Practice Growth Strategies: Communication and Promotion go hand in hand
When starting or growing your practice, you and the Marketing Department work in tandem. Marketing uses various communication tools to bring in new patients and keep the ARC brand top of mind, while you take the three major actions below to keep your patients happy and increase patient referrals to your practice.
The Physician Role
- Focus on the needs and wants of those who use or could use your services-patients, physicians and referring agencies.
- Deliver the program and services to meet those needs and wants.
- Communicate these programs and services to existing and potentially interested users of your practice.
Focusing
· Do you have any special interest that you can promote to patients and other physicians in the practice?
· How can you develop the flexibility to meet the needs of patients, staff, other physicians and referring agencies?
Delivering
· Make sure there are no barriers to patients making appointments: Rules like “only 2 physicals a day” or “procedures only at 11:30” will stop a scheduler dead in their tracks and stop you from building a practice.
· If your patient is sick, give them a call that evening to check on them.
· If your patient is new, check on the date of their last physical. If one is due, go ahead and take care of it for them.
· Provide your patients with health education materials or sources to help make them more aware of their health status and needs.
Communicating
Interpersonal Communications – the one-to-one communication between physician and staff, physician and patient, and staff and patient is the most important promotional technique utilized in a medical practice. Of all the other marketing strategies, this holds the greatest weight.
· Get involved in your community and keep a handful of your cards in your pocket. Hand them out at school and community events, your child's soccer game, etc.
· Make friends with the scheduling staff. They are the key to your fortune! Bring them donuts, flowers, etc.
· Be available to the media if they contact you for information about current health issues. Return media calls promptly, they are usually on a deadline and if you do not respond quickly you will not be called on again.
· Plan on making a presentation on a special interest at an appropriate ARC department meeting to introduce yourself to the other physicians in our practice.
· Don’t be shy about telling your patients that you are building your practice and asking them to refer their friends to you.
· When you get compliments ask your patients to post it on Angie’s list, Yelp.com, or other online resource. Send the Marketing Department any cards or compliments you get from your patients and we’ll include it in the Kudos section of the employee newsletter and may include it in the patient newsletter as well.
The Clinic Role
Front Desk and Appointment Staff
The front desk staff and appointment schedulers are integral to the success of your practice. They are your “sales team.” Marketing can only get patients so far as the telephone. Once patients call, it is up to your clinic staff to answer the phone efficiently and friendly. They need to be equipped to respond to patient requests and resolve patient complaints.
Referral Coordinators
ARC specialist physicians should make sure to meet the referral coordinators as they most often will help refer patients to specialists. They will also let new physicians and seasoned physicians know about new services and specialties available at ARC.
Nurses
Patients often get more face time with nurses than with doctors and will ask the nurses about primary care and specialty physicians. Make sure you communicate with ARC nursing supervisors about your services. You can send them an e-mail or make a presentation at their monthly meetings.
The A-B-Cs of the Marketing Department Role
The ARC Marketing Department develops internal and external communication tools to market the whole organization, specific clinics, services, specialties and sometimes individual doctors. Feel free to contact the marketing department at #Marketing if you have new ideas about how to build your practice.
ARC-INFO – 272-4636 – Patient Referral and Information Line
This is a referral source for you. Our CSRs refer callers to new physicians and to physicians with more openings in their schedule, depending upon where the caller lives and is willing to travel to see a doctor
ARC Web Site – AustinRegionalClinic.com
The ARC web site typically gets about 80,000 unique visits a month, including visits from internal ARC servers that may come from physician and staff use. Announcements about new doctors are posted on the home page. Our most popular pages are our physician bio pages. Users can search for physicians by name, location, or specialty.
Collateral
ARC Collateral materials include brochures and flyers about our services and specialties
Community Relations
Our Community relations specialist arranges for marketing staff, physicians and clinic staff to attend, health fairs, community events, speaking opportunities and networking events. Physicians are also encouraged to get involved on the board or join a committee of a local non-profit.
Corporate Communications
Announcements about new doctors are included on the company intranet site, CMSweb, and in the employee newsletters. Appointment availability in different clinics is e-mailed to managers and staff, and information about new specialties and services is e-mailed to various groups throughout the organization.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the marketing practice of communicating with current patients about services that they may need, i.e. reminding diabetes patients to get a foot exam, reminding parents to update their children’s vaccines, reminding women about mammogram screenings and more. We use direct mail, personalized letters and phone calls in reaching out to our patients to improve quality care and increase visits.
Directory Advertising
We advertise minimally in the AT&T Yellow Pages. Our Yellow Page listings also appear on internet directory sites.
Hold Messages
When patients call our clinics, we record informative messages about our policies, specialties and services.
Internet Advertising
Our internet advertising consists mostly of improving our organic search results (SEO). Sometimes we purchase additional advertising to market specialties and services.
Media Relations
Austin Regional Clinic is once of the first health care organizations contacted by the media when they need a medical source for a story. We respond to the media immediately and will often call on you to be on camera, on radio, or respond in print to breaking news regarding public health.
Patient Education
ARC-branded patient education materials are developed by our physicians and produced by the Marketing Department. Many of these materials are available to download and print from the ARC web site.
Physician Relations
Marketing works with physician department chiefs and clinic managers to set up specialist speakers at department meetings and at clinic sites.
Print Advertising
Our print advertising is hyperlocal focusing mostly on Community Impact newspapers and other widely read local papers. Our ads may be brand/image focused, clinic-focused, service-focused or call-to-action depending on the season.
Promotional Items
We hand out promotional items at every opportunity available and are happy to send promotional items to physicians when out promoting their practice in the community. These items include pens, magnets, stickers, notepads, hand sanitizers, first aid pouches and jump ropes.
Research
Every few years we conduct research to test our brand recognition and value, measure effectiveness of our advertising, or explore new ways to communicate about our specialties, services and our brand.
Segmented Marketing& Direct Mail
We know which segments of the population are most likely to use our services. When we market specific specialties, we target just those segments of the population who are most likely to use those services.
Signage
The Marketing Department works with Clinic Managers and Facilities to design and produce appropriate internal and external signage for each clinic.