Status Quo and Future Developments of Referring Physician Management - Results from a Survey

The implementation of the DRG-System induced considerable change for hospitals. Especially a continuous reduction of the length of stay increased competition among hospitals for patients. Within this context referring practitioners play a particular role as customers. The hospitals realized the relevance of an increased orientation on referring physicians. However a referring physician management solidly grounded in business economics is rarely applied. This study focuses on both, the status quo and the future developments of referring physician management. For empirical evidence all German acute hospitals have been surveyed about their referring physician management in autumn 2011. It turned out, that just one third of the hospitals operates an (very) intensive referring physician management up to now and only a few hospitals use a consistent concept. The hospitals request for more strategic and analytic orientation, an intensification of marketing measures, cooperation agreements and the implementation of an IT-based portal for referring physicians. The survey shows a large potential for improvement in referring physicians management in German hospitals. The hospitals should take this challenge in applying a specific change management.