Upgrade Your Physician Referral Marketing Strategy

You know how important it is to have a professional, user-friendly website to attract more patients to your medical practice. It’s no different if your goal is increasing physician referrals.

Both patients and physicians are looking for the differentiators that set your practice apart from competitors offering similar services. According to the American Medical Association, more than 60% of consumers search for a provider before scheduling an appointment. Doctors also search online to find and connect with specialists; physicians perform an average of six professional searches a day.

Get These Must-Haves Down

Your key differentiators:

Highlight your specialized training and expertise

Underscore technologies that few competitors have

Champion short wait times, assistance with referral paperwork, and/or anything else that you want referring physicians to know about you and your practice

***Your vital statistics* – *the facts and data potential referrers are especially interested in:***

How soon you can get patients in

What insurance you accept

If you have a direct phone line or an online system to allow physicians to easily schedule new patients

Patient volumes or procedures performed per year

Patient outcomes or recovery rates

Reviews Matter to Referring Physicians, Too

According to a recent Healthgrades survey, the most important factor in a referring physician’s decision was online reviews (19%), above location and board certifications (15%), medical school and training (12%), and types of insurance accepted (11%). In the same survey, patients said that the top reason they would not go to a referred doctor was negative online reviews. In addition to maintaining your own site, keep an eye on the major physician review sites.

Consider these strategies when it comes to online reviews:

Claim your provider pages on these sites and make sure all the information is up to date

Assign a member of your practice to regularly check and respond to feedback

Consider investing in reputation management tools that track your online reviews and allow you to quickly respond to positive and negative comments

The Value of Referral Management Systems

Referral management systems give you real-time updates on each patient’s status, cutting down on administrative burdens. They can also provide automated notifications to prompt timely follow-up with the patient’s primary doctor, which in turn makes possible better continuity of care. These systems are also designed for analysis, providing information on trends and patterns.

For example:

Who are the top referring physicians to your practice?

Do they have something in common?

If so, are there providers with similar characteristics that could be good candidates for some targeted marketing?

Are there physicians who used to be regular referrers who have slowed down markedly?

Has something changed about your practice, or has a new competitor entered the area?

Trend data can offer important direction on where to focus your efforts.

The Value of AI in Referral Management

One of the benefits of AI is the ability to automate workflows. As AI tools become integrated in referral management systems, they can prioritize referral requests by urgency, allowing practice staff to focus on the most important cases. They can also send text or email updates on referral status to patients.

Grow Your Practice With WAX

Our team deploys state-of-the-art digital tools and high-value content to help you reach the decision-makers in your market and persuade them to choose you over your competitors. We did exactly that for our client, an ACO REACH organization, with over 1,000 new providers joining their network.

We can do the same for you. We’ll optimize your site, analyze your competition, and create a data-driven physician referral marketing strategy that’s going to boost your ROI.