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Marketing PET/CT
Improves Your ROI Most PET/CT marketing efforts aren’t particularly sophisticated, but they make a real difference in the finances of offering the service. PET/CT represents one of the most important developments in medical imaging. It also represents one of the most costly pieces of diagnostic equipment. For facilities wishing to provide this major advancement in patient care, the price tag can run more than $2 million for a new, state-of-the-art scanner. That makes it critical for implementation to be coupled with an effective business approach designed to generate an acceptable return on investment (ROI). On the surface, the strategy is simple: Recoup costs by generating high volume levels. Generate those high volume levels by effectively marketing the service. As a successful marketing campaign generates more referrals, the business will eventually start taking care of itself. Typically, before installing a PET/CT unit, a facility’s management does some homework, including the requisite analyses (markets, trends, potential referrals, etc). But to truly make their service profitable, facilities need to take the next step into marketing their service. Unfortunately, marketing activities, for many people, are as pleasant as a root canal. But it’s absolutely necessary. As good as PET/CT is, its presence alone is not enough to generate referrals. You can have the most advanced technology in the world, but it won’t do anyone any good unless people know about it. For many medical professionals, marketing is unfamiliar territory. But, in the case of PET/CT, the marketing template is not too complex. The most important element is getting the message to referring physicians. Moreover, the same marketing strategies hold true for the various PET/CT business models. From the marketing standpoint, there is little difference whether you offering inpatient/outpatient PET/CT imaging, a freestanding imaging center with PET/CT and other modalities, or services that utilize mobile PET/CT scanners. ABCs of PET/CT Marketing Specialists best served by the technology include radiation oncologists, neurologists, cardiologists, and pulmonologists. When promoting their PET/CT services to these targets, providers have employed conventional marketing tools such as printed promotional materials and media placement, as well as the medical marketing staples of educational conferences, attending tumor boards at hospitals, scheduling breakfasts or lunches with physicians, and cold calls. In each example, the purpose is the same: delivering the message. When Fox Chase Cancer Center, a medical research facility and hospital specializing in cancer treatment located in Philadelphia, opened its PET/CT unit four years ago, it wanted to communicate that it was the first facility in its area to offer the modality. Fern Nibauer, the center’s director of physician services, reports that the first level of promotion involved media relations. However, she adds that another essential element was physician outreach. “We started by distributing an outreach letter, targeting primary care physicians as well as specialists, particularly those focused on oncology, to inform them that we now had the unit,” she recalls. Printed materials, including an announcement card and capabilities guide, were also part of the outreach. “These detailed our capabilities and explained why PET/CT is unique and why we brought it to Fox Chase,” Nibauer says. “As we promoted the program, we regularly sent out these materials, as well as a reprinted advertorial published in a monthly publication, Physician’s News Digest. In addition, the center hired a physician, Michael Yu, MD, whose duties included serving as a spokesman for PET/CT. In that role, Yu became involved in Fox Chase’s continuing medical education programs, making presentations about the center’s PET/CT component. Such presentations are an integral part of PET/CT marketing efforts. Often, these involve what Fedo calls a “physician champion,” someone who can introduce the modality and educate referring physicians about its capabilities. “We have a PET/CT specialist who gives presentations at our regular ‘Friday Morning Conferences’ for area physicians,” he reports. Physician Champion Face-to-Face With Physicians Fedo himself has knocked on a lot of doors since Ridgeview implemented PET/CT services. “That’s really how we got our marketing efforts off the ground,” he says, “and I still try and get out to all of my big referring clinics at least once a year. I’ll buy lunch and use the occasion to update the physicians and clinic staff about what’s new.” Carter S. Young, DO, chairman and medical director of the department of radiology at Methodist Medical Center of Illinois in Peoria, also likes to hit the streets to promote his facility’s PET/CT services. Back in 1991, when Methodist began its clinical PET program, 100% of the marketing involved physician-on-physician meetings, initiated by Young. When the center advanced to PET/CT, he continued this activity. “Over the years, our marketing department has done community marketing but, all along, I’ve continued to do the physician marketing piece, primarily by interacting with physicians one-on-one and in small group sessions in a variety of environments,” he relates. “Continued ongoing physician education is how I would put it.” He adds that the education is probably the most important element in marketing to physicians. Nibauer agrees: “They need to know how it’s different from PET alone or conventional CT, that it’s capable of whole-body imaging and that it can be quite specific, which is a huge help with staging, which is crucial, especially for