Field work
What to bring to a referring office
Referring offices are busy, and an unannounced visit with nothing to offer interrupts their day. The visits that build referrals bring something the office can use.
Referrals have grown more common over time. A Harvard study of national data found the share of physician visits that ended in a referral rose from 4.8% in 1999 to 9.3% in 2009, about 105 million referral visits a year. That means busy front desks, referral coordinators juggling dozens of practices, and very little time for anyone who stops by without a reason.
The people who decide where a referral goes are often not the physicians. Referral coordinators, front-desk staff and practice managers handle the paperwork, and they remember which offices make their jobs easier.
Useful things to bring
- A referral card. Your direct scheduling line, fax number and exactly what to send with a referral. This is the item most likely to stay at the front desk.
- A when-to-refer guide. A one-page guide, written and approved by your physicians, on the symptoms and findings that warrant a referral to your specialty.
- A fast-track card. How to get a patient seen this week, and what qualifies.
- An open-slot alert. If you can see new patients soon, say so. Coordinators want to know who has openings.
- A patient handout. Why the patient is being referred, what to bring and what the first visit will be like. Patients who understand the reason are more likely to keep the appointment.
- A lunch-and-learn menu. A short list of educational talks your physicians can give to the office's clinicians.
A few ground rules
- Your physicians approve everything. Every guide and handout should reflect how your doctors actually practice.
- Keep it educational. Referral relationships in healthcare are governed by federal and state rules. Bring information, not gifts, keep any meals modest and within your compliance policy, and never connect anything of value to referrals.
- Protect patient privacy. Discuss specific patients only through secure, appropriate channels, never in a waiting room or on a handout.
- End every visit with a next step. A date for a lunch-and-learn, a contact to follow up with or a question to answer. A visit without a next step is hard to build on.
Why it matters for patients
When a referring office knows exactly when to refer, how to reach you and what to tell the patient, the patient arrives informed, with the right records, at the right time. That is the point of every visit.