Archive for the ‘physicians’ Category

Speaking at AMA Houston Tomorrow: Direct Marketing to Physicians

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Our own Matthew Dillingham will be speaking at the AMA Houston event tomorrow, “Direct Marketing to Physicians.”

Here’s more about the event.  You can still sign-up at the door!

How do you break through the 200 marketing messages physicians receive each day?

At our June Healthcare SIG meeting, a panel of four experts will discuss the challenge of getting your message to physicians. They’ll describe the use of on-line and in-person tools and techniques to reach physicians. Hear directly from a pharmaceutical representative about how best to capture the interest and attention of busy physicians. Learn tips and techniques to help you develop more effective direct-to-physician programs.

Program Format
Each expert will provide a 15-minute presentation that is followed by a panel discussion with audience participation in the form of questions and answers. The discussion will be moderated by Vickie Alleman, a former healthcare marketer and author, with more than 20 years experience in marketing to physicians.

Attendees Will Learn:

  • What’s new in on-line marketing to physicians
  • How to utilize social media and mobile technology for business communication
  • How to get to the decision maker; meeting with physicians and clinical staff
  • The use of old fashioned grass roots marketing efforts

Panel
Mathew Dillingham – MedTouch
VP, Client Services and Strategies

Alicia Garza – Pharma Representative and Trainer

Anna Dragsbaek – Houston Area Immunization Partnership, Executive Director

Julie Chance – Strategies by Design
Healthcare Relationship Building Coach

Posted in Marketing, MedTouch, physicians, speaking | 2 Comments »

4 Reasons Why Recruiting Doctors Online Works

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Update: I stand corrected.  We  did move the webinars to September.  Just making sure you’re paying attention.  :)

This is our special week of looking at physician recruitment. 

To whet your appetite, here are four reasons why recruiting doctors online works, and why you should try. 

1. New doctors are already online

90%+ of medical students have a Facebook account; 55% have MySpace accounts.   Add in LinkedIn, Twitter, Sermon, and online email accounts and these graduating doctors are used to managing their personal and professional lives online.  What’s more, they self-organize; you can now target med students of a certain college or even of specialities.  Talk about targeted marketing, would you like to be able to get your job in front of a neuropathologist graduating from a top-tier medical institution whose hometown is next door to your hospital?   It’s entirely possible.

2. Your competition is not even thinking about it.

By virtue of the fact you’re reading this blog, I am suspect you may be of higher than average intelligence, looks, and web savvy.  Let’s imagine that your competition for these doctors is, without being unkind, in a different league.   Now they may be bigger, richer, and have a better reptuation, but since you’re considering this as a option, you will have no competition to contend with.  Being first to the market online is a significant advantage and is one of the reasons our solutions are so cost effect (more on that in a moment.).

3. The quality of applicants is superior.

Think for a moment of the different in quality of a personal referral and a resume from a recruiter.   In the first case, you know the applicant has some hard and soft knowledge about the institution — your hospital has come recommended, there is a social benefit for the applicant to working there, etc.   Now think of how much or little the resume from the recruiter knows — they’ve largely outsourced their job search to another person who, however gifted, is an invested party only.  

Recruiters might help you sell the applicant, but the applicant is still weighing options.  Online recruitment allows you to generate better applicants by offering a genuine experience of the culture and break down the institutional walls a little. 

4. It’s cheaper.

The average cost for recruiting a physician with a recruiter is $30k — considerably more based on speciality. We can deliver results from $5k for a placement, depending on specialty.  Plus, you’ll spend a lot less time on the phone.

Yeah, we thought you’d like hearing that.

More questions?  Contact us at solutions@medtouch.com

Posted in physicians, recruiting, search engine marketing | 2 Comments »

Will More Women Doctors Make American Medicine More Caring and More Patient Centered?

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

As mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, we’re taking some time to look at the increasing challenge of recruiting quality physicians and as discussed, the profession is going to be rocked by a series of changes, most notably the gender change.

The Changing Face of Medicine, due out later this year, will address the issue of the gender changes coming in the medical field.  From the blurb:

The number of women practicing medicine in the United States has grown steadily since the late 1960s, with women now roughly at parity with men among entering medical students. Why did so many women enter American medicine? How are women faring, professionally and personally, once they become physicians? Are women transforming the way medicine is practiced? To answer these questions, The Changing Face of Medicine draws on a wide array of sources, including interviews with women physicians and surveys of medical students and practitioners. The analysis is set in the twin contexts of a rapidly evolving medical system and profound shifts in gender roles in American society.

