Physician Guide to Market Outreach
Physician outreach is a crucial part of a comprehensive marketing strategy — especially when it comes to launching or growing a specialty practice. Local physicians and their referral coordinators send patients to specialists they can trust. This is why it’s important to position yourself as an expert and resource as you build those relationships with key providers. This might mean that you’re personally building bridges with targeted referral sources or you may appoint a friendly face from your practice to make these visits on your behalf. This should be a trusted, outgoing member of your care team or another representative of your practice like a referral coordinator, marketing specialist or physician liaison.
In this Physician Guide to Market Outreach white paper, we discuss the 5 key steps to physician outreach and show you how you can implement them.
1. Identify Physician Targets
Use your practice’s electronic medical record (EMR) to identify and generate a list of current referral relationships. Maintaining and nurturing these relationships will ensure that your practice remains top of mind when patients need your expertise. This is just important as identifying new referral sources.
2. Develop a Practice Message
3 things to address when constructing your practice message. Before you begin your outreach efforts, develop a 2-minute (or less) pitch, summarizing what you have to offer and how you can work to help their patients.
3. Make Intentional Connections
In addition to physicians, there are 3 contacts that should be targeted during your practice visits: gatekeepers, referral coordinators and practice managers.
4. Track Visits
Keep a record of any touch point you or your delegate make within a tracking tool.
5. Measure Success
Don’t expect instant results! It may take a couple outreach visits to build the rapport and trust needed to drive noticeable gains in patients and revenue. Remember, data shows that it can take an average of 6 touch points to generate 1 new patient referral. Depending on how much time you devote to marketing outreach, it could take 3-9 months for you to generate 1 new patient from a new referral source. Consider this when creating the right checkpoints for measuring success.