Tag: physician relations

Want to improve hospital-physician alignment?

What’s more important  to patient outcomes and service excellence – the performance of a hospital or its affiliated physicians? Tray Dunaway, MD, author, surgeon and educator, believes the more important question may be, can you see who’s been swimming naked?  We invited Dr. Dunaway to shed some light on the topic in the week leading up to the 2012 HealthShare Symposium, where he will expand on what he believes the industry needs to do to advance healthcare quality for patients. For now, here’s a preview.

Want to improve hospital-physician alignment? Tell them you can see them naked.

And so can everyone else!

Tray Dunaway, MD

Choosing a physician and hospital based on superior health care value determined by clinical outcomes and service benchmarks is difficult for many reasons. Even well educated and savvy healthcare consumers face a daunting task, often compounded by an overwhelming sense of urgency, in making the best healthcare buying decision when suddenly faced with medical needs.

Making the right choice is difficult because healthcare quality waters are murky. Most consumers can’t comprehend a myriad of decision making factors, nor can they determine proper significance of factors they even think they may understand. But quoting Warren Buffett, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

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Three ways to grow your business

We’ve got a great line-up of webinars in October. Hope you can make it. Just click register.

October 18, 2011
ICRM Case Study: CRM as part of the patient experience
(11 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. MT / 1 p.m. CT / 2 p.m. ET)
Register

Learn how one of our hospital partners is taking CRM to the next level by incorporating it into the patient experience. By connecting their custom system into the operations of their hospitals and physician offices (from reception to kiosks), see first-hand how to provide the ultimate personalized patient experience.

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Introducing Kathy Lapacek

We’re pretty darn excited to announce a new member of the CPM team — Kathy Lapacek, Product Manager of our Physician Relationship Management System. Kathy joins us from Advocate Health Care in Illinois, where she served as the Vice President of Business Development for two of its hospitals.

Kathy is whip-smart and has years of experience in physician relations. We know she’ll bring a lot to the enhancement of our Physician Relations System in the next year. Watch this quick video to see why she’s excited to work in physician relations, now more than ever.

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Recruited new doctors. Check. Acquired physician practices. Check. Now what?

We’ve got another great webinar coming up next week here at CPM HQ.

Recruited new doctors.
Acquired physician practices.
Now what?
Thursday, July 21, 2011
11 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. MT / 1 p.m. CT / 2 p.m. ET

Too often, hospitals lose money on underperforming employed physician practices. Many organizations focus on recruitment and acquisition. But what happens after the acquisition when you need to grow the business?

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What you missed in March

When you’re busy, it can be hard to find time to read your favorite blogs and catch up on healthcare news. Unfortunately, that means a lot of content gets missed. To do our part to help, here’s a round-up of our posts from the past month.

Here are the things we talked about in March.

  • Our Chief Marketing Officer came home from the Healthcare Marketing Strategies Summit with informed hope about the future of healthcare. Don’t miss her post on the experience.
  • Everyone was talking data at the Physician Strategies Summit. This recap of the Summit with our VP of Physician Relations was the month’s most-read post.
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Everyone’s talking data at the Physician Strategies Summit

Did you make the Physician Strategies Summit this year? Our VP of Physician Relations Christina Ott recently returned from the conference and I caught up with her to ask a few questions about how things went.

How was the turnout this year?
Christina: There were over 200 people at the Summit this year with a range of backgrounds in the healthcare community — from medical directors of large healthcare organizations to vice presidents of business development to heads of physician relations and physician liaisons.

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Give your physicians a little love

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day this week, we’re excited to introduce a new feature of our Physician Relationship Management System to help you sweeten your relationships with physicians.

Introducing Physician Psychographics
In light of changing physician affiliation with health systems, physician communication is top of mind for
many hospitals right now. Christina Ott, our VP of Physician Relations, hears often from clients looking for ways to improve their physician relationships.

So, we decided to find out how by going to the source. (Like all good things, it starts with data…) Our researchers conducted a study with a cross-section of physicians from across the country, collecting data on everything from demographics to practice statistics to referral drivers and attitudes about practicing medicine.

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January round-up

When you’re busy, it can be hard to find time to read your favorite blogs and catch up
on healthcare news. Unfortunately, that means a lot of content gets missed. To do our part to help, here’s a round-up of our posts from the past month.

Here are the things we talked about in January.

  • With healthcare in flux, hospitals have a lot to consider as they prepare for the year ahead. To kick off 2011, our planning expert offered four resolutions for healthcare executives. His follow-up post has four more actionable items for the to-do list.
  • This month, we had the opportunity to interview Paul Matsen, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer of Cleveland Clinic. In part one, he talks about strategic marketing campaigns. In part two, he shares the Clinic’s social media strategy.
  • In January we introduced our new open Instant CRM with a video announcement. Also learn more about it in our podcast.
  • Looking to create a more efficient, impactful media plan? In this podcast, our media strategist talks about the common challenges hospitals face and how better data can help you strategically target.
  • Right after healthcare reform was repealed in the house, we posted a video on what happened and what it meant for hospitals going forward.
  • Last month, a study came out showing a communication gap between physicians and specialists. Our physician expert shares her reaction in this quick-read post.
  • To help you stay on top of healthcare industry news, we posted a compilation of the hottest healthcare stories of the month.
  • What’s CRM? Les Stern offers a definition and we share some of the key points here.

Whew! A lot happened in January. Now that it’s wrapped up, let’s move into February full speed ahead. Are there any topics you especially want to hear about this coming month?

Closing the communication gap between physicians and specialists

By Christina Ott, CPM’s VP of Physician Relations

The Archives of Internal Medicine released a study this month showing that communication of referral information is not always effective between primary care physicians and specialists. (Becker’s Hospital Review also covers the story here.)

Through my work in physician relations I hear these kinds of concerns all the time. In healthcare, we all work to strengthen communication among physicians and specialists (and hospitals and physicians). One of the key opportunities for improvement is to identify the best ways to help both parties improve coordination of care for their patients.

An EMR is certainly a step in the right direction, but there’s still a need for interpersonal communication. As noted in the study, there is an increasing perception from specialists that they are not receiving information from PCPs. About 69.3% of PCPs reported that they “always” or “most of the time” sent notification of a patient’s history and reason for consultation to specialists, but only 34.8% of specialists said that they “always” or “most of the time” received that notification. Likewise, PCPs are concerned that if they send their patients to a specialist, they don’t always get them back.

It’s time for a renewed focus on strategies to improve communication between physicians and specialists. One such method is a peer-to-peer physician phone line. The PCP would need to commit to placing calls to the specialist regarding referred patients, and the specialist would need to commit to answering the call from a PCP. This tactic has been effective in increasing physician perceptions, trust and coordination of care for their patients.

As healthcare moves towards accountable care, the introduction of care teams can help the physician be prepared to consult the patient and provide the best quality of care. Effective ways to do this include proactively ensuring quality reports are received from a referring physician and providing nurse support to monitor patients with chronic conditions.

There are a wealth of ways to start improving communication between physicians and specialists. Overall, it starts with new understanding of the needs of both parties and how working together can benefit both their own and their patients’ interests.

Image Credit: Kit Cowan

Accountable Care on the brain

By Christina Ott, VP of Physician Relations

Last week, I attended the Hospital & Physician Relations Summit in Arizona, speaking with executives from hospitals across the country. Throughout the event, a few key topics came up time and again.

1. ACOs are top of mind.

The conference was focused around discussion of ACOs. Many organizations were there to get a better understanding of what their colleagues were doing respective to ACO and clinical integration models, as well as how healthcare reform will impact  ACOs.

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