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Articles and White Papers


Physician Recruitment Research Findings & Summary

Physician recruitment is a growing concern for hospital leaders.  With ever more organizations competing for a shrinking physician pool, pressure to meet community need and to survive as a hospital enterprise is mounting.  The strategic implications are significant - since physicians are central to quality improvements, market share growth, and financial viability.  In collaboration with the New England Society for Healthcare Strategy, Barlow/McCarthy (B/Mc) conducted a qualitative research study to examine the depth of physician recruitment issues across New England and how individual organizations are addressing the challenges.  The study also offers insights that can help practitioners in healthcare strategy, business and network development, and physician relations.  This report provides the study findings and conclusions .

Click here  to read the report.

Hitting Your Stride: Aligning With Surgeons to Develop Your Orthopedic Program

Growing demand and an improving reimbursement environment for orthopedic services provide hospitals with an attractive opportunity to expand their orthopedic programs.  However, only hospitals that can successfully attract orthopedic surgeons and align incentives will be able to capitalize on this opportunity.  This article discusses strategies for improving alignment with orthopedists by maximizing surgeons' capacity to perform surgeries, empowering surgeons to manage the service line, and partnering with surgeons through mutually beneficial equity joint ventures .

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Marketing in a Tightening Economy

Have you been asked to scale back your marketing efforts?  While your organization's first response might be to pull back, the downturn presents some unique opportunities as well.  Economic dips and recessions are much-studied phenomena and much is known about the strategic use of marketing communications in these times.  Sound strategy and solid plans can help keep the sharks at bay and assert the value of marketing.  In this White Paper from SPM Marketing & Communications, you'll learn:

  • 10 ways to cement marketing's role in your organization AND protect your budget in the process
  • healthcare's unique opportunities in a down economy
  • how to apply lessons in branding, communications, and media strategy gleaned from previous recessions
  • how America's top researchers, scholars, and institutions are saying firms should approach marketing today

Click here  to read the complete white paper.

Matching the Market:  Using Generational Insights to Attract and Retain Customers

Today, there are four distinct generations in the healthcare marketplace, with different values and expectations.  What are the implications for healthcare marketers?  How do you market the same service to different target audiences?  For example, how do you market joint replacement to a Boomer interested in quality of life versus a senior in chronic pain?  Generational targeting provides another level of refinement and can lead to better customer relationship management, and in turn to cost savings, a higher return on investment, and better campaign effectiveness-in other words, to improved marketing program performance.  Generational insights and findings provide vital support in achieving the Five Rights: the right customer, the right service, the right time, the right message, and the right medium. This new Research Brief from Thomson Reuters examines significant findings about how the four adult generations use healthcare, and highlights contrasting differences among the segments.

Click here  to read the Research Brief.

Analysis of Hospital Employed Physicians in US and Illinois

In the last several years, hospitals have begun employing physicians in greater numbers.  Based on analysis conducted by Pam Waymack, Managing Director of Phoenix Services, Evanston , IL , the number of physicians employed by community hospitals increased 11% between 2005 and 2006 (the most recent year for which data are available) and has doubled over the past 20 years.  In this article, Waymack discusses the analysis and implications.

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Improving Your Payer Mix

Full beds, increased expenses, little margin, and bad debt.  For many hospitals, meeting budget goals is becoming increasingly difficult.  In addition, for many providers, the impending capital gap is worsened by demographic trends, aging facilities, emerging competitors, staffing shortages and governmental deficits. 

Providers today must look for opportunities to re-engineer their revenue sources and stream.  It's time for creative strategies to achieve peak financial performance.

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Business Process Outsourcing: Maximizing the Value of Your Medical Contact Center

Hospitals today are learning that their contact centers are a cost-effective way to increase customer loyalty and boost patient revenue. Yet few healthcare facilities have the skills and tools required to maximize the value of their internally operated contact centers, and most are reluctant to invest in maintaining infrastructure they see as outside of their core business of delivering healthcare. Alternatively, many facilities view the contact center as a specialty service that should be outsourced along with dietary, pharmacy, and clinical support. Industry consultants say that because outsourcers handle such a large volume of calls, they can afford to scale their operations by investing in the technology, staffing, and call analysis that few internal centers can justify. The cost efficiencies of outsourcing can enable a hospital to offer the call center services that can boost it to market-leader status. This white paper highlights the importance of methodically analyzing the costs and opportunities related to outsourcing call center services compared to in-house solutions.

