In this episode of the Practice Profit System, host Matt Gillogly explains how cash‑based medical practices can overcome the referral limitations of the insurance model and build a thriving network of "raving fans" who generate consistent patient referrals. He outlines why traditional doctor‑to‑doctor referrals are constrained by insurance networks and provider loyalty, and suggests alternative partnership avenues—most notably collaborating with chiropractors who see many musculoskeletal patients. Gillogly emphasizes the importance of creating a 7‑star patient experience, under‑promising and over‑delivering results, and packaging services into a signature solution that boosts outcome likelihood. He shares a personal story of rebuilding his own practice after a divorce and financial strain, illustrating how focusing on one client, delivering exceptional outcomes, and asking for referrals led to a business where 60‑70% of leads come from satisfied patients. Practical steps include defining the perfect patient, offering guarantees that set realistic expectations, improving the patient journey, and explicitly requesting referrals while avoiding illegal fee‑splitting. The episode concludes with a promotion for his book, "The Anatomy of a 7‑Figure Medical Practice," which expands on these strategies.
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Hello everybody, it is Matt and welcome to the Practice Profit System. On today's show, we're going to talk about how to create a referral network in healthcare. That is today's topic. And really what we're talking about is how do you create Raving fans. That's really what you want. But we have to really start at the beginning. And the, one of the big challenges with regards to if you are in the insurance model is it's really hard to get people to refer people to you. Now, let me explain. I mean, I get asked all the time, Matt, who should I, I have somebody in my family has a heart condition. Who should they go see in Charlotte? Who do you recommend for your general practitioner or family doctor? I get asked those questions all the time. But what really dictates a lot more in the industry is who's their insurance provider and who takes what. That really is what dictates in the insurance model as to whether or not you're going to be highly referable. And so doctors wind up taking all different kinds of insurance that doesn't really work in their benefit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So when a doctor gets ready to open up a cash practice, or when they're converting their insurance practice to cash, They naturally think one of the things that they think about doing, I should say, is they talk about getting other doctors who are in the hospital system to refer patients to them because they think, oh well, they're as frustrated as I am, so why don't I get the pain management doctor to refer to me their knee patients? Well, here's the problem with that, and this goes back to my original point: the doctors in the systems. Like in Charlotte, there's Atrium or there's whatever it is, Novant. They actually have to refer within the network, not necessarily of who's the best patient or who's the best provider. Okay? So you have like this double-edged, this two-prong attack that really suppresses a traditional referral model in the insurance space. One, they, you know, they're the— well, I should say the biggest thing, not one, but the biggest thing is that they can't really refer outside of their network. So when you, as somebody who's giving up insurance, goes to your friend who's an OB-GYN and says, hey, send me your female patients, I'll do their hormone replacement therapy— one, they never think about it because they're so busy, they're seeing 60 patients a day. Two, if they're part of a large hospital group, they probably can get their hand slapped if they refer outside of the network. So how do you create a referral network? Well, oh, but here's— I forgot one other thing. Here's the other reason why they won't do this is they— the other doctors think you're nuts. Yeah, they think you're nuts. You see, they've been told that hormone replacement therapy is evil, that it causes cancer. You know, there was a study that was done 20 years ago and— or that, you know, that PRP stuff doesn't work. I read a study that they did it and there was no measurable improvement. What they don't know is that the study was flawed because they only did 15 cc's or The hormone replacement therapy was done incorrectly, or it was 20 years ago, or the data is old. So they think you're nuts. Okay? So they're not going to refer to you as well. I find very few of my doctors are very few of them are successful getting other doctors to refer patients to them. So how do you build a referral network? Well, let me give you a couple of other ideas. One of the best places I think that you can go to build a referral network. is chiropractic, especially if you are in regenerative, because they've got knee problems, back problems, all of that. The chiropractor reaches a ceiling as to how they can fix them. I've had a lot of my clients set up literally offices in chiropractic centers, in sublet out places, pay a marketing fee to that chiropractor in order to get access to their patients, right? You can't give them a percentage of the transaction cuz that's fee splitting, but you certainly can pay a marketing fee for each appointment or something like that. There's a lot of different things and we'll go into that. It's, you know, I don't want to go into the whole legal aspect of it, but that's one way that you could consider. Please consult with your legal professional who's a medical legal professional, but you can build it. So a few good chiropractic referrals will go a long way. But here's the other way. Here's the best way for you to create a referral system. Create raving fans at your current practice. They will be the absolute best source of Patients for you. My top clients within the span of 9 months to 10 months, probably let's call it a year cuz it's, you know, it's gonna be different for everybody. Let's call it in 12 months, have done such a wonderful job of treating their patients that guess what? They refer other patients to them. And a patient that's referred is as good as closed cuz they know the price, they know what's involved, and they're ready to go. Okay. So how do you create raving fans if you are at your current practice? So what you have to do is you have to create raving fans. So you've probably already have raving