“Relationship marketing” is a strategy designed to foster strong connections with customers by providing them with information directly suited to their needs and interests.
In healthcare, relationship marketing brings doctors and patients together. Through relationship-building activities, data analysis, and database marketing, a hospital can promote its services and physicians to area residents with the greatest health needs (e.g., diabetics, smokers, those without a primary care physician, those who would benefit from preventive screenings). And by engaging at-risk employees in the workplace, a health system can improve their outcomes while lowering the disproportionately high cost of their care.
Reaching Out to Employers and Physicians
It’s not unusual for a health system to have distinct employer relationship marketing (ERM) and physician relationship marketing (PRM) programs—but it’s rare for them to be coordinated.
Regional Medical Center (RMC) in Orangeburg, South Carolina, is one organization that has effectively integrated its ERM and PRM strategies and technologies to enhance both employer/employee and physician loyalty. RMC’s employer and physician marketing team members are part of the same hospital department and utilize the same marketing tools.
This coordinated effort to enhance ERM and PRM has helped maximize fee-for-service revenue as the organization transitions to value-based care and population health management. For example, the hospital’s joint ERM/PRM initiatives produced database marketing campaigns that resulted in over $9 million in total charges in 2014. There was also a corresponding 32.4 percent increase in referral growth from affiliated physicians during the same fiscal year.
Optimize Your Resources!
In the January/February 2016 issue of SHSMD’s Spectrum magazine, Kathy Rhoad, marketing director at RMC, discusses how a combined ERM and PRM program can improve health outcomes and ROI.
SHSMD members, read the full article: Integrating Employer and Physician Marketing.
Nonmembers, click here to Join SHSMD.