Practice Outreach

Academy of Chiropractic’s 


MD Referral Program 



From the Desk of

William J Owens Jr. DC, DAAMLP, CPC

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MD Referral Program.  


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Consultation #13

PRACTICE OUTREACH

This is where the fun starts.  Once you identify the offices that are friendly, open to work with you and interested in what you have to say, then we want to focus on building that relationship from an academic perspective on a more PERSONAL LEVEL.  We stay in the academic realm until we have a good opportunity to switch to more personal items and further build the personal relationship.  This can happen quickly or it can take some time.  Don’t worry about the time, think about the process, it has to take its course.  Some will move fast, others will move slower and some relationships don’t develop at all.  Practice outreach encompasses all aspects of clinical care and at this point is where you specialize your academic outreach with the Bimonthly Flyers from a “Generalized – one size fits all approach” to a specific academic and now CLINICAL approach.  So in a sense you are now taking what you have been showing them in the flyers and applying it to the patients of theirs that you are seeing from other referral sources OR the ones that they send you.   You are becoming a consultant for their primary care or medical specialist office now…working to help them triage their patients, manage referrals and keep them updated on the latest research while reporting to them on their patients.  The video in the Membership Portal #24 has more information on this if you are confused.  Make sure that your staff has watched it as well – this is your training system.  I would make them watch it at least 3 times until they can discuss the process with you. 

This most important thing to remember is to NOT overdo your outreach.  You will be missing opportunities to grow and get more new patients if you are spreading yourself to thin going to too many offices at one.  This is particularly important when you are the primary treating DC in the practice.  You have lots to juggle and if you don’t plan out how fast you are doing things; it can get away from you.  Then you are back on the “On Again, Off Again” train – lots of new patients, no outreach, less new patients, then outreach again…over and over.  Within this relationship comes the MD lunches for the offices, this is important since you want to start building relationships with the Staff, Mid-level Providers as well as the MD, but always remember that Staff and Mid-levels are often more important than the MDs in a practice, this is particularly true in Primary Care offices. 

For offices that are referring, you need to schedule a lunch to visit and re-connect at least quarterly, for me especially for the big referring clinics I do 8 weeks.  You can stay connected in the mean time via email and text to the providers, stopping by with coffee for staff AND AND AND sending patient reports to them if they want them. Some MD offices don’t care; others want the initial only etc.  You should ask them, “What is the best way for me to report to you regarding referrals?”.  This is a powerful question because it assumes that they are going to refer.  Every practice is different and as an example, I get many patient referrals from MD offices that don’t even want to see the patient, they triage right over the phone to us, the only thing they want is that the PATIENT DOES NOT COME BACK WITH SPINE PAIN!