How to Get More Referrals for your Direct Primary Care Practice
Direct primary care doctors often want to know how to get more referrals to their direct primary care offices from the local healthcare ecosystem. How do you get the nursing staff and discharge coordinators to send patients from the hospital, emergency department, specialist clinics, or urgent care clinics to your direct primary care practice?
One good way is to go to those places and meet with the nursing staff, front desk staff, and physicians. Our practice in Detroit is called Plum Health DPC, and we've gone to all of the local urgent care clinics and emergency departments to make sure that our practice is listed as a Primary Care office accepting new patients. We’ve also visited the handful of specialist offices in the Detroit community to make them aware of our services.
What you should bring with you:
A flyer describing your services, usually an 8.5 x 11 inch page with information on the front and back. Bonus points if it’s in full color.
A stack of business cards with your name, title, email address, street address, and phone number.
Your smiling, positive, outgoing self. Use positive body language to communicate that the patients being referred to your office will be in good hands.
To go above and beyond, maybe you could act like a drug rep and bring lunch - a box of Jimmy Johns or something similar - to the emergency department break room and introduce yourself to all of the ED workers. You can bring lunch to the specialists’ offices and urgent care clinics in your community as well.
Good luck with your journey! - Dr. Paul Thomas
Here’s a portion of our promotional flyer that we hand out to our local businesses and local healthcare ecosystem, like the emergency departments, specialist offices, and urgent care clinics.