Client Success Stories
Following is a sampling of some of our many medical practice clients for which we have developed and executed highly successful marketing and sales campaigns.
Large Multi-Specialty Group Needed to Reverse Declining Volume in New Patient Referrals
Background: This large physician-owned multi-specialty group noticed a decline in new patient appointments and overall volume.
Challenge: The physicians had received negative feedback from patients and referring physicians on a range of issues, including staff, office environment and scheduling.
Strategy: There were several issues to tackle here. We spent three days with the staff and learned that there was a lack of senior leadership, problems with appointment scheduling and check-in, and that most of the staff felt highly under-appreciated. We provided a two-day customer service training program to all staff from executive to clerical in order to provide them with the skills they needed to communicate better with the physicians, patients and themselves. Through this process, we empowered the entire staff to become part of the process and encouraging morale. We kicked off weekly staff meetings to give staff a voice and an employee recognition program met with success in boosting morale and communication in the office.
In terms of the environment, we implemented a competitive mystery shopping program to determine how our client compared to their competition. Their largest competitors had large beautiful offices with friendly and receptive staff who did an excellent job doing appointment scheduling and check-in. We discussed with our client who agreed that environmental changes were necessary in-office. With their architect and designer, we developed a new look for the facility, particularly the patient waiting area and the reception area. We made the reception area more patient friendly, enabling the staff to interact more easily. The patient checkout area was vastly improved, and perhaps most importantly, we revised the flow of the clinical areas to better the process for patients and staff. We then updated all brochures and their website and re-launched them to the medical community via a dynamic direct mail program and consultative telesales campaign.
Results: Following the re-branding of the practice the staff had a major attitude improvement and were completely focused on doing their best for the practice. After the first year of our marketing program the group had an uptick of 19% more patients, 26% more procedures, and 12% additional new referrers.
Pediatric Specialty Practice in Competitive Market was in Need of More Marketshare of Physician Referrals
Background: This pediatric specialty practice had competition from several aggressive hospital-based groups and wanted to implement a robust strategic marketing campaign to maintain their share of the marketplace.
Challenge: This group was in a competitive market and wanted to ensure they were getting as many referrals as possible from pediatricians, family practitioners, cardiologists, perinatologists and OB-Gyns throughout the region.
Strategy: After developing a comprehensive database of pediatricians, family practice physicians, cardiologists and other pediatric specialists, we implemented our proprietary marketing research survey to learn about the referring dynamics in this geographic area. Results showed that while our client did have many loyal referrers, a large number of practices were not familiar with them and referred to other pediatric specialty groups with which they competed. We learned that communications between referring doctors and specialists was extremely important so we trained the entire team at the practice through a series of customer service programs to be more interactive with patients, families, and especially referring physicians and their staff. We created a series of attractive brochures focusing on different specialties of the practice and implemented a strong marketing program including consultative telesales, in-person physician office sales visitation, and fulfillment.
Results: After six months of our marketing campaign the practice noticed a consistent increase of referrals overall, with new providers who had never referred before sending patients regularly. The extremely positive results of this campaign continued with a range of tactics generating referrals from new referrers, VIP referrers, drop-down referrers and ongoing referrers.
Single Practitioner OB-GYN Needed Help Marketing Exclusive Practice to Referring Physicians and the Community-at-Large
Background: This OB-GYN, highly regarded in the community, had an exclusive practice with no insurance participation. The doctor catered to wealthy patients who could pay out of pocket and maintained a high-end practice.
Challenge: The physician needed to get the word out about his practice and had a specific treatment he wanted to market to post-menopausal women, however he was facing strong competition from independent practices and hospital-based practices that were in-network.
Strategy: After developing a new branded look including a new logo and several elegantly designed brochures, we put together a marketing plan for the practice that included several strategies. We also developed an extensive database of potentially referring physicians and purchased a list of women in the appropriate geography based on focused demographics/psychographics. We created a sophisticated looking direct mail campaign including an invitation and a postcard campaign, and mailed each of them to both audiences. We also contacted former patients for recommendations and referrals to stimulate additional demand. The last piece of the program was a mass media advertising campaign in exclusive local publications in their market.
Results: The campaign brought in 75 inquiries with a 25% signup for the treatment after screenings and eligibility. Due to the private pay nature of the treatment, the ROI was extremely high.
Multi-Specialty Group in Ethnically Diverse Community Competes with Many Hospital-Based Groups
Background: Large multi-specialty group in densely populated area was seeking to increase referrals from area physicians and bring in foot traffic for PCPs.
Challenge: The practice’s geographic location offers tremendous choice to area patients with medical practices on most street corners all vying for the same volume.
Strategy: In order to make this client stand out from the competition we needed data on the referral patterns in this area. We implemented our proprietary marketing research survey which gave us a clear picture on the issues and challenges in this area. One of the largest obstacles for many referrers was the language barrier in this ethnically diverse neighborhood. We convinced our client to bring in several additional physicians and staff who spoke most of the languages in this area. We produced brochures and patient materials in several languages, including Spanish, Korean, Chinese and Russian. We then implemented both our in-person physician office sales referral program, consultative telesales program with fulfillment, and multi-language direct mail campaign. Referral pads and materials were available in all languages and referrers had the opportunity to choose which was best for their patients.
Results: After the first year of the program physician referrals were up 27%. We believe speaking to these referrers in their own languages enhanced the referral process and encouraged patients to come to this office as communication was no longer a huge issue. Ongoing marketing continued with increased referrals, cases and procedures year over year.