If you enter your patients into your practice management software and you include their general dentist in their profile, then you are able to track your referred patients and referring providers. Not true - the referring dentist is not always the general dentist. Your practice management software (PMS) is designed to manage the clinical engagement with your patients, or the charting, scheduling, and billing of your patients. Referral Lab is designed to provide you a more business centric perspective of you patient engagement, or data analysis on referred patients and their treatment plans. The two software systems work side by side to offer you two different ways to review your practice.
Why Referral Lab? Below are a few examples of how Referral Lab is a business tool:
1. When A Referred Patient Is Entered
When a patient is referred to you, they are not always entered into your PMS until they have an appointment scheduled. Where do the referred patients exist in your practice before they schedule an appointment? Are they sitting in your email inbox? Are they sitting in a pile of faxes from referring providers? Are they listed on a spreadsheet? How do you ensure each referral is contacted and consistent follow up is happening? Your practice management software is not able to ensure that. No patients fall through the cracks nor does it offer you insight on your referring providers.
2. Referral Source & Referral Timing Conversion Tracking
Referral Lab is a business tool for your practice to enter all the referred patients as soon as you receive the referral. When you are entering that referral record, you are able to attach a referral source to the patient. Not only are you able to add the referring provider but Referral Lab tracks both the practice and provider. This is helpful when you are receiving referrals from a provider that works for more than one practice. You are able to track the date of the referral, the date of the consult, the date that treatment was presented, and when the patient accepts treatment the date that treatment was accepted.
3. Referring Providers Trends
Additionally, Referral Lab will help you track your top referring providers by the number of referrals in any given period, the number of referrals converted to accepted treatment, and the average case value for each referring provider. You will be able to track which referring providers have just started sending referrals, stopped sending referrals, if/when they are trending up or down in their referral numbers over specific time periods. You are able to focus your marketing efforts on the referring providers that may need a lunch and learn or more referral pads.
4. Referring Provider Ranking
You may believe you already know who your top referring providers are and you are right about those. You do not need software or reports to know. However, it is those providers that aren't on your "Top Provider" list that Referral Lab's metrics bring to light. Referral Lab's Referral Ranker was created to include a variety of metrics, not just volume and dollar amount. The Referral Ranker takes all information and equally applies all criteria to find the irrefutable rank of all your referring providers. When you are reviewing your Referral Ranker report, you will see that a number of providers are where you think they should be on your list. But then there are the outliers that will give you pause. Again, where Referral Lab shines is finding those providers who may not send a big volume of referrals, but those referrals they send say yes, and say yes quickly, and their average case value is higher than average! By shining a light on those providers you are able to say, "How can we get more referrals from this provider?" instead of "Why is this provider on my Top 10 Referring Provider list?" There will be a provider who may not send a large number of referrals, but all their referrals convert into accepted treatment plans. There may be a provider whose referrals are consistently large case sizes compared to the other case sizes of the other referring providers.
5. Community
When it comes to running a specialty practice, it may seem like you are isolated from other colleagues in similar practices. Your practice management software helps you connect your patients, their diagnoses, their billing information, and their health information in one place, but it does not help connect you to other specialists in the same fields or answer questions about their learned experience. Referral Lab is not just software; we have a community of hundreds of offices across numerous specialties who share their best practices. We host a variety of master mind meetings and events both virtual and in person. Monthly we host several zoom mastermind calls for treatment coordinators, marketing team members, general dentists, and Hub (call center) teams. The mastermind calls create a space where individuals who do the same job at different practices are able to share and learn from each other. The calls create an environment where individuals connect to others who are doing the same thing as they are. We also offer in person training courses at our office in Chicago.
All practices need practice management software, but only practices that are looking to improve efficiency based on specific and actionable data need Referral Lab. Many of our current subscribers maintained their own spreadsheets before they turned to Referral Lab for a more robust and complete portrait of their practices. We like to call Referral Lab an opportunity tracker; it's a way to monitor who is referring patients to you, what happens after those patients are referred to you, and what your team can do to best service those referring partners and patients.
