When it comes to physician marketing, its better not to assume

I recently presented to a physician cabinet within a large healthcare organization for the marketing of their particular sub-specialty. The presentation’s topic concerned inbound marketing, social networking and other external elements — except physician marketing, as we were handling physician marketing separately.

After the presentation one physician followed us out the door to ask us what we were doing about referrals, as this was recently an issue for him. Over dinner, one of his closest friends, a physician in the same area but with a different specialty, was discussing a case and mentioned that he referred the case to a competitor’s hospital.

The doctor sharing this with us was offended that his best friend had referred to a competitor and asked him, “Why did you do that? We’ve been doing that procedure longer than they have and we’re better at it than they are.” His best friend replied, “Well, I didn’t know that.”

The doctor said, “Why didn’t you ask?” His friend countered, “It’s not my job to ask, it’s your job to tell me.”

This story reminded me of the Odd Couple episode where Felix Unger explains to Oscar Madison that, when you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME.

Are you assuming that your referral network knows what you’re good at? Or are you actively and consistently communicating with them so they know you’re the one to refer their patients to?