Physician Liaison Marketing: Building Stronger Referral Networks for Healthcare Practices

What is Physician Liaison Marketing?

Physician liaison marketing is a strategic approach to healthcare marketing that focuses on developing and maintaining strong relationships between medical practices, physicians, and referral sources. A physician liaison acts as the bridge between healthcare providers and their referral networks, ensuring seamless communication and a steady flow of patient referrals.

In a competitive healthcare landscape, physician liaison marketing is essential for practice growth and patient acquisition. By fostering relationships with referring doctors, specialists, and healthcare systems, physician liaisons help expand a practice’s reach and solidify its reputation within the medical community.

Why Physician Liaison Marketing Matters

The healthcare industry is highly referral-driven, particularly for specialties like urology, audiology, dermatology, and plastic surgery. A successful physician liaison marketing strategy can help your practice:

  • Increase patient referrals: A physician liaison strengthens connections with referring doctors, leading to more consistent patient referrals.
  • Enhance your practice’s reputation: By serving as the face of your practice to external physicians, a liaison ensures your practice is well-represented in the community.
  • Build long-term relationships: Sustainable referral sources are the result of ongoing efforts by a dedicated liaison, who nurtures relationships over time.
  • Targeted growth: Physician liaisons can strategically target the right partners for your practice, allowing you to focus on profitable or underserved specialties.
physician liaison medical representative for orthopedic
HOW-TO-INCREASE-PHYSICIAN-REFERRALS

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eferral marketing is the best way to consistently increase new patient referrals into your practice, from both currently referring groups & groups who have never sent you a referral. Research shows that both individuals and groups typically refer to specialists who are known, trusted, and with whom they have a strong relationship. Referral marketing can be thought of as healthcare relationship marketing, a way of expanding your visibility, ensuring credibility, and increasing education of the value & services you provide.

The question remains: how do you create & strengthen referral relationships? The answer: by implementing a physician liaison marketing program.

What is a physician liaison?

AKA: Community Liaison, Field Marketer, Practice Representative, Clinical Liaison, Marketing Outreach Rep
A physician liaison is a marketing professional dedicated to representing a physician or specialized medical/surgical group in an effort to establish and strengthen the relationship between potential referring physicians and hospitals. By maintaining an open line of communication with physicians and performing diligent outreach, physician liaisons maintain and grow the patient referral base for those they represent. Read More

What does a physician liaison do?

Physician liaisons do several things for the groups they represent:

  • Educate potential referral sources, such as physicians, counselors, schools, urgent care centers, etc.
  • Address concerns and issues practices & individuals may have with sending a referral or interacting with staff.
  • Position who they represent as an expert in their field, protecting & managing reputations.
  • Strategically promote services, treatments & insurance types their client would like referred.

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2 Options for Implementing a Physician Liaison Program

Remote Outreach Referral Marketing

This program was developed to accommodate tight budgets while producing excellent results. Our physician liaison team calls, faxes, and emails information to prospective referral sources, following up with them under the same protocol they would use if they were in the field representing you. Educate, set appointments, and more! Low prices and high ROI.

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Managed Physician Liaison Representation

The best option for practices who want the exceptional results only a trained, managed representative can deliver. Liaisons report to & are paid by PRM, and have the competitive advantage of using our employee portal for training, testing, tracking activity, and reporting. Shared and dedicated reps available!

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Elevate Your Practice with Physician Liaison Marketing

Key Strategies for Effective Physician Liaison Marketing

  1. Identify High-Value Referral Sources: Not all referral sources are created equal. It’s essential to identify key physicians, practices, or healthcare systems that align with your specialty and patient demographics. Use data-driven insights to target doctors who see a high volume of patients relevant to your practice’s services.
  2. Build a Structured Outreach Plan: Physician liaisons should follow a structured outreach plan that includes consistent communication and follow-ups.
  3. Provide Education and Support: Referring physicians appreciate added value. Physician liaisons can provide educational resources, clinical updates, and support tools to enhance the referring doctor’s practice. This could include offering educational seminars, sending newsletters with medical insights, or providing materials that help referring practices communicate effectively with their patients.
  4. Track and Measure Referral Performance: Data is a key component of successful physician liaison marketing. Implement a system to track referrals, measure their outcomes, and assess the impact of your liaison efforts.
  5. Maintain a Feedback Loop: A physician liaison should serve as a key point of contact for addressing any issues or questions from referral partners.

Choosing the Right Physician Liaison for Your Practice

A physician liaison plays a crucial role in practice growth, so it’s important to choose someone with the right skill set:

  • Relationship-building expertise: A liaison must have exceptional interpersonal skills to build trust and rapport with doctors and healthcare professionals.
  • Industry knowledge: A deep understanding of healthcare, patient care, and the specific medical fields your practice operates in is vital.
  • Sales acumen: While the focus is on building relationships, a successful liaison needs sales skills to “sell” your practice’s strengths to referring physicians.
  • Organizational skills: Managing a network of referral sources requires a structured, organized approach to outreach and communication.

Managing a physician liaison, who works remotes in the field as a practice representative, is a logistics nightmare for most mid-size practices. You need someone with the right skills and accountability, and a good management system. Read more about how we select our physician liaisons and what that means for you when you work with us.

Doctor-2-Doctor Marketing

Finding time to network is virtually impossible with your hectic schedule. Our professionals make it easy by networking for you, and setting up one-on-one time with referring physicians when it makes sense.

New Referral Opportunities

Unlike other organizations, our physician liaison reps are think outside of the box: we look at ALL potential referral sources, not just other physician groups. Podiatrist? You might get referrals from athletic directors. Counselor? Referrals can come from lawyers & churches as well.

Unsurpassed Training

At the end of the day, you want to see RESULTS. Our physician liaison reps are taught best practices to track activity and generate referrals- our techniques are perfect to implement with your office staff too!

Exclusive Territory/Niche Protection

When you use our managed physician liaison marketing services, we won’t work with anyone else within your niche in your area. We certainly don’t want to compete against our own efforts- lock in your area today to gain an edge over your competition!

Grow Current Relationships

Have you ever considered that you could be getting more referrals from current referral sources for services you provide? Our physician liaisons educate and strengthen your referral relationships, to increase referral patterns for the types of patients you most want to serve.

Identify Problems & Correct

We find that those who come to us because they’ve noticed a decrease in referrals are often unaware of the reason it’s occurred: we are experts at discovering what impacts referral patterns and proactively addressing issues before referral sources turn elsewhere.

What Drives Specialist Referrals?*

68.5%
Referral from PCP
18%
Referral from Another Health Care Provider
19%
Referral from Friend/Relative
66%
Percentage of Doctors Who Are Unlikely to Change Referral Patterns Unless Actively Engaged by a Liaison
increase-referrals

Whether you’re a new practice or have been in business forever, in today’s competitive market you need to consider your referral marketing strategy. Hospitals have been doing this forever, but as more specialists begin using liaison reps to market their practice, they too are seeing the benefit. Contact us today to get started!

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*Sources of the Statistics Listed Above in ‘What Drives Specialist Referrals?’