Sounds Crazy but...Distributing Free Prescription Discount Cards To Your Patients Can Build Goodwill and Brand Loyalty

Consumers, Medical Practices, Health Systems and Pharmacies Can Benefit

Think about it. When was the last time that you went to a doctor or hospital and they gave you something for free? What would you think if they provided you with an opportunity to reduce your healthcare costs? Chances are you’d have a pretty positive feeling about them.

Medical practices and health systems can generate substantial goodwill and loyalty by distributing free branded prescription discount cards to their patients as well as to those that they touch in their service area through corporate, community and congregational outreach initiatives and educational presentations. Every time a consumer uses your branded discount card and realizes a prescription savings, it will continue to reinforce in their mind the benefit of having you as their healthcare provider.

There are over 200 prescription discount card providers in the market, all of which are geared to helping the uninsured save money on their prescription medications. One company has taken it several steps further, providing savings to not only those that are uninsured but also to those that are underinsured with high deductibles, limitations or exclusions as well as to those with prescription drug coverage and a generic co-pay of $10.00 or more.

Free For All, Inc. launched its Equalizer Program in 2011 to assist consumers being disadvantaged by their insurance programs. The Equalizer got its name because it acts as a gatekeeper for all pharmacy transactions. This “free for all” RxCut Equalizer card guarantees that card users receive the lowest price possible on their prescriptions. Whether it’s their insurance co-payment, the pharmacy retail price, or the RxCut discounted price, card users will always pay the lowest price.

The Equalizer Program was designed to stop consumers from being charged their insurance co-pay when the retail price of the medication is actually lower. Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) are third party administrators of prescription drug claims in the United States. They develop preferred drug lists for their clients and negotiate discounts and rebates with drug manufacturers. PBMs however are publicly traded entities interested primarily in shareholder value. As a consequence they hold back a large portion of the rebates and pass through the higher costs to consumers and insured groups, resulting in the inflated pricing of prescriptions. Two PBMs control over 80% of the 3.6 billion prescriptions processed annually.  

Today, more than 210 million Americans receive prescription drug benefits managed by PBMs. Quite often those consumers are charged a co-payment for a generic medication that is higher than the pharmacy’s retail price and the RxCut discounted price. In fact the RxCut price on 19 of the 25 most frequently prescribed generic medications is lower than an insurance co-pay of $10.00.

The free RxCut card offers discounts up to 75% on prescriptions versus retail prices. The card is accepted at over 54,000 pharmacies in the United States and Puerto Rico, including major drug chains, supermarkets, box stores and 98% of all independently owned pharmacies. There is no enrollment or activation required, no expiration date and no personal information is collected so multiple family members can use the same card. (The card can also provide substantial discounts on all pet medications). When the RxCut card is added to an individual’s pharmacy profile, they will receive the lowest prescription price whether it is their co-pay, the retail price or the RxCut discounted price.

Savings with the card can be substantial. A health system in New Jersey distributes  branded RxCut discount cards to their patients at discharge from the ER. A review of 4,500 pharmacy transactions using the RxCut card over a two month period showed a savings to their patients of over $86,000, representing an average savings per script of $19.37. A free discount card for your patients that yields tangible savings like this will build brand loyalty to your practice or system.

The only financial exposure to a medical practice or hospital system interested in distributing RxCut prescription discount cards is the cost of the actual branded cards. Five thousand cards can be purchased for $50.00. On a monthly basis, reports can be generated detailing all pharmacy transactions using the RxCut cards that have been distributed with your unique Rx Group number. The report, which does not include any personal information, indicates the date the script was filled, drug name, generic vs. brand, quantity, retail price, price paid by the RxCut member, member dollar savings, member % savings and the pharmacy name and address where the script was filled.

While it may seem counterintuitive, retail pharmacies in a health system as well as pharmacies within the community can also realize a benefit with the RxCut discount card for their consumers with prescription coverage. Every time the RxCut card is used to equalize the insurance co-payment and when the RxCut price is lower than the co-pay, both the consumer and pharmacy win i.e. the consumer saves money which builds loyalty towards the pharmacy and the pharmacy nets more revenue because RxCut pays a much higher dispensing fee than the PBMs and also passes through all negotiated rebates to them.

