Fostering good on-the-job health can boost your practice’s visibility
July 1, 1999
Fostering good on-the-job health can boost your practice’s visibility
Getting involved with local employers pays dividends
As the health care market becomes more and more competitive, practices have to do more work to differentiate themselves for patients and prospective patients as well as employers and payers. One way to achieve that goal is by making your practice more visible in the community.
Lyne Chamberlain, RN, BSN, MEd, MBA, MHA, manager of marketing and new business development at the 80-doctor Physician Associates of Florida, felt one way to do that for her eight-office Orlando practice was to participate in work site health programs. The practice specializes in primary care, obstetrics, and gynecology and has about 130,000 commercial managed lives on its patient rolls, out of about a million in the Orlando area. "We’ve been doing health fairs in offices, screenings at the work place, and classes on issues such as stress management and body mechanics for a long time," she says. "But recently it has become a part of our marketing strategy. We used to do them when we got requests from a company or payer. Now we are more proactive."
The results have been mixed, says Chamberlain, with little measurable impact on the number of patients coming to the practice. But she says the goodwill such programs foster — with employers, patients, and payers — makes the time and expense worth it. (For more on running a successful program, see story, p. 87.) "The goal has been to get employers to insist to their payers that we be included in their health plans," she says. "And to get employees to either select us when they start with a company or change to us. That is the theory, although we haven’t proved it yet."
Ken Goldberg, MD, a physician with Texas Urologists in Lewisville, started his practice’s work site health program 10 years ago. "Men make 130 million fewer visits to physicians than women," he explains. "They are more comfortable in a nonthreatening environment like a work place. That’s why we started reaching out."
Goldberg started by approaching area occupational nurses for guidance on which companies to target. The first programs featured a discussion on health issues, followed by some offering exams or screenings. That initial discussion has evolved into a 12-minute videotape. The screenings take about 30 minutes each.
To conduct the program, Texas Urologists uses nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and one physician who is on maternity leave and likes the part-time aspect of the job. The screening program, which includes employers such as American Airlines, has taken off. Goldberg’s practice travels around the country putting on programs, advertising them through posters and payroll stuffers. It has become so large that the practice has hired a coordinator whose main duties include handling all the logistics.
Set your sights locally
Chamberlain has a list of all the employers in her area that have at least 1,000 patients with the practice. Those are the ones she calls on. While getting through to the right person is often difficult, once she has the right name, Chamberlain doesn’t have a hard time convincing them to take part in a program. "When I say, We take care of 23,000 of your employees,’ they don’t have a problem working with us."
Most times, the employers are very interested in working with the practice. "They see it as a benefit they can offer employees," she says. Costs are shared — and the costs are actual costs without any mark up — and include nurse time and any lab fees. Among the programs that sell best to employers are flu shot clinics. "That means the employee doesn’t have to leave work, travel to our office, set up an appointment. It also means they are less likely to be out sick later in the year."
Goldberg had a harder time selling his program to companies because it focused on men. However, because a number of his target businesses already had work site programs for women — such as mobile mammogram clinics — he was able to push his idea as being fair to the other half of the workforce.
When a program is coming up, Chamberlain sends out e-mail requests to the various offices for volunteer physicians to attend. "I tend to contact the offices near the employer in question, and I concentrate on particular specialists, depending on the topic." For instance, a family practitioner or internist would be better able to address stress management issues than a pediatrician. Nurses also are asked to participate.
Getting physicians involved is one of the keys to success, Chamberlain says. "Meeting the doctors is a really positive tool for building relationships," she says.
With some of her physicians, such as family practitioners and internists, the sheer volume of patients they have makes it hard for them to participate. "They’re just swamped right now and aren’t thrilled with my requests. But we have had some extra capacity among pediatricians and obstetricians."
Selling physicians on the idea can be difficult because they are already busy and have increasing pressures on their time. But Chamberlain says you can convince them to participate by letting them know that physicians who take part in community activities tend to be the physicians whose panels grow the most. More patients mean more income, she adds. Such programs also can benefit the entire practice through the free advertising that such events provide, both on the site of the event and through local papers, which often provide coverage. If the event is big enough, you may even get a photograph and a news story out of it.
Despite her commitment to the program, Chamberlain questions whether the work site health strategy has any concrete cause-and-effect benefits. "We had one insurance account that was fairly new, and we did a number of programs with them. They had 700 patients who could sign up with us, and 350 did. But after our programs, those numbers didn’t grow. We thought that with as much as we were doing, with all that visibility, the number would jump."
But there are other benefits that are less visible, Chamberlain explains. "It can be hard to tell how people make decisions on choosing a doctor. The fact that they have seen us out there and met our physicians sends a message to them that we are interested in promoting health. When they go to their insurance companies, we hope they will insist that we be on their provider list. And while they may not use us, they may recommend our practice to others."
There may also be a cumulative effect when the screenings and seminars are combined with other marketing efforts Physician Associates has. For instance, if they hear a radio advertisement, prospective patients might remember that the practice held a program at their office.
There is a true community service aspect to the programs, Chamberlain says. "We have identified diabetics and people with dangerously high blood pressure through these. The screenings help patients."
Like Physician Associates, Texas Urologists has spotted problems during the screenings. "Picking up disease breeds a lot of goodwill," Goldberg says.
"Even if we don’t find a direct relationship between these events and getting more patients, I think we will keep up with it," Chamberlain says. "I think that there will be a demand for this from both employers and payer. And it creates a positive impression that will pay off in the end."
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