A View From the Trenches

Can You Top This?

Pathology is a competitive specialty. We vie for the opportunity to provide laboratory services for hospitals, medical clinics and groups, and individual physicians. In the ideal world, we would like to think that our customers choose us because of superior service and/or diagnostic expertise. The reality, of course, is far more complicated. There are contracts based upon friendships, alliances, and sometimes, the physician's office has no choice, dictated by the patient's insurance company or HMO.

Recently, we were unsuccessful in keeping a new client, a large specialty medical group. For many years, the group had utilized the services of a competing pathology group. A cold call to the group from one of our sales reps revealed some dissatisfaction with their current pathology services and provided an opening for our group to offer them a choice.

We were well aware of this other pathology group's reputation for good service as well as a proclivity to bring gifts to their physician clients and office staff, to secure their relationships. Some of their standard operating procedures included the following:

Each doctors' and nurses' birthday is celebrated with their favorite cake and delivered a personalized gift

Each office is well-stocked with all of the staff's favorite soft drinks and bottled waters, delivered by daily courier

Weekly to monthly lunches and/or dinners are given for the office staff

We were determined to win and secure the contract based upon our excellent reputation for service and diagnostic excellence. At first, the physicians in the group agreed with our presentation and began using our services.

When the jilted pathology group discovered this medical group had switched pathology providers, they leapt to action, quickly sending their president and several sales representatives. Within days, the pathology group did the following:

Donated a large sum of money to each doctors' favorite charity

Sent a large $300 flower arrangement to the president of the medical group and the office staff

Showered the office staff with gifts such as free movie tickets and coupons to local events

As a final slap in our face, the office manager then showed the representatives of the competing pathology group examples of our reports, pointing out to them what they liked, and bluntly told them, "If you change your reports to look like theirs, we will come back to you." Within a week, the pathology group reworked their reports to satisfy their client's new demands. Satisfied, the medical group switched back.

What does one say to these kind of actions? Do we stoop to their level and wink at the abuses? Do we point out the blatant hypocrisy to the office staff? Do we rise above it all and go on to another group, unwilling to compromise our professional ethics?

What do you think? Please email your comments. I will post them anonymously. If you would like to share your trench stories, please email them to our site. Patient and physician confidentiality will be maintained.

Paul K. Shitabata, M.D.

Comments

Does this suprise me? No. The pharmaceutical industry has resorted to this tactic for years. I saw a study that showed it works for similar drugs like h2 blockers, antibiotics etc. However, it does not work for unique drugs that have no other substitute ie Gleevac, Viagra (before cialis/levithra etc) and drugs that have unique dosing ie Z-pack azithromycin. Drug companies have also been able to direct market to their end consumers; the patients. This strategy has worked well. Well what does this mean for us? The doctor's doctor website is a great step in that direction. Perhaps marketing the website to patients & clinicians for informational purposes would be a quick but ethical way to brand us better. Direct marketing ---web based, radio, local newspaper ads etc, with examples of our unique patient reports ie prostate bx reports and development of other patient centric reports for breast, cervix, & GI. Plus mailing out information regarding the website and our patient reports to alll the clinician in the roster at our hospitals and desirable busy practices followed by cold calling. We already have the technology in place and in a way these suggestions are "inside our box" but very much outside "the gift box". I prefer to fight fire not with fire but with water!

You win some, you lose some.  What is most important is that you try as 
hard and as much as you can and you uphold your moral standards.  It's 
important to be able to live with yourself but also know you did 
everything you could.  Personally, I feel that the competing pathology group 
"sold out" and has questionable ethics.  How much of their profits are 
they spending to keep the business of this specialty group anyway?  
There's other business out there

Wine and Dine really works. How do you think I got married? I 
guess we don't have any choice but to take the high road in this case. There 
will always be somebody who is willing to work for less or to compromise 
more (of their integrity). I can understand it if we were outbidded, but there's 
no way we can compete against that kind of "kickbacks", nor would we ever 
want to. 

Last Updated March 22, 2005