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Physician shortages have been an issue for years, and the problem is projected to only get worse. It’s also been noted that more physicians are leaving their private practices behind. These factors and others are contributing to a new emerging trend - competitive hiring.
A recent survey of 1,001 physicians at hospitals and health systems examined hiring at those organizations. Among the survey’s findings:
This movement creates a strategic opportunity for MedTech companies to expand their physician and/or site of care roster and get their technology to more patients. But the window to leverage this movement into a sale can close quicker than you might expect. Value analysis committees usually meet monthly or quarterly to review purchasing decisions. At the same time, site of care administrators will be working with their new physicians on credentialing timelines and finalizing preference cards. The time to influence a change could be as little as six months.
MedTech reps still relying on traditional methods for finding opportunities might not even visit the site of care that hired new physicians for six months. By then it’s likely too late.
With AcuityMD’s precise insights, procedure trends, and site of care data, reps can not only easily trace physician movements, they can quickly create strategies for how to prioritize physician targets.
Reps can filter site of care procedure data, down to particular codes, and uncover the facilities that have a provider with new activity based on the last quarter’s data. Now instead of visiting a facility and maybe getting lucky enough to ask the right person the right question to find out a new physician has joined, they can use the AcuityMD app in the field to learn about physician movement.
When a physician joins a new facility, reps can use AcuityMD to create a three-pronged playbook with different strategic options for targeting and converting the new opportunity.
A new physician at an on-contract site of care would obviously become a priority target. But many organizations manage their contract rosters manually, making it difficult for reps to know which facilities are on or off contract. Reps can spend days or weeks assessing which facilities are on contract if they even know where to look. But AcuityMD Contracts provides this information instantaneously.
From the same targeting list a rep used to filter sites of care with new provider activity, they can also use the On-Contract toggle to show which of those sites are already customers.
From there, preparing to meet with a new priority target is just as easy. Instead of manually researching the new physician to pull together relevant details, a rep using Acuity MD’s AI Call Plan gets a customized pitch in just minutes. Now they’re approaching their meeting with more than a contract in hand. They have personalized insights that allow a conversation to jump past chit-chat straight to why your technology meets this physician’s distinct needs.
This is still a great opportunity, but requires a different approach. First, a MedTech rep can use AcuityMD Peer Networks to learn what physicians their customer is connected to. If any of those peers are also at the new site of care, the existing customer can be used as an influencer to expand product usage among their new colleagues. This provides MedTech companies with a great opportunity to build stronger physician relationships.
They can also use their customer as a champion with the new site of care’s value analysis committee. As the survey noted, 32% of organizations have increased compensation to attract more physicians, and 20% have increased benefits. Hospital leadership that just brought in high-priced talent will have an incentive to supply that physician’s preferred technology, which reps can then leverage into a new contract opportunity.
AcuityMD still makes it possible to develop a targeted pitch when both physician and site of care are new opportunities. With AcuityMD Referral Pathways, a rep can see all of a physician’s downstream referrals to understand where they are sending patients. Then, they can see all of a site of care’s upstream referrals to see how they are receiving patients and, critically, how many patients in the area the site of care is missing out on. By combining this data with Care Journeys details on how their technology improves outcomes, a rep can build a strong ROI case for site of care leadership that clearly demonstrates how they can drive better clinical and financial outcomes with a targeted educational campaign to increase in-network referrals.
Competitive hiring is rewriting local markets in real time. When a high-value physician lands at a new hospital or health system, you may only have one to two VAC cycles to influence their go-to products. AcuityMD lets you spot the move early, map champions, and walk in with a strong ROI case built from precise market insights. The reps who move first set the preference card. The rest will need to find a new catalyst for change.