  

To learn more about the RxCut card, to locate participating pharmacies or to view RxCut  prescription discount pricing, visit www.rxcut.com/RXN00122

 Contact: mdstrategies@gmail.com; 404-372-6624

Health System Cardiovascular Community Outreach Screenings

Partnering With A Third-Party Provider To Extend Geographic Reach

Basic Biometric Cardiovascular Community Screenings

Many single and multi-hospital health systems provide a variety of cardiovascular risk assessment screenings to the community. Common biometric offerings include a comprehensive metabolic panel, lipid panel, blood pressure screening and body mass index (BMI) computation. These screenings, provided at little or no cost to the consumer, offer a very beneficial health service to the community while also, at the same time, enhancing the system brand through increased exposure and visibility within their service area. However, given the group nature of community screenings (i.e. held at community centers, senior centers, etc.), the “loop” is often not closed on those that participate i.e. individuals whose results might indicate potential risk are often not being navigated back into the health system for additional tests or follow up care.

Advanced, Fixed-Site Biometric Cardiovascular Screenings

Some health systems have begun to expand their screenings to include more advanced disease assessment testing, offered on a cash (versus insurance) basis, to identify asymptomatic individuals that might be at risk for serious cardiovascular related issues such as heart disease, stroke, carotid artery disease, peripheral vascular disease and the presence of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Tests offered often include cardiac related lab work along with an EKG, screening Echo, screening carotid artery exam, ankle brachial index (ABI) and an abdominal aortic aneurysm ultrasound screening test. The tests provide an excellent assessment of cardiovascular health and can identify clinical conditions unbeknown to the asymptomatic participant, some of whom will require additional follow up, treatment or monitoring. Testing is typically offered on the hospital campus or in the system’s cardiovascular practice offices. The physical locations for the advanced biometric screenings can present a limitation for health systems however in that they may not provide the convenience within their entire service area to attract their target population where they live and work. The fixed site physical locations may also be an impediment to reaching the population of surrounding, adjacent communities outside their primary service area because of the drive-time factor. Additional challenges for the health system also include the often limited capacity of testing times and the dilemma of finding technologists that are trained in both echocardiography and vascular studies.

Basic and Advanced, Mobile and Community Center-Based Biometric Cardiovascular Screenings

A rapidly growing opportunity for health systems to serve their communities and extend their geographic reach is to partner with a third-party provider which offers basic and advanced cardiovascular biometric screening. Cardiovascular screenings are currently being offered by several nationally recognized health systems, in partnership with third party organizations, and can provide significant benefits:

• No capital investment
• Extends the health system’s geographic reach
• Exclusivity within a defined market area
• Consumer convenience (testing available at multiple sites and times)
• Third-party provider “turn-key” infrastructure including staffing, supplies, equipment, logistics, call center, test interpretation, patient results reporting, scheduling and testing site selection
• Direct-to-consumer advertising regarding screening events 
• Ability to expand into corporate wellness and prevention screenings

National Cardiovascular Screening Providers

The two major providers of basic and advanced biometric cardiovascular screenings are HealthFair and Life Line Screening. The following is an overview of each company, their screenings and hospital partnerships.

HealthFair

HealthFair (www.healthfair.com ), based in Winter Park, FL was founded in 1998 and is accredited by the Joint Commission. The company has a fleet of 40’ mobile health coaches offering screenings in 43 states. Each customized coach is equipped with a reception area and two examination rooms.

The company offers a Basic Biometric Screening package including a finger stick blood test, BP, height/weight/waist measurements, Body Mass Index (BMI), and a risk assessment questionnaire. Results are immediately available and the patient receives a personalized health report that compares their values versus norms, calculates the risk of disease onset and identifies those risks which are modifiable. The company’s Advanced Biometric Screening package includes an echocardiogram, a 12-lead EKG, carotid artery ultrasound, abdominal aortic aneurysm ultrasound, an ABI and ASI. Additional screening services such as 3D breast ultrasound, PSA and osteoporosis ultrasound testing are also available.

HealthFair takes responsibility for securing the screening sites for its mobile medical units (e.g. parking lots at corporations, community centers, retail pharmacies, etc.), direct-to-consumer advertising, centralized or online patient scheduling, clinical staffing for the screening event and results interpretation and reporting. The company has a panel of seven reading physicians. Physician interpretation is accomplished through a mobile EMR platform. Patients receive a printed report with a description of each test, their results and disease information.

