Business Development for MAT providers has an interesting history in that, at first, it didn’t resemble traditional business development outreach at all.
Most MAT providers of any notable size started at a time when demand for their services was high and supply low. For this reason, few, if any, engaged in any kind of active marketing, including business development outreach. Word of mouth was enough to steadily fill any new clinic, usually in under a year.
When larger providers did start adding outreach roles, these were not focused on patient acquisition – acquiring new patients was not a problem that needed to be solved. Instead, they were seen as patient and community support roles. They’d help connect providers, guide patients in a case management fashion, and generally try to educate the community about MAT.
The Need to Re-focus Business Development for MAT Providers
Market dynamics are very different today. MAT providers exploded across the country, creating more supply than demand in many areas. Medicaid expansion was retracted, and patients have been moving away from opioids and onto new drugs of choice such as meth. The result is that we have more providers than ever for a shrinking patient base who need services.
In this environment, marketing has become a must. You can read our broader work on strategic marketing for MAT providers here. This article will instead focus solely on the boots-on-the-ground outreach components of good MAT marketing.
Roles need to shift from community relations and support to patient acquisition. This is the first difficult transition for many providers. The outreach reps currently in place tend to view themselves through the lens of an altruistic advocate for patient needs, rather than a critical part of business development.
However, when they are suddenly given goals in terms of patient referrals, concerns of working for a for-profit corporation focused on “heads in beds” begin to arise. We have seen entire teams refuse to focus on patient acquisition since, for them, that was too close to the business side of the organization. In those situations, the right move is to replace rather than attempt to retrain the team.
Primary Outreach Buckets for MAT
MAT outreach is different from that of traditional treatment programs. This is due to payer mix, patient needs, and resources at the clinic's disposal. Traditional treatment programs look mostly for commercially insured patients, so community partners cater to that patient base. These programs often have a vehicle at their disposal for pick up and drop off, an expense that is a little harder to swallow for MAT providers on lower margins.
There are numerous avenues for outreach:
Probation / Parole, drug court judges, and jails. These are often one of the number one referral sources for an MAT provider. Many are court-ordered to seek treatment and medication as a condition of their probation or parole.
Public safety officials – EMTs, law enforcement, and firefighters. These professions often come across individuals as a result of problems related to opioid use. MAT clinics may be able to partner with public safety officials on projects or advocacy campaigns against drug use.
Hospitals, and particularly ERs. The key points of contact are the social workers and discharge planners. Those roles are the ones that provide guidance to patients for follow-up care outside the hospital, not the nurses, doctors, or hospital execs.
Local non-profits. This includes syringe exchanges, harm reduction agencies, homeless shelters, food banks, domestic violence shelters, and vocational programs for the recently incarcerated or low-income communities. These types of programs have a lot of clients that would benefit from MAT services. We’ve specifically seen a lot of success with syringe exchanges and homeless shelters or food banks.
Government entities such as HHS, CPS, or Substance Use Task Forces. These agencies and task forces are often a great way to get in touch with important people within the judicial system, jails, and law enforcement. Many representatives from various public entities are often in attendance at Substance Use Task Forces, for example.
Local physicians, psychologists, and therapist offices. These professions often need quite a bit of education on the benefits of MAT. They also tend to see a smaller volume of patients. A private therapist, for example, may only have a caseload of 20 patients. They might keep those same patients for 90 days or more, so the amount of potential referrals from them can be limited. For this reason, it’s important to build as many relationships as possible with these professions.
Other treatment providers that don’t offer MAT. Other addiction treatment providers can be an excellent source of regular referrals. However, they are sometimes difficult to establish a referral relationship with.
Historically, these institutions have been skeptical of MAT, so a long-term approach to educational outreach and relationship building is often in order. But once you have them on your side, they provide a steady stream of referrals.
The challenge here is that most patients who could benefit from MAT services won’t voluntarily show up to a clinic. The hospital social worker or discharge nurse may make recommendations and provide materials, but patients often don’t follow through. Since the hospital staff knows the clinic doesn’t have a car for transport, they don’t even bother calling the clinic. They just provide the information and resources, then hope for the best.For this reason, it’s important hospitals know about your clinic and that materials are provided, but hospitals often end up being a weaker source of referrals than for traditional levels of care.
Don’t forget psych hospitals. They are a particularly good source of referrals as they tend to have a more concrete step-down process for patients living with OUD.
These are excellent places to build long-term relationships, and there are also occasional opportunities to present to the group on a topic related to MAT.
