Expanding Beyond Your Local Network

Physician Relations and Strategic Outreach

In today’s interconnected healthcare landscape, extending your reach beyond local boundaries is essential for sustained growth and improved patient outcomes. Facilitated by Endeavor’s Cindy Rose, Barbara Buesse from Siteman Cancer Center, and Ashley Snowden from Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center the Physician Relations and Strategic Outreach Summit emphasized that as local markets become more competitive and saturated, health systems must look outward to sustain momentum. Growth now demands thoughtful expansion strategies, strategic data use, and relationship-centered engagement.

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Expanding Beyond Local Markets:
Lessons from the Field

Strategic Expansion is No Longer Optional
With strong competition among leading systems, expanding geographic reach has become vital. Institutions are moving into secondary and tertiary markets to maintain growth and better serve patients requiring specialized care.

Data-Driven Decisions
Both presenters shared how data informs their strategies:

Building Partnerships
Success beyond the local market depends heavily on relationships:

• Formal affiliation agreements (like branded cancer networks) help align patient referrals and expand research collaborations.
• Partnerships are built around education, community engagement, and providing local physicians access to advanced services without requiring them to join a new system.

Real Relationships Drive Real Growth
In-person interactions—quarterly dinners, grand rounds, and collaborative programs—were consistently credited as the drivers behind improved referral patterns and enhanced community trust.

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Case Studies: Practical Success Stories

One major cancer center highlighted the creation of a formal Cancer Network, born from direct conversations with a respected community partner. This initiative, supported through regular physician engagement and community collaboration, successfully shifted referral patterns and increased access to advanced therapies like bone marrow transplants and CAR-T treatments.

Another institution described a different but equally successful tactic: embedding a physician liaison directly in an underserved region. By hiring a liaison who lived in Central New York, they were able to:

• Double patient referrals from key practices in just 18 months.
• Attribute over $1.2 million in new patient claims to her outreach.
• Strengthen ties not just to their main campus, but also to affiliated community organizations.

This “on-the-ground” model proved critical in building the trust and frequency of contact needed to sustain relationships over time.

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Key Strategies for Success

Targeted Messaging Works Best
Participants emphasized that outreach efforts must focus on highly specific messages, such as:

• Promoting a new clinical trial with clear eligibility criteria.
• Highlighting a novel surgical technique not available elsewhere.
• Offering concrete educational opportunities tied to patient care improvements.

Broad branding about an organization’s excellence tends to be less effective than messaging that addresses a specific patient need or clinical challenge.

Customized Educational Outreach
Quarterly educational events—tailored to the needs of local physicians—are a proven strategy. These vary in format from dinners and in-person lectures to virtual grand rounds, depending on the preferences of the local community.

Effective Use of Data Systems
Although many organizations face ongoing challenges integrating CRM tools, patient data, and referral tracking, progress is being made. Teams are finding ways to combine:

• Referral attribution through CRM notes.
• Patient claims data analysis.
• Feedback from liaisons directly in the field.

Those able to demonstrate tangible ROI on physician outreach activities are gaining stronger support internally for further investment.

Event Promotion Requires Hands-On Effort
Marketing educational events, particularly when partnering with external platforms, requires vigilance:

• Organizations that supplemented external promotions with their own email blasts, personal outreach, and co-branded materials saw stronger attendance.
• Late delivery of promotional materials by outside vendors can undermine success if not carefully managed.

Continuing Challenges

While progress is clear, the summit also surfaced persistent hurdles:

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How Endeavor Can Help Moving Forward

Endeavor Management remains committed to supporting organizations at every step of their physician relations journey through:

• Strategic market expansion planning.
• Training and best practices workshops for liaison teams.
• CRM integration consulting and referral tracking optimization.
• Development of hyper-targeted marketing materials and messaging toolkits.

Endeavor is helping healthcare organizations drive deeper engagement, measure success more effectively, and expand their reach to serve even broader patient populations.

By continuing to host these collaborative summits, Endeavor fosters a community of shared learning and innovation—empowering physician relations teams to elevate their strategies and outcomes in a rapidly changing healthcare landscape.