For private practitioners, who are you networking with for referral sources?

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I was curious to see what all referral sources private practitioners are getting involved with.

Right now, mine are insurance companies a psychiatrist and a psychologist who routinely refer to me, and I also get the random referrals from unknown physicians, psychologists, and other therapists.

I am looking to find a good solid referral source to get steady patients, so any thoughts and examples would be greatly appreciated.
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While I don’t like your business model, I'll point out that you’re stupidly missing where the never ending stream of patients: psychiatric hospitals.

Pay your employees fairly.
 
PsyDr said:
While I don’t like your business model, I'll point out that you’re stupidly missing where the never ending stream of patients: psychiatric hospitals.

Pay your employees fairly.
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My contractors take 75% of their earnings....not sure how I could be more fair short of giving them 100%, which defeats the purpose.

You don't like my business model of taking insurance?
 
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This really depends on the type of work you want to do and the type of clientele you are looking for generally. I would, personally, not bother with psych hospitals due to the type of patient likely to be referred. However, that depends the goals of your practice.
 
Most of mine come from neurology group practices and PCPs. Less frequently, but still viably, from private practice psychiatrists and larger nearby hospital systems.

If you ever get really hard up, you could always sign up to be a community care provider for VA...

Although I agree with the above that if you're interested in the patient pool, inpatient units could reflect a very steady (and in-need) referral source.

You could consider also reaching out to large therapy practices if you hear that they're consistently booking out. They may send you some of their overflow. I get some such patients from a couple other neuropsychologists in town.
 
Let local colleges/universities know. Often, their student services only allow for a smaller number of individual sessions. After that, or if they have more severe pathology, they look for community referrals.

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How would you reach out to these inpatient hospitals? I've email several in the past with no responses.
 
I suppose I should also ask/clarify for those who primarily rely on physicians and other healthcare providers as a referral source, are you calling them to establish that connection, sending an email, sending a gift basket, etc.? What have you found the most practical and useful approaches in establishing that connection with them to ultimately materialize referrals?
 
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texanpsychdoc said:
I suppose I should also ask/clarify for those who primarily rely on physicians and other healthcare providers as a referral source, are you calling them to establish that connection, sending an email, sending a gift basket, etc.? What have you found the most practical and useful approaches in establishing that connection with them to ultimately materialize referrals?
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Some combination of calling, mailing/giving informational materials (usually after talking with them), and going in-person. Although with neuropsych, all you usually need to say is, "my waitlist is less than 6 months."

Which may or may not also apply to psychotherapy (and particularly evidence-based psychotherapy) in some places.

As for the viability of inpatient hospitals, I suspect some of it may depend on how well medicaid pays in your area.
 
AcronymAllergy said:
Some combination of calling, mailing/giving informational materials (usually after talking with them), and going in-person. Although with neuropsych, all you usually need to say is, "my waitlist is less than 6 months."

Which may or may not also apply to psychotherapy (and particularly evidence-based psychotherapy) in some places.

As for the viability of inpatient hospitals, I suspect some of it may depend on how well medicaid pays in your area.
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IMO, having worked with that pop in an outpatient setting, generally not worth it unless you need high volume and you have employees willing to deal with that population.
 
I managed to secure a lunch/business meeting next week with this primary care practice in my area, so I will bring some brochures and cards. Hopefully it pans out.
 
1. The vast majority of therapy PP should have a known niche and target referral sources for their niche(s).

2. Know your market (read: competition).

3. Don’t waste your time subscribing to a bunch of insurance panels bc you should only take the top paying 1-2, so you don’t fill up on cases that cost you money.

4. Consider trying for EAP programs. Some companies pay decent for them, they tend to be short-term, and can include lower acuity cases, but not always. Who knows w 2023 stressors, but probably worth a look.

