A ton of organizations are using (our) reference and affiliation data to sell into healthcare—here's why

Selling into the healthcare space is difficult—especially if healthcare isn’t your primary or secondary market. Want to succeed in the space? You need to de-tangle, understand, and leverage the connections that define it: ownership structures, referral patterns, claims transactions leakage patterns, and too many more to list. Definitive Healthcare is your best bet for making sense of it all—and that’s not just speculation.

Definitive Healthcare ranked #1 for healthcare reference and affiliation data

Don’t take my word for it: We partnered with a leading independent research firm to survey leaders and professionals from a diverse array of organizations across the market about their usage of healthcare reference and affiliation data. The results were clear: Whether you’re in facility services, software and IT, or construction (or just about anyone else who does business in healthcare), Definitive Healthcare is the preferred choice for the data you need.

Speaking of the data you need, we ranked #1 in eight of the top data categories:

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We also ranked #1 for the top 10 use cases for healthcare reference and affiliation data—the core of our intelligence that so many organizations prefer. But that’s not all we learned:

• Most users are leveraging data to target key decision-makers, optimize sales intelligence, and identify decision-makers and influencers.
• Executive contact information, provider names, and other contact information topmost organizations’ data wish lists.
• Just over half of these organizations feel strongly that their teams have the data and insights they need to identify the right prospects.

Of course, those are just the highlights. You can read the full report here.

What is reference and affiliation data, anyway?

Healthcare reference data is the firmographic, location, and financial data for hospitals and other healthcare facilities. It also includes the demographic, contact, and location information for healthcare providers.

Affiliation data explains how healthcare organizations and providers are connected to one another, helping you understand the relationships between providers, facilities, physician groups, integrated delivery networks, accountable care organizations, government organizations, and other healthcare networks and systems.

You can use both types of data together to create useful intelligence about the market and find answers to questions like who works where, which facilities are affiliated with each other, and how billing is handled within a network.

Unsurprisingly, a wide variety of organizations are already incorporating this data in their planning and daily operations. As the research shows, they’re choosing to get it from Definitive Healthcare more often than not, because we make deriving insights from the data simpler, more accessible, and ultimately more useful across organizations.

So why Definitive Healthcare?

Look, we don’t want to toot our own horn too much—but we absolutely will when we have the data to back it up.

Our survey respondents ranked Definitive Healthcare as the #1 vendor for the top 10 use cases for reference and affiliation data, as well as for data across eight categories including hospital contacts, health system intelligence, and quality, clinical, and financial metrics. This puts us ahead of industry heavyweights like ZoomInfo, LexisNexis, and IQVIA.

So what do we do differently? Just look at the qualities that respondents rated as “very important” for their reference and affiliation data purchasing decisions:

Accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and ease of access were their most critical factors for evaluating vendors. Plus, these organizations preferred to pick and choose their own data fields and opted for custom solutions over out-of-the-box products.

Definitive Healthcare delivers on all those categories while also providing access methods that most closely align with these companies’ reported preferences: portal access with routinely updated data, as well as integration options with analytics solutions.

Data packaging

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Access preferences

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A full 39% of respondents said their teams spend a lot of time matching data across datasets, but let’s face it—that’s not the focus or central skillset of your sales and marketing teams. Our Atlas Reference & Affiliation Dataset removes the need for that effort entirely.

In other words, companies across the healthcare landscape say they’re getting the high-quality data they need, in the formats and systems they prefer, from Definitive Healthcare.

How can you use reference and affiliation data?

The applications for healthcare reference and affiliation data are as broad as your imagination allows, but your ideal use cases will largely depend on your business’s place in the industry and your role within the business.

Industry leaders from the diverse array of companies surveyed for our latest report identified 10 top use cases for this data:

Targeting key decision-makers

Affiliations data links physicians to hospitals, practices, and health systems, helping sales and marketing teams identify the leaders who hold purchasing authority.

Optimizing sales intelligence

Reference data enriches CRM systems with accurate provider and organizational details, giving reps the insights they need to refine sales outreach, lead more productive conversations, and improve conversion rates.

Identifying decision-makers and influencers

Affiliation networks reveal not only decision-makers but also influential clinicians who directly and indirectly shape purchasing and prescribing decisions across organizations.

Targeting key organizations

Reference data provides a clear view of integrated delivery networks, health systems, and group purchasing organizations, enabling more precise targeting based on financial performance, organizational structure, and other factors.

Sizing markets

Affiliations data helps quantify provider and organizational reach, supporting accurate market sizing by specialty, region, or health system alignment.

Prioritizing accounts

Reference data highlights the most valuable accounts based on organizational size, affiliations, and patient volume, so teams can focus efforts where impact is greatest.

Commercial targeting

Affiliation insights support commercial teams in aligning products and messaging with the providers and organizations most likely to benefit from them.

Planning territories

Affiliations data ensures territories are mapped fairly and strategically, balancing account potential and provider coverage across sales teams.

Forecasting and planning

Reference and affiliations data helps model future demand by analyzing provider relationships, market concentration, and organizational growth trends.

Segmenting providers and organizations

With affiliations mapped, providers and organizations can be segmented by specialty, network alignment, size, or influence, enabling tailored engagement strategies.

Reference and affiliations data goes beyond sales and marketing

But you don’t need to be an industry leader to leverage this data—you just need to want to sell into healthcare. Whether you need to identify the movers and shakers with buying power at an organization, home in on the organizations who need your product or services the most or shape your sales and marketing strategy around the motions of the market, reference and affiliation data can help.

Likewise, there’s a use for this data for nearly every team within an organization. Four in 10 teams reported using reference and affiliation data every day, and respondents recognized use cases within teams ranging from sales and marketing to supply and manufacturing.

Even C-suite executives reported using reference data including executive contact information, purchasing relationships, and quality and financial metrics to guide business development decisions like mergers and acquisitions.

Ready to learn more?

There’s plenty more to learn about reference and affiliation data in our latest report, including specifics on preferred data types, most useful affiliations, and a breakdown of our survey respondents.

Already imagining a brighter future for your business with reference and affiliation data? Schedule a free trial today and one of our specialists will show you how you can leverage our data, analytics, and expertise to accomplish your goals and drive organizational success.