Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

Address Blockages and Pinpoint Opportunities for Growth

By Jennifer Keller

Retaining and improving bottom line profits is a key priority for healthcare planners and strategists. Often when considering how to grow, patient outmigration and physician referral leakage are top of mind. Patient retention and well-maintained physician relationships are key to maintaining a strong financial standing, especially for rural hospitals.

“25% of rural hospitals nationwide are at a high risk of closing unless their financial situations improve. Of these hospitals, 82% are considered highly essential to their communities,” according to an annual Guidehouse analysis.

Many hospitals within close proximity to large U.S. cities are facing a serious financial challenge: patients who outmigrate to urban hospitals. This can happen due to patient preference or a physician referral, but it’s leading to lost revenue either way. 

It’s important to note though, this is not solely a rural hospital concern. A strong physician relations strategy is needed in many large urban areas to ensure you don’t lose patients to the large competitor right down the street.

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.

Recruit and Retain the Right Physicians for Your Market

By Lee Ann Lambdin

It’s well documented that there will be a continued shortage of physicians in the U.S. in the years to come. The Association of American Medical Colleges cites that there will be a deficit of between 61,700 and 94,700 physicians by 2025.¹ This knowledge highlights the need for hospitals to regularly conduct a community physician and provider demand analysis to continue to meet the needs of their community, grow service lines, and recruit the physicians they need. In this post, we’ll discuss the best way to do this analysis—the different methodologies used and our recommended process.

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: