In the latest episode of Inside Reproductive Health, Stephanie and Griffin explore if MD & DO referrals are still king or have been overthrown by internet resources as top referral sources. Knowing where most referrals come from can help you build an effective strategy to capture more new patients and convert those referrals at a higher rate. We also layout 6 pillars for an effective referring provider strategy that you can either give to your physician liaison to start implementing or outsource to a company like Fertility Bridge. At the end of the day, if your PL does not have a system, you are leaving money on the table.
Listen in to the full episode to learn:
The 6 pillars of an effective referring provider strategy
Make sure your reporting is in line and cohesive
Ancillary services
Building the right content
Having the right events
Outreach of referring sources
Converting referrals that come to you
The % of patients actually referred by a doctor (and what that means for your clinic)
If a physician liaison is needed
How to attribute referral sources properly
Additional Resources:
Referral Pattern Blog Post: https://www.fertilitybridge.com/inside-reproductive-health/the-6-pillars-of-the-fertility-referring-provider-system
To learn more about our Goal and Competitive Diagnostic, visit us at FertilityBridge.com
Transcript
Griffin Jones: [00:00:40] On today's episode, Stephanie's on, we talk about our six pillars for referring provider strategy. It's important to get these right before you hire a PL if you're thinking about that, if you're a big company, you've got dozens of PLs, it's important to get this right. And in working in this framework to make sure that you're getting the results that you want before I get into this topic, today's shout out, goes to Dr. Paul Lin from SRM in Seattle, because go Bills, that's why in today's show, we talk about these six different pillars of why it's even important to still address physicians as the referral source that they are, but not to put them on the pedestal of being all or nothing. Talk about the facts beyond that and then we break down each of the six pillars even more finitely. So I hope you get a lot of actionable advice from this episode. Let me know if you need any help and enjoy.
Hi, Stephanie.
Stephanie Linder: [00:01:38] Hi Griffin.
Griffin Jones: [00:01:39] Welcome back to talk about referring providers. But before we get into that topic, I do have to tell you that I got a call from someone that I'd never met before. A doctor on the complete other side of the world who listens to the show. And we were talking about other topics, but one of our more recent episodes came up and he said that he agreed with you about the referring wellness providers being listed on the website. And I knew most people were going to agree with you. I even said that in the episode, but I also knew that it would stroke your ego if I brought that up.
Stephanie Linder: [00:02:15] Yeah, it does. So thank you for sharing that. That's a good start to the podcast.
Griffin Jones: [00:02:18] Yeah, well, now I have to find something to ruin it for you and be pedantic about something to be right about and catch you off guard later in today. But we are in your wheelhouse about referring providers. So I might have my work cut out for me. The reason why we're talking about referring providers is because I've seen the attitude shift from even when I first started talking to people in 2014, 2015, still many people thought that referring providers were everything that all the good patients came from referring providers, that it was like, it was almost singular as a referral source. And now I'm hearing people say that it doesn't matter anymore. And that's just not true either. I've kind of seen the pendulum swing here and we have some facts. We were doing an abstract.
And then in spring of 2020, when the world started to go, we were going to submit it to ASRM 2020. And then when the world took a turn, I decided that was not anywhere near the top of our concerns at the time, but we did get 250. Responses from REI patients, all people who had done at least one consult at an REI practice from all over the U S and what were the facts that we learned from them?
Stephanie Linder: [00:03:38] Yeah. So we asked these patients several questions and one of the first questions was, were you referred by a physician? Yes or no. And 60% of the REI patients said, yes, they were referred by a physician now that's still a lot, but it's still very far, of course, from a hundred percent. So then we asked another question, okay of all the different ways you can learn about a practice, so physician referrals, online search, you know, online reviews, there was seven or eight options, which of these were the most influential? And what was really interesting MD referrals while still number one, only 21% of people said that was the most influential and what was number two and three was also really important data.
So it, number two was location coming in at 20%. So neck and neck with the MD referrals, and then number three was recommendation from a friend or relative coming in at 19%. So very interesting to look at this data in this way.
Griffin Jones: [00:04:41] So Step another way, 40% of your patients on average are not being referred by a doctor at all.
