Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

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

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

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

Note: this post is part 3 of a six part series. You can read the first, second, fourth, fifth, and sixth posts 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 the Tapestry Segmentation dataset 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

Why It's Time to Reconsider Your Source

Whether it proves to be an opportunity or a curse, one thing is certain; today’s healthcare providers are living in interesting times. With the U.S. healthcare system facing a monumental physician shortage, as millions of new patients flood the market, hospitals and health systems have never had a more urgent need for accurate, actionable intelligence—especially with regard to fostering and maintaining their physician referrals to drive strategic growth as they move into the latter half of 2016, and beyond.

Tags: Blog, physician liaison, Physician Pathway, physician referral, physician relations, strategic growth, health care, healthcare, physician liaision, white paper

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