SHSMD Physician Relations Benchmarking Survey Results and Discussion Chris Hyers, MBA, FACHE Christine Rhodes, MS
Your Guest Experts and representatives of the SHSMD physician strategies task force Chris Rhodes, MS Chris Hyers, MBA,FACHE Currently: Director Provider Relations Porter Adventist Hospital Currently: VP, Business Development Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare Iowa Experience: 16 years in physician/provider relations and healthcare marketing MS Indiana University BS Ithaca College Experience: Nearly 20 years in C-Suite Marketing, PR and Business Development MBA University of Nebraska BS University of Florida
The Study Special Thanks to Kriss Barlow of Barlow/McCarthy for tabulating and reviewing the results
Overview What s The Target Physician relations has entered the mainstream as a strategy to create relationships and earn referral opportunities.but how do you talk to the docs, how do you measure success, how do you structure a program We set out to learn from our peers
Survey Design and Implementation Survey STATS 2650 surveys sent SHSMD and AAPL members April 2010 347 respondents (13%) +/- 5% at the 95% confidence interval Respondent Profile Type of organization 37% stand alone hospital 52% hospital systems 12% other Type of Hospital 89% acute care 11% peds, rehab, psych, other Bed size
State of the State General Program Information
Results Program Overview How long the program has been in existence
Program Overview Budget What is the current total budget (including salaries)?
Program Focus organizing the team
Program staffing number of employees Table 3 Full-Time-Equivalent Employees, by Bed Size and Type of Organization Number of FTEs Stand-Alone Hospital <200 beds 201+ beds Reporting for All System Hospitals < 400 beds 401+beds < 400 beds Reporting for One or More System Hospitals 401+beds Reporting for Corporate Functions Only 401+beds Number of 48 61 22 41 47 25 11 Respondents Less than 1 FTE 40% 8% 14% 7% 4% --- --- 1 FTE 48% 21% 32% 12% 45% 16% 11% 2 3 FTEs 12% 54% 45% 34% 34% 24% 22% 4 6 FTEs --- 15% 9% 20% 13% 36% 33% More than 6 FTEs --- 2% --- 27% 4% 24% 33%
Program staffing staff background Which of the following best describes the background of the programs field staff?
Program staffing training Which of the following training has staff received in the last 12 months?
Sales Process - Targets and targeting What percentage of field staff time is devoted to the following activities?
Sales Planning Sales Process 62% of respondents use a sales plan Number of target physicians Vary widely (see full report) About 23.9% of respondents have 100-200 targets Schedule vs drop in Also quite a bit of variation
Reports and Reporting
Program Focus - Functions breakdown What percentage of staff time is spent performing the following functions?
Program Focus Priorities What is the number one priority for your program?
Sales Process Visit volumes Approximately how many physician office visits are sales staff expected to complete each week?
Tracking and reporting - Databases 67% of respondents are using a database to track activity 63% of respondents using a data base are using a vendor-provided CRM/sales tool while 37% use an internally developed tool or excel of access databases
Tracking and reporting metrics and measures What metrics are used to measure the impact of the physician relations program?
Results Department Interface How would you rate the interface between physician relations and the following departments (1=poor, 5=excellent)?
Program staffing management background Which of the following best describes the background of the programs management staff?
Who Wants to Know
Results Reporting structure What department does the physician relations program report to?
Reporting when and who? 55% produce monthly reports, 31% quarterly reports 13% no reports! Departments receiving reports:
So..is it working?
Incentives
Results Incentive programs Programs using incentive pay: Percent of individual s base pay provided in incentive:
Results Incentive factors What factors are included in the incentive program?
Results Incentive effectiveness Asked to rate on a scale of 1-5
Mission Accomplished?
Results Perceived effectiveness How effective is the physician relations program in supporting the orgs business dev and growth plans?
Effectiveness of Activities On a scale of 1-5 how would you rate the effectiveness of the following sales activities performed by the physician relations staff?
Open ended responses What do you anticipate will be the top three challenges your physician relations program will face in the next 18 months? Resource constraints (including staff and budget) (81) Physician Relationships (including recruitment and retention) (39) Patient volume (including declining numbers, driving volume) (22) Competition: among hospitals, access to physicians, access to capital funding, programs (20) Healthcare Reform (10) Economy (3) Declining Reimbursement
Open ended responses What do you anticipate will be the top three challenges your physician relations program will face in the next three years? Physician relations (recruitment, conflict resolution, shortage and retention) (35) Resource constraints (including staff and budget) (25) Competition (referrals) (30) Impact of Health Reform (20) Declining Reimbursement
How to use this data to engage leadership Beyond this is what everyone else is doing
Summary Observations Physician relations programs are functioning at a strategic level, supporting the business development efforts for the organization and receiving attention and support from executive leaders. In general, physician relations programs are active, using sales plans and metrics, with at least a couple of years of momentum behind them. Many program directors and managers as well as field staff have sales and marketing experience including pharmaceuticals and other healthcare-related services. Growing new referrals is the number one priority for a majority of programs, with a significant amount of staff time spent interacting with physicians and office staff. While staff training generally includes organizational branding and marketing strategies, clinical products and service and database systems, more traditional sales training such as account and territory management is still lacking somewhat. Although incentive-based compensation is becoming more common, only about one-quarter of all physician relations programs currently offer incentives as part of their compensation models. With high-volume medical staff members and new physicians scheduled visits are common though cold-calls and visits with office staff only are still very common. Many programs continue to devote a significant amount of time to complaint identification and issue tracking and resolution. Program activities are being tracked with database systems and program impact is commonly measured by number of physician visits, volume and revenue generated by sales, physician satisfaction and issue resolution. Anticipated challenges in the future (18 months and beyond) generally fall into the categories of resource constraints (including staff and budget), ongoing need to strengthen physician relationships for greater alignment and external factors such as competition and healthcare reform.
How to get the full report Visit the SHSMD website at www.shsmd.org/physicianrelations to order your copy.