The company has partnered with several hospitals and health systems around the country to provide basic and advanced biometric cardiovascular screenings (e.g. Baylor Health Care System, Oklahoma Heart Hospital, Loyola Medicine, Inova, Indiana Heart Hospital, Jefferson University Hospitals, HCA Midwest Health System, Broward Health, etc.). Depending on the committed number of service days per month for the mobile medical unit, the partnerships can include a wrapped, “branded” health system 40’ customized bus along with multi-media, co-branded consumer advertising including full page print ads, television and radio commercials, a branded landing page, social media marketing and pay-per-click and banner advertising. The company charges a daily service fee which includes all costs associated with the screening events and the multi-media advertising campaign. Geographic exclusivity is provided to their hospital partners.

Through the partnership, a hospital Care Coordinator can review participant results through the HealthFair mobile EMR portal (for participants that sign HIPAA releases on the day of the screening) and subsequently contact those patients needing follow up, navigating them to the appropriate clinical care provider within the health system.

HealthFair has partnered to provide screenings with notable corporate clients such as Ford, Tropicana and Lincoln Financial Group among others The company will also promote the hospital partnership and screenings to local businesses in the health systems’ market as a supplement to the corporations wellness programs, taking responsibility for securing the corporate contracts and the logistics associated with coordinating the company screening event.

HealthFair has also recently introduced a program to screen high school student-athletes in partnership with a nationally recognized health system in the Southwest.

Life Line Screening

Life Line Screening (www.lifelinescreening.com ) was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Independence, OH. The company has screened over 6 million people since its inception and they are currently performing over 1 million screenings annually, with operations in the United States, United Kingdom and, in the near future, also in Australia. Life Line Screening does not provide mobile medical units but rather partners with hospitals, medical practices and facilities such as churches, community centers, town halls and libraries to host screening events in their buildings. Its labs are CLIA-certified.

Life Line Screening offers a similar basic risk assessment screening to HealthFair and provides a personal results report to participants at the time of service. The report includes a disease risk score along with non-modifiable and modifiable risk factors affecting the score for stroke, diabetes, coronary heart disease, congestive heart failure, lung cancer and COPD.  Its advanced biometric screening, their Stroke, Vascular and Heart Rhythm package, includes a carotid artery ultrasound, abdominal aorta aneurysm ultrasound, an ABI and a 6- lead EKG. An additional option includes osteoporosis ultrasound screening. Lab packages (e.g. comprehensive metabolic panel, lipid panel, kidney function, PSA, C-Reactive protein, etc.) are also available through a Life Line Screening partnership with Lab Corp.

Life Line Screening promotes their community-based screenings to the consumer   through their website and by direct mail and newspaper inserts. The company is the largest direct mail provider in the country outside of the financial services sector. Consumers can schedule a screening either online or through a dedicated call center. The company secures the host community screening site and provides the equipment and technologists for the event. The screenings are interpreted by a panel of eleven physicians. Patients receive their results directly from Life Line, either online or by mail, within twenty-one days of the screening and are encouraged to share them with their physician (i.e. medical providers do not receive patient results unless they are requested by the patients’ physician).

The company has partnered with over 300 hospitals (e.g. Memorial Hermann, Arizona Heart Institute, University of Maryland Medical Center, Memorial Care Heart and Vascular Institute, Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, Christus, St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, George Washington University Hospital, Berkshire Medical Center, etc.) to provide basic and advanced biometric screenings to the respective communities, with the events hosted at the hospital or local churches or town centers. The company develops a specific, customized plan for each hospital partner based on their expressed needs and goals, including a co-branding strategy (e.g. print, video) and potential educational opportunities along with identifying the number and location of screening events for the year. The partnerships are one year agreements and provide geographic exclusivity. There is no financial obligation to the health system for the partnership with Life Line Screening. 

Life Line Screening provides its hospital partners with aggregate data for the community that is identified through the screenings (e.g. community incidence of diabetes) which can be used by the system to target its marketing and educational initiatives. Additionally, every two weeks hospital partners receive the screening results for those participants who have signed a HIPAA release, providing the health system with the opportunity to follow up post-screening.             

Life Line Screening has additional national partnerships with insurance companies, benefit providers, associations and corporations. They typically do not market to employers within a health systems service area.

