10 TIPS TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL PHYSICIAN LIAISON MARKETING PROGRAM
“A Year from now you will wish you had started today.” Karen Lamb
Are you looking to grow local physician referrals?
The healthcare world can be competitive, and as physicians, it can be challenging to reach and communicate to our potential patients and referring physicians our amazing capabilities to serve and treat patients.
The best way physicians can cultivate physician referral relationships is to build an active physician outreach program is a physician liaison marketing program.
What is Physician Liaison Marketing?
Physician liaison marketing is a physician outreach marketing campaign designed to build local referring physician relationships and to help streamline patient referrals.
Physicians, practices, and hospitals employ physician liaisons as the practice ambassadors to bridge the gap of communication and develop genuine and robust physician referral relationships.
The Importance of Physician Liaison Marketing Program
Develop the reputation of being a top practice and specialist in your territory.
Physician Liaison marketing can help you distinguish yourself in your community not only as a senior specialist but develop a reputation for a top and professional practice that genuinely invests in building relationships and providing support for referring providers.
Gain that competitive edge and stand out from the competition!
Utilize the unique ways; a physician liaison can connect with local referring doctors to meet their needs, requests, and discuss the competitive advantages of working with your physicians.
Build genuine and profitable physician referral relationships.
Physician liaison marketing allows your physicians the ability to meet with the local physician community with ease and develop meaningful relationships that help improve referrals and the patient care process.
This physician outreach is also is a great way to introduce new physicians to the referring practices and get that much-needed face time to build, know, like, and trust relationships.
Gain direct communication with referring physicians and practices. Never worry about missed opportunities to directly connect and communicate with referring providers to discuss patient care.
Streamline patient referrals by using your physician liaison marketing to develop action steps and unique referral systems to make patient referrals an easy and fast process.
Advantages of A Physician Liaison Marketing Program:
- Increase physician referrals
- Increase patient base
- Increase high revenue procedures & surgeries
- Increase overall revenue
- Scale and grow the practice
10 Steps To Building a Successful Physician Liaison Marketing Program
Step 1: Establish Benchmarks & Goals
It is so crucial to a physician liaison marketing to make sure you know your numbers! Before you ever get out in the field, you need to know your numbers and pull the required analytics of the practice.
How can you possibly know where you need to go if you don’t where you are?
Use the resources available to you like your EMR system to pull practice referral reports to understand referral patterns, trends, top referring practices, patient averages, revenue collected, and more!
Use these numbers and analytics generated from your practice EMR to develop benchmarks and goals to track and measure the liaison growth.
Step 2: Provide Professional Physician Liaison Training
Invest in your physician liaisons and let them know they are invaluable assets of the practice and program by providing professional physician liaison training, improving their ability to succeed and advancing their education.
Physician liaison training will provide your liaisons with the necessary skills, tools, and resources to successfully convert patients and allows them to market with confidence and ease.
Physician liaisons need to receive training to be QUALIFIED & CREDIBLE candidates to request a physician’s time out of the clinic and from their patients.
Benefits of Professional Physician Liaison Training For Your Practice:
- Reputation of professionalism
- Organized Marketing and tracking
- Confidence to market to physicians to convert referrals
- Capability to track growth and measure ROI
- Increase the success, efficiency, and productivity of physician liaison marketing.
- Avoid employee turnover
- Develop profitable physician referral relationships
Avoid the missteps and potential pitfalls that can come up when implementing a physician liaison marketing program with professional training.
And stop asking, “how do I measure ROI? What do I say next? How do I get past gatekeepers?”
Step 3: Develop a Strategic Physician Liaison Marketing Gameplan
Gain that competitive advantage by using the analytics and information pulled from your marketing report from your EMR to develop a strategic gameplan.
Target the territories and physicians you need to see to generate referrals and create unique and direct messaging related to their current relationship.
Step 4: Physician Support
Physician liaison marketing is about building GENUINE and meaningful physician referral relationships, so this means you need to have your physician’s support and involvement.
Check out these physician liaison interview questions…
The more time your physicians invest in the program and spend with their liaisons, the better the results and will be reflective of the quality of the specialists and practice.
Step 5: Provide Value For Referring Physicians
Are you spending the limited and valuable time you get with referring physicians to deliver generic messaging?
If referring physicians are willing to take time from their clinic and away from their patients to speak with a liaison, that liaison needs to be providing REAL VALUE in that meeting.
Physician Liaisons need to understand the NEEDS & WANTS of referring physicians- address those needs and create action plans to provide value based on those needs and wants.
Step 6: Consistent Follow-up
Physician liaisons need to be responsive to their community of referring practices and provide a direct line of communication.
The best way to create lasting and robust referral relationships is to have regular visits with referring practices.
Step 7: Tracking Your Physician Liaison Marketing
Building a physician referral strategy means spending 90% of your time out in the field cultivating referral relationships.
Because physician liaisons spend most of their time in the field and not in a traditional work environment, there needs to be an organized and easy tracking for marketing on the go!
Active tracking will help you continue to create strategic marketing and improve communication with your team.
Step 8: Measuring ROI for Your Physician Liaison Marketing Program
The best way to know where to focus your efforts is to evaluate what has been working and what needs improvement.
Pull EMR reports to measure the collected revenue and report ROI, return on investment, of the marketing.
Compare these reports with your established benchmarks and goals and annual reports.
Step 9: Be Innovative
Get creative with your marketing with ways you can build your network and differentiate yourselves from the crowd!
Recharge your liaison marketing by thinking of new and creative ways to provide value for referring doctors.
Jazz up your approach and think of 3 ways you can make connections with local healthcare professionals to improve marketing.
10. Ask Questions
Let your referring physicians do the talking, and the liaisons do the listening.
Don’t be afraid to ask targeted questions to understand their needs better and wants and how you as a liaison, can provide real value.
Ask questions to understand their referral processes better and understand what they are experiencing. Empathize with referring physicians and staff to develop real relationships and show support.
Physician liaison marketing means developing an active, responsive marketing campaign and building genuine connections with referring physicians.
Physician liaisons that spend the extra time and effort investing and supporting their referring physicians will see the best results and enjoy the marketing!
Then key to a successful physician liaison marketing program is investing in the program and building a strong foundation.
