Marketing Your Practice in Today's Healthcare Arena  

Category: Practice Management

Building a medical practice is harder than ever. Many specialists face a crowded market, and primary care physicians are getting direct competition from retail clinics. A phone book listing and a hospital affiliation are no longer enough to establish a strong patient base.

Physicians today must take an entrepreneurial approach to marketing-actively seeking out new patients and referral sources. Entrepreneurial marketing does not need to be expensive. Practices can achieve good results with a few effective techniques. Administrators and managing physicians often view marketing solely as advertising to attract new patients. Marketing is stereotyped as newspaper ads, billboards, and direct mail campaigns.

Marketing is in fact however any activity that moves your practice in a desired direction. Directions might include increasing income, deterring new competitors, retaining...