician relations, strategic growth, 2016, demographics, health care, healthcare, healthcare marketing, healthcare strategic growth, marketing, healthcare customer, healthcare patient, healthcare service area, marketing roi, patient population, physician recrutiment, service area
