Guest Column: Dr. Steven Neufeld, The Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Care Center
As a provider, I believe that one of the most significant advantages of CAO is our built-in internal referral network. With 170 of the region’s top physicians across all orthopaedic specialties, it’s pretty easy to support our partners in other care centers while keeping our patients within the organization, especially for those patients who have unique medical needs.
This network is valuable for both physicians and patients. Internal referrals build business opportunities and connection between our doctors, while ensuring patients receive a consistent, high-quality experience in every office.
But we have yet to make the most of this powerful tool. Each surgeon and care center has unique capabilities and offerings that may not be listed on our websites or come up in normal conversation, and so we are missing those referral opportunities.
Recently, I had a patient who needed a tendon transfer in their hand. Since not every hand specialist performs this procedure, I planned to send the patient to a physician outside CAO with whom I have a good rapport and referral relationship. I simply wasn’t aware of anyone in CAO that I could recommend. After asking around, I was able to refer my patient to Dr. Mustafa Haque at the Summit Orthopaedics care center – but I almost missed that opportunity.
As individual private practices, I am sure that we have all developed innovative or specialized services to better care for our patients. As an example, our office has invested in a number of unusual technologies and service offerings to better care for our patients – things that don’t fit in a physician bio or specialty description. These include:
- A shoe store, offering supportive shoes for our foot and ankle patients and staff trained in fitting shoes after surgery
- A laser machine to offer therapy for common conditions like fungus and athlete’s foot
- A Doppler machine to do basic tests to check blood flow
- An ESWT machine providing shockwave therapy for plantar fasciitis and other conditions
- An in-house orthotics lab
- In-house custom braces
- A CAT scan machine for the lower extremity
We would be happy to provide any of these services to patients in other practices. And likewise, I want to be sure I am referring my patients to other care centers whenever possible. We simply must do a better job of reaching out to understand each care center’s capabilities and make it easy for colleagues to find our own.
I know that transferring referrals can be a challenge due to the relationships we have carefully developed with outside providers over the years. But instead, I’ve found that providing excellent, specialized care overcomes the “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” mentality. I was worried about losing patients when we brought physical therapy into my practice, because regional physical therapists are a huge referral base for me.
But even though I’m not sending patients to them for physical therapy, I’ve found that they are still referring patients to me. I may have lost a few referrals here and there, but the benefits of having physical therapy in-house has far outweighed that cost.
I believe we will see a similar response across CAO as we emphasize internal referrals. After all, we joined together to create The Centers for Advanced Orthopaedics to promote the private-practice model. One of the best ways to continue empowering this model and standard of service is to work with our partners across specialties in a way that helps everyone. Internal referrals will build camaraderie, trust, business and volume.
Our greatest strength lies in our different skills, histories and offerings. As we leverage them to benefit each other, I believe CAO will grow into an even more influential organization.