Acadiana Hospitalist Services

I created a direct mail package, including a brochure, flyer and targeted sales letters, to introduce a new hospitalist service to the medical community in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Sales Brochure

Introducing a Revolutionary New Concept in Hospital Care

The Concept

As our name suggests, Acadiana Hospitalist Services specializes in caring for hospitalized patients. We’re 100 percent hospitalists all the time. As either the admitting/attending physician or as consultant, we apply the very latest evidence-based knowledge in our field to ensure consistently superior outcomes. Drawing on our intimate familiarity with the hospital system and the people who work within it, we expedite care from admission through discharge and streamline the hospitalization process for each and every patient we see. As solely a hospital-based practice, we are available to respond immediately to the needs of our referring colleagues and their hospitalized patients. When patients are ready for discharge, we refer them back to their regular physician, if they have one, or if they do not, to a local primary care practice accepting new patients.

The Benefits

Traditional approaches to hospital care no longer work in today’s healthcare climate. Primary care physicians can no longer spend half their time away from their offices, caring for hospitalized patients. Specialists can no longer afford to interrupt their schedules for hospital admissions, nor do they have time to meet inpatients’ often considerable non-specialty-related needs.

With their advanced, intimate knowledge of the entire hospitalization process, the doctors of Acadiana Hospitalist Services add a truly revolutionary, significantly beneficial new dimension to community hospital care.

Among the many benefits AHS hospitalists provide—

To Referring Physicians

• Physicians who refer patients to AHS typically reduce night and weekend work and keep more regular office hours.
• By referring their patients requiring hospitalization to AHS, PCPs can greatly reduce their hospital rounds, or eliminate hospital visits altogether.
• According to a study by The Advisory Board Company, PCPs who refer patients to hospitalists, on average, increase their office charges by $40,000 per year. Since AHS maintains no competing outpatient practice, referring PCPs are in no danger of losing even a single patient to AHS.
• Acadiana Hospitalist Services admits all unassigned patients to the hospital, relieving area physicians of admissions duty for “doctorless” patients.
• Specialists who turn over their admissions to AHS and assume a consultant role can free time in their schedules for more profitable procedures and consultations. AHS can manage H&Ps and discharge summaries, pre-procedure assessments/clearances, medical issues and the plethora of administrative burdens that accompany the hospitalization process, allowing specialists to focus on what they have trained for: their specialty.

To Patients and Families

• As a hospital-based practice, Acadiana Hospitalist Services’ doctors are available to see patients promptly as needed, sometimes multiple times a day. Should an emergency occur, AHS hospitalists are on hand to provide immediate treatment.
• AHS’s hospitalists are available throughout the day when family members want to discuss the patient’s condition and to provide detailed post-discharge instructions.
• Patients’ length of stay is usually shorter, and they are less likely to be readmitted, when a hospitalist is involved in their cases. The average AHS patient goes home a day and a half sooner than hospitalized patients whose doctors do not refer them to AHS.

Questions & Answers

Does the hospital own the practice? No. Acadiana Hospitalist Services is a limited liability corporation founded and owned by David M. Grace, MD.

Does the practice automatically see every patient admitted to the hospital? No. Unlike “house doctors” of long ago, AHS’s doctors see only patients referred to them, either by their own doctors or, if they have no doctor, through the emergency department.

Does the hospital pay for hospitalists’ services? No. The practice bills patients and/or their insurers directly.

Does the practice treat outpatients? No. The physicians see patients only at the hospital during their hospital stay. Acandiana has no outpatient practice.

How do I refer patients to the practice? Contact any of the physicians in the practice by calling the physicians’ line at 877 839-9178. If you are in an AHS-staffed hospital, simply write, “Consult AHS” on patient orders.

Sales Flyer

Top 10 Reasons to Refer Patients to AHS

1. You like talking to nurses, but not at 2:10, 2:50 and 3:20 in the morning.
2. Your waiting room regularly fills to overflowing with angry patients because you’re tied up at the hospital.
3. You like knowing what time your workday will end.
4. You prefer the back nine to code nine on weekends.
5. You hate wasting time during rounds waiting for “off the floor” patients to return to their rooms.
6. You’d rather not be chased through the hospital halls by family members seeking an update on your patient’s condition.
7. You wouldn’t mind earning an extra $40,000 this year by focusing on your office practice. That’s how much extra income The Advisory Board Company, based in Washington, DC, estimates doctors can generate when they work with hospitalists.
8. If you never receive an “overdue charts” notice or a “facing suspension” letter again, it will be too soon.
9. You want your patients to return to you after their hospital stay. Caring for hospitalized patients is not a sideline for us. It’s all we do. We do not compete with our referring colleagues.
10. You’d like for your patients to get well faster, undergo fewer unnecessary procedures, experience fewer hospital errors and be less likely to need readmission to the hospital—all documented benefits of hospitalists’ services.

