February 27, 2008 – 11:24 am
A few weeks ago we talked about how to increase professional referrals to your practice. Developing this referral source is essentially a networking exercise, but the point of the post was to provide a framework in which to do it without feeling weird, creepy, or uncomfortable.
I know there are a lot of alternative and complementary practitioners who are involved with networking groups like BNI. While I don’t generally promote those groups a great deal, I read a fantastic tidbit from Ivan Misener, the founder and CEO of BNI, in a piece on Entrepreneur.com: Read More »
August 30, 2007 – 7:35 am
We’ve been considering some new treatments and tools, so Tara’s going through her usual willing victim/guinea pig phase, being poked, prodded and zapped. It reminds me again of how effective it is to fully immerse yourself in the patient experience, and how great it is for referrals. When was the last time you actually were a patient, as opposed to just treating one?
Switching roles has some fantastic benefits, including: Read More »
As your practice grows, existing patient referrals begin to make up an increasingly large portion of your new patients. Practitioners will often know where a referral came from, but rarely will they know exactly why that person referred. We often know the source, in other words, but not the cause.
The truth is, however, often the patient herself often doesn’t know exactly why she referred. You can ask, but you might find the answers a little vague. Here are some of the behind-the-scenes reasons that patients go out on a limb to refer to you:
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CAMLAW has a new post on the “acceptance” of complementary and alternative medicine by the AMA.
While I’m sure many of you didn’t need the blessing, it does provide more ammunition for getting more referrals from MD’s who have been reluctant to “buy in” to your modality, or who are nervous for liability reasons.
CAMLAW : Complementary And Alternative Medicine Law Blog: American Medical Association Supports Alternative Medicine
It’s one thing to understand the types of referrals, but quite another to know which type is growing your practice. I’ve touched on this briefly before, but I want to stress it further.
Tracking your referrals is actually pretty straightforward, but often neglected. For the most part, it’s a front-line job, and needs to happen the first time a patient arrives. The easiest way to do it is to make it part of your intake form. It’s very difficult and far less accurate (and less likely to happen) later on in the patient cycle. The great thing is that it’s easy to implement - if you’ve got staff, just make it part of the new patient process. That’s it.
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One of the barriers to referrals from other health care professionals is their perception of you and your modality. Allopathic medical professionals in particular live in an environment of increasing litigation that is resulting in a fear of the “unknown”. Add to that the fact that anyone who refers is putting their own credibility on the line, and it’s easy to see why other health care professionals might not choose to refer to a CAM / holistic practitioner.
For most of these professionals, their comfort level with alternative medicine is determined by knowledge of whether the proposed treatment or modality is a) effective and b) safe.
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Of all the types of referrals, the ones that come from your existing patients are most likely to be high in both quantity and quality. Existing patients tend to refer clients who are a better fit for your practice, and a patient who’s had great success in your holistic office can champion your cause with more enthusiasm than even your best friend. And although a new startup may only have a handful of patients to draw on, over time that practice will build a patient base of hundreds or thousands of files that can refer hundreds of more prospects with little effort on the part of the CAM practitioner.
The best part is that getting your existing patients to refer to you is neither time consuming nor expensive. Most of it is just about your personal interactions with your clients. Here are a few strategies to use:
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I like to think of every new patient as a referral, even the ones that come in from direct advertising – I find it’s an easier way to build a new-patient strategy. Here’s a way to break down your referrals into 5 categories.
Patient Referrals
Still ranking as the best source of new patients in my book, existing clients tend to refer other people who will also find success with your approach. And they’re so easy to market to – it’s a captive audience whose contact info is (or should be) at your fingertips.
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Picking up from yesterday…
Regardless of where you fall on the alternative health opinion spectrum, these folks can be an amazing source of referrals. By presenting yourself as a complement or support to your local physicians, you may find them far more likely to refer to you.
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As a follow up to yesterday’s Putting the “Alternative” in Alternative Medicine, I thought it would be interesting to look at the term complementary from a business strategy perspective.
There are some deeply entrenched camps on this issue. There are many who view the term complementary as subservient to the allopathic medical community. It’s the “either-or” attitude, and it’s not right or wrong, it’s simply an opinion. There is a growing mountain of evidence that multi-disciplinary approaches to health care (read: professionals complementing each other) are great for patients. Whether you want to believe the data or not is up to you.
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