Mayo Medical Laboratories’ outreach support services were developed to fully utilize the laboratory resources within your community. The combination of laboratory testing, clinical expertise, consultative ability, and outreach support distinguishes MML from other reference laboratories. Mayo’s outreach support provides your hospital laboratory with tailored services that have a high return on investment.

Outreach Support Services

MML provides comprehensive outreach support services that are phased in three groups to match your specific needs and stage of outreach services development. For those wanting to start an outreach program or further refine an existing plan, MML offers a broad series of conferences, operational assessments, and customer development training programs that can help you build a comprehensive and viable outreach program that will not only reduce your overall health care system costs, but help generate more revenue within your community and for your operations. Descriptions of our outreach support services are included in this section, but more detailed information is available upon request.

Opportunity Identification – Identify Outreach Potential

Outreach Conferences

The development, implementation, and growth of a successful laboratory outreach program are critical to health system integration. MML offers a full conference dedicated to educating individuals about the core elements of successful outreach programs, which includes business planning, marketing, sales, customer service, transportation, and others.

Outreach Prospect Assessment

We will provide assistance to evaluate and understand your specific target market. This includes helping you conduct an effective market assessment to identify your market’s potential in both demographic terms and economic value. We provide the following assessment tools:

Prospect Assessment

Helps you locate and classify target accounts for developing effective sales plans

Needs Assessment Survey

Determines the laboratory services needed in your community

Business Plan Writing Assistance

Through an interactive program, attendees discover how their lab's unique attributes can be organized and tailored to fit the components of a successful business plan. This program is beneficial to laboratory managers, medical directors, and hospital administrators to help build and execute their organization's business plan and allow participants to:

• Determine the length of plan that is appropriate for their purpose
• Develop a timeline to get the plan completed and approved
• Identify key components and assessments to be used in their writing
• Use the plan as a road map for future strategies and operations

Strategic Alignment – Plan for Success

Operational Assessment

MML is available to conduct an on-site evaluation of your laboratory operations to ensure all your systems are designed to handle pre-analytical processes for your outreach test volume. Areas of focus are:

• Central Processing
• Customer Service
• Exception Handling
• Receiving
• Storage and Retrieval
• Transportation/Courier

Logistics Development

We offer you logistical expertise for establishing a transportation system for your outreach program. Features that are addressed include:

• Critical factors in courier selection
• Mapping routes
• Specimen tracking
• Specimen transit regulations

We will also share copies of our Courier Reference Manual and Courier Training video that are guides to train your courier network. MML will evaluate supplies, shipping procedures, and transport specifications for your specimens and provide written recommendations for improvements that will assist in rapid and accurate specimen identification and transit.

Physician Connectivity

MML, through its relationship with various information system vendors, will facilitate meeting your information system needs in today’s dynamic outreach laboratory environment. Your doctors will need to establish and maintain comprehensive clinical information and view patient laboratory results in a highly flexible manner. This technology will offer a powerful strategic advantage for attracting and retaining laboratory service business for your laboratory outreach program. MML encourages its clients to incorporate electronic ordering and reporting systems into their outreach programs. MML can facilitate preferential access to systems, which would provide efficiencies from ordering to results reporting.

Customer Service Training

Today’s most successful laboratories are those that reach out to gain new clients and place an emphasis on customer service, keeping clients satisfied and loyal to the community laboratory for all their needs. MML’s Laboratories Reaching Out full-day training program will support your laboratory in its overall customer service strategy. MML facilitators will guide participants through an interactive learning experience that is designed to develop and enhance individual laboratorian skills to create successful customer interactions.

Client Development – Create customers, meet expectations

Press Releases

To assist you with communicating your affiliation with MML for reference testing to your local community, we will provide you with a news release template that adheres to Mayo Clinic identity guidelines. We will work closely with you to customize the news release to reflect your reputation in the local community as well as nationally.

Collaborative Brochures

The joint brochure is a marketing piece developed with your specific needs in mind. This co-branded brochure will serve as a tool in promoting your outreach program and our relationship. MML provides you with a variety of templates to choose from and printing of the brochure is provided by MML. The marketing team will work directly with you, to complete the project. At the completion of the project, you will receive 2,000 brochures to assist you in growing your outreach program. MML has an experienced marketing staff to help develop innovative marketing materials.

Sales Training

MML has teamed with Miller Heiman Incorporated SM to offer Strategic Selling® and Conceptual Selling®, which take a practical, hands-on approach to sales training. These programs are appropriate for individuals involved in outreach through sales, marketing, and laboratory management. Strategic Selling encourages the participant to focus on accounts where the potential business is high but issues, known or unknown, are preventing closure. Through this program, the participant will develop strategies and action plans for handling challenging selling situations. Conceptual Selling fosters a customer-centered approach by focusing sales people on why a client is really buying. This enables participants to refine their efforts, resulting in more effective sales calls.

Integrated Test Catalogs

Our Publications team works with our primary clients to develop an annual Joint Test Catalog to assist them in outreach. The Joint Test Catalog includes test information relating to client tests and MML tests. This process is an otherwise costly and time consuming task which we manage. MML also offers a joint web-based catalog. This serves as another medium for sharing test information with our client's outreach territory.

View a sample link to a MML client test catalog.

Client Satisfaction Research

MML will work with you to identify current and future needs of your clients. High-quality customer service requires feedback from customers, and MML will help you measure your clients’ satisfaction through a survey addressing key service areas.