A Playbook for Increasing Referrals at Your Specialty Practice

When it comes to something as personal and high-value as healthcare, your best advertisement is a happy patient. Cultivating a referral strategy at your practice keeps new, good-fit patients coming in the door while conserving your advertising dollars. 

One reason referral marketing is so potent is because it reaches people similar to those you’re already serving. A good-fit patient is likely to have other good-fit patients in their network. 

For example, a patient who is happy with the results of her laser skin resurfacing is likely to recommend her dermatologist to friends of about the same age and income bracket with similar skin concerns. 

How to Get Patient Referrals for Your Specialty Practice or Med Spa 

Referrals are too important to trust to chance. To intentionally develop an environment that encourages them, focus on patient experience, communication, incentives, relationships with other providers, and your online presence. 

Prioritize Patient Experience 

Patients refer practices that deliver a great experience, from scheduling all the way through billing. 

Develop standard operating procedures for patient-facing staff. Train them to make patients feel welcome, comfortable, listened to, and cared for. Keep notes in your EHR your staff can reference for points of connection. 

Use an intelligent EHR with streamlined charting functions so during the patient’s visit, the clinician is focused on face-to-face interaction, not clicking through screens. A patient who feels their clinician is truly connecting with them is a patient who will rave about the practice to their friends. 

Outside their appointment, make it convenient for patients to access your practice. Use patient portals, chatbots, and online scheduling to remove any friction. 

Communicate With Patients Between Appointments 

Regular communication helps you stay at the top of patients’ minds between appointments, making them more likely to refer you when an opportunity arises. 

Use automated text and email systems to send friendly, relevant messages to your patients. Messages might include seasonal tips, like summer skin care, or product recommendations, like what to look for in a pair of ski goggles. 

Share helpful information on social media, too. This helps maintain a baseline level of awareness, and it’s easy for patients to share your posts with their network.  

Create a Patient Referral Program 

A referral program rewards patients when they refer someone who becomes a new patient. Some programs offer an incentive to both the existing and the new patient. 

These rewards and incentives are often free or discounted products. For example, a dermatology clinic might offer a free jar of skin care product, while an ophthalmologist may offer a discount on eyeglass frames in their optical shop. 

When designing your referral program, be careful about compliance. Structure it so it abides by HIPAA and state privacy laws. Be sure the incentives you offer are compliant with your state’s anti-kickback laws. 

Ask Patients for Referrals 

Don’t expect your patients to be mind readers. If you want their referrals, ask for them! Make it easy by creating a landing page on your website where referred patients can learn about your practice and make an appointment. 

Don’t ask immediately after a procedure. Wait until the follow-up appointment, when it’s clear the procedure was successful and the patient is happy. 

If there are no follow-up appointments, have your staff call, text, or email a patient a few days after the procedure to check on their recovery. If they are satisfied, that’s the perfect time to share a link to the landing page and ask them for referrals. 

Ask Other Providers for Referrals 

Develop professional relationships with other health care providers in your area, then collaborate on creating a program for mutual lead sharing. 

Make it about relationships, not transactions. Meet in person and make sure this is a person you would feel comfortable sending your patients to. 

Exchange materials outlining the services you provide and the conditions you treat. Establish an easy-to-use process for exchanging referrals, whether on paper or online. 

Update Your Online Presence 

When a potential patient is referred to you, the first thing they’re going to do is look up your website. 

A site that’s slow, outdated, hard to understand, or difficult to navigate reflects poorly on the practice and on the credibility of the referral. 

Use a professional website designer and a copywriter experienced in working with medical practices. Choose real photos of your clinic and staff over stock photos, and share patient reviews on the site to boost your credibility. 

Online reviews are not quite as effective as a referral from someone you know, but they offer many of the same benefits. Leads will put more trust into what your patients say about you than into what you say about yourself. 

Join online directories like Yelp, RateMDs, and Healthgrades, and update your Google Business profile. Then ask satisfied patients to leave you a review. 

How to Build Your Patient Referral Funnel 

A funnel is an intentional process that moves someone from a lead to a patient. By tracking where your referrals come from, and which actually become patients, you can lean into your most valuable referral sources. 