Summary

Cardiovascular community screenings provide the opportunity to identify clinical conditions before the asymptomatic individual experiences an event, placing them in the ER, and also enables the implementation of life style improvement strategies in those with identified, modifiable risks. Basic biometric screenings are offered by health systems within their communities but they do not consistently navigate the consumers needing follow up care back to services within the hospital. Advanced biometric screenings offered by health systems provide more specific disease assessment testing but are often limited by geographic locations where testing is delivered and by available screening times. Partnering with a provider of basic and advanced cardiovascular biometric testing may extend a health system’s geographic reach, eliminate the constraints posed by fixed-site hospital cardiovascular screening initiatives and expand   involvement into corporate wellness programs.

For Further Information Contact: cvscreenings@gmail.com

Starting A Physician Liaison Program To Market Your Practice

Many hospitals and health systems have Physician Liaison and/or Physician Relations Representatives that have the responsibility of visiting physician practices to promote the service lines of the hospital. Similarly many physician practices, in particular specialty practices, have initiated or have considered initiating such a program as a vehicle to carry their message(s) to the field and ultimately grow their referrals. Some consulting organizations provide the option of outsourcing this role to them while others will provide a Physician Liaison training program for your new hire.

If you decide that you want to start a Physician Liaison program on your own, where do you start? Let’s examine some of the areas you need to consider:

      Job Description for a Physician Liaison

Many practices are at a loss regarding defining a job description because this is a new, unexplored role for them. The following is a general example of the role and responsibilities of a Physician Liaison:

The Physician Liaison will support the practice by representing and promoting our clinical services, physicians and programs in order to increase referrals from existing providers and secure new business from current low volume and non-referring physicians.

 

ESSENTIAL JOB DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Functions as the primary sales and marketing contact for referring physician offices
• Interfaces with both physicians and their staffs to improve communication and understanding of the needs and wants of the referring practices
• Develops a sales plan for physician practices with measurable goals and objectives
• Conducts personal visits to referral sources on a daily basis 
• Identify issues and concerns from referring offices and communicates them back to the practice 
• Facilitates meetings for our physicians with referral sources and coordinates “lunch and learns” to discuss new clinical offerings
• Documents daily contact with referring physician offices
• Develops referral trend reports
• Facilitates community outreach, speaking and education opportunities for the practice

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

Education:  BA in marketing or business.

Experience:  Three to five years in healthcare sales, preferably in a physician services environment.

      Finding the Right Candidate

Practices need to understand that if you are going to have a successful Physician Liaison it takes more than finding someone with an outgoing personality. That is certainly an important trait but there needs to be more. Your Physician Liaison needs to have the ability to listen and understand what the client is truly saying. They should have great attention to detail and excellent organization and follow up skills. They need to be problem-solvers and be able to facilitate solutions, calling upon resources within your practice. And they need to have “conceptual” selling skills so they can be your communication eyes and ears.

Can you get this from an entry-level hire? Perhaps, but it is going to take time, training and personal management, which in many cases practices cannot devote. Ideally you should be looking for someone that has been in a sales capacity in a physician services environment and has already been through a variety of sales training programs. To hire a “Marketing” versus a “Sales” person or move a clinical person into a Physician Liaison role is often a difficult transition for them due to their lack of experience making sales calls and “cold call fear”.

Potential sources to identify candidates can be online job posting websites along with recommendations from your vendors and hospital Physician Relations Department.

Finding the right, experienced person will put you further ahead on their road to productivity.

      Setting Objectives for Your Physician Liaison

One of the challenges for a Physician Liaison role, particularly if it is new to a practice, is staying focused on the job responsibilities. Inevitably what happens is that if something even has the slightest orientation to a sales and/or marketing responsibility, most people in the practice will direct it to the Physician Liaison. As this continues over time, the Physician Liaison becomes engulfed in day-to-day “stuff” and is not able to get into the field, fulfilling what they were hired to do i.e. calling on referral sources. To avoid this all too common situation, it is important to set clear, measurable and quantifiable objectives for your Physician Liaison so that they know, and your practice knows, what is expected of them. The following are some of the many measurable goals that can be established for a Physician Liaison:

