Physician Retention / Leakage

Continuity of care is a top concern for today’s healthcare leaders. Health systems have invested heavily in creating strong delivery networks to manage the patient journey, improve quality of care, and reduce cost. To make a difference, those patients need to receive care within the network. Far too often, the patient ends up at a provider who is out-of-network. The three most common culprits are:

  1. Referral “leakage”
  2. Lack of efficient care coordination
  3. Poor service

B/Mc’s experts recognize that just saying we’d like to keep the business does not make it happen. Our team of consultants will work with you to:

  • Sort through the noise via a detailed assessment. We’ll partner to understand the what and the why of your patient leakage
  • Prioritize strategies and create a consistent approach to earn, ask for and measure improvement in leakage/in-network referrals

Our assessment process answers current state via data, observation and conversation- with the leaders, process owners and with your medical community. All are difference makers in our approach and lets us- and you- understand the why.

Fixing leakage often requires innovative process improvement. We partner with organizations to help identify the fix and, if needed, support the implementation. B/Mc provides customized solutions, based on the solid insights gathered from data, and those involved. A critical difference in our approach is making sure our ideas will work within your organization. That gets us to how. The result is recommendations and actions that are full of detail and equip your team for success. Once we’ve quantified the improvement opportunity, the process may include:

  • Data-driven documentation
  • Access and patient flow opportunities
  • Enhanced awareness
  • Clear pathways for internal collaboration
  • Results reports

Just as important as reducing leakage is to focus on “keeping” those patients referring physicians have entrusted in your care. At B/Mc we specialize in the referring physician experience and what is required to ensure your specialists and services continue to be their number one choice. We help organizations take a deep dive look into opportunities for improvement, which include:

  • Access
  • Service
  • Competitive differentiation
  • Awareness

We work with organizations to ensure long-term retention of newly recruited physicians. Finding and keeping physician talent can’t be assumed. Organizations that want to have a true net gain in physician recruitment recognize that proactive retention strategies are necessary. Our process includes:

  • A deep dive into the reasons for turnover and which groups are most vulnerable. This includes looking at reports and data, interviewing key stakeholders, and departing physicians to gain insights to inform solutions
  • Developing a customized retention strategy that proactively starts during onboarding, working to build long-term physician engagement and practice satisfaction

Learn more about how we can help with your new physician onboarding on our Physician Onboarding page.

Our Expertise

Physician Relations

Hospital and medical practice success is built on the strength of relationships with physicians. Without that, there is no growth. Field liaison programs remain the most effective way to create and maintain meaningful connectivity with physicians.

Learn More

Physician Recruitment

Recruiting a strong pipeline of physician talent is the cornerstone of a strong hospital or medical practice. Physician recruitment teams play a critical role and high performance recruitment teams are vital to success.

Learn More

Mystery Shopping

Sometimes unique challenges need a fresh set of outside eyes to unemotionally and objectively test, accurately record, and report key facts. Only then can effective solutions be developed and implemented.

Learn More

From the Blog

Physician Relations Blog

Embracing Challenges: A Path to Growth and Learning

By: Susan Boydell | sboydell@barlowmccarthy.com The role of a physician relations field rep or leader is woven with a myriad of challenges, each presenting an opportunity for personal and professional growth. By facing and overcoming these challenges, we truly...

Making the Boss Look Good

By: Kriss Barlow, RN, MBA | kbarlow@barlowmccarthy.com Are you a team player? I bet we all answer an emphatic “Yes!” when asked that question.  But, does the answer change when we expand “team” to include the broader organization and more senior leaders? Lifting up...

Everyday Grace in the Field Staff Role

By: Kriss Barlow, RN, MBA | kbarlow@barlowmccarthy.com On occasion, we all have one of “those” days where it seems that people just feel compelled to push our buttons. Admittedly, some of us might have more ‘pushable’ buttons than others! Our roles have high...

Practice Marketing Blog

Why Storytelling is Beyond Marketing

By: Jeff Cowart, MAH | jcowart@barlowmccarthy.com One of the associations representing marketers nationally offers storytelling skills development. The organization begins its course description with this definition: “Capture peoples’ imagination and interest by...

The Vaporous Storytelling of Healthcare

By: Jeff Cowart, MAH | jcowart@barlowmccarthy.com Recently we came across this communication from a healthcare system to its patients or consumers or customers or external stakeholders, or whatever label your health system prefers to describe the people who choose you...

Positioning Against Active Inertia

By: Jeff Cowart, MAH | jcowart@barlowmccarthy.com The inflexibility and even arrogance of holding current position when evidence of threat or opportunity is substantial is perhaps the most common characteristic of failure for companies, products, leaders, causes,...

Shark-like Practice Marketing

By: Kriss Barlow, RN, MBA | kbarlow@barlowmccarthy.com When I saw this quote on LinkedIn, I just loved it. Of course in the case of practice marketing the “chase” and “bite” need to be expressed a bit differently! But if we look closely there is some wisdom here that...

6 Practice Marketing Basics that Set the Course for Success

By: Kriss Barlow, RN, MBA | kbarlow@barlowmccarthy.com Marketers can be heard moaning, “Just add it to the list…” Teams of excellent health system marketers are now up to their elbows in one-off needs of employed practices, tri-fold brochures, requests for...

Let's solve this.

And let's do it on your timeline and within your budget.