Participate in Our Physician Sales Survey
Physicians still direct the vast majority of healthcare in the marketplace. In fact, as many as 80 percent of patients enter the doors of hospitals and facilities at the direction of physicians.

The movement toward a consumer-driven market notwithstanding, many hospitals, health systems and large specialty practices have turned to physician sales or referral development programs to grow their businesses. Unfortunately, motivating physicians to change referral patterns is a daunting task under the best of circumstances and the lack of industry “best practices” complicates the situation even further.

In October 2005, Strategic Health Care Marketing teamed with Corporate Health Group to conduct a national survey. The desire: to gain insight into healthcare provider’s physician sales efforts.

Now, Corporate Health Group is preparing to capture updated best practice information to share with our clients. The 2008 Physician Sales and Service Survey has been expanded and the results will be included in an upcoming white paper. In addition, the results will provide detailed management and enchmarking data for physician sales managers and healthcare executives like you to inform your programs for future success!

Click the link to go to the survey and/or forward it to the appropriate individuals within your organization. The survey deadline is March 28, 2008.

Understanding the Patient as Customer

Your patients come from all walks of life - young and old, struggling and well to do, healthy and ill. But, at the risk of oversimplifying, there are two things they all have in common:

1. They don’t want to have healthcare as an interruption in their lives; and
2. If they must, they want to be treated as a person that matters.

Think about it. Every patient sitting in your waiting room, lying in your beds or on your treatment tables is living a moment of "life interrupted." For whatever reason they’re visiting you, with the exception of the planned physical or check-up, it’s a surprise (and not usually a pleasant one).

Whatever the situation, that person has had to interrupt whatever they were doing to take care of whatever concern has brought them to you. They come to you anxious and worried - not only about what’s wrong, but how they’re going to resolve it.

From your organization, they want a kind word, a smile, the confidence that you’ll take care of them or their loved one with the kind of care you’d expect for yourself. It sounds simple, but with every simple solution there are always complexities.

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Medical Practice Top Improvers - A Client Resource of Innovation and Best Practices

Thanks to technological advancements and increased access to capital, physicians can perform complex procedures in medical clinics that formerly required a hospital visit. Medical clinics serve the patient's comprehensive needs, from routine check-ups to specialty care.

As medical care continues to trend toward outpatient treatment, it is important to focus on what outpatient clinics are doing well so the successes can be duplicated elsewhere. Press Ganey Associates, Inc., the health care industry's leading vendor of satisfaction measurement and improvement services, offers insight to care providers and medical practice managers on areas identified for industry-wide improvement.

Press Ganey analyzed the experiences of patients treated at 5,419 medical clinics nationwide between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2005. Patient response data was analyzed to distinguish which facilities made significant changes, with an increase in mean score points, over that four-year time period. The data was broken out in six-month intervals to pinpoint the facilities that had made consistent improvements. Through the survey process, Press Ganey identified medical practice top improvers.

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