Throughout the book, Ann K. Boulis and Jerry A. Jacobs critically examine common assumptions about women in medicine. For example, they find that women’s entry into medicine has less to do with the decline in status of the profession and more to do with changes in women’s roles in contemporary society. Women physicians’ families are becoming more and more like those of other working women. Still, disparities in terms of specialty, practice ownership, academic rank, and leadership roles endure, and barriers to opportunity persist… Women’s presence in American medicine will continue to grow beyond the 50 percent mark, but the authors question whether this change by itself will make American medicine more caring and more patient centered. The future direction of the profession will depend on whether women doctors will lead the effort to chart a new course for health care delivery in the United States.

Here’s the other statistic that gave me pause: 74% of Boomer doctors retiring in the next 20 years are men.

Think that doesn’t require a complete rethink of how you recruit these docs?

Posted in embracing adversity, gender, hiring online, hospital growth, physicians, recruiting | No Comments »

Physician Shortages: 3 Big Reasons It’s Getting Harder to Find Doctors… And the Adverse Impacts to Patient Care

Monday, August 4th, 2008

We’ve done a fair amount of research this year on the impact of the physician shortage and how it will hamstring the marketing, planning, and delivery of healthcare services in the future.

The silent killer is patient access.   The less chance a patient has of being seen quickly, the worse off he or she will be.  Having an adequate supply of doctors is the basic ingredient of healthcare delivery.  And primary care doctors, who provide those front-line services, are getting even harder to find.

Here’s three reasons why you might be facing an uphill battle, wherever you are.

1. Supply is dwindling.

The AMA reports that nearly half of its members are 50 or older.   If you segment out primary care docs, the news gets worse.   Medical schools are graduating an increasing rate of some specialists, but primary-care graduate rates are falling as medical school becomes an increasingly costly investment.   In the wake of the Patriot Act and the falling value of the dollar, there’s also the fact that more international students are going back home instead of staying put.   (Thomas Friedman calls this the “reverse brain drain” in his book, The World is Flat.)

2. Demand is growing. 

The US population continues to a) grow and b) require more healthcare.   From an economic point of view, there’s no reason to think demand will curtail any time soon.  In fact, hospitals are seeking to drive more care to newly created Centers of Excellence to address complex diseases and conditions.  As more people demand more care from more providers, the rate of demand increases in both directions: hospitals need more doctors to improve patient access as well as treatment.  A client recently told me that a few treatment positions added to ease the strain on the existing physicians were now completely swamped with diagnostic visits.

3. Increasing alternatives to traditional practice models.

While graduating physicians can choose to start or join a traditional practice, there are a variety of other avenues as a result of the changing demands of new docs.  Whether hospitalist positions, physician-run speciality practices, locum tenens assignments, or roles within bio-tech companies, these options often provide fewer hours and more work/life balance than the classic physician practice model.  (Example: many hospitals around the country are now paying for “on call” services.)  Considering that 50% of the med school population are now women, these options will increase, primarily clustered around delivering less hours and less stress.

What’s the solution?

More on that later this week, but we’ll give you a hint: it has something to do with our upcoming webinar.

Posted in healthcare spending, hiring online, hospital growth, hospital quality, hospital safety, physicians, recruiting | No Comments »

New article about how little doctors use email… for patients.

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

From the Boston Globe:

LOS ANGELES—Suzanne Kreuziger is a registered nurse who uses e-mail almost exclusively to communicate with friends. But when it comes to reaching her doctor, there’s a frustrating firewall.

The barrier is her doctor’s own reluctance to talk to patients through e-mail.

“It makes sense to me to have the words laid out, to be able to re-read, to go back to it at a convenient time,” the 34-year-old Milwaukee woman recently wrote on a social networking site. “If I were able to ask my physician questions this way, it would make my own health care much easier.”

Kreuziger’s experience is shared by most Americans: They want the convenience of e-mail for non-urgent medical issues, but fewer than a third of U.S. doctors use e-mail to communicate with patients, according to recent physician surveys

So I’ve heard the arguments about doctors not wanting to use technology (which I don’t believe; check the trunk of their European sedans — you’ll see some fine golf technology there) and the challenges about recording this information and HIPAA blah blah blah.

Isn’t this about the fact that a) most health plans won’t reimburse for a physician’s visit via email and b) the fear of lawsuits?

You can also read the full low-down of how little doctors use email.

Posted in e-health, physicians | No Comments »