By: Kriss Barlow, RN, MBA | kbarlow@barlowmccarthy.com

A friend was less than pleased when her son, a freshman in college shared, “C’s get degrees.” Ugh, most of us envision ourselves (and our students) as individuals who achieve at the highest potential. As a program leader, that certainly means demonstrated strategic value for the organization. As a field representative, it’s balancing the needs of the referring practice and the expectations of the organization. The challenge is that sometimes we settle for less than the best and rationalize efforts and outcomes that are good enough.

For leaders, settling might be because of the pull in so many directions or because the effort to influence change- of data, people or impact- feels overwhelming. Sometimes, it is because physician relations is not your first love and team members let you believe they’ve got this!

Field staff get comfortable with techniques that have served them well in the past, even though the audience and internal expectations have evolved. Top of this list today is a heavy emphasis on doctor-to-doctor visits as the primary connection. Couple that with a reliance on visits with office staff for complex care referrals rather than connections with the referring physician.

Whether you are a leader or a liaison, we’re at the mid-point in the year; a wonderful time to consider if your physician relations program is achieving that best-in-class position in your mind. Is your approach having the desired impact? If you’ve got doubts, let’s explore some ideas.

1. Assess: Start by examining the number of visits, who are they with, and what is the measurable impact? If you are a leader, have you recently done a ride-along or called some of the practices to learn their impressions of the visits? If you are a liaison, have you taken the time to do a candid self-assessment?
2. Re-visit Your Goals: The worst time to demonstrate value is when someone asks. Let’s get ahead of this. Look at the strategic priorities for the organization and determine how the physician relations program is contributing to success. Vague is not great here, so seek to address measurable ways to demonstrate impact.
3. Hyper-focus on Physician Relations: As a leader, if you have allowed the program to run fairly independently, take 3 months to deep dive into what makes for best practice, learn where your team is very successful and invest in guidance for areas if you or your team need some focused attention.
4. Set Standards: Leaders can set performance expectations, internal network expectations, clinical message obligations and referral growth expectations. If these are not in place, likely it is time to tackle a few. As a field representative, personal standard setting, about visit time, visit progression, intelligence gathering are all great for us to get a personal “push” to motivate and improve our skills.
5. Reward You! Make sure to take the time to recognize small changes that will have an impact. It can be recognizing a staff person who was willing to be vulnerable and try something new. Maybe as a liaison you had a productive visit with an especially challenging internal medicine doctor. Write down all the advancements and review it when you need a boost.

Best in class does not come without effort. But, if we are not making an effort to improve our team and our role, are we just getting by?

If you’d like to chat about your current vs desired approach, let’s set a call. Reach out at info@BarlowMcCarthy.com. We’d love to learn more and help where that makes sense.