·         # of visits per week to referring physician offices

·         # of meetings facilitated for practice MDs with referring physicians

·         # of lunch and learns coordinated with referring practices

·         # of social events scheduled with your practice and referring practices

·         # of referral coordinator lunches scheduled

·         # of meetings with ER physicians and Hospitalists

·         # of speaking engagements coordinated

·         Development of quarterly sales plan and rotational call schedule

·         Submission of weekly sales activity report

 Mentoring Your Physician Liaison

A challenge for many practices is what do you do with this person? For practices that have no experience with a Physician Liaison, the short answer is that you need to mentor them, provide them with an opportunity to succeed, give them clear direction, and monitor their activities not only through their reports but also by spending time with them in the field making calls on your referral sources. Giving them a list of your referring physicians and telling them to make calls and deliver referral pads is potentially a recipe for disappointment.

On a weekly basis you should meet with your Physician Liaison and review the planned activities for the week. Questions that you and the Physician Liaison should discuss include: What are the objectives of your calls? Who are you going to call on in the practices? Who in the practices determine where referrals are sent? What do you want to accomplish with the calls? What have been their referral trends? Have there been any problems expressed by these practices? In other words, you need to strategize with the Physician Liaison on their calls. Leaving them on their own to do this will likely not yield the results that you are looking for.

 Tracking Physician Liaison Sales Activities

On a weekly basis the Physician Liaison should submit an activity report to the Practice Administrator. The Physician Liaison should document what practices they visited, who they spoke to, what information they left with the practice, and any issues that were identified and follow up that may be required.

             Targeting the Referral Influencer

While private practices are physician owned and controlled, the bottom line is that the physicians don’t necessarily always influence where the patient is sent for additional testing or consults. More often than not a referral coordinator, check out person or mid-level will play a key role in where the patient is referred. As part of the Physician Liaison’s role, they need to determine who coordinates referrals within these practices and then target them from a relationship building standpoint.

In meeting with the referral influencer your Physician Liaison should try to integrate   questions such as the following into their discussion to get valuable feedback for your practice:

• What's the most important factor in determining where to send your patients for ________________ care?
• How’s your experience been with scheduling and with reports at our practice?
• Have your referrals to our practice changed over the last year? (If they're down, why?)
• Have you been satisfied with our care of your patients and service to your office?
• What feedback do you receive from your patients regarding our practice?
• Can I answer any questions about the services we offer?
• How can we improve our service to your practice?
• Are there any issues or problems we should be aware of?

Involving Your Physicians in the “Sales” Process

One of the most effective marketing initiatives is getting your physicians face-to-face, developing relationships with your referring physicians. Your Physician Liaison should be a conduit to facilitate these encounters. Primary Care physicians are often overloaded with patients so it is difficult to bring your physicians into their office for a “lunch and learn” or breakfast or lunch meeting. What can be very effective however is to bring your physicians to the PCP office for a “check in” with the physicians and staff regarding how your practice is performing on behalf of their patients. It does not need to be a formal, sit-down meeting but the fact that you are showing them that you value your relationship will end up paying dividends.

 Report Generation

As part of your Physician Liaison’s responsibilities, they should be the “go-to” person for collecting, analyzing and disseminating reports related to referral activity. Some examples of tracking reports include:

• Monthly referrals by referring physician
• Monthly new consults by referring physician
• Monthly referrals, new consults and total visits per office location
• Referring physician monthly ancillary services referrals
• Monthly ancillary services volumes by office location
• Source of self-referred patients by month (e.g. friend, television commercial, etc.)
• New patients generated as a result of community screening programs
• Referrals by your practice physicians to internal programs (e.g. exercise, nutrition, etc.) 

Considerations

Implementing a Physicians Liaison program is a very viable initiative to enhance relationships, increase visibility and grow referrals for your practice. However, to have a successful Physician Liaison program and an overall effective marketing strategy, you first need to have a plan to serve as a roadmap for your internal and external strategies and tactics. As a reference to guide you through the marketing plan development process, visit http://www.mdpracticemarketing.com/ for You Need To Have A Plan Before You Can "Work The Plan", a simple, practical guide to develop a comprehensive medical marketing plan.

Marketing is a process rather than an event. To position yourself to “market”, you need to develop a plan, looking both internally to evaluate the current state of your practice and externally to analyze your market and define specific goals, tactics and action plans.

