1. Why do you need to build Physician relationships?

Healthcare providers are most often amongst the busiest professionals, and face challenges with dedicating time to build relationships with fellow physicians. However, business relationship building is painstaking.

Fortunately, physicians and their staff can strengthen business relationships by sending thank-you notes and wishes to the physicians in the network. You can introduce your organization to the new physicians in the area by sharing some of your brochures and other collaterals, initiate a phone conversation with their office manager, and even share some of the referred patient details, to begin with.

2. How can hiring practice representatives help?

Besides the five important strategies outlined in the article, physicians need to take innumerable other initiatives to grow their professional relationships.

In today’s highly competitive landscape, physicians can hire practice representatives, who can effectively work on strategies to increase your practice revenues. It could be quite a sizeable investment to hire a full-time physician representative, given that an average doctor representative earns $58,150/per year-yet, it could turn out to be a meaningful investment, as the right professional can bring in ten to fifteen times the investment you have made on them.

Not all liaisons come with the same skill sets. Some representatives just make the routine phone calls and follow-ups, whereas the others build strong professionals relationships with the doctors and the staff; you need to find the latter. It’s essential that you take sufficient time to hunt for the right professional to effectively increase physician referrals.

What are the qualities of an excellent doctor liaison? A Vein Business report indicates six key qualities to look for before you hire a Physician liaison:

3. How do personalized gifts and invites work?

Personalization can go a long way in building a rapport with a referring physician’s office. Personalized and meaningful gifts can leave a footprint, but also ensure that your choice of gifts are appropriate and follow the legal guidelines for professional gifting. Holiday seasons are some of the best times to build those relationships. Chocolates, nuts and candies could be forgotten. Choose something more meaningful and personalized like, music for their office. You can even customize a gift based on a physician’s personal interest like—sports event or theater.

4. How can you take advantage of the power of networking?

Networking pays; and is definitely worth your time and effort. While bigger hospitals organize a host of networking events that provide ample space for physician networking, a smaller practice can think of creative ways to network with referring physicians. Treating another physician out to a dinner setting could be one of the ways of building professional relationships. Also, keep your business cards handy always, so you can pass it around to your fellow physicians when you meet them.

5. Why do you need to leverage digital communication tools?

"Communication–the human connection–is the key to personal and career success." – Paul J Meyer

The power of communication can never be underestimated, and just as in any business relationship, effective communication goes a long way in building your physician referral management system. Here’s how you can bridge the communication gaps with your referring providers.

Improving the availability and responsiveness of your office staff is key—to ensure that you don’t miss out on an opportunity when it pops up. Make sure that phone calls are answered at all times and especially important calls are returned by the physician.

Embrace technology! Digital technology is at the forefront of seamless and effective communication, and can be a priceless tool for care providers.

Physicians at times hesitate to provide referrals for a reason that the referred physician may send the patient elsewhere later. Communicate to them that your practice appreciates their reference and will send the patient back.

The strategies outlined above are just the initial initiatives you need to take to improve your physician referral management system. Once you increase the footfalls and get more patient referrals, you need to integrate an efficient referral management software into your patient engagement solutions to streamline operations and build a stronger referral management system.

SolvEdge’s patient engagement solutions pack exceptional features that support physician referral management. Built on a solid foundation of over 16 years of experience in healthcare solutions, SolvEdge captures the essence of complete patient engagement solutions, seamlessly integrated into our client’s workflows.

Check out our patient engagement solutions to see how your healthcare organization can optimize your referral management system.