And that's huge, but it still is really important. It's still 21% of people say that it's the most important physician referrals are the most important influence. Their decision of an REI practice. So that's still important, but it just a lot closer and a lot more segmented than we may have otherwise thought.
And I know that I have to make an important disclaimer here, which is when Stephanie and I say MD referrals. We mean physician referrals. We mean MD and DO referrals. There's a couple of DOs listening that are like, what the hell, man? Sorry. That sometimes really. It's just quicker than saying MD and DO referrals.
And then we don't have to say physician referrals, doctor referrals all of the time. So that's an important distinction to make you have multiple reasons that people are selecting the practice. You do need to know which is the single most influential. And that's why you have to do multi-source attribution.
So many people listening are doing single source attribution. You're asking people, how did you hear about us? I'm sorry. That's a very dumb question. I've talked about this on the podcast before I've argued with Rob Taylor about it. Who's an amazing marketer and you should listen to his episode, but single source attribution is like saying which beer got you drunk after you've had 12 beers. It was the 12th beer that got me drunk. Well, sorta, but not really. And so when you get the best of both worlds in multi-source attribution He's asking people binary. Did you see or hear us hear yes or no? What about here? Yes or no. And then all of those different options become the options where you ask of all of these, which is the most influential in making your decision.
And when you do that, you can start to see your patient's referral patterns change over time. So you don't swing from MD/DO referrals are everything to, now the internet is everything. You can see the nuance and the truth is that people are coming to you from a lot of different ways.
And they're making the decision from a lot of different ways, but they tie in together and you need to be able to see that now that we've shown you, that it's not the most important, but, or it's not exclusively important. It's irresponsible to view it as exclusively important. Physician referrals still are super important.
We're here to talk about that strategy because of it. What are the six pillars that build a referring provider Strategy.
Stephanie Linder: [00:07:24] So the six pillars that build our strategy around referring providers are number one. You have to make sure that your reporting is in line and cohesive. And we'll talk about that.
Number two is all the ancillary services. That's inclusive of things like semen analysis and HSGs and getting those ready to go. So OB's or any kind of physician can refer very easily to you. We'll talk about that as well. Number three is building the right content and number four is having the right events to promote and support that content.
Number five is the outreach with all of the referring sources and number six is actually making sure and following through that, those referrals actually come to you and convert.
Griffin Jones: [00:08:10] We're going to go through these six different pillars. And it's important to do that because one of the questions we get asked all the time is should I hire a PL or not?
And that's a secondary question first is that you have to have the system. Then you can decide if you need one person, if it's worth it, having one person working that system most PLs will not be able to just set up a system like this. Some will, some PLs are worth their weight in gold. I think that many PLs are walking billboards and you're straight up wasting your money on them, but some of them are true physician liaison. So they are actually the liaison of the relationship between yourself and the other physicians in your area. They should be treated like gold. They should be compensated well. And if you're listening and that's not, you come work for Fertility Bridge because we're going to be, we're going to be opening up that client operational marketing seat to be its own position.
I might even already have that commercial in this podcast. I don't know if it's done. But Steph gotta be busy managing accounts. So if that's you and you want to do that for multiple clinics, you can come work for us. But for most people, I just don't, they're just not good at they're walking billboards.
So first before we hire somebody to go do that, we have to have them in a functional system. And then you don't have to worry about the walking billboard part, either fulfill the system or they don't. So what is reporting built from Stephanie?
Stephanie Linder: [00:09:38] So when we look at reporting, we want to be sure there's very specific KPIs that are enjoined with it.
So here, we're looking at two specific KPIs. So what is your new patient volume and what is the total number of referrals, but within that number of referrals, we also want to look at the percentage of attribution, so the patient reporting. So these are the things that we'll focus on and you want to make sure that everything ties up to these two things. I guesse.
Griffin Jones: [00:10:07] And if somebody is listening, Hey, that's three KPI's. It's like, well, oh, well there's two main ones. And one of them gets split. So if your practice or your goals, aren't large enough to do a lot of outreach. Then you just need to measure these two things you need to know, okay, what are my new patient volumes easy?
