Managing Physician Communications — Tips in Ten(ish) Minutes

0:00:06.2 Kirsten Lecky: Hi, welcome to WG Content’s first Tips in 10 Minutes from WG Contents, formerly WriterGirl Associates. We’re actually doing something a little bit different today. We’re coming to you from a restaurant in Cincinnati. I’m here with my friends from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Amy Okin and Missy. She’s actually holding the camera for us today. And Amy does many things over at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, one of which is to lead and manage a lot of the physician communications. So why don’t you introduce yourself and talk a little bit about your role at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

0:00:37.0 Amy Okin: Sure. Thanks. Yeah, so I’ve been with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for about seven years. I lead our sub-specialist physician strategy, so really targeting sub-specialist physicians and trying to increase our reputation among them.

0:00:51.5 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah. And you’ve done a very nice job of that, winning US News & World Report’s number one slot last year. So yeah, I know, but that’s super exciting. Yeah. It was fun celebrating that with you guys. So, but you’ve been doing this work for about 25 years, is that right?

0:01:05.6 Amy Okin: Right. Marketing for healthcare for physicians. But physician communication is part of that.

0:01:11.2 Kirsten Lecky: One of the things we were talking about is the study that we did last year around the state of content planning and realizing that one of the primary challenges that doctors have is looking at physicians, getting them involved in your content creation, getting them needed to improve the process or improve the content, getting them time on their calendar for interviews. So you’ve been doing this for a long time. Is there anything that you would love to pass along as tips that have worked really well for you in building those relationships with physicians?

0:01:41.6 Amy Okin: Yeah. So I think a big piece of this, because we do a lot of content planning and we need to involve the physicians in the process because they are our audience. Well, they know what other physicians, what other specialists are going to be interested in. They also know what we’re doing, what they’re doing. We’re very fortunate because they do get a lot of top world leading research procedures programs. So that’s super helpful in involving the physicians. Just so we know what what we want. And then the other piece is we need to have those relationships built in. Sarah is our biggest partner. And that doesn’t happen overnight. This is something that we like to work with them on. I think another key to developing that relationship is yes, involve them in the planning and also we circle back against who we wrote our relationship with and let them know what works well.

0:02:44.2 Kirsten Lecky: Oh, that’s nice.

0:02:45.2 Amy Okin: We share our metrics as far as how many came to the article or each different topic.

0:02:52.3 Kirsten Lecky: So how do you… Talk to us a little bit about that part? Like how do you communicate the results? Do you like writing meetings? Is it like a newsletter that you send out? Like what’s the kind of the platform and the forum be able to close the loop on performance?

0:03:05.0 Amy Okin: Yeah. So I think I always try to give a link to wrap up the previous communication promotion and then start planning for the next one because they go hand in hand. We can see what happened with what performed well in the previous communication and then use that as a platform to start planning the next one.

0:03:25.2 Kirsten Lecky: Okay. And do you find that all of your, I mean, there’s a lot of doctors and you work with the same ones. I mean, how do you, I mean, is it, I imagine it’s driven by topic and service line and sort of specialty and what you’re working on. But how, talk a little bit more about how you get them involved because they’re busy people.

0:03:43.9 Amy Okin: Sure.

0:03:44.1 Kirsten Lecky: And you said get them involved up front. So how are you able to do that? So I think that’s a challenge that we keep hearing is just really tough because they’re busy and they have challenging and demanding schedules.

0:03:55.3 Amy Okin: Exactly.

0:03:56.1 Kirsten Lecky: So what is, how do you do that?

0:03:58.2 Amy Okin: So I work with the hardest. That’s one of the areas that I focus on. And so from a cleaning perspective, I work with our executive co-directors. So they have an executive co-director for research, cardiothoracic surgery, and cardiology. And so we kind of get the whole picture right there.

0:04:18.5 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:04:19.5 Amy Okin: So that’s who we start with from a planning perspective. And then we do a look at topics. So it is topics if we’re, if he has something in electrophysiology, obviously we want to talk to the electrophysiologist. And so I know a lot of adopts, let me know who the best person is to talk about it. And then we connect with them rightly or connect their writers with them directly to bring them.

0:04:44.6 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah. Okay.

0:04:46.0 Amy Okin: And it is a challenge because they are busy, but I do see at least at Cincinnati Children care doctors are very willing to participate. Time is the biggest challenge. So finding time on their schedule, but we’ve had a lot of success and a lot of great jobs who want to participate and share.

0:05:04.7 Kirsten Lecky: Well, and I think a lot of times too, it’s like, you have the success story, you will leverage that success story. So you’re able to say like, this is the best practice, this people care really well.

