Physician Involvement Can Influence Marketing Metrics

By aligning hospital physicians with the marketing department and its strategies, the patient experience and marketing goals both stand to benefit.

EHRs. Obamacare. MU. Medicare. HIX. Readmission rates. ACOs. Population health. PCMH. The healthcare industry's buzz words are a deafening swirl of acronyms and high concepts.

But at the end of the day, healthcare is all about numbers: patient outcomes, patient visits, patient volume. Marketing leaders know that marketing is a numbers game too: return on investment, page views, open rates.

It makes sense, then, that strategizing on how to achieve measurable results makes for solid common ground between physicians and marketers—an advantageous partnership not often capitalized on in many organizations.

By aligning hospital physicians with the marketing department and its strategies, the patient experience and marketing goals both stand to benefit.

Involving Physicians in Patient Acquisition
Physicians and marketers work in tandem at Holy Redeemer Health System in Meadowbrook, PA, believing that the stronger the partnership, the better the marketing outcome.

"Physicians deliver a patient experience that either reinforces the brand or not," says Christine Holt, chief experience officer. "Their presence with patients in the real and virtual worlds is an important part of marketing success. They also drive patient volumes through referrals and their affiliations with the healthcare system. As such, they have a big role in patient acquisition and retention."

Holy Redeemer adopted the patient acquisition methodology about a year ago, when it began to explore how patients came to the hospital. The strategy involves assembling a team to map the patient acquisition process, then engaging in discussions to focus on how the process can be improved and identify any barriers that may exist. Both the marketing and operations teams commit to specific strategies to enhance patient acquisition.

"Clinicians can also help marketing understand the services they are marketing on a deeper level," she says. "And when physicians understand the marketing strategy, they are more likely to be strong advocates for the brand. Physicians build the relationships that matter the most in healthcare."

To track patient acquisition success, Holt and her team use custom landing pages with forms, patient calls, and patient assessments. Each search engine marketing (SEM) campaign receives a custom URL to measure clicks and movement through the site. Marketers also track results from forms back to a database to assess conversion for leads to acquisition and sources. Additionally, they review all phone calls that come in from SEM to determine the quality of leads and those insights are used to tweak the landing pages.

Calling on Physicians to Set Measurable Goals
At the physician-led Greenville Hospital System in Greenville, SC, physician stakeholders and the marketing department have long worked hand in hand. However, in recent years the marketing team has helped physicians transition from viewing them as order-takers to fellow strategists.

The Greenville marketing department went from "doing whatever [physicians] wanted to developing measurable goals with them, then the marketing department develops and implements the plan," says Sally Foister, director of marketing services.

"The other major change in alignment is [that] in the past year the physicians have been involved in setting the growth priorities—therefore the marketing priorities—for the organization. This allows the marketing department to be focused and prevents us from marketing every squeaky wheel, which leads to ineffectiveness."

In addition to helping set measurable growth goals, physicians are an asset to the Greenville marketing team because when they are invested in marketing strategies and initiatives, they are more readily available for community relations efforts that put them face to face with prospective patients.

Greenville tracks a slew of metrics, focusing most on new patient visits—its highest measure of success for growth priorities. Marketers also gather information to determine the effectiveness of each tactic employed in a campaign, analyzing click through rates, open rates, web traffic, call volume, and referral rates.

"I believe the most important things we've accomplished regarding alignment is having physicians be part of setting the growth priorities for the organization, and we have a 'menu' of marketing tactics that each new physician or physician practice gets depending on where they fall in the priorities," Foister says. "It's black and white. The same rules apply to everyone—it keeps the number of messages in the market to a minimum."