And then I need to know the number of referrals, but they should be measured against each other in the ways that Stephanie says, if you don't have such big goals for growth, you can more or less stop there. You don't even necessarily need to do the rest, but before you put any substantial effort and resources into outreach, you should be reporting on activity across a few different categories.
So, okay. So we've got the main things to report on volume referrals and how referrals are split up. But once we decide we're going pass, what we're actually going to be doing enough outreach. Then we need to be monitoring the results of that activity. And you could break that up into six categories, which are what Stephanie?
Stephanie Linder: [00:11:14] So there's really three main reports. You will, of course, want to look at the people that are referring to you. And within those that are referring to you, you've not want to, not only want to look at the practice level, but you also want to look at your top 20 providers. So I say top 10 practice, top 20 providers.
And the reason is that there will be some folks that there's only an, a practice of 10 OB GYN, maybe only one is referring. And so they would normally fall down to the bottom of the practice lists. But if you also look at it for providers, you can target and, you know, change your strategy a little bit to get that top referring provider, to start speaking to their partners and kind of spread the referral, use them to spread the referral patterns within that OB practice.
So that one is the most important, but I was the second most important is who are your targets for those that don't refer so same strategy. We need to look at the top 10 practices that don't refer. And then who are the top 20 providers that you want to target, whether they're in or not in that practice?
The next one is something that I don't see our clients do very often, so I wanted to bring it up. Who do you share patients with, but they have not referred? So all of your patients that get pregnant will need to, well that most will need to be sent back to an OB GYN for care and graduation. Very often those folks that you send back to, if they're pregnant, if they have successful pregnancies, you're naturally having a word of mouth referral and building your brand and reputation.
Hopefully your patient is speaking highly of you. But I was always shocked that people don't look at this list more often, because for me that would be the lowest hanging fruit. Hey, I'm sending patients back to why aren't we starting kind of a circle of referrals. So that would be the third, a report.
Looking at it again in the same way, both at the practice level and then also at the provider level.
Griffin Jones: [00:13:23] I want to make that distinction for the listener too, because it wasn't immediately obvious when you and I were first talking about this, the referring targeting, not I thought, well, what's the difference between the non referring target at first?
And of course you could use this non referring patient sharing group to inform your target list, but it is kind of different, it's you have people that are, because we know that 40% of people are not being referred by a doctor. Well, they're still going to an OB when they have to deliver, they probably have a gynecologist, and those are the people that you share patients with.
And so if they're not referring to you, you still have that common patient that you can use to build that referral pattern. That was an important distinction. That you made that I think makes sense. If people want to see this visually go to the Fertility Bridge blog, you can see this article where we put in the different columns.
So you can see the different axes between practice and provider and then referring non-referral target, non referring and sharing patients. And so. If you're doing all of these things, you want to record them in you want to record your activity in a CRM. If you have somebody that's out there calling on these people and they are actually working a top 20 and top 10 lists for all of these, that's a lot.
You want to record that activity in a customer relationship management, a HubSpot or Salesforce, you record the results, meaning who's actually referred in the EMR that, so if you've got your reporting set up, then we can start to look at other things that bring in referrals and what comes next on our pillars.
Stephanie Linder: [00:17:44] So the second pillar is ancillary services. And I want to share a statistic that I love sharing with our clients and really is kind of an aha moment is that 30% of patients that see your practice or a referral semen analysis or HSG will return to your practice for fertility consult within one year.
So this is a huge opportunity to get a referring MDs used to your practice. A lot of clinics don't do these ancillary services very well. Painful. So if you can make this process seamless, you will win over a new physician and it's a great entry point to get them to build trust and start referring for that initial consult.
Griffin Jones: [00:18:27] So what are the steps in order to build that offering?
Stephanie Linder: [00:18:32] So we broke this down into four steps. The first thing is you just have to begin accepting outside semen analysis and HSG referrals. Most clinics do this, but I'm always surprised at folks that don't have an HSG machine or don't necessarily have andrology on staff.
So first make sure that's available and offered at your clinic. Second you want to promote that separately separate from, you know, the typical marketing brochure or patient facing brochures you drop off, you need specific content, and we'll get into that a bit later that promotes these services.