0:05:16.6 Kirsten Lecky: And then you use that to help you get them additional doctors and more doctors involved in the process. ‘Cause we see the value of their time. Including patients. They need to almost, their audience almost needs to be sorted as well internally. It’s really important for you all to do this. It’s mission driven and we’re educating the community and you have to make sure that people understand what you’re doing. And so being able to have examples to share with others, putting that as well. Is there any, have you had any surprises in your 25 years doing this work? Like maybe a certain type of channel, a distribution channel or a method or anything that sticks out?

0:05:51.7 Amy Okin: Well, we’re always trying to find new people. So targeting some specialists will be a challenge because it’s a very specific audience. So we’re always challenging our media agency, finding ways to reach them. I think we just ran a promotion and we tried a new channel and it performed exceptionally well. So that’s very exciting to see, when we see one channel that is performing better than another, then that’s really encouraging and we kind of like to dig in and continue to try that. And then also, even when we have success, we still want to push ourselves to find other ways to do it.

0:06:34.9 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah. So is there any tips or advising we give to other people that are in similar roles to help them do their jobs more effectively, efficiently?

0:06:44.6 Amy Okin: Yeah. I think in general, like when we think about positions and communicating a position, it’s not always nice to tell you guys, no, it’s just coming out of med school, you have that’s within practicing through that age. So there’s a wide range of doctors, they use their content and look at their content in a variety of different ways. So I think the big thing is don’t just focus on one area, look at multiple ways to reach them. Social, digital, email, make sure that you’re diversifying your channels. And then I think the other key thing is when you write your content, I think it’s really important to focus on those headlines. You really need a really powerful, hard hitting headline because sometimes that’s the only thing they’ll see.

0:07:36.9 Kirsten Lecky: Right, absolutely.

0:07:36.9 Amy Okin: And you want them, even if they just see your headline, you want them to put something away. So that’s important, but even more so you want them to click on the headline and read the article. So you want to make sure that it’s relevant to what they’re interested in. And then once they click on the article, the headline, you want to make sure your content is relevant and also positions are busy.

0:08:04.0 Kirsten Lecky: Great.

0:08:04.1 Amy Okin: You want very punchy articles, something very scalable. So bullets, graphics, we’re always looking for ways, that’s one of our focus as well, how can we make our articles, our content more scalable so they can review it quickly, take away a few things quickly.

0:08:25.3 Kirsten Lecky: All the things that we’re very passionate about in our organization, I think it is, it’s all about strong headlines, useful bullet points, short paragraphs, because even though these are physicians, they’re still really spanning the content. I mean, it has to be digestible, it has to be actionable, it has to be something that’s easy for them to consume, and it doesn’t have to be the big long words that can become the long ones. I think all of us are scanning our content. We’re not really reading it word for word. So I get that and appreciate that. Anything else that you’d like to share with our audience?

0:09:02.1 Amy Okin: I think overall, when you think about position communication, I work a lot with building awareness, building reputation, but if you’re looking at building referrals, I think one thing you just need to make sure that your best approach there is really one-to-one communication with the physician, and that’s something that can’t be forgotten, because developing those relationships, whether with a liaison or even better positions with the physician, that’s really where you’re going to have the most success in driving these referrals and connecting with some doctors, hopefully on a longer survey.

0:09:47.1 Kirsten Lecky: Can you share an example of how you’ve been able to do that really well?

0:09:51.2 Amy Okin: So I don’t work as…

0:09:53.4 Kirsten Lecky: Someone at your team?

0:09:54.7 Amy Okin: We have a team that specializes in that, because it’s a liaison, and also just as we open new clinics and whatnot we have liaison to take the doctors out.

0:10:08.6 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah, yeah.

0:10:08.9 Amy Okin: With their positions.

0:10:10.3 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:10:11.2 Amy Okin: And that really…

0:10:13.4 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:10:14.1 Amy Okin: Because we have, again, having that one-on-one connection, and that’s doesn’t always has to be face to face.

0:10:18.6 Kirsten Lecky: Great.

0:10:19.7 Amy Okin: It could be a follow-up phone call, when a doctor can refer you, and also, I think our doctors are really good about working with a better person, giving patients that, who have their specialized care, and maintaining that ongoing relationship. To ensure the patient has the best care the best…

0:10:41.9 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah.

0:10:42.9 Amy Okin: Location.

0:10:44.2 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah, no, I think those are all really good, and I think to summarize, I love that it’s really developing the relationship up front, but that piece about closing the labor, making sure they understand what the value, how it’s contributed to the overall mission of the organization, making it different for the community, why it’s important, I think all of that matters. Obviously, that’s why we’re all doing it, so being able to close the way for that. So thank you so much. Hopefully, the background noise wasn’t so bad here in our restaurant for breakfast, but I appreciate your time.

0:11:11.3 Amy Okin: Thanks so much.