This article was published in the November, 2011 issue of the Efficiency in Practice newsletter.

For Effective Marketing, Define Your Target Customers and Markets

Target Customers and Markets

Before developing specific marketing initiatives, it is important to define your customer segments because each has their own needs and wants. It is more than just “patients” or “referring physicians”. It could be existing patients, new patients, referring physicians, referral coordinators, referring physician practice front office staffs, the hospital system, Emergency Room physicians, Hospitalists, etc.

Once you have defined your customer segments, it is important to create a value proposition for each entity. In other words, how will your customers benefit by doing business with you? For example, patients may benefit because experience translates into results and your practice has done more lung cancer surgeries than any other practice in the state. Referring physicians might benefit because they know your practice provides quality care with exceptional service so they feel confident that they are not going to hear any complaints from their patients. The referral coordinator may benefit because you simplify the scheduling process through a back office hotline. In other words, every “customer” has different needs and understanding them will allow you to tailor your key messages to satisfy their needs.

In addition to defining your customers, to be efficient with your marketing dollars it is also important to define your target markets in terms of geographic location and patient demographics such as age, marital status and household income. As an example as to where this would be useful, many practices have introduced cash-based screening services as a way to grow ancillary volumes and to capture new patients. Because these screening services are not covered by insurance, it is important to determine the relative affluence of the market because those markets with higher household incomes will most likely have more discretionary dollars. For example:

The ________ market has the largest population within ten miles of the office of any of our locations (706K) and the largest number of households within ten miles of the office of any of our locations (306K). Additionally it has the highest average household income of any of our markets ($102K) with 33% of the households having an average annual income greater than $100K. The size of the market provides the greatest upside opportunity for the practice to secure new patients and the affluence of the market would indicate the likely viability for cash-based screening initiatives.

Demographic information by zip code can be found online, through your local Chamber of Commerce or can be purchased if the specifications of your search requires more detail.

The more clearly you define your customer segments and target markets, the better able you will be to customize your marketing strategies and tactics.

Conducting A Marketing Assessment Of Your Physician Practice

In beginning the marketing planning process, you first need to take an inventory of your current situation by conducting an internal marketing assessment. The assessment will provide the foundation from which you will be able to develop a systematic and comprehensive marketing plan. Ultimately that plan will include a historical perspective of the practice, the competitive landscape, key messages and strategies, unique differentiators, collateral needs, referral targets, PR and marketing activities, a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) and specific goals going forward.


 Identify Key Differentiators, Referral Targets and Competitive Activity

As a first step in the marketing assessment, it will be beneficial to “interview” each of your physician providers, mid-levels and management team members to gain their perspective of your practice. The interviews will allow you to get their view on unique differentiators, SWOT, key messages, the competitive environment, marketing opportunities, relationships with referring physicians and referring physician targets and any barriers to referrals that might exist.

The information they provide will not only be useful to you but it will also give them a feeling of ownership in shaping the future message and initiatives of the practice. It is recommended that you send them in advance a questionnaire to consider and then conduct individual face-to-face meetings to get their input.

• What do you consider to be the unique differentiators of our practice?
• What do you see as the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) for our practice?
• What are the key messages / core values of the practice which should be communicated?
• Who do you consider to be our major competitor(s)?
• What marketing strategies and programs are our competitors using to promote their practice?
• Who do you think are key referral sources and referral targets that we should be visiting?
• Are there any previously good referral sources where a relationship no longer exists with our practice? What happened to the relationship? 
•  What positive and less than positive “perceptions” of our practice exist in the market

Evaluate Past Marketing Initiatives

In addition to gathering the previous information which will be integrated into the marketing plan, it is also important to honestly evaluate past marketing initiatives and determine specific needs going forward. Questions to consider in your evaluation: Have the activities been effective? What has been the return on investment? Have they generated new referrals? Have they created increased exposure and visibility in the community? Has it been an integrated process or solitary, non-cohesive events? Some areas to look at include:

Evaluating Past Marketing Initiatives

Program	Implemented (X)	Perceived Effectiveness	Continue / Discontinue
Print ads
TV commercials
Direct mail
Billboards
Speaking Engagements
Website enhancements
SEO
Internet marketing
Google AdWords
Sponsorships
Community outreach
CME programs
Thank you letters to referring MDs
Patient and physician satisfaction surveys
Yellow page ads
Patient email newsletters

