Goodbye, Physician Relations; Hello, Business Growth

The traditional physician relations model is dead. At least it is at Texas Health Resources, and a growing number of organizations narrowing their sites on increasing volume. If this trend continues, physician liaisons may soon be a thing of the past.

In 2008, Texas Health Resources, the 24-hospital, Dallas-based health system, realized it needed to drive up volume in order to remain competitive. Naturally, it first looked to its physician relations strategy.

What the health system found was not one cohesive program, but several inconsistent strategies throughout each of its affiliates or, as THR calls them, entities.

"We decided to make it a system-wide strategy when the economy went to hell in a hand basket and volume became more important to the organization," said Susan Boydell, director of business growth strategy for the health system. "We knew physicians were the best way to go after that volume and the strategy changed from a traditional physician liaison program to business growth."

After Boydell and her team came up with the concept, they conducted a system-wide assessment to determine whether the organization was ready for the strategy that they envisioned. They visited each of the 24 entities and spoke to leadership about their views on the value of physician relations.

"We also did an assessment with each of the folks doing a physician relations role to find out what their goals were, what results had they been given, and what the majority of their day was spent on," she says. "Thanks to the assessment, we knew where we were and where we needed to get to. We understood how the organization would support this strategy in the long run."

Once the assessment was complete, Boydell submitted an implementation plan for THR leadership approval. It was granted, and deployment began in 2009. The intricate deployment stage consisted of many steps:

• Working with human resources to create a new organization structure
• Creating job descriptions for new positions, such as Physician Growth Specialists
• Putting a cohesive incentive plan in place across the whole organization
• Determining the best tools to use for tracking success
• Setting activity-based goals and volume-based goals

"All goals in the volume perspective were developed in conjunction with the entities," Boydell says. "They told us what they wanted to grow and we provided the strategy of how we were going to do that."

Today, THR no longer incentivizes activity goals. While Physician Growth Specialists do have to meet basic activity requirements, all incentivized goals center around volume.

This year marks THR's new physician growth program's third full year of deployment, having been in place since midway through 2009. And the strategy's results are continuing to grow.

THR has set goals ranging from a 3% to 6% increase in growth over the year before, depending on conditions within the specific entity. In the first quarter of 2012, the majority of its entities exceeded the 6% goal.

"It hasn't always been that way because the organization hadn't been growing," Boydell says. "We had really good results in some entities and others, mostly where there was ease of use issues or competition in their market—those were harder to grow. Overall, this past quarter we had significant results."

So, is the physician liaison role on its way out? Perhaps, but most likely not anytime soon. Even THR kept two physician liaison-like physicians, called Retention Specialist, sat two entities based on their specific needs. Still, 22 of THR's 24 hospitals are functioning just fine without a physician liaison role.

"We transitioned away from that," Boydell says. "There are some that are left within the organization, but nobody has put in any new position that is similar to [the physician liaison]."

Regardless, putting the emphasis on business growth, and less on physician relations, is a critical strategy for all hospitals and health systems in order to stay competitive.