5. I keep a certain # of slots for clinical cases each week, and once they are full, that’s it. Cast a wider net to start, but consider volume v mix of cases. I realized I’d rather screen out cases than get stuck w a case that eats up 2-3 pt worth of my time.
 
texanpsychdoc said:
I managed to secure a lunch/business meeting next week with this primary care practice in my area, so I will bring some brochures and cards. Hopefully it pans out.
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Reading your posts over the past ~6 months has given me the encouragement to pursue private practice. Seriously! Your posts specifically have caused me to change course in my career!
How have things been going for you? How's business?
 
oldschooliscool said:
Reading your posts over the past ~6 months has given me the encouragement to pursue private practice. Seriously! Your posts specifically have caused me to change course in my career!
How have things been going for you? How's business?
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Practice has been steady. Ever since going into PP full time, I average $12-13K a month doing primarily insurance based therapy. I am looking to expand my services into forensics come March doing immigration and CST evals, as well as my practice consulting business I have. By next year, I hope to double my monthly income ($24K a month). I've hired a psychologist and look to hire 10 more so I can earn a decent amount of passive income so I can work less and travel more.
 
texanpsychdoc said:
Practice has been steady. Ever since going into PP full time, I average $12-13K a month doing primarily insurance based therapy. I am looking to expand my services into forensics come March doing immigration and CST evals, as well as my practice consulting business I have. By next year, I hope to double my monthly income ($24K a month). I've hired a psychologist and look to hire 10 more so I can earn a decent amount of passive income so I can work less and travel more.
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This is EXACTLY the type of thing I'm trying to replicate in the coming years when I launch my own. Fantastic job!! I have so many questions, but I don't want to pry or hijack your thread. I just wanted to say that your posts on here have been such an encouragement to me!
 
oldschooliscool said:
This is EXACTLY the type of thing I'm trying to replicate in the coming years when I launch my own. Fantastic job!! I have so many questions, but I don't want to pry or hijack your thread. I just wanted to say that your posts on here have been such an encouragement to me!
Click to expand...

Feel free to message me privately. Glad to answer any questions.
 
texanpsychdoc said:
I suppose I should also ask/clarify for those who primarily rely on physicians and other healthcare providers as a referral source, are you calling them to establish that connection, sending an email, sending a gift basket, etc.? What have you found the most practical and useful approaches in establishing that connection with them to ultimately materialize referrals?
Click to expand...
As a psychiatrist I am constantly looking for places to send people for psychotherapy that would be covered by insurance (our in-house offerings are thin).
An email with your practice contact information, therapy modalities/areas of specific expertise, location/virtual options, and what insurances you take is great.
I do not need gift baskets or chocolate turtles. That would feel weird and kind of slimy coming from someone I've never met.

If you take insurance, I would try to find psychiatrists in your area who take the same ones you are paneled with and target those providers specifically. It's really helpful to be able to confirm to the patient that the referral I'm providing will take *their* insurance (not just *some* insurance).
 
tr said:
As a psychiatrist I am constantly looking for places to send people for psychotherapy that would be covered by insurance (our in-house offerings are thin).
An email with your practice contact information, therapy modalities/areas of specific expertise, location/virtual options, and what insurances you take is great.
I do not need gift baskets or chocolate turtles. That would feel weird and kind of slimy coming from someone I've never met.

If you take insurance, I would try to find psychiatrists in your area who take the same ones you are paneled with and target those providers specifically. It's really helpful to be able to confirm to the patient that the referral I'm providing will take *their* insurance (not just *some* insurance).
Click to expand...

I sent out over 600 emails to various physicians (mostly psychiatrists) across Texas and other states since I can see patients across 37+ states virtually. I did exactly what you outlined, and out of 600 emails, only 3 people responded with "thanks, we'll add you to our list."

Needless to say, that approach did not really yield any results, especially considering I accept several major insurances (BCBS, United, MultiPlan, Aetna).

I have since started to call practices and major hospitals (which is frustrating because it's impossible to find a live person at these hospitals who coordinates referral networks). Some of the practices I call tell me "send us an email" and I'm like "I did that before 6 months ago and you guys never responded."
 