How do you send a semen analysis patient? What's the turnaround time? Make that very clear and contents. The third would be to provide a really good service. So your turnaround time at maximum to get these results back to patients. Should be 72 hours, if not sooner. And the fourth is educating these referring providers on what to do with these results.
And this can come in a lot of different ways through content, through events, through consults. I see a lot of people use our advanced providers to share this information back with the referring providers clinics. But it's clear that you educate them and be that source of education so they can begin to build trust and credibility.
So you can begin to build trust and credibility with these referring provider sources.
Griffin Jones: [00:19:53] Okay, so we've talked about reporting, we've talked about ancillary services. What's the third pillar?
Stephanie Linder: [00:19:57] So the third pillar is content. So once you've identify these ancillary services, you need a way to promote them as I referred to.
So you need to create this content, but even before jumping into the content, you need to make sure your foundation is set and you know, your brand guidelines are set. If that is not established, you need to work with fertility range, our work with your marketing team to make sure those brand guidelines are crystal clear.
But if that is establish, what you want to do is make sure that you pull out there were the three unique differentiators of your clinic, be of interest to the referring provider. Now I'm not talking about the same three differentiators that you talk about with patients, although it's quite possible they can overlap, but the three differentiators will fall into three categories.
And these three categories are your performance. This is an encompassing of success rates. What unique technology do you do? What happens differently in your lab? Is there anything unique with embryology? The second one will be all about the patient care. So this is where you get a chance to talk about your staff.
You as a physician and the way you communicate with patients. And then the third is the access to care. So are there financing options? Is it easy to get an appointment? Do you take a wide variety of insurance or if you don't, why don't you? So those. Differentiators are he to pull out again that are different from just the unique differentiators that you talk about to your patients.
Griffin Jones: [00:24:08] And this is where you can get really creative with things too. It's not just the pamphlet anymore. And I think you've all gotten the idea now that you're seeing so many of your colleagues destroyed Tik TOK and destroy Instagram that oh, doctors really are using this social media platforms. The rest of you that aren't doing that are using LinkedIn, like it's 2010 Facebook.
And so your doctors are in these places, this word is where you use your creative, because you're going to put them in different places, your referral pads, your referring provider page, which should be on your website. You should have a differentiator checklist, a preconception panel, and then how to interpret the essay guide.
And if you want to talk about that last one, I'll yield the floor to use absence. You said often find that's something that's missing.
Stephanie Linder: [00:24:59] Yeah, absolutely. So what often happens, not every clinic, but a lot is that they'll send the results of the seam and analysis back to the provider. And the patient is just unsure where to get the interpretation of the results.
Every REI listening to this podcast will agree with this when, how many times does a patient call you and can you give me my results of the semen analysis and your staff is tasked with no, you have to go to your OB for that. And that patient is very confused and that I've seen that lead to bad reviews on the fertility clinics page when it's not the responsibility of the REI, it's a responsibility of the person who ordered the semen analysis.
So the point of this all being is that if you can educate your OBS through written content through a guide, Through a video that says, this is how you talk about the semen analysis results with your patients. This is what a total modal count means. That will just prevent that from happening, which has such a ripple effect into your community, your referrals, your online reputation, et cetera.
So when Griffin talks about, you know, the pieces of content. That one is one of the most key ones that is not really done well in most clinics.
Griffin Jones: [00:26:17] Should all be cogent with the rest of your marketing. You shouldn't be here's doctor outreach over here. That's just something we do to, we call on people. We invite them out to dinner every now and again, it's part of your brand.
It's part of the content that you create and getting creative is really important to have creative people and in messaging. These things is what helps you get apart from the herd that is doing the exact same things and having the same diminishing returns. So once we've got our content, now we can use that as a baseline for events, which is our fourth pillar, when you've got really good content, then you can create events about that. About those. And so what are some of the different events that people can build upon beyond lunches and dinners?
Stephanie Linder: [00:27:10] Right. And I'm glad you made that caveat Griffin, because I think a lot of folks just think, you know, for sales reps or PLLs or physician liaisons that, oh, they just do lunches all day long.
