Cardiovascular Business - January/February 2008 - (Page 27)

one guerrilla marketing approach is to invite physicians to get a CtA exam. “once they experience the technology themselves and see their own results, they totally get it.” — John osborne, MD, phD, state of the Heart Cardiology practices can advertise CtA’s ability to image any part of the vasculature. occluded superior mesenteric artery just beyond the stent and stented renal artery with restored blood flow. (provided by Cardiology Associates) and public relations activities or you need to devote physician time in concert with administrative staff efforts, or both. Regardless of which approach you take, a number of successful cardiac CT practices have found that focusing on the following basics before implementing a particular approach will. → Defining your market: Will you market to referring physicians, private-practice or specialist leaders, patients, civic organizations or the community as a whole? Or all of the above? → Focusing on internal or external communications: Will you market to your existing patient base or to new patients? How about to your existing network of primary-care physicians or to all of the primary-care providers in your area? → Choosing your medium: Will you advertise in radio, print and TV (the expense of which increases in this order), send educational materials such as newsletters or letters to referring physicians, sponsor dinners or work on public relations placements in local media? Or some combination of these methods? → Persuading your audience: How will you persuade your target audience that your practice is the place to go for cardiac CTA? Publicize your unique strengths in terms of physicians and staff, geographic advantages, easy scheduling and quick access to convenient appointment times. → Refining your message: What do you want to communicate about your cardiac CTA program—the technology you’re utilizing, the expertise of your physicians, your history with the technology or the specific uses you’re making of the technology? traditional marketing As long as you are focused, a traditional marketing program is as good a method as any to tout your cardiac CTA program. Many larger practices have hired a marketing director to take charge of these efforts full-time, such as New Mexico Heart Institute in Albuquerque, N.M., which has a Toshiba America Medical Systems Aquilion 64-slice scanner and 38 cardiologists in the practice. The practice currently does approximately eight to 10 cardiac CT scans per day. A marketing director can assume a number of tasks, including coordinating all marketing and public relations, overseeing the production of newsletters, letters, brochures and other printed and web-based educational materials as well as setting up events and seeking out publicity opportunities in the local media. An internal marketing director or coordinator can work with outside advertising agencies to handle the design of any ads or marketing materials you want to place—or perhaps the person brings skills to create materials. Cardiology Associates in Mobile has a full-time marketing director on staff and a part-time employee and also uses an outside agency. In general, hiring an outside agency involves hourly costs for various creative services—such as writing and designing brochures and ad campaigns—plus a percentage of commissions on printing, media, photography and other services you purchase through the agency. Hourly rates vary and range from $150 to $225 an hour for a contractor or small to mid-size agency to produce an integrated marketing and public relations. Cardiology Associates spends approximately $20,000 a year marketing their cardiac CT practice. There are four potential audiences to focus on when designing a marketing program, but unless you have a large budget, you probably can’t successfully market to them all. Here are some techniques that various cardiac CTA practices have used to raise awareness and gain market share: Newsletters. If the target market is your current patient base, an existing newsletter can continually reinforce your message about the diagnostic utility of cardiac CTA as well as the professional expertise of your staff. While rising postage and printing costs can mean a substantial outlay of costs in publishing a newsletter, especially on an ongoing basis, gathering patients’ email information and getting permission to send a newsletter electronically can cut these costs substantially. Cardiology Associates also publishes its newsletter online on its website and keeps past issues in the archives as a reference for patients, Chunn says. Letters. An announcement on letterhead from physicians in your practice or medical director sent to local primary-care physicians is another tried-and-true method that can be quite successful, especially if you follow-up on the letter with phone calls, personal visits and/or invitations to seminars or to make an appointment to have a CTA. In lieu of a more expensive newsletter, you also can send letters to patients as well as corporate and community leaders, who are interested in innovative healthcare technology that can CardiovascularBusiness.com Cardiovascular Business 2 http://CardiovascularBusiness.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cardiovascular Business - January/February 2008

Cardiovascular Business - January/February 2008 Contents The Ticker: Quality Pays in Several Ways Cover Story: The Proof: Why Evidence-based Medicine Improves Cardiac Care Clinical Study Digest: Co-payments and Cath Labs Cardiac PET/CT Fills in Gaps Left by SPECT Tapping into IT to Improve the Office-Based Practice SPECT–Proving Its Value Cardiac Images in the EMR: Just a Click Away The Top 20 Ways to Market Your Cardiac CTA Practice The Big Picture: Medical Displays for Cardiac Images Statins Work But Pharmacoeconomic Caveats Abound Driving Data Protection: Opting for Storage On- or Offsite News & Views Calendar Reader’s Resource

Cardiovascular Business - January/February 2008

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