February 1, 2010

Many hospitals or health systems with an employed physician network struggle to find additional ways to drive profitable volume through their primary care practices and increase referrals to their specialty practices that will generate inpatient volume. When these practices are not seeing the volume or payer mix needed to support them, physician retention often becomes an issue, as the employment model is not sustainable without sufficient production.

Marketing strategy is playing an increasingly important role in supporting physician practice and service line growth. An effective employed network marketing strategy must be operationalized. The focus of this plan should be on increasing profitable volume in your practices and in the hospital, while leveraging the value of your network as an entity of its own that can create perceived ideas of quality for your physician staff and hospital service lines.

The following questions can help maximize the value of your employed physician network:

What does "marketing" mean to you?
For many hospitals, marketing of their practices means promotion. Advertisements, commercials, physician directories. However, there are many other marketing-related areas that dramatically affect the success of your employed physician practices, and in most networks, these are inadequately addressed. Analyzing patient origin and its impact on the practice?s current and future payer mix will help target promotional activities and improve patient profitability. Reviewing the physicians? schedules to determine available capacity and what impact the physicians?s hours have on payer mix can make a big impact on the practice?s finances.

When is the last time you reviewed how your network is managing the referral process?
Keeping referrals in-network is one of the fundamental strategies to building an employed physician network. Do you have PCPs who aren?t referring to hospital-owned specialists or ancillaries? Do you have specialists who aren?t helping PCPs keep their patients or who aren?t providing PCPs adequate feedback? How easy is it for your physicians to refer to one another? Is your network using a common EHR to ease the referral process? Do other private practices have an easier process for referrals? For a busy front office, a quick and easy process usually controls who gets the referral. Finally, what relationship do your practices have with any local hospitalist programs? Unassigned patients can be an additional source of referrals to your practices, and developing those hospitalist relationships is the key to obtaining them.

Have you leveraged every avenue the hospital can provide?
Hospital-ownership can give employed practices a competitive advantage over private practices in the same area. However, few hospitals leverage this into their marketing strategy for their employed physician groups. First among these is a strong physician liaison program, which should be a staple of any hospital with an employed network. This program should market the hospital?s services and specialists to the medical community and should actively participate in introducing new physicians to the relevant medical staff that will help them build a successful practice. Secondly, the impact of putting the weight of the hospital and the network behind each physician practice should not be under utilitized. Development of a robust branding strategy for the hospital and its physicians should not be ignored. Like all other professions, physicians need to build relationships and develop positive reputations. Your hospital must help foster an environment for physicians to do just that.

Conclusion
The implementation of a robust marketing strategy with an operational focus can be very intricate and overwhelming. Healthcare Strategy Group can help you develop a strategy that is based upon our experience of working with a multitude of employed physician groups across the country and an expert knowledge of best practices within the industry.