3 Invisible Mistakes Destroying your Specialist Referral Network

This episode of the Dental Referral Marketing Podcast exposes three silent "invisible mistakes" that destroy specialist referral networks. 

1. communication black holes
2. team friction
3. patient hijacks

This episode provides actionable strategies to audit practice workflows, eliminate patient feedback delays, and plug referral leaks to stop losing referring doctors.

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Thanks for Listening! 

See you in the next weekly episode, posted Monday mornings at 8am est. time. "Referral Marketing made simple for Dental teams who want to grow!"

Michelle Hougland

Host - Dental Referral Marketing Podcast

CEO/Founder - Referral Conduit Software

michelle@referralconduit.com

https://stan.store/dentalreferralmarketingpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You do excellent clinical work. Your patients leave happy. Yet your referral numbers are dropping and you do not know why. Welcome to today's podcast where today we're going to be looking at three invisible mistakes destroying your specialist referral network. Most specialists think they're losing referring doctors because of clinical outcomes. But honestly, that's rarely the case. Doctors do not leave because of your hands. They're leaving, dare I say, because of your systems. Today we're going to expose the silent errors you may be making right now that are driving doctors away without them ever saying a word. Before we dive in, let's define what's an invisible mistake. Especially practice, this is a friction point in your communication or workflow. It's invisible to you, but it's glaringly obvious to the general dentist who sent you their patient. In this episode, we will break down these three hidden mistakes one by one. First, we're going to look at the communication black hole. Second, we'll talk about team friction. And third, we will cover the patient hijack. By the end of this quick episode, you will know exactly how to audit your practice and plug these referral leaks. Let's begin. For the black hole, poor communication flow. You treat the patient, but the referring doctor hears nothing from you in weeks. They're left in the dark. When the patient goes back to the general dentist for a cleaning, the dentist looks clueless because they do not have your chart notes yet. It makes them look bad to their patient. From boots on the ground in the field for many years among specialty practices, that communication and being able to send your letters and chart notes to your referring providers. I know it's a pain point. I've had many of my specialist providers reach out and ask if we have any recommended dictation services or any ways to streamline this process. Because when you're going through a lot of patients on a day-to-day basis, as I know you do, there's a lot of information that needs to go back and forth, not only between your exams, but if you're an office that also sees a hygiene patient, uh, such as a periodontist and the periomaintenance, you have a lot of communication that needs to continue to the referring provider. And I know if you've been practicing for any length of time, this has become probably a sore spot or a source of contention for you, or you've assigned it to one of your team members. But I dare to say this is a necessary evil, if we may call it that, to be able to continue to keep your referring providers in the loop. Now, the good thing is there is a lot of technology that's out there that can help streamline this process. I know a lot of you probably are still doing your letters or you have a quick little template, or maybe you've assigned your dental assistant to go in or your dental hygienist to make these updates for you, but it is extremely important. And the reason why your referring providers may see black hole if they're not getting updates. So send updates the moment the patient checks out. There are software tools out there. I know referral conduit has that opportunity where the patient is not only notified at the time that they've been referred and they keep in that loot from the time they left the general dentist till the time that they come to your office and then the time that they return back to the general dentist, but it will be able to help bridge that gap for you. Or just make sure if you're not ready for any type of software, you want to do letters and templates, regardless of how long you've been in practice and how time consuming it is to your day-to-day, is extremely important. Some communication is better than no communication. You do not want your office to be thought as the black hole compared to your competitor's office who continues to update your referring providers. Mistake number two, team friction, the front desk hurdle. The problem. When the referring practices are considering sending a patient over to you and they call your front desk team, your non-clinical team, when they answer the phone, are they short with them? Are they annoyed? Are they irritable? Is this really a great way to be able to welcome a referring provider to send a patient to your practice? I hate to say it over the years, I have heard this way too many times in my own ears when I'm in practices. And I can guarantee you it happens more than you probably know. And usually it may be a team member that is close to retirement or they've had a bad day, but this is a friction point. And when a referring provider or their referred patient calls in, are they welcomed with a virtual arms open wide, big smiling voice? We are so happy that you've referred a patient to us, and to go up and above the call of duty to make them feel welcomed and glad they called your practice. The truth is, referrals do not just come for the doctors. No matter how amazing you are in your clinical work and how outstanding it is, they come for the front team, your assistance. They come because it's the whole package. If your team makes their job harder, they will quietly steer patients to a different specialist. This is something I found when I'm consulting with dental specialty practices, when they're looking at the numbers and we're looking at some of your top referral sources over the last couple of years of your practice. And then they just quietly disappear. Then we start to dig deeper and we see, oh, well, we lost a front team member, and then we had to maybe go through two different people to be able to get the right person in for that position. Well, in that time, what type of experience was your referring providers receiving? Did they feel comfortable and confident that the gatekeeper, the front person greeting them when they're calling or when patients are walking into your practice? A great representation of you, the doctor, this behind the scenes working, trying to continue to keep your head above water and pay your team and keep your practice open in your community. This is something I find far too often. And doctors don't know this is happening. Or maybe you have a gut feeling. Maybe you have heard Sally on the phone and you kind of cringe as you walk into your office, just like, oh, I know I should talk to her about this