Recently, I’ve spoken to several practices who want to grow influence in their market and get more referrals.
Who doesn’t?
They recognize the need to get their message out to potential referring doctors but the idea of bringing on a physician liaison can be daunting for a practice who hasn’t had one before.
Or…
Perhaps you have a physician liaison and you’re trying to figure out how to best utilize their time and talents.
So, let’s talk about it.
Why hire a physician liaison and what value can they add to your practice?
In a Clinical Advisory Board Physician Survey, 66% of doctors said they were “very unlikely” to change existing referral habits without a physician liaison.
66% of doctors said they were “very unlikely” to change existing referral habits without a physician liaison
Clinical Advisory Board Physician Survey –
MD News.com
Hmmm… If that’s the case, doesn’t it stand to reason that most potential referring doctors won’t magically start referring to your practice just because you want them to?
It doesn’t matter how great of a specialist you are, if referring doctors don’t understand what your practice has to offer their patients and how to work with you, they won’t refer to you.
It’s the physician liaison’s job to get your message out there and help referring providers understand how you can best care for their patients.
If you want to grow practice referrals, hiring a physician liaison is well worth the investment.
Once you have a liaison, how will you get the best value for their time?
If a practice generates an additional $1,000,000 in annual revenue from their liaison’s efforts, that equates to almost a $500 value in hourly revenue for your liaison’s time.
A lot of practices pile their liaison up with other administrative or marketing duties.
While that may work in some cases, think about it this way…
For every hour your liaison is out of the field or focused on unrelated tasks, you are losing hundreds of dollars in potential practice revenue.
If your liaison is spending 80% of their time on administrative or other tasks and only 20% of their time on liaison work, you’re missing out on a lot of potential opportunities. That formula should be reversed to 20% of the liaison’s time being spent on other tasks and 80% of their time on liaison responsibilities.
This is the strategy I use with my own teams:
If it’s a $15 – $20 per hour task, delegate it.
Your liaison should spend their time calling on referring offices or other activities that build referral volume.
What are some of the high value tasks for a physician liaison?
- Territory and sales call planning
- Referral tracking and monitoring the ROI of their efforts
- Setting up appointments / following up with customers
- Communication with referring doctors
In other words, it’s time to re-think that two hour meeting that could be handled with a five minute email.
Here are the most frequently asked questions I hear when it comes to a liaison’s responsibilities:
What if my market doesn’t support a full-time liaison?
If your market doesn’t have enough referring offices to support a full-time liaison, hire someone part time for the role. If you can, make the liaison role their only focus. Otherwise, their other responsibilities will spill into their liaison work putting referral relationships on the back burner.
I have a full-time liaison, but they also have other responsibilities within the practice.
This works well in theory but rarely works as planned out in the wild.
If this is your current structure, clearly identify liaison work time, and set firm boundaries around this time. For example, Tuesdays and Thursdays could be dedicated to nothing but liaison work. Otherwise, the “other” duties have a way of creeping into the liaison time.
I like the idea of doing some outreach with the referring doctors in our area, but I’m not yet ready to invest in a dedicated liaison.
Even without a dedicated liaison, you likely have someone in the practice who could call on referring doctors one or two days a week. Perhaps there is a nurse, tech, or other team member who doesn’t have as much going on during surgery days and they could spend a few hours a week on outreach. Once you get a little bit of traction, you’ll feel more confident about bringing on a dedicated liaison.
How about you?
Do you have a physician liaison? Are you looking for a physician liaison? Do you have questions about how to hire or train a physician liaison?
If you’re ready to take your physician liaison efforts to the next level, let us know.
