Add to the Funnel With a Better Procedure Mix

Key Business Concepts by Brad Bichey MD MPH

So this article came through my email this morning and it got me thinking about a key business concept.

' Only a Sociopath Could Work for a Large Health System,' Doc says Sardonically (read here - https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/988422).

The concept I want to address is funnels. Whether you are in medical device sales, medical device marketing, or you are a surgeon who does innovative and advanced treatment, we all have funnels. These funnels drive patients, customers, sales, or leads. We live in an interconnected world in the surgical space. We're all trying to improve Surgical Care and drive innovation everyday by offering something that can significantly impact a patient's quality of life. Something better than the current, common treatment. If you're not one of those people you don't need to read any further, but for those of you who are, I encourage you to read a little bit further and learn about adding to the funnel in the right way. Now let's take a closer look at this article.

SOCIOPATHS IN SURGERY?

As a surgeon, when I first read the title I was taken aback because I don't feel like there are sociopaths in the surgical space in any kind of large numbers. Almost all the doctors I know are ethically trying to do the very best for their patients. The same goes for the successful medical device leaders I work with. I talk with medical device companies every day and along with the doctors we work with we all have one goal in common. That goal is to drive innovation through the surgical space and to get our services, procedures, and products into the hands of great surgeons… ultimately to improve the quality of life of the patients we treat.

I guess that's why they call articles like the "Sociopath" article clickbait because it got me to read the article further. Thankfully when you read the beginning of the article, you'll see the author wasn't talking about a large number of sociopaths that have all now found themselves and are working in large health systems.

The author was using the term sociopath to identify doctors who work in large Health Systems who don't get burned-out… they must be sociopathic to live and work in the system and tolerate it.

Well that’s obviously false. We all work with great surgeons and many of them are employed in large health systems. Unfortunately there's a Kernel of Truth in the author’s statement.

REAL STATISTICS

The following statistics should all give us pause, patients, doctors, and anyone in medical device. Burnout is occurring as a direct result of what's happened in the medical device industry over the last two years. Here are some chilling statistics.

In a recent Medscape survey 53% of physicians reported being burned-out. If you look at the surgeons you work with right now you might not believe that over half of them are burned-out, but there's nothing to indicate that your group of surgeons is in any way different than those across the space. Of the surgeons that are burned out, 65% say the burnout is significantly impacting their life and a percentage of them are saying, “I'm leaving the industry completely.”

For the doctors that aren't leaving, this is a serious problem because patient volumes are already at all time highs. Backlogs created by COVID are causing many offices to be overrun by high patient volumes. These offices are booking out new patients 2 months or longer. There are low conversion numbers and surgeries are getting booked several months after that. Unfortunately, these statistics are all indications that one day you could wake up and your best doctor has decided to retire without warning.

REAL PROBLEMS

I live and feel these statistics daily. We all work with surgeons. In your meetings with surgeons, they won't always tell you they're burned out. All you can do is ask, “How is business?” Unfortunately they don't always tell you the truth. Maybe even you're burned out because of what's going on. That's okay too. If you really dig deep we all know there's a tremendous amount of burnout that's going on right now.

I started Nemedic not only to drive better patient care but to help defeat burnout across the surgical space. Burnout has been going on for a long time. It was here before COVID, before all the surgical shutdowns, and unfortunately it is now at epidemic levels. Now the economy is in turmoil and the outlook over the next two years is uncertain. Things aren’t getting better. Most of the solutions out there right now involve mental health services from the hospital system. Unfortunately, support groups aren’t going to fix this.

The problem is so much deeper. It’s systemic and it has to do with the technology and processes every doctor has to use these days that take them away from surgical care.

Many surgical practices are broken now. They are forced to focus on administrative tasks and their schedules are being overrun by random scheduling by an unskilled workforce. This drives dissatisfaction among patients and dissatisfaction by surgeons in their surgical practice life.

Patients don’t realize how much non-surgical care a surgeon may see and many sales reps I talk to just think the doctor they work with has a certain rate of monthly procedures that can never change.

If you are in Medical Device, first realize you are part of your surgeon’s practice life. You are part of the Care Continuum with patients. Second, realize there are solutions out there that can dramatically improve the surgical procedure mix in an office. We all need to band together to improve things immediately. You see, if you help your surgeons have a better practice life they won't burnout. They will be loyal customers. They'll do more surgery and less medical management. They’ll use more of your products and they will grow their business in any economy.

That’s better care… because the patient is getting a more innovative treatment. Your treatment… instead of migrating to a less innovative surgeon. Let's explore this further.

SOLUTION

It turns out if you simply start bringing in more qualified patients, patients that need a procedure, instead of medical management, EVERYTHING IMPROVES.

The solution is not adding more people to the problem. A bloated practice just creates more overhead.

We have all seen this “solution” unleashed. In fact it’s one of the primary business principles employed by large health systems… “Have the doctor work with more people. Put more people in the entourage and on the team.” Whether it's a physician assistant, a nurse practitioner, or a scribe, this is not the solution. More people working the problem doesn't create a better practice life, it only adds unnecessary overhead, complexity, costs, and hassle. The fact is you can't scale your way out of burnout.

This is the solution. Bring in a happy patient with a clear upfront contract.

What I mean by that is... bring in a patient who's sick, motivated, can afford surgery, and then send that patient to a doctor that they're confident can help them. The solution is sending that patient to a happy doctor that does the innovative procedure that the patient needs. This concept might seem overly simplistic, but that's not going on right now, especially in large health systems.

What's going on in large health systems right now is health care that's very homogenized. These systems think about your surgeons as interchangeable cogs in the machine - every ENT is the same, every GI doctor is the same, every general surgeon is the same.

We all know that's not true. Every doctor that you work with, every doctor that I know, has a focus of skilled care that they would love to do more of. It’s this focus that should direct our energy. It’s this focus that should drive what patients we help bring into their practice, because they will naturally do better patient care on patients that they have a passion to treat. They will naturally do better patient care when they use your innovative medical device.

So here is the key business concept

Actively manage the mix of new procedures coming into your surgeon to create a better patient mix. When you do this your doctor can get back to doing what they love, make more, and work how they want.

They won't be burned out and they'll be happy with their practice life. Even better... they'll be happy with you!

And a key concept is, if you're helping them actively manage that mix of new procedures, they will naturally do more of your procedure. If that's the case. If they like your procedure, you should act. You should actively try to manage that mix of new procedures. Help them do that because just adding to the funnel does not work anymore. It makes them too busy, overburdened, and burned-out.

See, the current funnel is broken, but you can shift the mindset! What you really need to do is improve the funnel and when you do that, everybody's happier and you'll get more sales. Patients will be happier. The surgical staff will be happier. You’ll be happier.

MORE ABOUT NEMEDIC

Actively managing the mix of new procedures coming into a surgical practice is what we do at Nemedic. It's OUR specialty.

We believe great care starts with great customer service. For us, that’s a text based, frictionless process. Ultimately, we believe surgeons should just get back to just doing surgery. We know the front office is broken right now. They're too busy answering the phones to prioritize surgical business. We take the guesswork out of the process by pre-qualifying every patient using software and a human touch. If you'd like to learn more just contact me on LinkedIn or have your surgeon direct message me and we'll start working to improve everything! You can learn more about how we work at nemedic.com.

MORE ABOUT PHYSICIAN BURNOUT

Lastly, if you want to learn more about physician burnout, have your doctor try out the burnout calculator at physicianburnout.info.

It’s a site we've built to help you and your surgeons understand what's going on in the industry right now.

Fire Up!

Dr. B