By: Kriss Barlow RN, MBA | kbarlow@barlowmccarthy.com
Vaccines have triggered a collective sigh of relief for many healthcare workers around safely providing care and returning to pre-pandemic routines. In many markets, physician relations teams are beginning to think about getting back in the field.
But, what about right now? What are you doing to maximize each day – for the referring physician audience and your organization – until a wider range of freedom for safe field visits finally arrives? Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Shake off the cobwebs. Not literally of course! Many have never had cleaner homes with all the time spent in the home office. However, the routine and the pace may have changed. This is a great time to rethink the daily call routine, streamline the approach, get insights from the practices about their status. Start a general inventory and detail the actions needed to prepare for re-entry.
- Get on the phone. While Zoom meetings work well for the doctor-to-doctor connections, there’s also ample opportunity for the liaison to do a brief phone call with a doctor. Use a 3-5 minute connection on a topic of mutual interest. Ask a question, share a fact, get a pulse on their practice and begin to stage your interest for a personal conversation when the time is right. Discipline yourself to make a few calls every day that are not just “how’s it going,” with relevant nuggets of information such as updates on vaccine supply.
- Prepare. There’s a window of time before liaisons will be back in the field. In one respect, we have a wonderful gift to be able to consider future needs, the approach, how messages and impact can be adapted to present the best possible liaison role. Teams can start to address their plans and socialize the approach internally to generate support and involvement with stakeholders.
- Review your target lists and data sources. With a clear sense of what needs to be accomplished, evaluate your target lists and current data trends to ensure you’ve got the right audience for the organization’s current needs. Just because you’ve always spent 80 percent of your time with PCP’s does not mean that is the right mix for the organization’s current needs. Be nimble and let the data and organization needs drive the audience.
Some teams lost people during the pandemic and many leaders have been asked to slow the hiring process. If this happened to your organization, you may need to expand coverage and work a much larger geography than before. Take this time to do your research and set priorities for quickly learning the new geographies.
- Consider where virtual will have a future role. Liaison teams were driven to virtual contact routines out of necessity, but we’ve all seen evidence of valuable virtual tools to enhance relationships. As you consider the best approach for field effectiveness, determine which virtual methods should become part of the standard toolkit.
- Take a pulse check on their needs. It’s safe to assume that the needs of the practice may have shifted during the last 11 months. Start crafting some good questions to learn about their current environment, to test their priorities for the services you offer and to make certain you are adding value when you do go in. This is a case where the phone can be your friend.
Does your team have a plan in place? If your re-entry plan could use some outside support, please send us a note. We’ve created some virtual trainings to guide the leader and/or the team members in their re-entry plans. Here is a link to more details on our virtual re-entry trainings, simply reply to this email for all the details!