Physician Liaison Program Support
Recognizing the critical need to develop and maintain effective hospital-physician relationships

Overview

Our program is an outgrowth of our 20+ years of experience working with physicians and physician organizations. After the rush to acquire physician practices in the mid-1990s, hospitals began to divest underperforming sites and realized that they could no longer afford endless losses. As a result, they came to the conclusion that they needed to assure the loyalty of key members of their private medical staff. The Physician Liaison program was the vehicle that they used to reach those physicians.
Historically, the liaison was more a sales/public relations person.

Our Program

Our approach to working to enhance liaison programs is that we see that every market is different and the hospital's experience with developing and maintaining relationships with community physicians will differ widely. Our services run the spectrum from helping to create a program, recruit and train staff, to simply providing the current liaison staff the use of our innovative and unique software, Med-Track.

Getting Started

Except for organizations only interested in Med-Track, each project starts with a "snapshot" of the market. Through interviews with key management and physicians, we explore the hospital's background in physician bonding, the challenges that face the hospital, the realities of the physician practice environment, and the physician perception of the institution and the management. We also examine the medical staff demographics to include number, age, and specialty.
Clients have the option of outsourcing the entire program. Our seasoned staff of liaison program managers will provide total support and oversight to assure effective operations of the relationship effort.

Program Elements

Program Review and Enhancement
As the importance of a vibrant and dynamic physician relations/outreach becomes more critical, the focus of existing programs need to change, and the knowledge and skills of existing staff may need to be enhanced. Our team of professionals will work with your liaison staff to revisit the pram model and focus, make recommendations for change, and work with your staff to assure that they are effective in their new environment.

Liaison Selection
A successful physician relations program must have a strong foundation. It is critical that the individual(s) selected to perform the task of physician liaison posseses the ability to relate to individuals of varied personalities. Using a personality profiling system that is based on the DISC research of William Marston, we can assist in identifying candidates that will posses the traits most likely to be needed in developing effective relationships.

Training
The new liaison will learn techniques needed to develop effective personal relationships with physicians and office staff, understand the challenges facing private physicians in the current environment, become acquainted with the operation of the typical medical practice office, practice fact finding and problem solving behaviors, and review data gathering and analysis methods.

Situational Analysis
We will assist in the development of a medical staff profile which will include admissions (inpatient and outpatient) by physician, age weighted volume by specialty, segmentation of the staff based on volumes (high admitters - "Loyalists", divided admissions - "Splitters", and infrequent admitters - "Phantoms"), and hospital market share (where data is available).
This document can easily serve as a formal needs analysis for physician recruitment activities.

Data System
The Horizon Group has developed a unique Physician Liaison software package called Med-Track. Using this system, liaisons and their managers can:

• Manage Physician Contacts
• Create and Assign Tasks
• Schedule Meetings with Physicians
• Create Structured Scripts for Encounters with Physicians. These Scripts Include Customizable Questions that can be Reported On
• Enter Physician Information and Responses to Questions Directly into a Laptop Computer During the Visit
• Import Hospital Data such as Admissions, Outpatient Visits, DRG Codes, and Charges
• General Custom Reports on any Data in the System

Program Supervision
f the decision is made to outsource the program management, each month we will review the activities of the Liaison staff, make recommendations for improving the impact of the program, review and analyze the issues that were identified during the visitations, and make recommendations to management regarding any actions that are needed.
New programs may find this option helpful over a 3-4 month period, until site staff are comfortable with their responsibilities.

Continuing Professional Development
We will continue to work with the Liaison to keep their knowledge-base as current as possible regarding physician practice issues and trends. This will be accomplished during regular monthly sessions and formal meetings held on an annual basis.

For more information on our Physician Liaison Program,
contact Jessica Caravello