Whether you are operating a physical therapy, occupational therapy, or speech therapy practice, a key component of success remains referrals. Patients are still the lifeblood of any clinic so the best way to ensure long-term success and growth remains increasing traffic through successful referral strategies.
Strong practice management involves focusing on marketing as an integral part of your medical practice. Referred patients are ideal because they are a low-cost acquisition. However, there are other techniques that you can use to increase your referrals to scale your practice.
The first focus of marketing is the development of relationships and networks that will drive referrals. The process takes time and may not become at once fruitful. However, with perseverance and dedication, your referral program will grow and expand.
Tips for How to Get More Patient Referrals
1. Reach Out to Physicians with Marketing Materials
Although most physicians have a generalized knowledge of your practice, they still need to understand your services to inspire referrals.
- Supply materials and articles that outline the conditions you regularly treat.
- Share your success and testimonials.
- Collaborate closely on patient care.
- Offer data that shows your practice’s success.
- Always thank the referring physician both publican and via private direct mail.
- Take time to carry out in-person visits to get to know the referring physicians and establish a firm relationship foundation.
2. Focus on Your Practice’s Specialties
What makes your practice stand out from the competition? Focus on the differentiator that makes your practice stand out from the crown. If you are a physical therapist, you focus on balance rehabilitation or pediatric physical therapy. Pinpoint those specialties and then highlight them. Operating a speech therapy practice, you might focus on communication modalities or articulation. An occupational therapy clinic may focus on hand therapy or environmental modification. Use the specialties as opportunities with which you can market.
If you simply do not have a specialty that your practice focuses on, then maybe it’s time to try to branch out and find something that makes you stand out from the competition.
3. Take a Proactive Referral Approach
Yes, you want physicians to refer patients to your practice, but you can also use a take-charge approach by learning about physicians in your area for patient referral. Maintain a list of doctors and their specialties alongside the condition that you treat to decide why physicians to refer your client to.
At this point, you should start to track your referrals. Starting the referral process inspires great and longstanding relationships with local physicians that help everyone involved.
Invite a partnership with a local physician by creating a personalized letter inviting them to work with you by overseeing the patient’s progress. Keep everything very concise when drafting the letter and include business cards to encourage the physician to distribute them to patients.
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4. Create a Strong Online Presence
Focus your practice management on maintaining best practices. Optimize your clinic’s website so that your practice is easy to find online. Most patients will carry out an online search and then choose a clinic based on a physician’s recommendations and reviews.
Invest in a leading website design coupled with an SEO-rich blog. The website and blogs should all hold crucial keywords that list your services and location. Always ensure that your clinic’s name, physician’s name, address, and phone number are all prominently displayed so visitors can quickly find you.
Always ask your patients to take a few moments to leave a positive review. Online testimonials tend to have an enormous impact on would-be patients picking your practice.
Staying active on social media supplies a great marketing strategy for any therapist. It creates a visible presence and helps your practice stay at the forefront of your patient’s minds.
Use your social media profile to share essential information about your practice, promote services, offer interesting content, and inspire engagement which leads to referrals.
5. Targeting Patients
The most important strategy to inspire referrals involves targeting patients through effective marketing. Many patients do not understand what differentiates an occupational therapy office from a physical therapy office. Even patients searching for a speech therapist will want to know how the speech therapy office stands out from the competition. Highlight your services and foster strong brand awareness by being clear about what your practice offers. Also, let would-be patients know that they don’t need a doctor’s referral to visit your practice.
An effective way to target patients involves creating a paid ad strategy. If you are working on a tight budget, then you might drag your feet at investing in digital marketing, but paid ads can increase revenue. Figure out your budget and then work within it. Think about what you want to use to entice patience such as a discount or some other perk then give them the option to schedule a consultation.
Email marketing is also a wonderful way to reach out to patients and gain referrals. You’ll stay in the forefront of the patient’s mind and encourage them to act. Email marketing is highly cost-effective and a great tool to educate patients about your services or any upcoming changes or events at the practice.
Focus on creating a marketing campaign at every stage of the patient’s journey. You’ll have the opportunity to inspire trust and foster satisfaction. Even if your patient has finished their course of care, you want them to know you remain available to meet any future needs and to meet the needs of any referrals from past patients.
Conclusion
Fusion Solutions supplies effective practice management for all aspects of your clinic. Our software solutions function as your healthcare technology partners in all aspects of your practice’s data and billing management. You can use the reports generated to measure how effective your marketing efforts are proving. At Therapy Brands, we want to help you continue to grow your organization with strong patient referrals and leading marketing efforts.
Contact us today for a free demo of Fusion!
