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10 Answers You Should Know About Your Competitors’ Physician Base
January 1, 2023 | 3DhealthDepending on the market and quality of the candidate, filling a new physician’s practice with patients is not necessarily an easy task. We had a Client (now retired) that would often ask “why would a patient pick one of our physicians over any other physician in the market?” Fair question. Recently, we have been helping our partners determine the best way to differentiate their physician base against local, regional and even national competition. We start by helping answer ten questions:
- How does the size and mix of your physician base compare to the competition?
- What portion of the primary care market are you capturing in comparison to the competition?
- How many primary care served lives does this translate into?
- How many primary care points of entry do you have vs. the competition? Number of PCPs per point of entry?
- Is the competition offering specialty or satellite services from these same offices?
- Do you have any holes in your specialty base? Does your competition?
- What percentage of your physician base is open to new patients compared to the competition?
- How do your new patient appointment wait times compare to the competition?
- How does your and your competitors’ patient access compare to national averages and patient expectations?
- Is the age distribution of your physician base an area of concern? To what degree? Compared to the competition?
In order to retain existing and capture incremental patients, it is critical to offer the market both a breadth and depth of physicians. This includes a robust primary care network along with a choice of desirable specialists. The market’s view of a particular physician base can either benefit or haunt a health system for years to come.
To complete a competitor analysis, we start by inventorying the primary care providers in the market, understanding with whom they are affiliated and how they are aggregated on a per office basis. Based on the size and productivity of each primary care network, we are able to calculate the number of primary care served lives along with market share for our partners, and each one of their competitors. Depending on the historic level of investment in primary care, primary care market share can often lag a health system’s inpatient and outpatient hospital market share, representing a real business risk.
For the 72.3% of consumers with a primary care provider, it is important to offer them a number of office locations conveniently located throughout the market. Patients increasingly expect convenience and choose health systems based on their ability to offer the right number of locations, with the right mix of primary care and specialists. As part of our competitor analysis, we help determine the number of specialists that can be supported through each primary care network – our partner’s as well as their competitors’.
Consumers also expect to be told yes, and well-running physician practices develop their culture and workflow around this reality. Most of 3Dhealth’s partners are focused on scripting and training the front desk personnel to say “yes” to the market and consumers, rather than “no, sorry”. While our partners are undertaking this important work, we are encouraging them to develop “work arounds” until they achieve targeted access. For example, create a New Patient Concierge Program that ensures the first impression for new patients is a great one. Rather than practices telling new customers no, have them direct patients to the Concierge. From there, the Concierge can customize their new patient experience and make them feel special rather than locked out of the system.
Over the past year, 3Dhealth has surveyed over 63,000 consumers around how long they are willing to wait for a new patient appointment for 42 different specialties. While consumer expectations certainly run high – 55% expect access in four days or less – they do not appear to be unreasonable. Consumers appear to adjust their expectations based on physician specialty. Only 30% of consumers attempting to book a new patient appointment with a Pediatric physician are willing to wait five or more days. Family Medicine is a similar story, with only 33% of consumers willing to wait five or more days. Yet, 64% of consumers are willing to wait five or more days to access an OB/Gyn.
Not recognizing an aging physician base can cause even the best of strategies to collapse. Our experience across the country suggests that at any given time, 25% to 50% of a health system’s need for physicians is from an aging physician base.
Recognizing an aging physician base in your competitor can prove to be a serious opportunity and help you differentiate your physician base within the market – invest in your physicians while capturing incremental patients in your targeted service lines.
The above will help set the stage for a structural advantage utilizing your physician base. In our next 3Dperspectives we will outline how to further differentiate your physician base through customer service.
For questions or comments please contact Shane Foreman at SForeman@3Dhealthinc.com or Ron Flower at RFlower@3Dhealthinc.com .