Generating Referrals as a Specialist

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SweetWater54

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As a specialist, how much of your time is spent trying to generate referrals? How often do you take GP's out to lunch, send gifts to offices, host events etc.? Is this a big aspect of the job that you think about often? Do you enjoy it or is it more of a necessary evil that you have to do to keep the GP's happy so they send you patients?

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Anyone have any insight? I am deciding between a specialty and general practice and just wondering if this is a significant aspect of the job of a specialist? Thank you.
 
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Depends.

Your question really depends on a lot of factors. However, in general, I expect that a successful specialist will spend a fair amount of time fostering their relationship with their referral base. General dentists do this too, though - their patients are self-referred and their efforts are focused on advertising. Whatever you do, you're going to have to drum up business...
 
The dentists only refer their patients to the specialists whom they know and trust. They don’t just send their patients to some unknown specialists in their town. I don’t refer my patients to the local oral surgeons because I don’t know any of them. Instead, I make all my patients drive 30-40 miles to see the surgeon who is not only a good friend (my dental classmate) but also has a tract record of providing excellent treatments for my patients.

When I started my first ortho office, I didn’t really have any choice: either go door to door to beg the GP for referrals or have an empty office. I had plenty of time to visit the GP offices because my appointment book was pretty much empty. When I met the GPs at their offices, I let them know who I am, my office hours (late and weekend hours), the insurance plans my office accepts, my reasonable fees and easy payment plans etc. Working part time for a dental chain has also given me the opportunity to meet a lot of GPs. Some of these GPs later quit their job to start their own offices and they usually think of me when their patients need ortho tx.

My wife did the same thing when she purchased an existing perio office that didn’t do any implant. To increase implant referrals, she went to the GP offices to teach them how to tx plan and restore implants. When the GPs don’t know what to do with patients who need full mouth reconstruction (due to years of dental neglect), my wife helps tx plan the entire cases for the GPs.

Now that we paid off most of our debts and our appointment books are not as empty as before, we no longer have to go door to door. We continue to work hard to keep the referring GPs happy. To continue to show our appreciation, we ask our staff to deliver gifts to GP offices on every Xmas, Chinese New year, and Thanksgivings.

The beauty of ortho is the patients can by-pass the GP offices and go straight to ortho offices for braces. For endo, perio, and OS, the practice can't survive without the GP referrals. At some ortho offices, more than 50% of the new patients come from word-of-mouth referrals. To gain more case acceptances, you may have to charge reasonable fees and have easy payment plans. By treating more cases, you do not only gain more clinical experiences but you also have greater opportunities to demonstrate to both the referring GPs and your patients your clinical skills. The more people who see how good you are, the more referrals you will get. If you are good, people will still choose your office over other offices that look 100 times newer and more high tech than yours. Everybody wants to receive good treatments at affordable fees.
 
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