How Are Your Referral Relationships?

Every potential referral physician is different, and you need to take an individual approach with each referring physician and group practice. Take the time to uncover the true needs and interests of each referral partner in an effort to build a professional relationship, create value, and establish the trust needed to gain lasting referrals. Follow up is critical. Take the time to confirm that your referral colleagues are completely satisfied with your care so that the relationship grows.

Whether assessing a venous problem, giving clinical recommendations, or making it easier for primary care physicians (PCP) to refer to you, relationship marketing is fundamentally about delivering value. It might also mean that your staff needs to spend a lot of time in relationship-building activities that donโ€™t seem to at first produce revenue. Physicians often find relationship marketing challenging because of the perception that it is โ€œselling.โ€ To get beyond that, keep in mind that the best marketing tool is what you do in your vein practice, and how well you do it.

 

When a patient self-refers to your office, do you mail a letter to their primary physician with your clinical notes? What about post-procedure reports, do you communicate your results and possibly provide before / after pictures? Do you think the PCPs read your letters? My guess is that they are filed in a chart or scanned into the EMR by a medical assistant and rarely seen by the intended recipient. Instead, I would recommend that your liaison put on a pair of scrubs with your practice logo and hand deliver the reports. An introduction by a liaison that they are part of your clinical care team and delivering a clinical report personally to the referring physician gets them seen immediately. Even if you are only talking to an office manager, PA or RN, it is an opening to build a relationship. Use the reports as an opportunity to introduce your practice. Let them know that you are the โ€œgo toโ€ practice in the area and that their patients are self-referring to you.

As you consider implementing relationship marketing techniques, remember that each referral source is looking for something completely different, but they all want their individual needs met. Build relationships with potential referral sources by meeting their needs as they have defined them, which might take some research. Once you understand their needs, align your services to meet those needs. That demonstrates your practiceโ€™s value, how well you listen, and how much you care.

Tailoring your practice communications to be more time-sensitive and reliable than your competitorsโ€™ entrenches the working relationship. Your goal should be to make it easy to do business with you by being more responsive than your competitor.

When was the last time you evaluated the effectiveness of your efforts to build a long-lasting referral relationship with primary care physicians in your service area? Think about these proven tips to strengthen rapport and increase referral volume.

  1. Think strategically about referral patterns. Do you know who refers to your practice, who doesn’t, and why? Ask your front desk staff to generate a weekly or monthly referring physician report by procedure. Which physicians currently refer to you and what types of cases do they send? Do the non-referrers know about all of the conditions you treat or has a patient they referred experienced a less-than-favorable visit to your office? Identifying the reasons why these physicians do and do not refer can provide the foundation for improving relationships and increasing referral patterns.
  1. Identify other practices courting your referral physicians. Success is not achieved by ignoring your competitors but rather by anticipating competitive issues and influences so you can always have a proactive plan and strategy for staying ahead of your competition. Referring physicians often report dissatisfaction with specialists who are slow or late in providing consultation reports. Review your internal processes to make sure communication flows back to the referring physician within 48 hours of seeing patients. Before and after pictures are a good idea to support your clinical skills in the referring physicianโ€™s mind to encourage additional referrals.ย  Use case studies to bring attention to additional benefits of vein treatments.
  1. Good Idea! Improve referring physician education by asking whether referring physicians would like to receive clinical case studies via secure email. This also allows you to build a valuable email database that gives you instant access to your referral physicians.
  1. Be available. Get patients in as quickly as you can.
  1. Listen. Patients tell their PCP doctor when specialists or their staff are rude or abrupt – which makes the referring physician look bad for sending the patient to you.
  1. Say thanks. Whether it’s a telephone call or handwritten note, show your appreciation by thanking referring physicians and their staff for their confidence in you.

Relationship marketing is one of several approaches you can use to promote your practice, but it is unquestionably the most valuable. Relationship Marketing, supported by the right integrated strategy, produces more new patients than any other method. Relationship Marketing can also be one of the least expensive marketing approaches, but it is rare to find practices executing it effectively because it is hard to do well.

When most physicians think of relationship marketing, they think of establishing and entrenching their relationships with key referral sources, such as PCPs. Thatโ€™s only partially right. While PCPs account for a lot of the referrals that practices get each year, some practices rely or focus on them too much and miss out on establishing solid relationships with another large referral base – current and past patients.

Market research has repeatedly shown that previous patients refer about 40% of all new patients. Interestingly, from a clinical standpoint, former patients are the least qualified to make those referrals. Instead, they base their referrals on how they feel about you as well as their experiences with your staff. Before you spend another dollar on external resources to market your vein practice, devote time to ensuring that the service you deliver to patients doesnโ€™t just produce satisfaction or loyalty, but also creates patient advocacy. True patient advocates are your most valuable marketing assets. They not only return to you for additional services, but rave about you to others.

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