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The Brand: Your Ultimate Competitive Advantage

Why do people sign their names with a $120 Montblanc pen when they can do the same with a Bic for about a buck? Why do they buy Coke or Pepsi, when lower-priced alternatives are a mere arm's reach away? Why will people refuse to buy a personal computer unless it has an Intel chip in it, a chip they probably will never even see? Les Stern, President of L. Stern & Associates, Inc., a marketing consultancy, believes it is because all of these companies have taken what is more or less a commodity product and made it a product of choice by successfully establishing and maintaining a brand.

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Physician Marketing: Not Overlooking the Obvious

With all the recent studies and reports on consumerism in healthcare, direct-to-consumer advertising and the impact of the Internet on consumer health decision-making, it's no wonder so many healthcare organizations have focused their marketing efforts on reaching consumer audiences. But HealthLeaders.com member Daniel Fell says it's time for the pendulum to swing back in the direction of the physicians and the critical role they play in where patients receive medical care.

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 Understanding and Achieving ROI with CRM

CPM examines what constitutes "profitability" in marketing or communication programs for care delivery organizations and the comprehensive strategy needed to achieve it. Several case studies illustrate real-world examples or measurable ROI and how the providers achieved it.

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Bringing Your Service Lines Online

As healthcare organizations and hospitals continue to move up the "e" learning curve, they are continually looking for new ways to make better use of their online assets and investments. One growing trend is to use their consumer Internet sites more effectively in support of their strategic objectives for their service lines (aka centers of excellence). This article by David Sternberg of Marketing Technology & Metrics, Inc., will provide you with insights as to what many leading healthcare organizations are doing to leverage Internet technology to support their strategic objectives.

 Click here to read the complete white paper. (128 kb)

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Creating Consumer-Driven Healthcare Organizations

Two profound forces are transforming healthcare: empowered patients and disruptive

technologies. Disruptive technologies are those that continue to evolve in ways that will radically alter the field and thus "disrupt" the status quo design and operation of the healthcare industry. Either force alone is enough to redefine the provider landscape. Together, their combined impact will be dramatic and presents an added challenge for providers to align their strategies in anticipation of these events. This paper examines the process for adoption and the actual design of a strategic plan intended to address these market forces and to create a consumer-driven health system.

 Click here to read the complete white paper. (641 kb)

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HIPAA and Patient Communications: Where to Go From Here

Here we go again. When it comes to HIPAA — the Health Insurance Portability and    Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 — and medical privacy, it seems that nothing is final.Although the Bush Administration stated that the medical privacy section was accepted in December 2000 and finalized on April 14, 2001, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced proposed changes on March 21, 2002.

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Developing the Personal CRM Health PortalTM for Better Health Management

"In terms of the Internet's potential impact [on] healthcare marketing, the proverbial fat ladyhasn't sung. In fact, she hasn't even squeezed out of her dressing room door backstage."  This recent prediction from Arthur J. O'Conner, Senior Manager, KPMG Consulting, echoes the feeling that despite financial difficulties for many national medical websites, the e-revolution is here to stay in healthcare.

Click here to read the complete white paper. (525 kb)

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Customer Relationship Management for Healthcare: An Integrated Approach

Your customers are out there. They always have been. They are smarter and have moved into the driver's seat in healthcare purchasing and decision making. And now there are more of them thanks to an aging and growing population. Reaching them effectively through the years has changed as marketing has evolved. Just compiling lists of prospects and mass-advertising with the hopes of increasing sales or service utilization no longer works.

Click here to read the complete white paper. (500 kb)

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How to Develop and Implement a CRM Marketing Plan

CPM presents a high-level summary of the development of a comprehensive CRM marketing plan to increase market share and maximize return on a CRM investment.

Click here to read the complete white paper. (295 kb)

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