While I haven’t needed to do marketing for my current practice, when I first relocated I did some marketing and it was largely about identifying pain points for local med practices. For instance, I found success contacting occupational medicine practices and finding out which patients they had a hard time finding timely services. I identified counseling following physical injury, new onset chronic pain assessment and treatment, and driving anxiety following MVA to be areas of need and the most common types of referrals for the 2-3 largest occ med practices in the area.

I developed a quick reference sheet for common referral examples that would benefit from my services. Since I only wanted Workers Comp cases, those are who I targeted by reviewing the WC Guidelines of my state for psych services. Once I knew what kind of cases qualified for WC psych referrals, I chose referral examples that reflected the types of cases I preferred to see.

I’ll defer to others about marketing for commercial insurance, as their reimbursement was never worth the hassle.
 
texanpsychdoc said:
I sent out over 600 emails to various physicians (mostly psychiatrists) across Texas and other states since I can see patients across 37+ states virtually. I did exactly what you outlined, and out of 600 emails, only 3 people responded with "thanks, we'll add you to our list."

Needless to say, that approach did not really yield any results, especially considering I accept several major insurances (BCBS, United, MultiPlan, Aetna).

I have since started to call practices and major hospitals (which is frustrating because it's impossible to find a live person at these hospitals who coordinates referral networks). Some of the practices I call tell me "send us an email" and I'm like "I did that before 6 months ago and you guys never responded."
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Hm that sounds frustrating.
I wouldn't think that calling the front desk at a big hospital would get you anywhere other than an endless ride around a voicemail tree.

When I think about who keeps referral lists around here (besides me haha), it's usually the social workers.

If you're going after larger organizations, maybe see if you can get in touch with someone from social work who works with the type of patient you want to see?
 
When I had my (small) private practice, I was busier than I wanted to be off psychology today mostly.
I think a lot of clinicians use PT really poorly. Do a search from the patient side; all you see is the photo and about a tweet’s worth of the start of the profile. Most of the people on there don’t arrange their profiles so that what pops up in that search is enough for people to decide to call them, let alone have it informed by any branding or marketing thoughts.
A pain with PT (maybe they changed this since?) is that it doesn’t work with psypact in that you can’t make your profile visible in the other states.
My other referral source was from my reports. I was on the top of most providers’ lists for adult psych assessments in more than one city, I think because they liked my reports. Executive summary first page so all the key info for a physician was there. I’ve read reports where the dx is buried on page 14 of 22 in the middle of a paragraph. I’ve also seen reports, some done by people who claim expertise in assessment, that have notes like REMEMBER TO PUT THOSE NUMBERS HERE in a table. So, a little care and you seem to be in the 90th percentile of providers.
Also, calling people back. Half the calls I got, the person said they called half a dozen other people and never heard back from one of them.

Edit: well, I don’t think they liked my reports. I got emails from them thanking me for clear reports.
 
MCParent said:
When I had my (small) private practice, I was busier than I wanted to be off psychology today mostly.
I think a lot of clinicians use PT really poorly. Do a search from the patient side; all you see is the photo and about a tweet’s worth of the start of the profile. Most of the people on there don’t arrange their profiles so that what pops up in that search is enough for people to decide to call them, let alone have it informed by any branding or marketing thoughts.
A pain with PT (maybe they changed this since?) is that it doesn’t work with psypact in that you can’t make your profile visible in the other states.
My other referral source was from my reports. I was on the top of most providers’ lists for adult psych assessments in more than one city, I think because they liked my reports. Executive summary first page so all the key info for a physician was there. I’ve read reports where the dx is buried on page 14 of 22 in the middle of a paragraph. I’ve also seen reports, some done by people who claim expertise in assessment, that have notes like REMEMBER TO PUT THOSE NUMBERS HERE in a table. So, a little care and you seem to be in the 90th percentile of providers.
Also, calling people back. Half the calls I got, the person said they called half a dozen other people and never heard back from one of them.

