Getting Strategic to Reduce Referral Leakage

Unfortunately, the physician liaison role is widely misunderstood by key players in health systems as problem-solving instead of relational building. Physician liaisons are primarily responsible for developing relationships with physicians in order to facilitate beneficial referring practices and reduce referral leakage within health systems. This lack of clarity causes a gap between creating complex strategies that accurately reflect liaison duties and accomplishing growth goals.

A physician liaison’s top priority and principal value involves efforts to reduce referral leakage. However, due to the lack of clarity revolving around the physician liaison role, referral leakage for a health system can average from 55-65% with approximately 70% of physician relations strategies failing due to lack of execution. While growing educational relationships with physicians is still key to reducing referral leakage, relational building has become much more difficult in the field. The intent alone to form positive relationships with physicians is not going to cut it anymore. To close the gap, strategic thinking in the field is now required to get results.

Create a Field Strategy Script

In a poll completed by Marketware, access or time with physicians is 1 of the top 3 significant challenges respondents saw in their future within their physician relations programs. Just as the physician liaison role is built upon many other roles, so is the primary care physician role.

Physician liaisons need to structure their visits better with physicians to create efficiency within their own role and for the physician. Instead of starting off the conversation by asking, “How is it going?”, a liaison should instead begin with explaining the purpose of their visit. For example, does a certain physician need to be educated better on new services? Or Is a certain physician showing up in your referral tracking software as referring patients to outside sources? Monitoring issue management will better help a liaison understand anything that may be happening with a physician to make visits more efficient.

A liaison should regularly clear their mind of questions to make room for more thoughtful ones that better position their services. Personalizing questions during a physician visit helps reduce referral leakage. After each visit, physician liaisons must take detailed notes about their interactions with primary care physicians. These notes help liaisons build stronger, personable relationships with physicians and assist physician relations managers in tracking visits more effectively.

Reevaluate Focus

To better figure out which questions to ask in the field, reevaluate your current strategy to create a sales plan and further message development. Managers should look at their current strategy to discover if they have a leakage strategy, better define their leaking patients, and describe their targeting methodology. Addressing these issues and implementing data and field intelligence will help create questions to better position services. Then, create a method to define what physicians you can earn business from and use data and field intelligence to quantify these opportunities.

Physician relations managers should periodically evaluate their team’s alignment with the organization’s goals. Managers must describe their team as physician advocates, volume growth experts, problem solvers, or customer service professionals. They should then analyze the necessary attributes for success. Since roles naturally evolve, it’s essential to assess whether the team is stagnating in its comfort zone and adjust as needed.

Report Data through Storytelling

Track and record all efforts through referral tracking software to effectively communicate ROI to senior leaders. Next, ensure reports reflect the organization’s values, convey a clear message, and include data. A liaison should package their story by highlighting key learnings, identifying opportunities, and quantifying potential volume. Strategic reports can include sales cycle results and use reporting as an opportunity to educate leaders about internal customers.

Closing Thoughts

Accurately defining physician liaison duties is important to create physician relations efficiency and reduce referral leakage. As roles continue to evolve, so should our strategies. Physician relations teams can do so by implementing data and field intelligence, asking better questions in their physician visits, and adjusting strategies as new technologies evolve. While roles change and are added onto within the physician relations team, the main value of physician liaisons continues to be the same: relational building. New technologies allow liaisons to get better strategic about increasing this value and their value to the team.

Webinar — Physician Relations & Healthcare Analytics

Identify & Reduce Your Hospital’s Referral Leakage

Referral leakage is inevitable, but with the right strategies, you can minimize its impact and keep more patients within your network. This webinar explores the key types of leakage—procedure, referral, and patient choice—and provides actionable solutions to help your hospital improve retention and drive growth.

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Video — Physician Relations & Healthcare Analytics

End Referral Leakage with Marketware’s PRM & Analytics

Referral leakage is a pressing issue in healthcare, occurring when patients are referred to or seek out-of-network providers for specialist services or other medical needs. Every hospital experiences leakage — it’s inevitable. But there are ways to reduce leakage and increase your growth. Watch this video to see how Marketware’s PRM & Analytics Platforms can end referral leakage for your organization.

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