Physician Mailing List
What Is A Physician Mailing List And How Can You Ensure Its Quality?
Communication within the healthcare industry is hardly a delight. Many organizations struggle to find a good physician mailing list for their marketing and communication processes. Unfortunately, most businesses lack even the capability to distinguish a good mailing list from a bad one.
Keeping this in mind, we have created this article explaining all the details you need to know about mailing lists targeting physicians. Our report will help you understand how to access high-quality mailing lists and streamline your direct mail communication.
What is a Physician Mailing List?
The physician mailing list contains the postal address or mailing details of physicians in the US. Now, it is not necessarily challenging to get your hands on a mailing list containing the address data of physicians. However, ensuring the quality of the mailing list is not easy.
Ideally, the mailing list should contain address data of physicians validated at state and federal levels. It lets you ensure that the physician you are mailing is actively practicing and has the proper credentials. But how can you ensure that your mailing list has such high-quality data?
There is an easy way to ensure the quality of your physician mailing list, and it’s called AMA Physician Masterfile.
What Is AMA Physician Masterfile?
The AMA in “AMA Physician Masterfile” refers to the American Medical Association, and chances are you’ve already heard about it. As you may have already figured, the AMA Physician Masterfile is a “master file” containing information on every physician in the United States.
It was initially created as a record-keeping device to support AMA’s membership and mailing activities. But, as time passed on, the AMA Physician Masterfile expanded its application to various branches. Validating physician mailing lists is one of the first applicational use of AMA Physician Masterfile.
Today, the AMA Physician Masterfile includes several healthcare professional data, including education, training, and professional certification information. And this data is from virtually all doctors in the US, including all Doctors of Medicine (MD) and Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine (DO).
What Information Does The AMA Physician Masterfile Contain?
The AMA Physician Masterfile contains current and historical information on over 1.4 million healthcare professionals. It includes the data of
- Physicians
- Residents
- Medical students
- Physicians who graduated from foreign medical schools practicing in the US
You can imagine how useful this data is for creating high-quality physician lists. However, an organization in the healthcare industry usually only needs the data of actively practicing physicians.
Hence, a high-quality mailing list should refine the data further as per your direct mail requirement. AMA database contains extensive information on doctors, and some of the critical information it has are listed below.
- Age
- Gender
- Specialty: Primary, Secondary
- Phone Number
- Preferred Address Type
- State/SCF/Zip Code
- County
- State of Licensure; Year of Licensure
- State of Residency Training; Residency Program
- State of Medical School; Medical School
You can see that you get every detail you need to create a high-quality mailing list for physicians. Hospitals trying to hunt new talent or pharmaceutical companies selling a new drug can all create advanced physician mailing lists using this data.
Why Does AMA Keep The Data Deceased Physicians?
Even after death, a physician’s record is never deleted or removed from the AMA Physician Masterfile. The AMA database has the records of over 226,000 deceased physicians. AMA keeps this data for identifying frauds who try using the credentials of a deceased physician. Hence, in a way, it also protects your physician mailing list from fraud.
When Does a Physicians Data Get Added To AMA Physician Masterfile?
As soon as someone enters medical school accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), a record is created for them. Yes, a database is designed for individuals even before they become a doctor. However, most physician mailing lists do not require information on medical students.
You might wonder what happens to the data of international medical graduates or IMGs. International medical graduates have to enter a post-graduate residency training program to have their information recorded.
Furthermore, the residency program for IMGs must be accredited Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). In addition to that, IMGs can also enter the Masterfile if they can obtain a license from one of the 68 US licensing jurisdictions. IMG data helps create physician mailing lists, unlike the mailing data of medical students.
Who Can Use AMA Physician Masterfile For Physician Mailing Lists?
The Health Solutions Data Management (HSDM) has a dedicated AMA division that deals explicitly with physician data. They collect, analyze, and manage the AMA Physician Masterfile data. But the real question is who can use this data to optimize their postal mail communications.
Here is a list of entities that may often require a quality patient mailing list:
- Medical organizations
- Universities
- Research institutions
- Pharmaceutical companies
- Governmental agencies
- Other health-related groups
How Often Is The Physician List Data Updated By AMA?
The AMA continuously updates the AMA Physician Masterfile to ensure it always has accurate data. It means AMA adds and updates details of physicians in their database regularly. For instance, you wouldn’t want to miss out on 45,000 new physicians who get their licenses every year for your physician mailing lists.
AMA updates this detail on a monthly and bi-monthly basis. But that’s not all. AMA also keeps track of disciplinary action reports and updates it in the AMA Physician Masterfile. If a physician’s license gets revoked, suspended, or surrendered, it will reflect in the Masterfile.
How To Access And Use Accurate Physician Mailing Lists?
At this point, we don’t need to tell you the significance of choosing an AMA database licensee for your physician mailing list. You can not access mailing lists from an AMA database licensee as easily as accessing a regular mailing list.
Here are some of the options by which you can access accurate mailing lists for communicating with healthcare professionals in the US.
The Reliable Way
The most reliable way to access quality mailing lists targeting physicians is to go to an expert list provider. Just make sure that the provider you choose is an AMA database licensee and regularly updates their physician mailing lists.
Obtaining the mailing list from such an expert gives you access to high-quality data. However, the standard direct mail process still requires you to verify the mailing list before sending direct mail to those addresses. The to and fro communication can be tiring and time-consuming.
The Convenient Way
A much more convenient way to access and use accurate physician mailing lists is to use a direct mail service like PostGrid. Service providers like PostGrid acquire a high-quality mailing list from our mailing list partner and relay them to your business organization.
Some of you may not have the warmest feeling about having a middleman. However, it does not require you to run around to find an accurate mailing list. And since it is a direct mail service, you get to print and deliver your mailer accurately from a single central hub.
Physician Mailing Lists And Direct Mail Automation
As discussed above, using a direct mail service provider like PostGrid to access physician lists offers a great deal of convenience. But the comfort is not merely limited to having a central hub to obtain mailing lists, print mailers, and send them. At least not when you use an automated system.
With an automated system, you can decide when you want to send the direct mail and to whom. Advanced features like scheduled mail make it incredibly convenient for you to send your direct mail communications.
In other words, you can obtain your physician mailing lists directly from direct mail services like PostGrid and instantaneously send mail to that list. Setting up bulk mail for your organization is easy as long as you have automation capabilities.
Conclusion
Ensuring the quality of your physician mailing lists can be pretty tricky sometimes. But with the proper guidance, it is not as difficult as you might think. The most reliable way to ensure the quality of your mailing list is to pick an AMA database licensee as your mailing list provider.
However, it is not always convenient to get a mailing list, validate it, and deliver it to individual targets. A more convenient approach is a direct mail service provider like PostGrid that can provide you with high-quality mailing lists.
PostGrid already has one of the best direct mail automation software in the US and offers address verification capability. You can get a quality physician mailing list from PostGrid’s mailing list partners. But, the best part is that you can verify, personalize, and deliver it from PostGrid itself.
As a result, you save a significant amount of time. You can optimize your direct mail communication with healthcare professionals. Hence, PostGrid could be the best solution for great convenience and accurate communication.
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