A big piece of provider marketing is managing the referral base, which can be a significant percentage of an organization’s business. From the referring provider’s perspective, it can be quite frustrating to refer a patient for services where the patient has to wait a long time, where communication is not sent back to them in a timely manner, or where there is confusion about the referral process itself. It is not always the marketing leader’s job to improve processes, but they are certainly stakeholders in the process given how much the process impacts the satisfaction of those providers referring in.
After reading Improving Healthcare Referral System Using Lean Six Sigma, write an article critique that accomplishes the following tasks.
Begin by briefly summarizing the premise of the article and its relation to this unit’s concepts.
Explain how the Lean Six Sigma process helps the marketing team.
The patient referral request process for the hospital (Figure 2) includes multiple process steps. Briefly analyze the risk of communication breakdowns between the various steps.
In reviewing the fishbone diagram of reasons for delayed physician response (Figure 4), which reason do you believe is most impactful, and why?
From a marketing perspective, how would you share with referring providers the improvements they can expect between the two value stream maps (Figures 6 and 7). Remember, marketing is not necessarily sharing all the details, but rather the difference in experience for them.
Compare and contrast health care marketing to non-healthcare marketing from the viewpoint of physician engagement.