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.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under All Posts, Referral Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.