5 Ways to Measure Physician Liaison Impact
What is a Physician Liaison & What is the Importance of Measuring their Impact?
A physician liaison is a professional that represents a physician or group practice, including specialists, to other healthcare groups, and hospitals and creates relationships between different providers. The connections they establish build trust between various medical or surgical groups and help physicians grow their practices.
Physician liaisons are instrumental in developing ties between healthcare providers and referring physicians — driving both patient referrals and revenue growth. It’s essential for a healthcare organization to track and measure physician liaison impact across key growth initiatives to optimize its liaison program and increase return on investment (ROI).
Understanding physician liaison impact enables organizations to:
- Optimize resources & drive better outcomes
- Gain insights into the liaison program’s performance
- Demonstrate the value of liaison with stakeholders
- Uncover opportunities for growth & expansion
- Foster a culture of continuous improvement
- Use strategic decision-making
5 Key Growth Initiatives for Measuring Physician Liaison Impact
1. New Patient Growth
Looking at total patient visits can be misleading when it comes to driving referral development. Especially when supporting surgical specialists, as a patient may visit a surgeon multiple times before and after surgery. An effective physician liaison is most likely to impact new patient referrals specifically. As such, this performance measure is often key to demonstrating impact to related practice managers.
2. Growth from Key Markets
Many liaisons are assigned specific geographical markets to build relationships that will reinforce and improve an organization’s capture from those markets. This can include opening a satellite to expand patient access. These programs often evaluate their liaisons based on the growth of patients or cases in one or more markets of interest. They can also use shifts in market share as a lag indicator.
3. Increase in Targeted Cases
Similarly, liaisons are often organized by service line. These liaisons may be targeting specific markets but, primarily, they focus on building relationships with specific specialists or sub-specialists. These programs often evaluate their liaisons based on the growth of specific case volumes. For example, a cardiology service line liaison is tasked with meeting area cardiologists to promote the opening of their hospital’s Structural Heart Clinic. Not all volumes are created equal which is why liaisons are tasked with growing high-value procedures that positively impact their organization’s contribution margin.
4. Improvements in Contribution Margin
The contribution margin is the net revenue tied to a procedure once direct costs are subtracted. The contribution margin can be impacted by several things outside of a liaison’s scope of work, including payor mix and operational costs. That said, service line liaisons are often relied on to positively impact these areas. This is done by specifically promoting high-value procedures, focusing on referral partners with a targeted payor mix profile, and engaging providers in initiatives to drive quality and cost improvements.
5. Increased Commitment
While liaison impact is most often measured by tangible changes in volume or revenue, there are other ways liaisons can serve as strategic resources. For example, liaisons can be instrumental in identifying providers open to employment, recruiting physicians to join a specific ACO as well as those willing to partner with IT to implement a network solution like Epic Link. While these efforts are not always directly linked to an organization’s bottom line, these examples of physician alignment are critical to an organization’s success and can be measured based on the number of commitments secured with the support of those driving physician relations.
Best Practices for Physician Liaison Impact Measurement
Adhering to best practices is crucial when measuring physician liaison impact to ensure accurate and meaningful results. Following these best practices can help you effectively measure your physician liaison efforts and enhance your organization’s performance through data-informed decisions.
Set Clear Goals & Objectives
You should define the goals and objectives of your measurement efforts before implementation.
Identify KPIs & Other Metrics
Identify the KPIs and metrics that align with your goals to assess the impact of your physician liaison activities.
Collaborate with Internal Stakeholders
Engage with internal stakeholders to gather their insights into measuring physician liaison impact.
Monitor & Improve Continuously
Regularly monitor metrics and analyze data to identify trends and areas for improvement. Use this information to refine your physician liaison strategies.
Evaluate Physician Liaison Impact with Healthcare Technology
Leveraging these tools can provide an understanding of physician liaisons’ impact on referral patterns, revenue growth, and physician satisfaction, allowing organizations to optimize their liaison programs.
Physician Relationship Manager (PRM)
PRMs are tailored for physician liaisons to streamline their workflow and enhance measurement capabilities. A PRM platform helps manage and track interactions between liaisons and providers, enabling efficient documentation and impact measurement.
Learn moreHealthcare Data Analytics & Reporting
Data analytics tools offer valuable insights into the effectiveness of liaison efforts, allowing healthcare organizations to track key performance indicators (KPIs).
Learn moreHow does your organization measure liaison impact? See how Marketware’s PRM can help you meet your KPIs and demonstrate your return on visit. Schedule a customized demo with one of our solution specialists to get started!
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