And with the advent of COVID, all of a sudden folks are like, oh, there's no access. And they've given up, well, it's time to get creative. It's time to stop using lunches can be good strategically, but it's time. You know, just throwing $400 at the window and seeing what sticks. So the four events that you can leverage is the provider to provider meetings.
One-on-one I know we want to be useful of your time as a provider, but that sometimes they'll go further. Even if it's a virtual meeting than a lunch with 30 staff and no doctors. The second is provider to group visits. This can absolutely happen. And where a lunch strategically would make. But also a lunch does not always have to be done.
It could be something coffee in the morning, a snack people also just want to come and meet the provider for educational value. So if you can come and give them some kind of value or something, they'll learn that they can take to their patients. That's where you'll see the most ROI. The third is open houses.
I know Griffin, you challenged me on this a little bit. People want to see what happens behind the curtain, AK in the lab. And if you have a beautiful space, you have a lab with really cool technology. It's a huge opportunity to show this off, now this would be strategically used with a new doctor, a new location opening.
But I still think they are very useful and the last would be single topic, educational events. So it ties back to what I said is that OB's and you know, sometimes primary care providers, wellness providers are desperate for education around fertility. So if you can say, look, we're doing a virtual event, an in-person event, we're going to talk about, you know, the five markers that you need to look at for your fertility patients, people want to come to that. They want to learn and they want to meet you. So make it valuable.
Griffin Jones: [00:29:09] All four of these can be turned into they can all be in person, they can all be virtual and go ahead and turn them into a lunch and dinner. If you want to. All I'm saying is the content of each of them should be good enough that you don't have to be buying somebody lunch or dinner if it's not relevant.
Okay. So we're making our way through our six pillars. We've talked about reporting. We talked about ancillary services like HSG and essay. We've talked about content. We've talked about the events that you build. Upon and beyond that content. So what is the actual outreach like?
Stephanie Linder: [00:29:42] what's important to know as even with the best physician liaison in the world, especially as a newer practice, new location, new doctor, no one can replace the true REI and their relationship with a physician.
So your reputation must be trusted in order to really build and accelerate the referral network. Bottom line is you need to be accessible. You need to be present and you do need to communicate with these referring providers. So there are some places where the PL just can't fit in for you or replace you.
And so this would be allowing residents to do rotations. Just this, the relationships you have with medical schools, shadowing, and coming to visit your practices because eventually those. The OBS of the future. All the relationships that you made in residency are so valuable as you go into your future practice, our into your practice.
And the third would be your memberships in the specialty society. You need to show up to those. That's crucial to make those relationships after hours. And then also it's the grand rounds and the journal clubs. Again, you're educating the doctors of the future. And so what you do now does pay off three, four years down there.
Griffin Jones: [00:31:03] It's this ties into the content via events and everything else. Because as a referring as a physician who is referring, it was being referred to by other physicians. It's your relationship. And the more that you have to build upon and include the rest of your team and the rest of your practice, the more you are extending that relationship of which someone else can be the liaison.
And even though it's not your field, you can kind of get the example from what Stephanie and I do. Many people bought Fertility Bridge for Griffin because people heard me on the podcast, et cetera. But guess what? I don't manage accounts at Fertility Bridge, Stephanie does and part of the reason that we're able to make that transition is one Stephanie's in the first sales call with people.
So even before somebody becomes a true client or at least in the goal diagnostic, She's in there. And so people are meeting her. If we decide somebody's going to move forward, we bring our project manager into this second meeting so that they're meeting these folks before we even move on. And since you haven't been on the podcast, Stephanie people are prospects. Oh yeah Stephanie, she's on the podcast with you. And so it's even more familiar to people. So you were including these other people with you in the content so that you can distribute the relationship.
And it's almost like a boomerang with the content, because not only are you being featured in the content, you're also contributing to it. And you're also getting your orders as far as our philosophy from it. So you're contributing, you're receiving and that's should be true for the entire group.
