Physician liaisons play a vital role within healthcare organizations of all sizes and types. Data-driven, strategic business development and physician outreach initiatives focus on growing referrals from practices with the patient access, payer mix, appropriate utilization and quality outcomes that support your organization’s strategic goals.
Physician liaisons serve as the strategic growth engine for hospitals, health systems, medical groups and other healthcare organizations. They are an extension of the leadership team, working in the field to build relationships with providers and their teams, and improve utilization of the organization through direct selling.
As trusted advisors, physician liaisons bring value to physicians, advanced practice providers (APPs), and medical office teams. In this role, they enable providers to seamlessly refer patients within your network without the delays, inefficiencies and barriers that cause frustration and leakage.
Physician liaisons are essential to the success of your healthcare organization’s key service lines, medical specialties and population health initiatives. As an extension of the C-Suite, they partner with others in clinical, operational and administrative leadership roles to:
Physician liaisons also serve as the catalyst for rapid ramp‐up and long‐term retention of providers, through strategic onboarding which includes mentorship, as well as integration of the physician into the organization and their family into the community. They are uniquely positioned to introduce new providers to others and assist them in navigating the organization.
It’s mission critical to identify, hire, and train physician liaisons with the right business acumen, personal attributes, and attitude to be effective in the field, with their colleagues in operations and with leadership.
The ability to effectively collaborate, communicate and build relationships are hallmark skills of physician liaisons who successfully lead teams toward accomplishing a common goal. They are accountable for breaking down the silos between operations, strategic planning, marketing, and physician practice administration. Based on the their direct reporting relationship with senior leadership, they prioritize transparency and accountability for achieving the organization’s strategic goals for growth.
Physician liaisons are results driven, thriving on the data and details embedded in strategic service lines, medical specialties and operations. They establish their credibility internally and with physician practices by analyzing timely and relevant data, understanding the strategic goals of the organization and aligning their outreach activity to produce measurable results toward achieving those goals.
A strong physician liaison efficiently and thoroughly prepares for their engagement with physicians. Their performance in the field demonstrates that your organization is hearing, committing resources, and implementing solutions that meet your providers’ needs with a healthy sense of urgency and higher-value solutions.
If you are interested in our physician liaison program and how our team can help you, contact us today.
A strategically built physician outreach program is grounded in timely, relevant data; rapid-cycle process improvement, consultative needs-based sales training, and laser focus on executing strategic growth initiatives.
A key benefit of building a professional strategic outreach team is that it shows physicians, advanced practice providers and their office teams that you respect their time. You’re committed to creating the path of least resistance for access to your services. Physician liaisons are instrumental in identifying and eliminating obstacles that cause providers to limit their engagement – or avoid your hospital services altogether!
The rewards of the well-structured, professionally staffed physician outreach and business development program are seen in the value delivered to your provider and a return on investment that is both rapid and measurable:
The communication gap between leadership and physicians is already too wide and growing. Structuring a professional outreach program will improve your providers’ level of trust, satisfaction, engagement, and ultimately, your organization’s financial performance.
The days when a physician liaison was expected to deliver brochures and lunch are long past. Their role has transformed from being a “professional visitor” to being a trusted advisor. Earning this coveted relationship is the culmination of needs-based, consultative sales skills; product and industry expertise; and knowledge of the competitive landscape, providers’ payer mix and referral patterns. Physician liaisons also need to authentically connect on an interpersonal level and be responsive to how personality, appreciation languages and generational differences influence communication and decision-making.
The timely return on investment from a strategic physician outreach program depends on your team’s ability to build relationships, increase sales, drive measurable growth in strategic referral volumes, improve service and open lines of communication. It requires the foundation of a rigorous training program that includes professional sales techniques. New and experienced physician liaisons benefit from exercises that instill and refresh the skills proven to improve preparation, create better messaging, master the art of asking, overcome objections and close sales.
Physician liaisons rely on timely, relevant data and insights to build closer physician alignment, stop network leakage, maximize network utilization, protect market share and drive strategic growth of high-margin service lines and specialties. A strategic growth readiness assessment provides the quantitative and qualitative data required to build a rapid impact growth strategy and execution plan to achieve your objectives, while building trust and strong relationships with physicians.
Successful physician liaisons utilize robust payer data reports and internally generated data to support targeting decisions by:
A best-in-class physician relationship management (PRM) and market intelligence platform is an essential tool that enables you to laser-focus on strategic growth and accountability. When integrated with EMR data, a PRM should help you easily identify shifts in referral patterns and volume in real time at the service line, practice and provider level. This enables you to identify and reverse network leakage by diagnosing the underlying causes and building accountable action plans for issue resolution.
When evaluating a PRM, choose one that is built to support your unique outreach and issue resolution workflows. The provider should deliver stress-free implementation, field-tested experience and consultative support. Key features of a PRM that is purpose-built to support physician outreach include:
See our FAQs for more answers to your questions about what physician liaisons do and how they will drive strategic growth for your organization.
"Tiller-Hewitt gave us a jump start for early success. By focusing our program on the right initiatives and tracking the right data, we got our outreach ..."
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