Newspaper inserts
Referring MD  newsletter
Patient referral cards
Patient education seminars
Published articles
Physician bios
On hold messaging
Practice brochure
Patient info brochures
Services fact sheets
PR initiatives
Lunch and learns
Promo items
Social events
Direct marketing visits to referrers
Mystery patient
Radio ads
Association membership

Conduct A Referral Trend Analysis

In many cases, practices do not necessarily have a firm handle on referral trends. In general terms a practice might have a sense of who their top referral sources are but many do not consistently track referrals. So, unbeknown to the practice, a top referrer’s numbers might be significantly down from prior years because they are currently splitting referrals among different providers. Another key component of the marketing assessment is to conduct a referral trend analysis for the last two years in order to clearly see the referral picture. Some areas to quantify include:

• Total referrals by referring physician 2009 vs. 2010
• Total new consults by referring physician 2009 vs. 2010
• Total referrals and new consults by referring physician per location 2009 vs. 2010
• Total referrals and new consults by your MD providers 2009 vs. 2010
• Top referral sources by your MD providers 2009 vs. 2010
• Referring physician ancillary services referrals 2009 vs. 2010
• Ancillary services volumes 2009 vs. 2010
• Ancillary services volumes by location 2009 vs. 2010
• Total revenue performance vs. budget by location 2009 vs. 2010

The information you learn from this analysis will often be surprising yet will be critical in developing your marketing plan and strategy to target specific referral sources.

Implement Patient and Physician Satisfaction Surveys

In establishing a representative baseline for your practice, a useful initiative is to implement patient and referring physician satisfaction surveys. The information you obtain will identify ways to improve your practice which will result in better patient care, happier patients and enhanced loyalty from your referral sources. The survey design and tabulation can be developed internally or outsourced to a consulting organization. While developing the survey tool yourself might seem to be the easiest and more cost-effective alternative, an option for practices is to use a survey tool and process from an outside vendor. It will be less stressful and time consuming for the internal staff and often will provide the ability to benchmark results versus other similar group practices. The surveys should be brief, clear, easy to complete and consistent in the numeric grading system from question to question.

Patient Satisfaction Surveys

It is critically important for practices to hold onto what they have and protect their revenue base. Focusing on existing patients and seeking their input will show that you value them as a customer and that you are committed to continuous improvement. Patient surveys should focus on their clinical experience and interaction with their provider, the ease of scheduling and the referral process, their experience at their appointment and the customer service skills of the internal staff. If you decide to implement a survey process internally, the Medical Group Management Association (http://www.mgma.com/) has published Patient Satisfaction Questionnaires which provides samples of patient satisfaction questionnaires, examples of MGMA member questionnaires and ideas to measure and improve patient satisfaction. The booklet can be ordered by contacting the MGMA at 1-877-275-6462.

You should consider making patient surveys a part of your daily practice routine, asking patients to complete the survey prior to leaving your office and dropping it in a secure locked box. This gives them the opportunity to comment on their experience while it is fresh in their mind as opposed to receiving a survey six months after their appointment when the specifics of their visit might be difficult to recall.


Referring Physician Satisfaction Surveys

For specialty practices, referrals from physicians represent their primary source of new patients. As a result it is very important that you have a pulse on their feelings about your practice. Any difficulties in scheduling, reporting or complaints about your practice from their patients can quickly result in a change of their referral patterns to another provider. Physician surveys should seek feedback on the referral process, scheduling, staff customer service, clinical care, reports and patient feedback. They should also include questions related to their referral patterns to your practice and if they have changed as well as their overall satisfaction and preferred method of communication from your practice. So that they are comfortable that their comments are anonymous, it is recommended that you include a return address envelope with your address in the addressee and addressor locations. If you elect to implement a physician satisfaction survey internally versus outsourcing it to a third party, the MGMA also offers Satisfaction Surveys for Referring Physicians. The booklet includes sample physician satisfaction questionnaires, how satisfaction items are measured, methods of conducting surveys and key findings.

With patient and physician satisfaction surveys, it is imperative that you act on what you learn or your efforts will be wasted. Going forward, you should compare the metrics that you measure versus previous surveys in order to track your quality improvement progress.