Edit: well, I don’t think they liked my reports. I got emails from them thanking me for clear reports.
Click to expand...

I've spent a few years ironing out my PT profile, and I really do try to make it to where it really captures my "essence," for example, the first sentence reads "as a gay psychologist, I work with the LGBTQ+ community etc." So, I would like to think that on some level, that really puts out there a population I focus on, even though my practice is not geared towards them per se. Since I take about 5 different insurances and have a variety of areas of practice I engage in, I am really trying to market a generalist group practice, not just a solo practice. I have been getting a decent uptick in PT referrals, but I'm typically getting maybe 1 a week. Mental Health Match has been a bust for me as well.

It's frustrating....so, idk what to really do at the moment. I am not an advocate of "you must find a niche and market it," as I think someone who does generalist work and accepts several major insurances can really make a generalist practice flourish. Perhaps time will tell.
 
texanpsychdoc said:
I've spent a few years ironing out my PT profile, and I really do try to make it to where it really captures my "essence," for example, the first sentence reads "as a gay psychologist, I work with the LGBTQ+ community etc." So, I would like to think that on some level, that really puts out there a population I focus on, even though my practice is not geared towards them per se. Since I take about 5 different insurances and have a variety of areas of practice I engage in, I am really trying to market a generalist group practice, not just a solo practice. I have been getting a decent uptick in PT referrals, but I'm typically getting maybe 1 a week. Mental Health Match has been a bust for me as well.

It's frustrating....so, idk what to really do at the moment. I am not an advocate of "you must find a niche and market it," as I think someone who does generalist work and accepts several major insurances can really make a generalist practice flourish. Perhaps time will tell.
Click to expand...
Well that’s funny since I was a gay psypact psych in Texas w a pp and on about 5 panels until earlier this year 😂

That does sound odd to me though. There were periods I was turning down/referring out 3 people a day. I had to close my psych today profile to stop calls at one point.

I had a pretty specialized niche practice. Therapy for PTSD (sometimes some other stuff esp for other bodybuilders via psypact) and adhd/ld assessment. I didn’t really see anyone for plain depression/anxiety/stress. I don’t know what your profile says, but tbh I found a lot of the generalist ones come off…weird. Like some people are checking every box from preschool to elderly and from stress to BPD. I had solid success w a clear, fairly narrow focus; it’s not like there’s a shortage of people with PTSD.

Also, imo if you’re not seeking out only lgbtq+ patients I wouldn’t have that as the first line of your branding. That’d be like iPhones centering that they’re for lgbtq+ ppl because you can put Scruff on it. I had some fun moments where a patient would ask something about my “wife” and I’d reply “yup, my husband….” Never caused a problem, actually I think it made some people rethink some stereotypes.
 
MCParent said:
Well that’s funny since I was a gay psypact psych in Texas w a pp and on about 5 panels until earlier this year 😂

That does sound odd to me though. There were periods I was turning down/referring out 3 people a day. I had to close my psych today profile to stop calls at one point.

I had a pretty specialized niche practice. Therapy for PTSD (sometimes some other stuff esp for other bodybuilders via psypact) and adhd/ld assessment. I didn’t really see anyone for plain depression/anxiety/stress. I don’t know what your profile says, but tbh I found a lot of the generalist ones come off…weird. Like some people are checking every box from preschool to elderly and from stress to BPD. I had solid success w a clear, fairly narrow focus; it’s not like there’s a shortage of people with PTSD.

Also, imo if you’re not seeking out only lgbtq+ patients I wouldn’t have that as the first line of your branding. That’d be like iPhones centering that they’re for lgbtq+ ppl because you can put Scruff on it. I had some fun moments where a patient would ask something about my “wife” and I’d reply “yup, my husband….” Never caused a problem, actually I think it made some people rethink some stereotypes.
Click to expand...

