PRM vs CRM: What’s the Big Difference?

As growth specialists in today’s healthcare industry, you must utilize different tools depending on your organization’s needs. Two very powerful tools are the PRM and the CRM. Knowing the differences between these applications and their roles within the healthcare industry is critical to improving your ROI in your day-to-day operations. So what’s the big difference? Let’s explore PRM vs CRM.

What is a PRM?

Physician Relationship Manager

A physician relationship manager or PRM, is used by healthcare administrators and physician liaisons to manage their relationship with physicians. These physicians may be employed within their facility, affiliated within their network or they may be completely independent. A PRM aims to improve physician relations, ultimately increasing referrals from physicians.

A good PRM is designed to help you track, troubleshoot, and develop every aspect of physician relations. This includes creating physician profiles with interaction history, visit notes, issue tracking, task and initiative management, and onboarding tools. Since PRMs are often used by physician liaisons while they are making office visits, a PRM should be mobile-compatible. This will provide all of this valuable information to these professionals in the field.

A PRM is extremely useful when used in conjunction with another tool that every growth specialist should be familiar with — data. Having a clear picture of physician referral behavior helps to target physician outreach and adds a different level to physician relationship management as a whole. When claims data is combined with a PRM, a physician relations team has access to actionable tasks and initiatives. This gives them the ability to effectively target its outreach efforts. 

What is a CRM?

Customer Relationship Manager

Customer relationship management refers to all of the practices, strategies, and technologies involved in reaching out to clients, as well as the management of those interactions. Most often, a CRM is a software application designed to allow businesses to manage relationships with their customers. In recent years, CRMs have become increasingly common. Currently, 91% of all companies with more than 11 employees use a CRM. While the growth rate for the CRM market is 3% for all verticals, in healthcare that growth rate is currently at 9%.

For general business uses, a CRM will store customer and prospect information, leads, accounts, referrals, client lifecycle progress, interaction notes, and any other information needed to manage this relationship. Depending on the actual user of the CRM, it may also include:

• Sales force automation & opportunity management (for sales representatives)
• Marketing automation & campaign management (for marketing professionals)
• Customer service, support, email & voice logging (for helpdesks)

A CRM will also provide reports on trends related to customer volume growth or decline and will segment information by demographics, specializations, and other categories that are important to the user.

PRM vs CRM: The Big Difference

While a CRM helps a company keep track of its B2B or B2C customers, a physician relationship management tool helps a healthcare organization reach out to allied physicians and their practices. For this reason, the function of a PRM falls more along the lines of tracking and enhancing strategic B2B alliances and partnerships. A hospital may still make use of CRM applications, as hospitals seek to expand market share by reaching out directly to patients and prospective patients in their region.

When used within their respective purposes, both PRM and CRM can prove to be incredibly useful in helping businesses expand their market share and grow. Marketware’s state-of-the-art physician relationship management tool together with our data analytics are designed specifically to enhance physician relations and increase ROI as a part of your growth strategy.

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