Struggling with Referral Growth? Align Your Physician Relationship Management Channels
// By John McKeever //
When marketing, outreach, and operations collaborate to meet the needs of physicians, everyone wins.
Successful physician relationship management has been a longstanding goal of health care leaders. No doubt its importance remains, but success requirements continue to evolve. If your organization is questioning what industry leaders are doing to maximize results from physician relations, you are not alone.
I’ve spent my career working with health care systems across the country and found common themes among successful physician relations programs. Organizations that develop meaningful relationships with referring physicians use a holistic, multifaceted approach that puts physicians at the center.
The approach integrates three key components equally:
- Marketing
- Outreach
- Operations
Often, health care organizations are successful in one or two of these areas but have not evolved them all into an integrated, comprehensive approach.
Here’s a way to organize the essential components and their synergistic effect on physician relationships. Think about where you stand within each one, and across the three together when considering where you are relative to what is outlined as the most mature.