Three minutes in the doctor's office - the use of "best practices" from pharmaceutical sales

Depending on your source, referrals for home health care from doctors or their offices make up approximately 15-25% of all referrals at home. For competitiveness of independent organizations over strong hospital-based agencies, this is often the most successful choice when you want to create your referral base. However, home care institutions need to pay attention to the fact that doctors for home repatriation can be either a “hard sale” or an increasingly exhausting upward movement. There are many people on the market with pharmaceutical and medical devices that require several minutes from doctor's time and are characterized by increasingly limited access to doctors, especially for marketers or home care agents.

Yes ... your home care agency is competing with pharmaceutical agencies!

Home care agencies are competing with pharmaceutical companies to get just a few minutes from the doctor or his staff. These "pharmaceutical" companies invest in intensive and costly "grooming", supported by their significant training resources and marketing muscles, to get a few minutes of time with the doctor. Many relationships can tell you how often they are forced to “cool their heels” in the doctor’s office, while a small army of pharmaceutical representatives slides in and out. To illustrate how crowded the medical market is, here are some composite figures from research conducted by experts in the pharmaceutical industry at Scott-Levin Inc., INCOMM and Datamonitor:

• On average, doctors see 10 representatives per month
• Currently in the United States there are about 100,000 pharmaceutical representatives who see more than 830,000 doctors.
• Pharmaceutical reputation will often be targeted to 120 physicians who will be treated for 1 week to 2 week cycle.
• Scott-Levine also calculated that pharmaceutical companies spend about $ 100,000 on advertising costs for every 11 doctors!
• An INCOMM study of 500 pharmaceutical representatives showed how long a representative usually gets with a doctor during an office call: 26% said less than one minute, 63% said two minutes, and 11% said three to five minutes.

Limited doctor time, limited access to a doctor

In hospitals and large practice management companies, increasing pressure on doctors to reduce the time allotted for activities not related to treating patients, doctors (and their gatekeepers) have no choice but to limit the time they spend with representatives marketing and pharmaceuticals. The needs of an aging population are also subject to the “temporary challenges” of doctors. By 2011, it is estimated that most doctors will spend at least half of their time caring for elderly patients. It will not be paid for some time, and “frequent pilots” - patients who often call their doctor’s office or require a lot of attention from their primary health care doctor will continue to put a burden on the practice.

What does this mean for home marketers?

Aging America, the business realities of practicing in a managed care environment and the marketing impact of pharmaceutical companies have created a unique environment for home care institutions with regard to marketing services for the practice of doctors. In particular, pharmaceutical companies planned the market to such an extent that the practice of doctors was “conditioned” to expect certain things from all health care marketers.

Here are some examples of this sales status and suggestions on how to more effectively sell home care services:

Doctors were “conditioned” to expect marketers to be well prepared

Successful marketing for doctors is not a random offer to “buy according to your pants." Homecare marketers work in a complex world where they have to slyly twist numerous three-minute meetings into long-term and “binding” relationships. Pharmaceutical companies spend significant funds on training their sales representatives, often providing sales “scripts” and “word lanes”. Home care agencies should also encourage their marketers to develop their own scenarios, “lifts” and open questions.

Doctors are "conditioned" to expect expensive "courtship,"

Deep pockets. pharmaceutical companies have created a marketing environment in which access to a doctor and his staff often involves the provision of meals or meals. Unfortunately, the practice of doctors is not able to determine the regulatory environment in which home care departments work. This can be difficult for marketers at home. Be very careful in providing meals to doctors. Allogic meals can be interpreted as an indication of appeal. Make sure that if you find yourself in a difficult place and feel the need to provide some kind of “repair”, you also provide good educational information about home care in general or other valuable information about the health or treatment of patients, and not just about your agency in particular .

I suggest you take the time to evaluate what you really get from the “lunch and study” programs. Many large practitioners will dine, provided to them daily, by a seller or others. If you ask a key employee, if they had lunch on the last day, they worked in the office, and they cannot tell you who dined them, I almost guarantee that this is a strategy that will not give the Referrals Agency.