To be fair...I'm on Scruff and Grindr, and I get it, the iPhone is more than just a place to find some good hookups. I will say that the uptick in my PT referrals have been mostly gay men out of the Houston or Austin area since I heavily market in those areas. I guess I can revisit my verbiage on there. I've had too much wine tonight so I will have to get in the right headspace when I return back to Texas from Florida in a couple of days from vacation.
 
Non-insurance practice and I get about half referrals from psychology today and another half from my website. I get a trickle of referrals from a psychiatrist I used to work for and a couple of docs in town that re figuring out who I am and are referring friends and family. I am also developing an aftercare program that seems to be growing slowly but surely and that is now about 2/3 of our revenue. I spend most of my energy doing solid clinical work and going the extra mile for the case that I have and very little effort into networking with random providers. Second year in we grossed 296k in revenue and are at 30k a month and growing so should be better next year. Expenses are still high so no real profit, but part of that is investment in the future. Also part of my strategy that differs is I am working with interns and developing them and paying them salary and when they get licensed, paying them a bit above market. If they want to go solo they can but I don’t like the percentage cut dynamic vs salary for a variety of reasons.
 
smalltownpsych said:
Non-insurance practice and I get about half referrals from psychology today and another half from my website. I get a trickle of referrals from a psychiatrist I used to work for and a couple of docs in town that re figuring out who I am and are referring friends and family. I am also developing an aftercare program that seems to be growing slowly but surely and that is now about 2/3 of our revenue. I spend most of my energy doing solid clinical work and going the extra mile for the case that I have and very little effort into networking with random providers. Second year in we grossed 296k in revenue and are at 30k a month and growing so should be better next year. Expenses are still high so no real profit, but part of that is investment in the future. Also part of my strategy that differs is I am working with interns and developing them and paying them salary and when they get licensed, paying them a bit above market. If they want to go solo they can but I don’t like the percentage cut dynamic vs salary for a variety of reasons.
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Nice!
I never wanted to be ft pp but there were days I’d look at my work to pay ratio in academia and my work to pay ratio in pp and think… why am I not in practice full time???
Trixie Mattel bless you for paying interns, btw.
 
MCParent said:
Nice!
I never wanted to be ft pp but there were days I’d look at my work to pay ratio in academia and my work to pay ratio in pp and think… why am I not in practice full time???
Trixie Mattel bless you for paying interns, btw.
Click to expand...

I've optimized my site, but I do a lot of other forms of marketing. I send emails, make phone calls, do a ton of social media stuff as well (e.g., take referrals on Facebook pages I follow, make videos, make posts across various platforms). I've gone door to door dropping off my cards and brochures. Right now I average $12K a month, but would like to get to $24K a month by hiring more providers and delegating patients to them. I can't really delegate until I can get a sustained referral basis to fill up their slots. Not sure what else I can do....
 
texanpsychdoc said:
I've optimized my site, but I do a lot of other forms of marketing. I send emails, make phone calls, do a ton of social media stuff as well (e.g., take referrals on Facebook pages I follow, make videos, make posts across various platforms). I've gone door to door dropping off my cards and brochures. Right now I average $12K a month, but would like to get to $24K a month by hiring more providers and delegating patients to them. I can't really delegate until I can get a sustained referral basis to fill up their slots. Not sure what else I can do....
Click to expand...
Referrals trickle in and when you bring in someone new that will automatically increase your reach. In some ways you have to risk and reach and trust that it will happen. One reason I pay a salary is that I take on some of that risk. It’s also why I stay with interns. If you are taking insurance it’s just a lot of noise that people have to sift through to get to you and then what is it that sets you apart? We have a full time admin staff person and a group therapy and offer some community support services including coordinating care for psychiatry. Some of why I’m talking about this is to help myself clarify what we do and why to improve my own sales skills. Generating referrals is not as important as closing leads and retention in my mind so that’s where I put in the effort.
 
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