The primary source of referrals from these other providers are the Medicaid calls they receive, but can’t accept. However, these often go through a central call center, so it is very hard to build a relationship with their representatives. These central call centers generally provide a resource list to Medicaid callers. Your goal is to get on that list rather than hope for direct referrals.
The program’s business development reps are the next best source of referrals. They often get Medicaid calls that they will refer to your services when appropriate. These reps can be hard to work with though, as they often expect some kind of reciprocal relationship with referrals in return. Outreach reps for MAT clinics often find it difficult to provide commercial referrals themselves, so the reps from other providers may lose interest in maintaining the relationship.
Finally, nowadays more and more providers are open to patients from their programs using MAT protocols. Having patients step down from their program to your clinic is another important way to get referrals. To get these kinds of referrals, your outreach rep needs to build relationships with the case managers and therapists at the program who manage step down back into the community.
When outreach is done well, a single rep can connect as many as 10 Medicaid patients a week to care, depending on the size of the city they are in.
Tracking the Referral Process
Because MAT providers aren’t used to having measurable goals for their outreach reps, as they transition from community education to patient acquisition, necessary infrastructure and processes are often missed.
A rep's job is not to simply talk to referral sources and “hope that it increases census”. They need to actively measure their own success by tracking their referrals in a CRM.
This means that reps cannot tell community partners to call the main line, they must tell them to reach out directly and personally facilitate the intake. By being the first point of contact, the rep now knows when they get a referral, if it’s viable, and, very importantly, they talk to and continue to build the relationship with that referral source.
By fielding the intake inquiry, they start to get a sense of who refers and why, which allows them to become better at their jobs. They also know who to send thank you messages and follow-ups to. If calls go into a central call center without the rep's knowledge, then they are able to do none of that.
The rep doesn’t need to spend much time on the phone with the prospective patient. The objective is to simply get basic contact and insurance information, and then pass it over to the admissions team.
Through referral call interactions, and by tracking total referrals in the CRM, reps can start to determine which buckets or specific community partners are the most important to build relationships with. They can also use that information to determine areas where they are weak, and then work to improve.
What Should Territory Assignment Look Like?
Most patients come from a 10-mile radius for the average MAT clinic. Some will come from up to 30 miles out. Very few come from farther than that. So a rep’s job is to focus on all potential referral partners in that radius.
Because this radius is so small, it’s feasible to have 1 rep supporting 2-3 locations – as long as that rep is centrally located and doesn’t need to travel more than an hour to get to any location. If they need to travel more than an hour, they’ll be spending too much time on the road and too little time face-to-face with referral partners. Additionally, when travel time is too much, we find reps resort more to phone calls, emails, and video conferences. This is not ideal for forming strong relationships or for getting their foot in the door with new partners.
Don’t Make Them Do It on Their Own
Oftentimes in the field of behavioral health, outreach reps work largely in isolation. They don’t have close relationships with the facilities, and the marketing department doesn’t give them any support besides the odd brochure.
Reps should instead work in close collaboration with their facilities. A standard KPI we like to see is 1-2 tours a week. Nothing convinces a community partner to refer more than an onsite tour, and facilities need to be prepared to accommodate these regularly.
It’s ideal for facility staff, especially licensed clinical staff, to be willing to do meet and greets during these tours, as well as facilitate trainings. Trainings can be organized on or offsite and are a great way to showcase your program’s expertise. We also like to get our clients’ trainings accredited and approved for CEUs.
Events like these need to be marketed to drive awareness and attendance, so there needs to be targeted support from the marketing department. Event marketing should be in addition to other B2B-focused marketing such as LinkedIn Ads, email campaigns, billboards, and TV. Collectively, these go a long way toward driving awareness of your program in the community. By providing marketing support to the outreach team, their job of getting a foot in the door or staying top of mind is that much easier. Good marketing support can increase outreach admissions by 10-20% when done right.
Making good supporting collateral and material is another job of the marketing department. Of course, reps need business cards, brochures, and all that, but they also benefit greatly from higher-level content such as research studies, white papers, and presentation decks. And, if those can be tailored to specific referral sources – such as judicial, hospitals, or EAPs – then reps can be much more effective in their outreach.
Getting Out There and Creating Partnerships
All of the above will help you craft a strong business development outreach plan. Keep in mind that most MAT providers did not build out effective outreach teams in the past, and traditional rehabs don’t operate in the same way. Executives can’t look to other providers for effective models.
Instead, use this information to craft the right strategy for your team and organization. Need some help? Give us a call, and we can assist with creating onboarding trainings, organizing the team, defining strategy, and, of course, full-service marketing across digital and traditional media channels. You can reach us at engage@27aa2dbd3f.nxcli.io or by phone at 800-396-9927.