Business Development Specialist - Marketing (FT)

Position Summary

The Business Development Specialist serves to strengthen hospital-physician relationships and increase patient referrals/admissions for the hospital by developing and maintaining relationships with physician practices and office staff. By instituting a dual customer service and marketing approach, the Business Development Specialist helps to boost referring physician satisfaction and loyalty and maintain profitable hospital-physician relations within a specific geographical region. This job includes, but is not limited to, promoting the hospital to a variety of physician populations, conducting physician sales calls, and developing/implementing strategies to enhance communications with physicians and other health care providers and increase volume for the hospital, conducting market assessments, analyzing physician needs and ensuring customer satisfaction.

Work Schedule

Forty hours per week (M-F, 8am-5pm), but more time may be required for occasional weekend and evening activities. Primarily works outside the office, with the majority of their time spent traveling to outlying hospitals and physician offices.

Primary Duties

Develops, maintains and strengthens positive relationships with referring physicians to increase hospital market share.

• Identifies and targets physicians with best opportunities for increased referrals/admissions to the hospital.
• Maintains profile on each physician, practice and office staff, and monitors physicians’ referral patterns.
• Works to develop and implement physician outreach strategies and continually updates top physician targets list.
• Contacts referring physicians and medical staff offices on a regular basis to initiate and/or maintain relationships, communicate hospital updates, obtain service feedback and provide educational information.
  • Prioritizes meetings based on level of loyalty, satisfaction and consistency of referral patterns.
  • Customizes meetings to each physician’s interests and needs.
  • Grants priority meetings to physicians with the most opportunity to increase referrals OR who have recently expressed negative feedback.
  • Plans and conducts standing/routine meetings and phone conferences with physicians who have high referral numbers.
  • Leverages hospital administrators and physician leaders in site visits as needed.
• Consistently provides timely and effective follow-up after each physician meeting and patient referral.
  • Serves as liaison between medical staff, referring physicians and the hospital regarding requests, questions and concerns about patients referred.
  • Assists in providing timely reports and supporting documentation for referring physicians of any acute care rendered for their patients.

Maintains communication and complaint resolution processes to ensure high service quality and physician satisfaction.

• Proactively solicits feedback during physician visits.
• Fosters accessibility of hospital specialists for referring physicians’ questions and concerns.
• Relays physician concerns immediately to the Sr. Business Development Specialist and ensures timely action and follow-up.
• Serves as liaison between medical staff and referring physicians regarding requests and referred patients to ensure continuum of communication and care.

Compiles, analyzes and communicates market intelligence from physician meetings.

• Writes trip summaries for each physician visit and maintains in a log or database, with all sales conversations, market intelligence, concerns/complaints, compliments, referral data, questions and follow-up steps outlined.
• Collects physician referral data and works to analyze physician referral and satisfaction data.

Provide continuing education on new technologies, procedures, and medical staff.

• Maintains knowledge of all hospital programs, processes and policies, as well as general market issues and volume trends.
• Works with hospital physicians to stay up to date on latest clinical technologies, procedures and services, and communicates these to referring physicians.
• Organizes educational sessions, luncheons and dinners for referring physicians and staff with approval.
• Invites referring physicians and nurses to visit the hospital and/or clinic(s) and arranges tours as appropriate.

Serves as an integral part of the Marketing team.

• Assists in the development of strategic plan for increasing physician referrals.
• Assists in the development of marketing communication and collateral.

Adheres to strict confidentiality both internally and externally.

Qualifications/Specifications

• Education: Bachelor degree in business, marketing, management, communications, nursing, healthcare administration or related field required.
• Experience: Minimum of two (2) years’ experience in healthcare sales and/or marketing strongly preferred (will consider professional-level healthcare experience, including ongoing coordination/communication with physicians, in lieu of sales and marketing). Experience in specialty area (i.e., bariatrics, wound care, peripheral vascular disease) preferred.