By Dr. Ricardo Cook, Chair, CAO Marketing Committee

I have had the wonderful honor of serving as chair of the CAO Marketing Committee for the last several years. In this role, I have seen the committee achieve great things, from positive placements in local media outlets to launching CAO Central and overseeing the creative design and execution of our branding across all our physical and digital properties.

I’ll borrow from Dr. Grosso’s 2016 Annual Meeting speech to say that, through marketing and other efforts, we have built an incredibly strong foundation for such a young company, and our growth has proven that our business model will prevail throughout this transformative time in healthcare. In fact, when you look at physician headcount, we have grown 75 percent since the public launch in 2014. And our revenue has increased nearly 60 percent in that time. I know that we have an incredibly bright future as a leader in private practice orthopaedic care, and we should all be proud of what we have created together. But there is still so much to do, and many of these efforts will hinge on marketing.

Let’s take a look at some of the key goals the marketing committee has agreed upon as we develop our plan for 2018:

• Local brand awareness: Our foremost goal is to increase brand awareness in the community, so that when a patient walks into any CAO facility, they know who we are. When patients think of orthopaedics, we want them to think of us.
• Patient retention and communication: We want all of our existing patients to understand who we are as we adopt the CAO brand. We need to communicate to our patients that, while our name and logo may have changed, we are still the same compassionate physicians and staff they love, now backed by the resources of the largest orthopaedic group in the country.
• Patient acquisition: Our marketing efforts should educate prospective patients about CAO, and should ultimately bring new patients through our doors. Our brand can – and will – be synonymous with the highest standard of orthopaedic care.
• Physician recruitment: The Centers for Advanced Orthopaedics offers private practitioners an incredibly compelling value proposition. We are showing that private practice medicine cannot only survive, but thrive, in this new healthcare landscape.

How do we achieve these goals? First and foremost, we must have a consistent image throughout each of our practices, which is why we set the September 30 deadline for brand conversion. Nearly all CAO care centers have reskinned websites. Many have adopted beautiful CAO signage outside of their offices. We are wearing CAO branded lab coats. We are marketing ourselves as CAO when we speak with referral sources, using cleanly designed, informative collateral. We must embrace the CAO message regardless of who we are speaking to so people – whether referral sources, current patients, prospective patients, or the community in general – know who we are and what our organization is all about.

We’ll be kicking off 2018 with strong, strategic marketing efforts to help us achieve these goals, and there are a few upcoming projects I’m particularly excited to share with you.

For a while now, we’ve been talking about the idea of a CAO call center to simplify the appointment booking process. Through a unified EMR or a similar technology, patients can call one number or visit a single website to book appointments, whether they need to schedule a visit with a physician or physical therapist, regardless of the location. Not only will this be a huge convenience for patients, but it would allow us to better serve them. We can direct them to the CAO care center closest to their home, and can help them to identify a specialist who can best treat their injury or condition if their local care center doesn’t offer exactly what they are looking for. We know patients value convenience, and investing in this type of service will help to keep patients within the CAO family, while also allowing care centers to capture previously unrealized revenue through booking last minute appointments.

Physical therapy consolidation is a huge step for our organization, and one that we have discussed at length. Through our PT-wide EMR system, we’ll be able to simplify scheduling efforts, share data and increase profitability. But in order to truly capitalize on PT consolidation, we need to apply what we’re doing across care centers to PT locations and begin marketing ourselves as one unified group.

Lastly, we are finalizing a regional marketing strategy, which will help our groups to streamline marketing efforts in the communities we serve through local event sponsorships, hyperlocal advertising, branding work and more. Over the last several years, we’ve learned that unity and working together yield the most successful results, and marketing our group should be no different.

In summary, 2018 represents a pivotal moment in CAO’s young and vibrant history. We have grown significantly since our launch, boasting nearly 200 of the most talented orthopaedic physicians in the region and a dedicated staff spanning nearly 1,700 healthcare professionals. There is no limit to what we can achieve when we come together, and embracing the CAO brand fully is a critical next step in becoming the foremost orthopaedic private practice group in the nation. As a unified and powerful company, now is the time to seize on our collective momentum to take the organization to new heights.

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