Keys to success in healthcare PR: maximizing exposure and building relationships with your thought leaders

By: Erin Caffrey, Executive Director, Pascale Communications, LLC

Being successful in healthcare public relations requires the ability to develop and maintain a healthy, responsive and dedicated physician or key opinion leader (KOL) base. Many healthcare PR firms work with physician KOLs to develop releases, facilitate interviews for trade editors or do other promotional activities.

While attention to these seemingly PR101 activities may generate a neutral response from the client, the KOL and the trade press, a successful PR firm actually goes beyond these PR101 tasks. Going above and beyond in this regard includes serving the KOL as a flexible and informed resource that can further enhance the KOL relationship with the company brand, build and maintain respect between the KOL and the PR account person and ultimately, provide creative story angles for editors. It’s a win, win, win!

In fact, we consider this process the art of “physician wrangling.” Success as an effective physician wrangler will net more distinctive, on-message and effective published articles for your client and their brand. It will enhance the company relationship with the physician as well as the editors who will see the PR firm, company and physician as valuable resources – not just promotion hounds.

Tips for successful physician communication include: be informed about the topic you’re discussing (but don’t be afraid to ask questions to understand clinical relevancy better), be flexible with call times (meet the KOL on their time), set clear expectations for article/interview outcomes, follow up after the interview, and once any media is published provide clips for their records and thank them for their time.

Following the suggestions above is not a fail-safe process to a perfect article. There are always contacts that will be difficult to manage in terms of setting up the interview and follow up. However, these steps will net more valuable published articles for all parties involved. The physician, client and editor will all be appreciative that the extra steps were taken. In fact, crazy as it sounds, there will be a point where physicians will actually look forward to the emails from their PR contact as they know they will be managed in an efficient and respectful manner.