Generally speaking, how much of an orthodontist's patients come from referrals and how much from direct marketing? I guess it depends on practice to practice, but is there a typical amount? Are there orthos who get by without any referras?
Sure, many of us, orthodontists, can get by without any GP referrals but to get to this point we have to be in our practices for a couple of years and have a good track record of providing excellent care. Most patients want high quality work and affordable fees. If your fees are cheap but you do poor orthodontic work, then don’t expect to see a lot of patients to come to see you. So how do you get the point where you no longer need the GP referrals? The very simple answer is by starting as many new cases as possible. The more cases you treat and finish, the more people will go around saying nice things about you. To start as many new cases as possible, you’ll need to do the following when you start your practice:
-Going door to door to beg the GPs for referrals. Many of the GPs may not be very happy with the orthodontists they've referred to and they might want to try your office.
-Charge reasonable fees to increase case acceptance. If the GPs refer a bunch of patients to you but none of them accept the tx because of your high fees, then the GPs will have to refer their patients to other orthos who charge lower fees. To accomplish this, you need to keep the overhead low. Fortunately, ortho is the specialty that has lowest overhead.
-Hire friendly staff to treat the patients well. To me, that’s more important than spending a ton of money on high tech equipments and office décor.
-Open your office on the weekends and late hours. Most patients are kids and their parents don’t want them to miss school.
-Welcome every patient to your office even if the patients just want to shop around for the best price. Who know? The patients may like you because of your friendly personality.
-Accept as many insurance plan as possible even if they don't pay you a lot.
-Target the populations that most orthodontists largely ignore such as low income Hispanic and Asian populations. It’s a mistake to assume that the patients are too poor to afford ortho tx by looking at what they wear and drive. High income parents also fail to make payments on time because there are so many other expenses for them to worry about as well…such as BMW car payments, private school tuitions for their kids etc.
If you do all of these above, you don't have to go rural areas. You can have a successful ortho practice right here in Southern California. People in big cities care more about having beautiful smiles and want braces for their kids than people who live in rural areas. There are also more referring GPs in big cities than in rural areas.