All too often, opening a satellite site or starting a new practice fell under the guise of “if I build it, they will come.” Take advantage of accessible research tools and conduct preliminary research that will help you shape your approach and enhance patient acquisition.
Consider your vision and ask some questions to set the planning foundation in place and to guide your research. You might consider the size of the market you are entering and basic demographic information such as income level, housing prices, employment, age and even gender. Are there particular attributes to this market? Is it growing? What kind of neighbors are there? What is the competition in the market? Does it seem to be well penetrated with physicians of your specialty? Does the community have several physicians who might refer to you?
You might be surprised at how easy it is to obtain some of this information. Start with the community hospitals in the area. They usually have a good sense of the medical community and population characteristics. If you have a good relationship with a hospital within the target market and they are working with you to conduct your assessment, you will have access to a great deal of local market information. The business development and/or marketing departments at a local hospital can provide general payer mix within the market, provider information and even case mix data broken down by zip code. If you are not fortunate to have access to this information from the local hospital, consider trying governmental resources such as departments of public health.
The local chamber of commerce typically has good resources about demographics and employment characteristics. The town’s website and local employers often have good information on their website especially if the community is interesting in attracting new businesses and families.
Make sure you find out about who the other providers are in the community. This information can be found using state licensing information and can be cross-checked via hospital web sites.
Doing a little detective work makes sense. Determining how full competing practices are currently can be useful information. You don’t want to enter a market that has an over-supply of your specialty. To determine if these practices are full or who the primary payers are, you will need to directly contact the office administrator at the individual practices and explain your purpose. This kind of surveying takes time but is well worth the information. Office administrators are not always easy to access, but hold considerable information about the market and can be very helpful.
Targeted research informs everything – services, location, marketing message and strategic positioning – and should not be overlooked. Research of this type can help you recognize how to approach the market. It can also alert you that the market may be over-saturated and not the best fit for your practice. Research of this type will help set a foundation for your practice positioning. It doesn’t’ take long and is well worth the findings.
