As a physician, your medical practice is your identity – and it is the only branding opportunity you have with your patients.  Like it or not, they associate your face with your practice and will make treatment decisions and recommendations accordingly.  Having accepted that, how do you develop a medical practice marketing strategy as a physician?

The first decision you must make is what niche you want to occupy within your specialty.  If you’re a dermatologist, do you want to be seen as the life-saver who identifies and treats skin cancer or as the Botox specialist for the masses?  If you’re a cardiologist, are you the preventative-maintenance authority who advocates lifestyle changes or the brilliant diagnostician who recommends all the right medical tests?  There is no right or wrong answer here, and every niche has value – but you need to decide how you want to brand yourself and ultimately, your practice.  A scattered marketing strategy will be ineffective because potential patients won’t be able to figure out what you have to offer them.

The Obama administration made a major concession last week when it announced that it was scrapping the long term care program known as ‘Community Living Assistance Services and Supports’ (Class).  Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) said that she had concluded that premiums would be so high that few healthy people would sign up. The program, which was intended for people with chronic illnesses or severe disabilities, was championed by Senator Edward Kennedy before his death.

Pill mills have been in the news quite a lot the past few years, and not in a good way. They dole out millions of narcotic prescriptions annually. Often times the line between doing what’s best for the patient and doing what’s best for the bottom line of the pill mill practice gets very shady at these businesses.

“Comprehensive pain centers are very different from "pill mills". Unfortunately the two practices get associated together in the minds of the public.” states David Greene MD, CEO of a pain management center in Phoenix, Arizona and consultant to National Medical Testing Supply (NMTS).  “With the US in the midst of a full onslaught pain medication epidemic, best practice pain centers are regularly being thought of as pill mills when in fact there are considerable differences.”

Although many patients will purposely seek out pill mills for the obvious reasons, as busy medical professionals we certainly don’t want to be referring patients to one or even thought of as one ourelves.  Here are the top 3 reasons pain management centers are different (in a good way) from your standard Pill Mill: