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:
- Referral “leakage”
- Lack of efficient care coordination
- 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.
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.
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.
From the Blog
Physician Relations Blog
Time to Find New Referral Sources?
By: Kriss Barlow, RN, MBA | kbarlow@barlowmccarthy.com Physician relations teams typically spend their time with providers who already refer to your organization. Historically, that made the most sense- it was the chance to earn more from those who already had a...
From the Trenches: Real-World Insights from Our Work with Clients
At Barlow/McCarthy, we spend our days in strategy rooms and out in the field with healthcare leaders facing real challenges and chasing real opportunities. In this post, we’ve asked our team to share quick takeaways—what’s working, what’s shifting, and what we’re...
Medicaid Cuts and the Future of Recruitment & Relations: What Now?
The following post is a collaborative response by our team regarding the article mentioned in the post. Contributors include: Allison McCarthy, Susan Boydell, Mitzi Kent and Amy Chandler. A recent article from Becker’s Hospital Review, "Proposed Medicaid cuts,...
Beyond the Referral: How to Build Lasting Physician Engagement
By: Susan Boydell | sboydell@barlowmccarthy.com Securing a physician’s referral is just the first step. The real challenge—and opportunity—lies in fostering meaningful, long-term relationships that go beyond a single patient handoff. Strong engagement isn’t built on...
Selling Smarter, Not Harder: The Role of Niche Targeting in Physician Relations
By: Susan Boydell | sboydell@barlowmccarthy.com In today’s competitive healthcare landscape, traditional sales approaches often fall short when trying to get a referring physician’s attention. Broad, one-size-fits-all messaging can fail to resonate, leading to missed...
Practice Marketing Blog
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...
Holiday Tactics in Recruitment, Relations, Marketing and Biz Dev
Being that the holiday season is here we thought that it would be an appropriate time to bring out a collection of some current and past holiday articles. It can be a challenging time to communicate with physicians as well as just getting your own work done! So check...
Doctor-Patient Relationships Rank at the Top
By: Kriss Barlow, RN, MBA I often search the web for interesting facts when I prepare talks or articles. When trolling, I found this survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. I think there are some really interesting...
The Marketing Leader in Transformation Times
By: Jeff Cowart, MAH Most seasoned hospital and healthcare marketers today were bred in a world where product marketing was the gold standard, and metrics...
Referrals are only the beginning of the story.
If you’re ready to understand what happens after the referral is made and how it impacts access, retention, and revenue, our consultants would welcome the conversation.