Are You Building Provider Loyalty?
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How can you build and ensure provider loyalty?
Recently while visiting with an old college friend, she told me that her mother-in-law had recently fallen ill and had been in the hospital for 3 weeks. She had been complaining of multiple distributed symptoms that were not resulting in a clear diagnosis after multiple tests done in her hometown one state away.
When my friend brought her to her own doctor here in Chicago, the physician admitted her to the hospital after a short visit.
My friend was shocked. Her mother was feeling okay and did not have an urgent condition that seemed to require her hospitalization. When my friend questioned further, the doctor explained he admitted her mother-in-law because it would be faster and easier to have her tests performed and get the results more quickly.
By admitting her to the hospital to have all testing completed onsite, that physician took the course of action that would be the most efficient for him while also providing the timeliest course of care for his patient.
In this competitive environment, it is critical for health systems to realize the impact that having a connected environment that enables coordinated care can have on their bottom line and more specifically, referral revenue.
Referring physicians develop loyalty for those health systems and affiliated treatment centers that can provide timely updates about their patients – whether that be lab results, radiology images or treatment notes.
By being easy to do business with, referring physicians continue to refer new patients to the facilities and services that efficiently connect them to their patient’s status. This cannot be accomplished however if you do not know who your providers are, where they practice and how to reach them with updates.
Establishing a master provider registry across all systems can enable you to maintain up to date contact information - whether that provider is a person (doctor, nurse, home health aide, dentist, etc) or a location (imaging center, laboratory, dialysis center).
Updated provider information can then be shared with all systems that use provider data – like HIE, radiology and lab systems – to allow you to communicate efficiently with high value physicians. Beyond the provider registry is the ability to clearly identify which providers refer and treat patients and where.
By understanding these relationships that exist across providers, patients and locations where they treat patients, the right patient information can be located and shared with the right provider when it is needed across all points of care.
A new solution brief outlines additional use cases for how mastering provider data across the health ecosystem can reduce costs, increase referrals and improve care coordination. Take a look to understand where fragmented or out of date provider data may be hurting the bottom line.
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