GP's like Bill are busy and tend to refer when they are reminded of you. A patient comes back and raves about your office and you get two more referrals. A hygienist tells him he should look at the patient's perio problem and he refers.

The problem is how do you stay in his mind without pestering him. We will give you ways to improve visibility without pestering him.

The other problem could be he just doesn't see enough reasons to refer. The first step is to draw him out and learn where he is really coming from regarding referrals. What will motivate him to send more? What are problems preventing him from referring more consistently? These are questions which need to be answered with specially designed questions.

We have specially prepared questions to draw the newly referring doctor out on a number of key topics. This gets the relationship off on the right foot.

The purpose of the "draw out" lunch is to lay a solid foundation for your new relationship. It is also to give us information to help in planning the right follow up steps to take.

Thus a lunch can center around family, vacation plans, or the last few cases you have mutually treated. It's all very nice but your referral relationship has not improved and therefore your referrals will not increase.

The answer is to introduce the meeting in an entirely different manner. Then have a carefully prepared agenda which is designed to get the GP confiding in you on issues relating to referrals. Together, we will work up the agendas for each lunch and practice them with you until they are natural.

The relationship you have started building in the lunch will not lead to a long lasting gain unless correct follow-ups are done. For example, if the doctor tells you he is tired of his patients "dropping through the cracks" in your office, then this must be solved.

We have programs to help solve the most common complaints GP's have. We also have programs to help fulfill their most common desires. These programs impress the GP and get results.

When the majority of a practice's income comes from a small number of doctors, the referral base is said to be "narrow". A narrow referral base puts the practice at risk because the loss of one doctor can have a severe impact on the practice. Narrow referral bases also tend to have highly fluctuating monthly referrals - way up one month and way down the next.

One of the most frequent complaints we hear is, "I know I need to broaden my referral base, but I don't have time in my schedule to do lunches."

First of all, our Joint Ventures are not "lunch programs" where you need to do huge numbers of lunches each month. The key is to make every interaction you have with a GP build a stronger relationship. We give you techniques so that you can build GP relationships through your day to day activities, (e.g. case acceptance, doctor calls, reports, staff interactions, etc.).

We will train a member of your staff to be your Relationship Coordinator and she will help you build relationships. She will ensure your day-to-day activities increase your referral relationships. She will also work with us to help you organize and implement marketing plans which build referrals.

Further, she can get to know the staffs of other practices and build professional relationships with them. These actions go a long way toward enhancing referral relationships.

You can't just neglect the issue. That could jeopardize your social friendship. What is needed is a carefully thought out and scripted meeting where the issue is brought up in a non threatening, relationship-building manner.

If the preparation and scripting are done well, these meetings will result in the doctor telling you why he doesn't refer. Once we know why, we can work with you to turn him into a referral source

1. Each case which fails to start, or does SRP but doesn't go on to needed surgery, means a loss of revenue and also a loss of the time you spent presenting the case.

2. Also each is a lost opportunity to interact with the GP regarding the case and build your relationship with him/her.

3. Most importantly, failed case acceptance can have serious consequences to the doctor's motivation to refer. The GP spends time and energy referring the patient to you. He then can be disappointed when the patient doesn't go ahead or only does part of what is needed. He can lose confidence in your patient skills and get the idea that he should only send the "very motivated" patients as the others won't go ahead anyway. The overall result is decreased referrals.

In the Joint Venture you select the doctors that we develop referral plans on. Usually they have good potential and are the "higher quality" doctors.

If you select one of these types of doctors to work, then the doctor plan will start with a very thorough "fact finding" mission. Our job is to ask as many relationship building questions as possible and look for an opening. If we find an opening where periodontics can fit into his treatment philosophy; it may have a chance of success.

The wrong approach would be to try and educate him to refer.

So the first thing you must do, even if you are busy, is have an ongoing program to build relationships. Our Joint Ventures build relationships through your day-to-day activities (e.g. Doctor calls, correspondence, and patient feedback.) We will show ways to make these build better relationships.

The second thing to do is to have someone on your staff help you in marketing your practice. See Answer #6 - Your Relationship Coordinator.)

If there are several periodontists, GP's have several choices for their patients. A number of GP's will start to categorize the different perios when making their referral decisions. (e.g.: Perio #1 is better with sensitive patients, Perio #2 gets the patients back to me faster, and Perio #3 is comprehensive but slow.) On the Joint Venture we will impress the GP that you are the specialist who listens to his/her needs and wants, and you are the one that fulfills them.

Yes, this program can not be done with more than one periodontist in each area.

We will circumscribe an area of exclusivity equal to your major referral radius.

Also, you can rest assured that all information given to us is held in the strictest confidence under a contractual confidentiality clause.

You can schedule a short consultation in one of four ways:

1. Go to the "Contact Us" Section and fill out the form requesting a 30 minute no charge consultation, by clicking here.

2. Call us toll free at (877) 957-5390
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3. Fax us toll free at (877) 957-6879.

4. E-mail us by clicking here.