Doctors "condition" waiting for "regular" call cycles

Doctors and their staff regularly visit specific representatives. They expect it. Although it may be inappropriate for a home care agency representative to consult a doctor as often as during a two-week cycle, marketers at home can build a relationship with the doctor by creating a procedure or a cycle of calls. The call cycle should be based on the days when the doctor or key personnel sees the representatives, and, most importantly, the marketer must be disciplined to maintain a routine. Your marketing visit will eventually become “expected.” To be successful with this, a home care marketer must build a “action plan” based on a call cycle or a plan with action elements or results that the marketer provides in his or her call cycle. By providing a simple list of patients that the agency has monitored on a monthly basis, “feedback”, detailed programs, results data, and other industry information can be part of the “results” that a marketer offers at home as part of their call cycles.

Doctors "condition" to expect marketers to build relationships throughout practice

Although doctors have maximum “power of the pen” in their exceptional ability to certify orders for home care services, often other employees actually send referrals at home. Office nurses, office practice administrators, surgical ramps, and fillers for doctors, such as nurse practitioners or medical assistants, are usually key tasks for home marketers to develop relationships. It is important that marketers and home care intermediaries have a good contact management system (CRM) to help them track all contacts within the practice. It also makes sense for a home care agency to take part in events in which these people go to receive updates in the industry, such as meetings at the local level at the Medical Management Association of Groups or in other practice management forums.

Doctors "condition" the expected marketing materials aimed at them

Many agencies do not provide their marketers with all the tools they need to do their job. It is expected that many marketers will build relationships with doctors, armed only with a business card and a brochure. It only makes sense that the marketer will need a few items of support to support the call cycle, as described above. Worse, their brochures are often written with the consumer, not with the doctor. Physicians respond best to materials that are clearly aimed at them, with important information provided in a concise header and a bulleted format so that they can quickly get the most important information.

Pharmaceutical companies often “publish” or minimize their formula information in certain areas. We recommend having information on how to apply home care recommendations, for example, according to Medicare criteria, when and how to make a home care referral (to your agency) that is “branded” by our agency's contact information. Spending some money on this piece so that it is properly designed, and a professional search can go a long way in getting referrals.

Doctors "condition" to expect marketers to become an educational resource

It may seem surprising then, how many opportunities for training doctors in home care. For example; Ask your marketer or relationship how often a doctor or one of their employees said, "Well, we just let the hospital take care of the reseller at home." Your first reaction to this statement may be that the practice intends to refer only to a hospital agency. But look a little deeper! What about patients who need home care and have not been hospitalized? Obviously, there are many practices that do not understand that home care services can be provided to patients who see the office without a recent hospital stay. Provide these methods with information about the criteria for home care, as well as the general diagnosis or conditions of the patients that they see in the office that can guarantee home care services.

Doctors are “conditioned” to expect and appreciate “special programs”,

In fact, the results of the Scott-Levine study of 6,000 doctors showed that more than 60% of the respondents whom they see are “specialists”, and 90% of these doctors prefer to attend a specialty, rather than a general sales representative. Even for home companies that are generalists, having a special program can be the key to creating referrals from the practice of doctors. Doctors often need a reason to make this the first direction and a special program, which can be a huge reason for reference. And we all know that the first referral is always the most difficult to acquire!

Doctors are “conditioned” to expect you to simplify the treatment

Having tools such as fax-referral forms, online referral forms, doctors portals, a specialized nurse, or a “dot” can be a great way to make sure that doctors or their staff always have extensive experience with your agency. Your marketer should ask the office staff how they prefer to make a referral, and then have several referrer options. No matter what you can do to make life easier for the doctor or their staff and not waste time, you have a long way to go in building your relationship with them. And always, a simple “thank you for the referral” can go a long way!

These are just a few suggestions that can go the way of developing better ROI for agencies that use communications or marketing representatives when calling doctors. To learn more, sign up for the webinar, Basics in Home Marketing: Marketing Your Doctor at http://www.novaetus.com