Gathering and Sharing
Competitive Intelligence
By Christine M. Rhodes, MS
Best practice physician relations programs are impacting the success of their organizations by gathering useful competitive intelligence (CI) as a function of their physician relations activities. Competitive intelligence contributes to a healthcare organization’s success by helping decision makers identify opportunities to improve the organization’s position among competitors, customers and suppliers.
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Gathering Competitive Intelligence Competitive Intelligence is generally gathered during physician relations activities in two ways. |
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Directly - An example of direct CI gathering would be a physician relations representative asking every physician or practice visited that week about a specific subject of interest to leadership.
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Indirectly - CI is gathered indirectly through anecdotes, examples and stories uncovered in the course of a physician relations visit. A physician relations representative with good listening and follow up questioning skills will be able to tease out competitive intelligence during a general physician relations conversation and discern between hearsay and reality.
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Competitive intelligence can also be gathered by the physician relations team through other channels.
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Staff can monitor local and national healthcare publications for CI information regarding their community, state or region. This includes both advertising and stories in our trade publications.
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Staff can collaborate with the public relations department, who can share mainstream media coverage (newspapers, radio, television) of the organization.
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Competitive intelligence can also be found in physician satisfaction focus groups and survey research.
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In addition to traditional print media, competitive intelligence can be found in online sources - CI can be gathered through regular reviews of competitor organization websites.
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Blogs and social networking sites are a new source of CI. They are however, less reliable so information found there should be validated for accuracy.
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Competitive intelligence presents itself on a variety of subjects. Physician relations programs can gather CI on the following subjects of primary interest to leadership:
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Competitor Hospitals
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New facilities
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New service lines
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New technology
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Leadership changes
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Recruitment and relationship sales activities
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Marketing or sales plans
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Referring practices
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Recruitment, retirement
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Ownership, management
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Business viability
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Loyalty
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General market perceptions
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Efficiency and convenience
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Customer Service
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Media coverage
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Quality and safety perceptions/misperceptions
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Cost/value perceptions
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Sharing Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence information needs to have a home in the data collection process of the physician relations program. Adding intelligence as a category in the physician relations database will make it easy for field representatives to record this information as part of their regular data entry. Reports on business intelligence can then be pulled from the database and shared selectively with leadership.
A common mistake and often costly mistake is the widespread sharing of competitive intelligence throughout an organization. This information is then responded to in a reactive, rather than proactive manner. Competitive intelligence may contain information about a specific person or situation that could be perceived negatively if shared widely. To have a positive impact, information that is identifiable by the situation or at an individual level should be shared only with those leaders with a definitive need to know. Those leaders can then determine who else to share the information with. More routine and global intelligence information can be included in the physician relations program’s regular reports with a wider reach.
The gathering and reporting of competitive intelligence can be an impactful and important contribution of the physician relations program. Efficient collection, proactive organization and thoughtful reporting of this information are the keys to success.
