Becker's Spine Review

36 PRACTICE MANAGEMENT How Texas Back Institute is revamping referral relationships, marketing strategies during the pandemic By Alan Condon T exas Back Institute in Plano has adapted to the economic sit- uation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to revamp its sales and marketing strategies and strengthen referral relationships. Aer effectively sticking a zero-spend on its marketing efforts in March, the practice had to seek new ways to engage with patients and build business in a changing market. "e world around us is constantly changing and we have the privi- lege of changing with it to strengthen referral relationships and reach new audiences," said Cheryl Zapata, chief development officer at Tex- as Back Institute. "Plans that were successfully implemented just months ago have had to be completely revamped and, in some cases, discontinued," said Ms. Zapata. "We've created new sales and marketing plans to be com- petitive in today's complex world." e sales team, which typically visits referring providers in person, presented physicians with a list of their top 30 providers, encouraging them to call them directly or set up Zoom meetings. Since then, the physicians have taken a more leading role in connect- ing with referring providers, leveraging social networking platforms to develop relationships and doubling down on more traditional ways of communicating such as email and text. Physicians have also been participating in the practice's marketing ef- forts, brainstorming ideas for social media platforms and drumming up ways to reach audiences that have been spending more time at home during the healthcare crisis. Such plans have included internet memes, photos and a more light- hearted approach to in-house video content, including a #stayathome series showing how physicians were spending their time during lock- down. Aer terminating its search engine marketing campaign in March, the practice looked to bolster its search engine optimization strategy to attract more visitors online. "We strengthened our authentic digital marketing by creating ad- ditional content for our web pages and blogs containing target key- words," Ms. Zapata said. "Knowing we were moving to an environ- ment which would largely be telemedicine, much of the new content surrounded keywords which would support that." e marketing team changed keywords to reflect what is happening in the marketplace and wrote back-end SEO for those keywords. "'Telemedicine' and variations of that are huge," Ms. Zapata said. "at's not something we traditionally focused on in the past, so now we're in a position where we have to be very aggressive about how we market it." "We pulled a bunch of URLs that were specific to telemedicine in spine and started pointing those to our primary website, so people looking those keywords up ['telemedicine spine', 'telespine doc', etc.] would be navigated directly to our website." e revamped marketing strategy has been a hit, but the reaction to the practice's new lighthearted approach to video content has been even more impressive. Aer some debate, the team created a video that expressed concern for patient safety during the pandemic, but with a more jovial ap- proach than previous videos. It received a particularly impressive reaction online. Between January and July, Texas Back Institute's video content racked up almost 200,000 views on social media platforms. e heightened viewership figures are down to people spending more time on social media platforms while staying at home, Ms. Zapata said. "Don't be afraid to follow the trends," she said. "In medicine, we need to be professional. But when you're dealing with social networking, there needs to be a balance between medicine and what's going on in social networking. "Just like any field, you have to understand the trends, and how to appro- priately play in those trends, so that your marketing also makes sense." e new-look video content has added another dimension to the practice's marketing game plan, with patients seeming to enjoy a more jovial side of their physicians at a time when the news is domi- nated by COVID-19. "We've never seen anything like this before," Ms. Zapata said. "e way people are responding to video content right now is extraordi- nary. If practices were to focus on one thing to really drive patient volume, I would say focus on your video." n Steamboat Orthopaedic and Spine Institute opens ASC, clinic By Alan Condon T he new building housing the Steamboat Ortho- paedic and Spine Institute and the Steamboat Surgery Center in Steamboat Springs, Colo., has opened, Steamboat Pilot & Today reported Aug. 10. Spanning 27,000 square feet, the center offers MRI and X-ray imaging, physical therapy, injections and occupa- tional therapy. Steamboat Orthopaedic and Spine Institute expects 90 percent of its surgeries to be performed at the surgery center, which has two operating rooms and offers the full spectrum of spine and orthopedic surgery. The ASC is a joint venture with Steamboat Springs- based UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center. n

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