So all of our points of view, we are really firming out as you've been able to see. So when. Stephanie's talking to somebody there's a lot more for her to go off of Fertility Bridge knowledge than just, oh, this is what I think Griffin would say. And so by you really participating in the content in the events, you're creating a cannon, a Bible, or an authority for which your people can both contribute and they also have their orders to go off of from there. So I harped on that for a little bit, but I just don't think it can be stressed enough. You are the person from which people have the relationship. They don't want to make the substitute if you just drop it on them. But if you bring in the other people and they trust them, then it's a much smoother transition and you can do it too.
From the ways that we talked about the ways that your PL is going to do this is through total office calls, updating the target accounts, they should be also updating the wellness providers. They should be touching these people twice a month. They should be doing the coordination of the content and events, and they should also be checking up on those referrals after those events.
So that brings us to our sixth and final pillar. What is referral? Follow-throughs Stephanie?
Stephanie Linder: [00:34:13] Yeah. I want, we'll get into that in a second, but Griffin, I want to make a point too, is that when you say, you know, your senior physicians bringing in. There are supporting staff. It's of course it's a physician liaison or the marketing team if they have it.
But this is also great for when you have a new physician, join your practice, you as the seasoned physician or a medical director, bringing the new physician in almost as to say together. Like you can trust them, just like you trust me. And that's also how you start to build a book of business and see the ROI on that new fellow or that new position.
And you almost give your blessing. I think that's really important because that's a really important thing to any medical director that is hiring new doctors. Like they need to get them busy as quickly as possible. And that's one way. But going on to the referral follow through is, okay, great, we're getting people to refer to you now. It's how can I, how do we keep them happy? So there's four key things that you need to do to make sure that this follow through happens. Kind of going old school with the first one is sending a thank you note for that first referral. Now we're talking about people who have never referred to you before and start referring.
So the old school written thank you, notes, Griffin. I know you're a big fan. But it goes a very long way and people just don't do it anymore. So Hey, Dr. Jones, thank you for the referral. The second is just making sure that you are tracking your semi monthly touch points twice a month in your CRM. And you're checking in, you know, this is what's updated with your referral.
This is some new collateral we have, et cetera. The third is the post console or referral note that is sent back to the OB or primary care doctor immediately following the patient's console.
Griffin Jones: [00:35:53] Talk a little bit about how that's different from the thank you note?
Stephanie Linder: [00:35:57] So thank you. Note comes after, you know, you get the referral, let's say, you know, your PL or you as a physician or whomever, it shouldn't be checking weekly to say, okay, Dr. Jones sent me a patient for the first time it's marked in the EMR. Great, I'm sending them a thank you note right away to say this patient booked their console, thank you so much, you know, you don't have to get as detailed, although some people do to say the consult actually in six weeks, we'll keep you updated.
But the post consult referral note six weeks later when that console it happens with the physician. It's the physician's duty to say, okay and they have their specific criteria, again, we don't want to get too clinical, but there's specific criteria that say, okay, this is what they were diagnosed with, this is what we discussed. This is their plan of treating. And maybe they even less, like some of the genetic testing that they're planning to do, each clinic will be a little bit different, but it's basically a note to update the OB so they can keep it in their records to say, okay, my patient, I referred them.
They actually had the console. This is what they're moving forward with, whether it be IVF, third party services, et cetera. So it's a way to keep them updated on their patient. And then a way for them to know that eventually they'll be coming back to them for pregnancy care. So very easy to do this when you're a new practice or you're not busy.
This one often gets pushed to the side as a practice gets busier. And so the key is to create a workflow in your practice that this is templated a bit, or this becomes a part of your operations and it doesn't get pushed to the side. Once you get busy.
Griffin Jones: [00:37:34] There you go, there are your six pillars for referring provider strategy, reporting, ancillary services, content events, outreach, and the referral follow through. You need this system before you hire a PL if you're thinking about doing that, if you have a PL or multiple PLs, and you're not seeing the results that you want, or you have no idea what the results are its because one or more of these pillars are broken in the system. If you would like Stephanie and my help and Fertility Bridge's help, we can talk about that in a gold diagnostic, $600. It's quick, it's easy. You can make sure your people are on the right track. And hopefully this podcast was $600 of value just listening to it, Steph, thanks for coming on and going over this with us. And I look forward to getting into more detail in future episodes.