Sales Letter for Primary Care Physicians

ACADIANA HOSPITALIST SERVICES LETTERHEAD

October 7, 2005

Dr. John Doe
Family Care Practice
123 Any Street
Lafayette, LA 70508

Dear Dr. Doe:

When was the last time you were late for your office appointments all day long because your early-morning rounds at Lafayette General took longer than you expected?

How many times has your telephone rung in the middle of the night because one of your hospitalized patients has suddenly declined and the ICU nurse wants to know what to do?

Have you ever fallen so far behind in your hospital paperwork that you received one of those “overdue charts” notices or a “facing suspension” letter from the hospital?

Have you thought about how many hours you spend every year, driving to and from the hospital, finding a parking space, riding LGMC elevators, finding your patients’ rooms and doing hospital paperwork? Have you considered how much lost income that time represents?

Introducing Acadiana Hospitalist Services

I started Acadiana Hospitalist Services, LLC, X years ago to help solve problems for my primary care colleagues and, at the same time, to improve patient care in the hospital. Currently, our practice consists of four full-time hospitalists, including one board-certified family practitioner, Joe Smith, and three board-certified internists—Joe Smith, Jane Jones and me. We have three staff members who handle our administrative work and billing.

As individual primary care physicians and as a medical practice, we are devoted exclusively to caring for patients in the hospital. All our professional development efforts, policies and procedures are focused solely on hospital care. We do not maintain an outpatient practice. We do not complete with our referring colleagues for primary care patients. We are all hospitalists, all the time.

Our normal day at the hospital begins at about 7 a.m. and continues until 5 or 6 p.m. or later, as our patients’ needs dictate. Three of us are on fulltime duty in the hospital all day long, Monday through Friday, and two of us work weekends at the hospital. After hours, one of us remains on call for the practice, consulting by telephone with the hospital staff and returning to the hospital from home any time the situation warrants.

From the outset, we have operated our hospital-based practice as a convenient, caring extension of our referring physicians’ practices. We have also relieved you and your colleagues of the previously shared duty to care for the 600 to 700 unassigned patients who enter Lafayette General each year.

These are the practice policies I believe will be of most interest to you:

• As a practice and as individual physicians, we are solely dedicated to inpatient care. We provide hospitalist services, not as a sideline, but as our chosen specialty. We focus exclusively on best practices and new developments in hospital care. It’s all we do.
• If a hospitalized patient has a primary care physician, we become involved only if the PCP refers the patient to us.
• We do a thorough evaluation of each and every patient we see, requesting and reviewing records from the referring physician whenever we need to.
• Referring colleagues receive a dictated fax—usually within hours of our initial contact with their patient—detailing why the patient came to the hospital, our complete diagnosis and our treatment plans.
• We adapt our services to the individual preferences of the referring physician. Some want to be consulted before we make any major changes in their patients’ orders. Others prefer for us to handle all the decision-making and simply report on what we’ve done. A few take a case-by-case approach, asking us to use our discretion with some patients and to consult with them on others. You decide how you want us to work with you.
• At discharge, we fax a summary report within 24 to 72 hours, including a brief narrative, complete diagnosis, test results, medications and dosages, other doctors involved in the case and our suggestions for continuing care.
• When we discharge your patients from the hospital, we send them right back to you. We do not have a competing outpatient practice, so you never risk losing a patient to us.
• We standardize the care we provide based on best practices in the hospital setting, resulting in the best possible outcomes for your patients.

Let us help you and your patients.

No matter how talented and dedicated a doctor you are, you simply cannot function at your best in today’s healthcare climate so long as you divide your time between your office practice and the hospital. No doctor can. We have dedicated ourselves and our practice, not only to helping you provide even better patient care, but to become a better doctor by enabling you to focus exclusively on your office practice.

I hope you will read the enclosed brochure, along with my “Top Ten” list of reasons for you to specify, “Consult AHS.” Since you may well have additional questions and concerns, I would welcome an opportunity to meet with you and discuss specifically how AHS can benefit you and your patients. Please call me to schedule a convenient time. To contact me directly, call 254-XXXX.

