If you've been a private physical therapy practice owner for more than 5 minutes, you already know that the best way to get clients is by referral. In order to refer your business, people need to know, like, and trust you. They want to be sure that you will take good care of the clients they send you. For that, they'd like to be better acquainted than just hearing your name.

Incorporate Referral Requests into Business

The key to real success in referrals is to build requesting referrals right into your daily business operations process. Asking for referrals occasionally will get you only limited referrals. You can get many more valuable referrals by doing it regularly.

Look beyond your normal customers. Find partners in getting referrals. Be creative. Here are a few ideas:

• Make calls solely for the purpose of seeking referrals.
• Go to conferences of physicians and exchange business cards.
• Talk to people who talk to people, like reception staff, secretaries, hairdressers, etc.
• Get back to people after the visit to say thank you and to ask for referrals.

Seven Tips

Here are seven tactics to drive the referral side of your business.¹

1. Set a Target: Set a clear goal with a time line—for example, a 10% increase in referral business over the next 10 weeks.
2. Timing: Give your referring doctors and patients time to experience your service before asking for a referral.
3. Top 20: Not all physicians are referral candidates. Find the top 20% that are ecstatic about your business and ask them for referrals. Make sure their patient network is the type of client you want.
4. Give and You'll Receive: Give your patients extra service and follow-up support before asking for referrals. When you give willingly to your patients, referrers will return the favor.
5. Type of Customer: Inform your referring doctors of the type of patients you can help. Provide a clear picture of the patient demographics for your practice.
6. Rewards Program: Provide special rewards to your referring doctors on a regular basis.
7. Thank-You: Create a basic thank-you letter that can be personalized and sent to each referral you receive.

Building Referrals

How do you build referrals? The simple answer involves becoming the referring physician's best alternative by following these four steps: 1) Research; 2) Prepare; 3) Communicate; and 4) Follow up.

1. Research
   The first step involves doing a little research to find out exactly what referring doctors expect from your office. Two tools can help you in this research:
   • Referring Doctor Survey. Conduct a written survey of offices that refer to you, asking for feedback on what they expect from your office and how well you are meeting those expectations. This survey can be transmitted via mail, fax, or e-mail.
   • Referring Doctor Interviews. Assign someone to represent your office in conducting personal interviews with referring doctors. These interviews can be conducted over the phone, although personal visits often result in more detailed information and may be viewed as less intrusive by the interviewee. This technique results in a higher percent of responding practices and better-quality information than a written survey, but requires much more time to implement.
2. Prepare
   The second step is to prepare your office to provide the services and communications that the referring offices want from you. These tools can help you make sure your office is ready:
   • Patient Satisfaction Survey. Implement a regular program of surveying your patients and responding to their comments by implementing needed changes.
   • Track Referrals. Set up a system to track every new patient and how they found out about your office. This information should be tracked and reported monthly so you know exactly who is referring currently and are alerted when an office stops sending you referrals.
   • Physician Correspondence Review. Carefully review your current procedures for communicating with referring doctors about their patients. Do your letters to the referring doctor communicate thoroughness? Professionalism? Appreciation? Is your follow-up timely? Letters to referring doctors should be sent within 1 week of the visit.
   • Customer Service Review. Take a hard look at how easy your office is for referring offices to deal with. Asking the following questions will help: How soon do we get physician-referred patients into the office for an exam? Do we have a separate, dedicated phone line for referring offices to call us on so they have quick access to our practice? How is the attitude of our staff members toward referring office staff? Are we friendly and accommodating? What system do we have in place to make sure referred patients are clearly identified so that appropriate communications with their referring doctor will take place?
3. Communicate
   Many practices seem to believe that just being prepared to receive referred patients should be enough, but proactive practices know that they must also continually communicate with referring practices to keep referrals flowing. Some of the tools that are helpful in communicating with referring offices are:

   For tips on marketing your practice to increase referrals, read “Will Work for Referrals” in our October 2007 issue.

   • Personal Contact: Encourage staff PTs to meet with the referring doctors periodically. Assign a member of your staff to call on physician and office staff. Many practices are beginning to hire marketing personnel to call on referring offices to encourage them to refer.
   • Educational Courses: Conduct courses for referring doctors to educate them on the latest advances in physical therapy care. Use a course evaluation and a written survey to obtain feedback regarding what referrers want from your practice.
4. Follow up
   The key to building long-term referral relationships is to maintain positive contact with referring offices. Some of the ways this can be done include:
   • Distribute a Referrer Newsletter. This doesn't have to be a fancy newsletter with a masthead and columns on a dozen different topics. A simple letter to referring doctors informing them of a new technique, advancement, or service that your office offers may be more effective, and is certainly easier to produce than a full-blown newsletter.
   • Provide Customized Referrer Handouts to Your Referring Doctors. These are simple patient education sheets that your practice provides on the most commonly referred conditions. You then put the referring doctors' names and addresses on the sheets in addition to your practice's name and address as the recipient of the referral. These handouts will help the referring office educate patients about their condition and assist the patients in getting into your office.
   • Regularly Thank the Offices that Refer to You for Their Business.

These tips are simple, but when executed on a regular basis they can drive your referral business and build sales revenue. Start today and watch your referrals grow.

Michael Kidd, PT, owns Progressive Physical Therapy in Cleveland. For more information, contact .

References

1. Zahorsky D. Seven sure-fire ways to build your referral business. sbinforma­tion.about.com/cs/advertising/a/aa020203a.htm. Accessed December 21, 2007.
2. Joyce J, Kuperstein J. Improving physical therapy referrals. Amer Fam Physician. findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3225/is_7_72/ai_n15798271. Accessed December 21, 2007.