one, but I'll save it for another day. I would say this is an urgent issue. This is something that unfortunately I have seen that sometimes specialists steer away from making those corrections or having those hard knee-to-knee, eye-to-eye conversations with your team to correct poor behavior. Maybe it's someone that you quote unquote inherited when you bought a practice and they, I don't know, they'd have a lack of better word, maybe a chip on their shoulder, or maybe you're a new provider coming out of school and you're still learning everything with the practice and not only being a specialist, but running your own practice. Now you have to deal with HR type issues like a team member who is a little grouchy on the phone. But this is an invisible mistake and needs to be quickly attended to. Also, having your manager, your practice administrator reach out to their manager or practice administrator and bridge that gap and give them that VIP experience, maybe even taking them to lunch and say, if you ever need anything, if you ever have any issues or any problems with being able to refer a patient over, we want to make your job easy. Please don't hesitate to call and contact me. And then the third thing is make sure that you're auditing and listening to your team as they're answering the phone calls. Now there's tools out there that you can also deploy that you can record phone calls and do team trainings. I know that there's some really great companies out there that will work with the teams. With front team members, the front team associate is usually the entry-level position to a dental practice. They are someone that may not have even come from dental before and maybe they had a great interview, but when the rubber meets the road and it's 3 p.m. on a Thursday, they are not the friendliest person, or they have two people at the desk and they can't hold their composure and they're treating patients or referring providers rudely. This is something that is an urgent matter that can cause your practice major production issues. If you lose one or two referral sources that you used to depend on to make sure your PL is looking nice and healthy with a lot of a cushion in between at the end of the month, this is something that needs your urgent attention. Mistake number three, the patient hijack, boundary crossing. The problem, you treat the patient for a referred issue, but then you spot other work and suggest treating it at your office. The friction, you just cross the line and threaten the general dentist's business. Trust may be gone instantly, and you will never get another patient from them. So that one or two extra services while that patient is in your chair without having communication with that referring provider could have cost you the whole referral source in general. This is something that I attribute to the Paradonist that I had the pleasure of working for for almost two decades. He taught me so much about dental referral marketing. And that was one thing he always said. I would much rather lose a patient than a referral source. And this is under the same premise. I would much rather do just a smaller treatment for the patient than to lose the potential of all the referred patients that are coming after that patient if I take good care of them. So what you can do, the fix, keep a strict boundary in this situation. You can do a comprehensive treatment plan, which you should, but before recommending any treatment on your specialty that is needed up and above the referral, you need to stop and reach out to that referring provider. Even possibly depending on the relationship, maybe your office manager or your administrator can call their office manager or administrator and then just say, hey, Dr. Smith, has your patient here that you referred over? Thank you so much. The patient's in the chair and he's noticed some other areas of concern. And we just want to confirm, how would you like us to proceed? Is this something you would like us to treat, or would you like us to refer them back to you? And that is something that, yes, you may lose one or two procedures that potential are in your chair right then, but you're gonna gain their trust. And then they're gonna feel more comfortable to continue to send more patients your way. And it's something that maybe later, if they say, no, no, just treat that tooth number 19, that's the only one right now, but thank you for calling. Then maybe in a future opportunity, you take this doctor out to dinner, take him out to lunch, or maybe just bring lunch in to go over cases with them. And then just start bridging that gap of, hey, if there's other cases in this situation, how would you like me to handle this? And then just see if you can continue to steer them towards being able to allow you to do more services. Maybe sometimes it's just the way that they're flowing with their treatment plans and the way maybe it's an office that heavily maximizes the use of insurance benefits for their patients. So doing anything out of the norm from what's been estimated is completely going to throw off their system. And I'm telling you, if you throw off their system and you have an office manager or an insurance coordinator or a treatment coordinator who is relying on benefits and they get an angry patient that calls back in a couple of months because that claim that they were counting on does not go through, because surprise, the specialist's office did a lot more than we referred them over for, you are gonna lose because that team member is gonna come and give your referring doctor an earful. So we just want to make sure that we're looking at it from all angles. And even though, yes, you may have that opportunity of that patient in your chair right then, if they're being referred over, they're being entrusted to your care just for what they've been referred over for, unless you have a conversation with them after. This is something that I would stay clear and keep a strict boundary on crossing over for doing more treatment than they've been recommended. So, in conclusion for today, protecting your referral network does not require a total practice overhaul. It just requires closing these three simple gaps so referring doctors feel safe, informed, and respected. Should you have any questions or want to take a deeper dive on this topic, book a call with me. I have a link in the show notes below. I'll be happy to spend an hour discussing how this applies to your dental specialty practice. Also, make sure your team signs up for my free monthly level up training where we go over different things such as designing event referral flyers, how to be able to work on referral systems in your practice, and so on. It's completely free. Check out the link in the show notes below. Every month is a different training, and I'd love to see you there. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of the Dental Referral Marketing Podcast. This is Michelle Hoagland, CEO of Referral Conduit Software. I post podcast episodes every Monday morning at 8 a.m. Eastern, where we make referral marketing simple for dental teams who want to grow. I'll see you in the next episode. Have a great day, everyone. Bye bye.