Evidence-based marketing: Find what patients, referring doctors want

Orthopedic practices should uncover key client needs using simple data analysis, focus groups and other tools.

Issue: March 2006

Orthopedics Today: Marketing Your Practice [logo] Orthopedic surgeons wouldn’t consider performing surgery without first getting a “picture” — such as a radiograph or MRI — to look inside a patient. The same logic applies to marketing their practices. Building an effective marketing plan requires a snapshot of the market right up front.

After defining key objectives — a practice’s mission, vision, core values and goals as discussed in “Marketing your Practice” part 1 and part 2 — identify all potential patients and referral sources, and what they need. Marketing experts agree this is essential to devising a clear, targeted marketing strategy. The clearer that client picture, the more market-driven and evidence-based — and successful — the strategy will be. This is also a good time for partners to define who they would like to have as customers.

Track results

Expert marketers recommend writing down every fact uncovered and every idea that pops up during this process, as well as any thoughts about future or potential clients’ needs. The goal: to collect hard data for analysis and incorporation into the marketing plan.

Medical marketing expert Eric N. Berkowitz, PhD, recommends “… integrating your customer into the design process to guarantee a product that’s tailored to the customer’s needs and strategies.” Needs assessment could shed light on which services and specialties are most needed in an area or help a practice identify existing services that might be underutilized or draining profits.

Practices offering MRI, for example, might assess which existing patients use that service. Maybe not a lot. If outside patients are the chief group, who are they? Who refers them? Should those users be converted into new clients? What are their needs and how might the practice cater to them?

Fact-finding

To root out useful data like this, conduct an objective needs assessment. That’s evidence-based marketing. Several tools can help, including market and competitive analyses, demographic studies, surveys and focus groups.

Whatever the tactic, it must cull current information for an accurate snapshot of market characteristics. The research should reveal, among other things: Who are the clients? Who operates in the market? What are the market trends, including what changes you can expect and what realistic steps the practice should take based on that intelligence.

At this early stage, however the practice is not identifying its differential advantage, but simply uncovering basic market facts.

Which facts matter most?

Charles M. Stiernberg, MD, MBA, FACS, writes, for example, that through demographic analysis, “Practitioners should know the following characteristics of a population in a particular location: Age, sex, income, occupation, education.” Such information might help a geriatric orthopedic group realize they would not do particularly well in a suburb rife with new schools and playgrounds.

Look at your patients

Practice administrators or marketing managers can do a lot of needs assessment just by profiling patients already using the practice. What are the top zip codes? What are the ages, diagnoses, types of health care coverage? Such data are probably readily available by running basic database reports, once you learn where to look.

“[Integrate] ... your customer into the design process to guarantee a product that’s tailored to the customer’s needs and strategies.” — Eric N. Berkowitz, PhD

They should do the same to characterize referring general practitioners and case managers. Find out how many patients and what type they refer to you and determine if those patients are good or problematic for the practice.

Chris Houchens, of Shotgun Concepts, a marketing firm in Smiths Grove, Ky., recommends going to the local chamber of commerce or utilizing the Internet to find demographic information. “A lot of it is just a gut check,” he added.

“Your market analysis pretty much says: What is the status of the market that I’m [dealing] with at this point?” It should focus less on the practice’s current patients and more on the market as a whole,” he said at the Medical Group Management Association 2005 Annual Conference in Nashville, Tenn.

Houchens used the local area to demonstrate how to approach the analysis: “What is Nashville like right now? Is Nashville growing in these demographics? Does it have a growing senior population? Are they going to need this or need that? What are the trends going on in Nashville right now that would cause an influence on our business?”

Branching out

Extending the scope of the needs assessment might become necessary, say, for a pediatric orthopedic practice that appears to be the only game in town. “Looking farther afield, investigate where pediatric cases are going in your wider regional marketplace — say within a 50-mile or more radius from your office,” John B. Pinto, president, J. Pinto & Associates Inc., wrote in his book Marketing an Orthopedic Practice: A Practical Guide.

More in-depth research might yield information about just how far patients in the region are willing to travel for care. Although some further-out cases may not turn out to be potential patients, Pinto said tracking them helps pinpoint key market trends. Maybe these patients need a pediatric orthopedist closer to home. With such market intelligence, the practice might consider opening another location to get the added referrals.

Houchens urged practices to look ahead a year, two, even five years, to identify major influences like building booms, changes in tax structures and growth areas outside the market that could siphon off potential business.

Market research firms, like the Simmons Market Research Bureau, might also help.

Competitive assessment

Least important of these activities: the competitive analysis, says one practice marketer. “I don’t like to focus too much on competition. You try to beat somebody and that’s what you’re going to be wrapped up in. I prefer we be the best we can and if we’re the best we can, we’re going to beat them anyway.”

But Houchens suggested listing everyone and everything considered the practice’s competition because that might influence later actions. “If you’re a cardiologist, Krispy Kreme is your competitor.”

Surveys and focus groups should seek information and impressions from those with objective views of the practice, not simply from current patients or referring doctors.

Find the service gap

Still, you may want to know if there’s a surplus or hole in the number of providers or the services they offer and you may want to capitalize on it. Berkowitz said surveys help pinpoint such service gaps. An orthopedic practice might conduct one to find out to which orthopedic practices primary care physicians in the area currently refer patients, which gets at competitive information.

To find out what the market really needs, they should also ask the same group what they don’t like about the orthopedic group they refer to now, he said.

“It is the market that will tell you: Here’s the service gap I see.… You don’t sit there with your partners and say: What do you think we should offer?”

For more information:

Beckwith, Harry. Selling the invisible. Warner Books, New York. 1997.

Houchens, C. How to create a marketing plan for your health care organization. #BRK412. Presented at the Medical Group Management Association 2005 Annual Conference. Oct. 23-26, 2005. Nashville, Tenn.

Berkowitz EN. Strategic positioning and marketing ICL#328. Presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 72nd Annual Meeting. Feb. 23-27, 2005. Washington.

Pinto JB. Marketing an orthopedic practice. TBI Press, Dallas. 1992.

Stiernberg CM. Marketing your practice. E-medicine: Instant access to the minds of medicine. July 18, 2003. Available at: emedicine.com/ent/topic68.htm.