To build your funnel, start by defining the specific types of patients you want to attract.  

Maybe you want more patients seeking LASIK, for example. Or perhaps you want more using a specific insurance provider. 

Make a short list of potential referral partners. This might be other providers, pharmacies, local employers, or non-medical wellness practitioners. 

Create a simple way for referral partners to send you referrals, such as a web form or a dedicated email address. Set up an automated response so they know their referral was received. 

People referred by your existing patients will likely reach out through your main channel to schedule their appointment. To track them, add a field to your intake form asking if they were referred and by whom. 

Set up a system to tag referrals in your EHR. Then you can automate intake workflows and track referral status from first contact to scheduled appointment. 

Create an automated process to send referrers a note thanking them when the person they referred becomes a patient. 

Review your funnel regularly to identify bottlenecks and nurture your best sources. 

How to Measure Your Patient Referral Program 

If you decide to implement a referral program, you should also implement a way to measure it so you can gauge its effectiveness against other marketing channels. 

First, use website landing pages, dedicated email inboxes, and intake form fields to track whether a new patient is a referral and who referred them. 

Use the analytics tools in your practice management system to track how many referrals become new patients, and estimate the lifetime financial value of those patients to your practice. 

Referrals come from happy patients, so monitor patient satisfaction. Use survey tools to gather feedback from current patients to identify areas in their experience that could be improved and determine whether patients are likely to refer others to you. 

Audit your referral strategy regularly. Look for areas of strength you can lean into and for areas where the process needs work. To run an audit, tag referrals in your EHR. Set a time period for the audit, such as the past 12 months. Pull baseline data from your EHR to report on referral-tagged records in that time period. 

Categorize the referrals by source and review: 

• The source’s referral volume 
• How many referrals became patients 
• Time to appointment 
• Revenue per referred patient 
• Patient retention

Look for performance patterns. For example, insurance companies may generate the greatest number of referrals, but physician referrals might bring in more profitable patients by referring them for cash-pay procedures. 

Hidden Issues That Keep You From Getting Referrals 

If you’re sure you’re delivering a great patient experience, but you’re still not getting many referrals, it’s possible there’s a minor friction point creating a bottleneck. Check for these common reasons a practice might struggle to get referrals. 

• Insurance uncertainty. A top question for any potential new patient is whether your practice is in-network for their insurer. Eliminate uncertainty by publishing lists of the insurance payers you accept, or offer quick eligibility checks for referrals. 

• Lack of trust. If you’re wondering why you don’t get more professional referrals, take a closer look at your relationships with other providers. 
   
  Practitioners need to be confident in your ethics and abilities before they’ll trust you with their patients. Take the time to build personal relationships with referral partners, thank them for any referrals they send, and be sure to send people their way as well. 
   
  Showcase patient outcomes on your website and other public forums, so both referral partners and prospective patients feel comfortable in your expertise. 

• Confusing process. Maybe people would like to refer patients to you, but they don’t know who to refer or how to do it. 
   
  Provide referral partners with a short, clear description of your top services, insurance you accept, and ideal patients so they can spot good-fit candidates.  
   
  Keep any referral forms you ask partners or patients to complete short, easy to find, and easy to fill and submit. 

• Scheduling delays. When a patient is referred to your practice, it’s very disappointing to find out your next opening is weeks or months away. 
   
  Reserve a couple of appointment slots each week specifically for referred patients. When you are fully booked, communicate quickly and clearly about expected wait times. 

Make Referrals a Reliable Growth Engine 

When managed with intention, a referral program can be your practice’s most reliable marketing channel. It has a higher conversion rate and lower acquisition costs than traditional marketing, and helps you serve more of the people you enjoy serving best. 

Built-in marketing tools in Nextech’s intelligent, connected platform make it easy to implement and track a variety of marketing initiatives, powered by the data of your actual practice performance. 

Nextech helps specialty practices in dermatology, ophthalmology, and plastic surgery, and med spas to deliver outstanding care while operating an efficient, profitable practice. Request a demo to see what Nextech could do for you.