'Get-Keep-Grow' Patients Using Geospatial Heat Maps: Successful Practice-Building Via Business Intelligence

Background: Building a new Plastic Surgery practice requires clear understanding of the market- its needs, size, demographic, psychometric-data, current referral patterns and capacity for new growth. New graduates are neither taught to obtain, extract, and analyze this type of data, nor do they ever learn how to identify actionable insights based on this data during training. Here, we apply one such method towards practice-building in Central Ohio. Geospatial mapping identifies clusters and is typically used in population studies to better understand patterns, strategize, implement change and measure results. 

Methods: Geospatial patient demographic data of practice-referrals was collected at two time periods: pre-marketing (12/1/2013-6/30/2014) and post-marketing (7/1/2015-3/31/2017). Potential referring centers with maximum referral-potential were identified and a personalized, targeted, marketing plan was implemented via deployment of consistent and relevant cross-service information. Patient access was improved with implementation of agile referral-logisitics. Post-study, we measured our referrals, and created a new strategic plan for future growth. 

Results: Geospatial heat-maps allowed us to achieve four goals: 1)plan effective outreach using specific customized messaging based on powerful insights of physicians' referral behaviors, 2) use timely feedback to effect practice-changes (co-localize multidisciplinary service delivery, speed up patient access by simplifying communication, etc ), 3) establish a function rich, scalable platform for new growth- to support more services that could be marketed to the same customer, 4) track our results. Ultimately, we have shown drastically increased rates of conversion from contact-to-referral-to-surgery. Additionally, new patient referrals increased significantly in Northwestern and Southeastern, Ohio, within specific, targeted markets. 

Conclusions: Heat-mapping yields powerful data on customer-behavior, which in turn can guide a coherent practice-strategy, help design a customized marketing plan, and ultimately improve market penetration.