Be sure you are tracking referrals and thanking your existing patients and colleagues for referring new patients to your practice throughout the year.
The holidays are quickly approaching, and this can be an ideal time to give a holiday gift to the special people who have contributed to your practice’s success throughout the year.
A big part of a practice’s success is patient retention and patient growth by acquiring new patients. New patients are important to every practice, and knowing how those new patients find your office among other offices in the area is critical.
Some new patients may be referred to your office by a friend or neighbor. You can evaluate which of your existing patients referred new patients to your office by generating a Referred By Patient Report. You can run the report for the entire year and determine which existing patients referred the most new patients to your practice. You can also see which existing patients referred new patients that resulted in the highest amount of production. Once you have this information, you could send the referring patients a holiday gift thanking them for their support throughout the year. It’s a nice way to say thank you and encourage them to continue referring new patients to your practice in the future.
You can also generate the Referred By Doctor/Other Report and use the information from the report to thank the doctors who referred the most patients and the highest production patients. This is especially important for specialty offices who rely on referrals from other doctors, and the relationships specialists build with general dentists tend to dictate who the general dentist refers patients to the most.
You can track what gifts you send to referring patients as gratuity in the Referral Analysis in the Dentrix Office Manager so you don’t send the same gift to referring patients each year. You can also track the value of those gifts. For referring doctors, you can use the referral analysis to make notes about thank you gifts you’ve sent to them.
The holidays are always a good time to reflect on the past year and what you’re thankful for. This is a great opportunity to add thanking the patients and doctors who have helped your practice to grow to your end-of year tasks. Use Dentrix reports to find those referring patients and doctors and let them know how much you appreciate them this holiday season!
Learn More
For additional information, read the following:
- Grow Your Practice with Patient Referrals
- Manage Your Patient Referral Information in Dentrix
- Analyzing Referrals
By Charlotte Skaggs
Certified Dentrix Trainer and The Dentrix Office Manager columnist
Charlotte Skaggs is the founder of Vector Dental Consulting LLC, a practice management firm focused on taking offices to the next level. Charlotte co-owned and managed a successful dental practice with her husband for 17 years. She has a unique approach to consulting based on the perspective of a practice owner. Charlotte has been using Dentrix for over 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.