Sincerely,

[ACTUAL SIGNATURE IN BLUE INK]

David M. Grace, MD

P.S. Are you accepting new patients? If so, we will be happy to refer unassigned patients to your practice after their discharge from the hospital.

Sales Letter for Specialists

ACADIANA HOSPITALIST SERVICES LETTERHEAD

October 7, 2005

Dr. John Doe
Specialty Practice
123 Any Street
Lafayette, LA 70508

Dear Dr. Doe:

If you’re like most specialists I know, you like doing what you do.

The surgeons I know like doing surgical procedures. The OB-GYNs like delivering babies. The orthopedists like repairing joints and bones. They think of the “scut work”—admitting patients to the hospital, assessing patients and prepping them for procedures, providing medical care outside their specialty for unassigned patients, completing hospital paperwork—as unpleasant but necessary aspects of their jobs.

Introducing Acadiana Hospitalist Services

I started Acadiana Hospitalist Services, LLC, X years ago to help solve problems for my specialist colleagues and, at the same time, to improve patient care in the hospital. Currently, our practice consists of four full-time hospitalists, including one board-certified family practitioner, Joe Smith, and three board-certified internists—Joe Smith, Jane Jones and me. We have three staff members who handle our administrative work and billing.

As individual primary care physicians and as a medical practice, we are devoted exclusively to caring for patients in the hospital. All our professional development efforts, policies and procedures are focused solely on hospital care. We do not maintain an outpatient practice. We are all hospitalists, all the time.

Our normal day at the hospital begins at about 7 a.m. and continues until 5 or 6 p.m. or later, as our patients’ needs dictate. Three of us are on fulltime duty in the hospital all day long, Monday through Friday, and two of us work weekends at the hospital. After hours, one of us remains on call for the practice, consulting by telephone with the hospital staff and returning to the hospital from home any time the situation warrants.

From the outset, we have operated our hospital-based practice as a convenient, caring extension of our referring physicians’ practices. We have also relieved you and your colleagues of the previously shared duty to care for the 600 to 700 unassigned patients who enter Lafayette General each year.

These are the practice policies I believe will be of most interest to you:

• Individually, and as a practice, AHS doctors are on duty at the hospital most of the time, and we are always prepared to return to the hospital immediately after-hours. In an emergency, we can often clear and prep your patient for a procedure in the time it takes for you to arrive at the hospital.
• We are happy to serve as admitting/attending physician, handling all the attendant responsibilities and extra paperwork while enabling you simply to consult as specialist.
• If a hospitalized patient has a primary care physician, we become involved only if the PCP refers the patient to us.
• We do a thorough evaluation of each and every patient we see, requesting and reviewing records from the referring physician whenever we need to.
• Referring colleagues receive a dictated fax—usually within hours of our initial contact with their patient—detailing why the patient came to the hospital, our complete diagnosis and our treatment plans.
• We adapt our services to the individual preferences of the referring physician. Some want to be consulted before we make any major changes in their patients’ orders. Others prefer for us to handle all the decision-making and simply report on what we’ve done. A few take a case-by-case approach, asking us to use our discretion with some patients and to consult with them on others. You decide how you want us to work with you.
• At discharge, we fax a summary report within 24 to 72 hours, including a brief narrative, complete diagnosis, test results, medications and dosages, other doctors involved in the case and our suggestions for continuing care.
• We standardize the care we provide based on best practices in the hospital setting, resulting in the best possible outcomes for your patients.

Let us help you and your patients.

No matter how talented and dedicated a doctor you are, you simply cannot function at your best in today’s healthcare climate so long as you divide your time between your specialty and all those non-specialty-related aspects of your practice. We have dedicated ourselves and our practice, not only to helping you provide even better patient care, but to become a better doctor by enabling you to focus exclusively on your specialty.

I hope you will read the enclosed brochure, along with my “Top Ten” list of reasons for you to specify, “Consult AHS.” Since you may well have additional questions and concerns, I would welcome an opportunity to meet with you and discuss specifically how AHS can benefit you and your patients. Please call me to schedule a convenient time. To contact me directly, call 254-XXXX.

Sincerely,

[ACTUAL SIGNATURE IN BLUE INK]

David M. Grace, MD

P.S. Want to sample our services? Why not refer just one patient to us? The next time you encounter a patient who doesn’t already have a primary care physician, let us handle the admission, assessments and testing, pre- and post-op primary care—everything the patient needs outside your specialty. We’re confident you and your patient will be delighted with the results.