Solid referrer relationships are the lifeblood of every specialist practice.
Whether your practice is medical or allied health, great referrer relationships are essential to establishing and maintaining a successful specialist healthcare business.
First and foremost, your referrers want to know that their patients are well cared for, with excellent service right from their first to last interaction with your practice. It’s not just the time they spend in the consultation that counts - whether or not patients are getting all of this reflects on the referrer!
And your referrers want the process of referral and getting information back to be seamless for their patient, themselves and their team.
Below are some of the steps we use to help our clients build great referrer relationships and, subsequently, successful practices:
□ Establish what potential referrers need and want from you - the best way to do this is to ask them. Most needs will be around obtaining optimal support in the care of their patients, but what form will this take for the individual referrer? For example, whilst some might have a particularly strong interest in your area of practice, many won’t want lengthy letters back after every review - they receive a considerable volume of letters... Listen to their requirements and clarify where needed.
□ Consider whether you’re meeting the different needs of each referrer by asking questions relevant to your situation, such as whether they have:
An in-depth interest in your specialty and desire extra information?
A preferred referral pathway/mechanism?
A need for emergency/held appointments for urgent referrals?
A desire to be able to get in touch with you directly when they need to?
A preferred method to receive letters or information back to them?
□ Tailor your service offering and support more directly based on the responses you’ve gained to the above; you’ll be better placed to meet specific referrers’ needs, and thus those of their patients.
□ Establish the administrative procedures required to support this service delivery within your practice. Your shared patients will appreciate everything running smoothly, give feedback to the referrer, and tell their friends and family.
□ Provide information about yourself and your practice - referrers will also want specific information about you, your special interests and points of difference from others in your area of expertise. This could be a flyer or simply an email that your practice manager can distribute. Your LinkedIn profile is also relevant here.
□ Let existing and potential referrers and their admin teams know what information you need from them before the patient’s initial appointment to enable you to provide optimal patient service.
□ If you’re going to do presentations to referrers, such as ‘lunch & learns’, do your homework so you can really add value. Tips include to:
Find out what the clinicians want to know more about from their practice manager. Providing a list of potential topics as a starter can help with this.
Include case studies.
Include images where relevant.
Leave sufficient time to cover their questions and discuss current cases they raise.
If needed, get coaching on your presentation style and content so you’re confident and can project genuine interest and engagement to your audience.
□ Where questions are raised during the presentation, where relevant, work to source additional valuable information after the presentation. Then, ensure this gets through to the relevant practitioners promptly.
□ Learn how to extract and analyse referrer data from your practice management software (or get your practice manager/medical secretary to research how to) and review this regularly. Look at trends, such as who your new referrers are, who’s dropped off more recently, etc. Then, use this data to help focus your attention.
The Augmentum Consulting team has worked with a broad range of practitioners and organisations to help them develop and retain good relationships, which support both referrer and specialist and, most importantly, their shared patients/clients.
We also provide consultancy and management services, supporting healthcare business owners and decision-makers in many key areas, such as strategy development and action planning, building effective foundations and teams, keeping your finger on the pulse, and driving growth and success.
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