lung cancer.” Education also involves information about appropriate indications and reimbursement issues, as physicians need to be informed about how payors reimburse for PET/CT. Other important elements of successful marketing include customer service and communication. Essentially, customer service involves accommodating physician needs. “The idea is to get them dependent on you, so to speak,” says Fedo. “For instance, physicians want quick turnaround, usually by the next day. So, we’ll electronically transmit our images to radiation therapists, which helps them with their therapy planning. That helps ensure that they will continue sending their patients to us.” Maintaining strong communication ties between interpreting physicians and referring physicians is essential because it also positively impacts future referrals. “That close connection is key,” comments Nibauer. “Our radiologists connect with referring physicians immediately. They’ll provide images on disc and send them via e-mail so that the referring physicians will have the images almost immediately.” Alternative Marketing
Resources Some collaborate with their equipment vendors. Hitachi Medical Systems America, Inc. is an example of a vendor that provides marketing services along with its equipment. For customers using the company’s Sceptre platform of dedicated PET and PET/CT products, Hitachi offers a service called Sceptre Solutions, which was developed to provide programs and services to help customer’s evaluate market opportunities. Among its offerings, Sceptre Solutions provides market analysis that helps customers with their strategic business planning and development of effective marketing strategies. The Sceptre Solutions package includes physician education brochures, patient brochures, a reimbursement code card, newsletters, referral fax pads, and clinical case studies. Hitachi also offers on-site marketing sessions with a company marketing expert, to prepare and assist a customer’s marketing team with strategic objectives. Other PET/CT service providers seek help from outside marketing firms, such as PET2Market, a Seattle-based business that specializes in PET and PET/CT. Marishka Pilch, the company’s founder and a PET marketing and clinical education consultant, says Pet2Market’s clients fall into two categories: facilities just starting out with PET/CT who seek a successful launch and facilities already offering PET/CT that want to increase their utilization. “For the start-ups, we evaluate their marketplace, determine who the likely referrers will be, and develop the marketing and education efforts most appropriate to their needs,” says Pilch, who managed medical practices before moving into sales and marketing focused exclusively on PET technology. “The second group involves facilities who have been doing PET/CT for awhile but whose volumes have become flat. We help take them to the next level. In such cases, we analyze who refers and who doesn’t and for what indications they’re referring. We try and determine what we’re missing.” She works with both large and small facilities, but the greater part of her client list includes the smaller facilities that don’t have a dedicated diagnostic imaging marketer or a physician liaison. “Many times, it is a smaller hospital who is getting a mobile PET/CT scanner and just can’t dedicate a full-time person to marketing,” she says. “In such cases, I help with physician awareness and education.” Pilch not only develops a marketing strategy, she helps implement the plan. This frees up the client’s staff so they can perform their responsibilities. The service can help facilities and staff who are reluctant to do marketing. “There might be people within the facility who might be better suited to go out and do what I do, such as a radiologist or technologist, but many of them just don’t feel comfortable going to a physician and asking how they are working up their lung cancer patients, for instance. They don’t want to look like they’re telling a referring physician how to practice medicine. The truth is many of these referring physicians are looking to the imaging experts to tell them what to do.” Impact As with other service providers, Integral PET Associates benefits most from its physician-to-physician marketing. “By far, that is the most important because you’re talking to referring physicians on their level,” says Lissak. “We attend tumor boards and grand rounds at hospitals, where we bring in speakers to talk about their experience. We also put on a lot of symposiums and educational programs. Also, our physician liaison representatives spend a lot of time in physician offices.” When assessing the impact of marketing, Lissak states, “Without it, we wouldn’t have any business.” Offering his own assessment, Young is a bit more analytical, but his message is equally as enthusiastic. “Marketing to your primary user has a direct quantifiable effect on scan volumes,” he reports. “I have seen increases in volume related directly to presentations I have given at tumor board conferences.” Pilch offers an example of how marketing efforts impacted a joint ventureship: “I worked with an imaging center that was jointly owned by two hospitals that couldn’t afford their own PET/CT units, and we nearly doubled their volume,” she recalls, adding that volume increased from 35 to 40 scans per month to 65 to 70 scans. “That happened within four months.” Those figures are extraordinary, she points out: “Most places only need to do two extra scans a month for the PET/CT unit to start paying for itself.” — Dan Harvey is a freelance writer based in
Wilmington, Del., and a frequent contributor to Radiology Today.
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