Continuing our discussion of how to promote your satellite office, let’s talk about some creative strategies you can employ that require little investment.

Many satellites fail because of their limited hours. Referring doctors often wonder about the commitment to the satellite when it’s hard to schedule patients.  Each week, have a staffer send an e-mail to your practice rep, administrator and physician partners, indicating if wait times have become excessive. Simply shift resources to the satellite to improve the access.  Keep tabs on the hours and access of your competitor(s) in the region; make sure your access is always better.  Providing new referral sources with a list of the doctor’s cell phone numbers is a great way of communicating access, explain to referring doctors that they can call or text the doctors anytime they wish. While most won’t take advantage of this, it offers them peace of mind that the doctors are available at a moment’s notice, if necessary.

Open houses are a great way for doctors to interact with potential referral sources.  The key to a well-attended open house is to use your practice rep to follow up in person on the invitations and ask for a commitment to come to the open house.  Invite the entire staff of the potential referral source, since staffers often act as patient advocates in the referral process.

Satellite offices only succeed with a persistent marketing presence.  Before abandoning your satellite office, think about using a practice rep to deliver your message on a frequent basis.

««  Read More      No Comments »»

When we engage in the marketing audit process with practices, we often find that they once had a satellite office in an outlying area that failed.  Doctors become frustrated with driving to the satellite office to consult with just 2 or 3 patients and usually abandon the satellite office within the first year.

The reason why satellite offices fail is due to the fact that most of the potential referring doctors in the market do not even know that the office exists or they may find the limited schedule results in waiting too long to get their patients seen.  Some offices try the direct mail approach, but consider: 1) direct mail has has just a 2% response rate, 2) merely announcing the opening of the facility is not enough, and 3) it often takes several attempts for the message to sink in with a potential referral source.  Think about the most successful marketing campaigns — you remember them for a few reasons:

- The message was effective

- The message was frequent

Before abandoning your satellite office, try “practice rep” approach first. For a small investment, a part-time sales and marketing professional can visit your potential referral sources in person and promote your satellite office.

The best method for success in this situation is to meet with your practice rep prior to field marketing. Develop the message that you want to be delivered, identify marketing collateral material that needs to be created as a “leave behind” for the referring offices, and discuss the best potential targets.  Once a marketing plan has been developed, your practice rep can target the entire staff of referring offices. Often it’s the check-out staff that can offer some information as to whether an opportunity exists.

The rep can follow up and remind referral sources that have promised referrals but haven’t delivered, since it can, in some cases, take up to 6 interactions to make a physician change their referral pattern.

Look for another post next week about other easy ways to promote your satellite office!

««  Read More      4 Comments »»

Below are the fundamental steps required for the scientific method of basic medical research. Virtually anyone who has studied science or medicine is familiar with this process and yet very few recognize its application when marketing their medical practice.

– Ask a Question
- Do Background Research
- Construct a Hypothesis
- Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
- Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
- Communicate Your Results

Let’s try to apply it to marketing here:

Ask a question:  How can I increase my preferred patient volume into my medical practice?

Do background research:  How do other successful practices do this?  What are they doing that we are not?  What type of preferred patients do I want to recruit?  Does increased volume affect my bottom line or is it lost in the mix of a complex medical practice?

Construct a hypothesis:  We propose that a marketing campaign composed of direct marketing, advertising, and symptom-specific mailers will have a positive impact of a 20% increase of referrals for patients with X disease and Y insurance.

Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment:  The practice begins a limited six-month experiment combining:

1. A monthly mass mailing campaign composed of six different letters discussing common symptoms related to my specialty all aimed at the same targeted group in the same zip code in an area recognized as high income, well-insured patients of a certain age and demographic.
2. A small quarter page, 3-color ad, detailing our practice with our website and contact information in bold print, published in our locally-focused upscale magazine.
3. A part-time practice liaison is hired to meet with PCPs and other targeted referral physicians in an effort to communicate the capabilities of the practice while building relationships and gaining important objective feedback on the practice.

Don’t forget to collect the data!  Work with your staff to poll every patient who calls or schedules an appointment to find out who referred them or how they heard of the practice. (This is the weakest link in most practices.  Make sure that your staff is on board and understands the critical importance of tracking your results!)

Analyze your data and draw a conclusion: At the end of six months, compile your results for the campaign overall as well as each component of the campaign, i.e., mailings, ads, and direct marketing, to determine which of these tools yielded the highest return on your marketing investment dollars.

