Physiatry Practice Management Resources

In recent years, healthcare has evolved into a commercial marketplace. More and more, the patient-physician relationship resembles a consumer relationship: Patients demand good customer service and are willing to shop around until they find it. Consequently, consultants say, it is more important than ever before for physicians to market their practices.

Marketing is a complex and continual process of collecting data, improving the way your practice functions and how it looks, and getting the word out that your practice not only provides the services that patients want, but also the treatment that patients deserve. With new technological advances at their disposal and experience under their belts, practice management and marketing consultants can help you identify the most effective methods to market your practice.

First, a practice must decide what it intends to accomplish through marketing over the next three to five years, says Rebecca Anwar, a consultant at the Sage Group, a practice management firm in Philadelphia. A practice may want to expand, to add services, to maintain its current market share or to decrease that market share (in the case of a retiring physician). Any of these goals, she explains, "requires some careful planning."

"The most important first step in having a successful marketing program is to devise a marketing plan," says Ms. Anwar. This includes focusing on goals, gathering and analyzing current practice data and deciding on a budget.

Physicians and their staff must provide a practice profile to a practice management consultant. Data from your own computer system should tell you how many patients you're currently seeing, how this number compares with that of the last two or three years and characteristics of the patient mix -- not only in terms of medical treatment, but also insurance coverage, Ms. Anwar points out.

Along with the internal practice data, consultants also need to gather external data, Ms. Anwar notes. "We really need to know the status of the managed-care environment in that community," she says. "Who are the major players? Who are the major payers? How does that compare to your internal profile?" By comparing internal and external data, practices can not only identify their patient base and decide what services they want to market to the public, they can choose how to market the practice to managed-care companies, Ms. Anwar says.

For instance, if you are already doing a great deal of business with a particular managed-care company, a consultant can suggest ways in which you can show that company just how you are meeting their clinical and service expectations, she says. Or, if your practice does not do enough business with one of the largest insurance carriers in the area, a consultant will be able to figure out why, and then work on marketing your practice to that company.

The final step in preparing a successful marketing plan, says Ms. Anwar, is determining your marketing budget -- how much you are willing to spend each year on marketing -- and committing to it. Keep in mind, she warns, that "marketing is not free; it's expensive."

Once your goals, data and budget are in order, a consultant will make cost-effective and profitable marketing recommendations. Then it's up to you to implement the marketing program. The consultant will identify a staff member that may be able to act as the internal marketing coordinator, or may suggest that the practice hire a part-time staffer to execute the marketing plan, says Ms. Anwar.

It's all too common for a practice, once the marketing plan has been developed and paid for, to never actually implement it. "It's like saying, 'Gee, I'd really like to go to Italy.' Then, after you get the travel agent to make all the arrangements, you decide not to go," Ms. Anwar says. "If the physicians aren't committed to marketing, don't do it."

Marketing experts advise physicians not to embark on expensive advertising campaigns -- external marketing -- until they know they can satisfy the patients that the ads are intended to attract. When you spend dollars on newspaper and Yellow Pages ads before you have everything in order internally, you're simply wasting your money, explains Lynn Curtis, marketing director at the Center for Sports Medicine and Orthopaedics in Chattanooga, Tenn. "You're going to capture your patient population and then make them angry," she says.

"Medicine's going retail, so you have to approach it from a retail point of view," explains Ms. Curtis. "When we go into a doctor's office, we have levels of service that we expect and think we're entitled to for what we pay."

You won't ever have a perfect system, she says, "but, if you have service issues, you need to identify them." Start by monitoring the way that phone calls are handled in your practice. "The phone company will track your telephone lines for you at a very small fee -- as low as $30 -- to see how many times patients or referral services or whomever are calling, getting a busy signal and hanging up," she says.