Setting core values, goals helps practices hit right targets

Take plenty of time to settle on core values — they become lasting guideposts.

Issue: February 2006

In part two of our “Marketing Your Practice” series, Orthopedics Today looks at how defining core values and basic goal setting can help orthopedic practices — small, medium and large — become more competitive in today’s tough environment of rising costs and falling reimbursements.

When orthopedic practices plot a comprehensive, evidence-based marketing plan, they need to take time to set their core values and map out a few basic goals. These steps follow the crafting of mission and vision statements (subjects of part 1 in this series, which appeared last month).

Orthopedics Today: Marketing Your Practice [logo] Core values are guiding principles. They give the partners and those responsible for executing a marketing plan a benchmark for making later course corrections. So sticking to core values long term implies thinking long and hard to get them right at the start.

Thomas Mitchell, CEO of the Texas Back Institute (TBI), Plano, Texas, emphasized the importance of not changing a practice’s core values — at least not too often. Whenever the three TBI founders have considered different strategies, they have generally kept to their core values. “As you work through this process, you don’t go and change this on a regular basis. It’s not like we’re going to sit down once a year and redo a fundamental strategy,” Mitchell told Orthopedics Today.

So what does a real core value look like?

Here is an example of a core value that might not be top-of-mind for a surgeon but could prove very meaningful to patients via word-of-mouth promotion: “Putting patient satisfaction first.” A bit rosy sounding? Perhaps, but also potentially very effective in practice.

When more than a dozen patients complain about the slippery conditions in the parking lot, a practice that actively attempts to operate by the “patient satisfaction” core value would not hesitate to counsel the crew that maintains the lot and sidewalk and hire a better outfit, if that is what it takes. So practices must take those values beyond the medical side.

Common core values

Bill Champion, an orthopedic practice marketer, helps clients identify their core values. One of the easiest approaches to identify the core values is to consider the values necessary in a new physician. Are they expected to be hard working, honest, friendly, dedicated to research or consistently go above and beyond? Once the list is complete, compare the values and prioritize. In many cases, the top three or four represent your core values.

Champion, president of the Orthopaedic Marketing Group, Omaha, Neb., reinforces the value of core values in both marketing and managing your practice. “If you have a set of well-established values, decisions with regard to marketing and staff become much easier. For example, if ‘fairness’ is one of your core values, and a clerk charges a patient for two X-rays because of a technician’s error, what do you do? You do the ‘fair thing.’ You correct the problem and charge for one film.” A small thing? Definitely not. Reinforcing your core value in this situation not only sends the right message to the patient about what the practice stands for but also sends a resounding message to staff of how you work with patients and each other.

Mitchell said the three TBI founders established their practice’s core values early. And while some might dismiss such things as intellectual exercises with little realworld application, Mitchell said core values have become incredibly useful in guiding the practice’s marketing and direction. The TBI core values are as follows:

Take a multidisciplinary approach to back care.
Maintain an academic practice on the leading edge of clinical research and new product development.
Gain international recognition for the practice’s efforts

“It’s interesting. They named themselves Texas Back Institute, which gives somewhat of a geographic constraint, but they wanted to play on a world stage, and actually they do,” said Mitchell, who as been with the practice just over a year.

Short- and long-term goals

Experts recommend that in addition to core values partners also devise specific marketing goals based on their mission statement. Such goals should ideally represent the most important steps towards advancing one’s marketing strategy.

Some medical practices that take this approach seriously organize goals into short-term and long-term areas. A short-term goal, for example, would consist of specific tasks to accomplish within about 90 days. Such rolling plans give a practice immediate focus, helping to reach clarity around what needs to be done day-to-day. If the practice has lost revenue, or found receivables have slowed due to long billing cycles, for example, a short-term goal might be to identify three or four vendors who can help set up a better system.

Tackling longer goals

Longer-term goals, though a bit more difficult to tackle, also keep the practice on track. Champion suggested having a five-year marketing goal that staff members constantly work on. For example, a practice that had already settled on a mission to shift resources in their practice away from pediatrics and toward sports medicine might set a goal of growing the practice from five to 10 physicians, with six of them eventually being sports medicine specialists. The key here: Making goals consistent with mission and vision. The aforementioned could be the right five-year goal for a practice seeking to be the practice in the region with the strongest reputation for handling sports injuries. This year they might add one doctor, next year maybe two, and so forth, as they work toward the ultimate goal.

“As you go down this path … as you start to develop plans, think about doing it in a market-driven way,” notes Eric N. Berkowitz, PhD, a specialist in marketing medical organizations. “Most groups follow the hallway politician approach to planning” where one influential physician drives the marketing plan based on his individual interests, he said. That can easily be entirely at odds with what the market actually wants or needs. For a an evidence-based, market-driven approach, “the first step is mission and goals.”

The responsibility for creating these four legs of marketing — mission, vision, core values and goals — falls on the partners. Eventually, some aspects of the marketing strategy can get outsourced. But the partners need to take ownership of the process at the outset, set the course, and then regularly oversee its progress.

Experts recommend the practice take plenty of time with each of these steps. “For a group practice of multiple physicians — five, 10, in some cases 15 physicians — this stuff is really hard to do,” Champion said. “But it’s critical if it’s going to work for them, because they all have to buy into it.”

For more information:
Beckwith, Harry. Seling the invisible. Warner Books, New York. 1997.
Berkowitz, EN. Strategic positioning and marketing. ICL#328. Presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgery 72nd Annual Meeting. Feb. 23-27, 2005. Washington.
Collins, Jim. Good to great: Why some companies make the leap … and others don’t. HarperCollins Publishers, New York. 2001.
Next month: How to assess your customers’ needs in order to deliver them a better product.
If your practice has already taken some steps towards setting up a marketing plan, please share your experiences. We welcome your insights for possible inclusion in future articles. Send an e-mail to Susan Rapp at srapp@slackinc.com.