Did you meet your goal?  Great!  Did you fall short? Why?  Either way you’ll want to analyze the results of each component of the campaign to see which you should use in future efforts.  Poor performing components should be abandoned in favor of newer ones, which are then combined with your proven component in future campaigns!

Communicate your results:  Tell your staff and your associates about the winning component of each campaign so that they can reinforce it and support these efforts in future campaigns.

Marketing is very similar to the scientific method.  The key is to try a campaign, measure it, track it, and adjust it as needed according to your goals.

««  Read More      2 Comments »»

I saw this message on a billboard the other day:

Bill Gates started Microsoft in a recession.

There was no sponsor listed, but I thought it was a rather inspiring and true message.

And over the past year, I’ve continually heard that those who get ahead during, and more importantly, after a recession are those who increased their marketing in the midst of a recession.

Harvard Business Publishing recently printed an article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter titled, “In a Recession, Put Everyone in Marketing.” Kanter writes:

“Are you facing falling customer orders?  Slower renewals? Cancellations?  Requests for ever deeper discounts?

Those are silly questions.  Of course you are experiencing these recession symptoms.  And you have probably cut budgets and jobs more than you like.

So now what?  When you can’t (and shouldn’t) cut any further, you can leverage the creativity of the people on your team.  This is truly the time when employees are your most important assets – for real, not just in slogans.  In a recession, everyone should be in marketing.  Motivated employees contribute to creative thinking that can help retain current customers and identify new ones.”

Kanter makes five suggestions:

1) Increase customer contact and communication

2) Start looking for new markets now.

3) Invest in employee morale

4) Emphasize and reward small wins

5) Stick with your values

To read more about all five, go to: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/kanter/2009/04/in-a-recession-put-everyone-in.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-WEEKLY_HOTLIST-_-MAY_2009-_-HOTLIST0501

In point #1, Kanter notes:

“Financial turbulence sometimes leads managers to overemphasize pleasing banks or investors while appearing to take customers for granted.  But as we all know, without customers, there is no business.

Senior executives, regardless of function, should become personal ambassadors to major customers, thanking them for their business and making it clear that they want to help them succeed.  But don’t stop there.  People throughout the ranks can reach out to customers – perhaps a personal note or a phone call to provide news or ask questions.  Customers will know you care, you will be better informed, staff will feel more involved, and unexpected opportunities might arise.”

Kanter closes with:

“Challenging times divide winners from losers.  Winners survive because they never forget the important enduring truth:  High quality products and services are created by engaged employees who know and care about customers.”

««  Read More      No Comments »»

Once again I feel compelled to speak about the issue of complaint handling at medical practices.  In our capacity as field marketers for specialty practices, it’s our role to survey referral sources on the quality of our clients’ clinical and administrative services. As such, we are often the first [...] Continue Reading…

««  Read More      No Comments »»

Pre-certs  are here to stay and the requirements are certain to increase. In some states, almost every managed care payor requires a pre-cert prior to expensive testing. The time it takes a medical office to procure a pre-cert is significant; most take 30-60 minutes and cost the practice roughly [...] Continue Reading…

««  Read More      No Comments »»

Today, we’re excited to be recognized by Forbes Magazine!  Take a look at this Practice-Reps press release, which was published today on Forbes’ website. It provides a bit of history on Practice-Reps, and describes our services and how we bring a combination of sales and marketing to specialty medical [...] Continue Reading…

««  Read More      2 Comments »»

I visited a new practice yesterday and came away with a distinct impression about this small solo practitioner.

As you ponder the impression you make on new patients or potential referral sources, take some tips from this modest yet forward-thinking physician.

The waiting room was immaculate! The walls were newly papered [...] Continue Reading…

««  Read More      1 Comment »»

Looking for a relatively passive way to drive referrals?

In past articles, we’ve talked about the value of patient-to-patient referrals. While physician-to-physician referrals are clearly the most viable and reliable, don’t discount the value of patient-to-patient referrals.

In a recent MGMA survey, respondents reported that 86% ask their doctor when seeking [...] Continue Reading…

««  Read More      No Comments »»

Some months ago, we were asked to advertise in a charity booklet with a target audience of 400 people who would be attending the charity ball. Most of the ball attendees were potential clients for our firm. The quarter-page ad allowed us to publish our black and white logo [...] Continue Reading…

««  Read More      1 Comment »»