fans from your insurance practice, assuming that you have really good bedside manner. Let's assume that you're not a horrible doctor and don't treat people like crap and your staff is not idiots. Okay? If they are, then, then they're not gonna know, like, and trust you. But let's just assume that you're taking really good care of your patients, that you really do care for your patients. All of my clients do. Okay? So They already know, like, and trust you. So if you come to them with a new concept or a new idea, they're gonna be very open to it. So I would recommend that you start with building your referral network in your cash practice with your current insurance practice. So, but here's the twist. You can't just start doing the procedure. I'm gonna ask you this question. Here's a very simple question for you. If all you had was one customer, Okay. And you had no other customers, no other patients. All your ad accounts were shut down and everything was riding on the outcome of this one patient and the results of that patient, meaning you had to get an outstanding result to create a raving fan so your business would get more referral customers. What would you do? You'd probably do a lot more than you're doing right now. Right? You would bend over backwards in order to make sure that that patient got a great outcome. You'd under-promise, you'd over-deliver. You would make sure that they were the absolute perfect patient that you could get a great result. There's a bunch of things that you would do. You would figure out how— ways to increase the likelihood of the desired outcome, which means that you wouldn't just do one thing. You would attack the problem from multiple different directions at the same time. You would figure out a way for them to get results faster than in the Let's say if they had a procedure in the past, you'd make the experience better than it's ever been before. It's a great process that we take people through in our program, and it's how do you create the 7-star experience? And everybody's like, what's a 7-star experience? And I go, well, it's 2 higher than a 5-star experience. If you've ever stayed at a Ritz-Carlton or a really high-end hotel or resort, they always try to give you that 7-star experience versus staying like a Courtyard, and it's gonna look like a 3-star experience. Okay. So I'm going to ask that question again. If you had one customer, everything else was shut down, your ad accounts were shut down, you had no other way to bring in customers, bring in patients, and everything was riding on the outcome that you— and the results of this patient, meaning you had to get an outstanding result to create a raving fan so you could get more business via referrals— what would you do? So that's my question for you. That's actually some homework. I want you to think about that, because if you go out and you really Figure out. Most people just are like, well, I got to process this as quickly as I can. But in the cash world, you don't, because for every one patient that you treat in the cash world, you'd have to see 20 insurance patients. I mean, you're going to have a lot more time. What else would you do? Play the game. It's a lot of fun. But here are just a few more ways to make your business highly referable. Before I do that, I'm gonna tell you a quick story. Back in 2018, I had sold my practices in 2017, went through a divorce, took some time off, and I came back out in 2018 at the beginning of the year. And what I— middle of the year, I should say, probably about April. And I started an agency. I was gonna market for medical practices cuz we'd had such great success in our clinics and we got a bunch of clients and things were going along. But the problem was, is we weren't getting results. We were getting leads, we were generating leads. The doctors just weren't able to convert them into And make the numbers work. And so literally in the span of like three weeks, I lost all seven clients. We were not highly referable. We weren't getting great outcomes for them. Getting great outcomes for us? Well, we thought we weren't getting great outcomes. So here I am. I had sold my practices, gone through a messy, expensive divorce, dealt with some other personal issues in my life. My mom had died. I dealt with some other stuff at the at the end of the business with some staff that. Caused some problems for me, all of these things, and cash was pretty tight. I mean, I had 2 kids in college and they were in private college and I had to figure something out quick. And so I started with one client and what I did was I bent over backwards and I did whatever I could to make that client successful. That client was Dr. Maggie Barber, and she was right down the road from me. She, we kind of sort of competed with each other. And I helped her business grow really, really quickly and make a bunch of changes in her business, and her business doubled. And then that went to— and I wound up with a couple of others, and I had Trev Buccieri, and I had Mark Petropalli, and there were a couple of others in there. And we just focused— I just focused on getting them absolutely amazing results. And I got more and more referrals and more and more referrals, and that's how we grew the business, this business that's today And today, like 60 to 70% of our leads come from referrals. It's our biggest lead generator is our satisfied clients that refer their friends to us. That is the number one way, bar none, bar anything else that we do, the number one way that we get clients. And it'll be the number one way that you get clients as well, because we install these next few things that I'm going to share with you about how to make your business more highly referable. We have our clients install this into their practices. And they get referral after referral after referral. Yesterday, Dr. Petropali closed a $26,000 client on a referral. Not bad. So how do we do this? First, you have to be very clear about who you're going to serve and who you're not. We call it serving the perfect patient. Only make sure that you are serving the perfect patient. Don't take any patient in. Second, under-promise and over-deliver results. This is a big question. They go, well, Matt, how do I know? I was asked this question last week in Washington, D.C., doing some training for a group, a large group. And they asked me this question and they said, Well, Matt, how do, you know, how do we manage expectations? And I said, well, I always offer my clients a guarantee, my patients a guarantee. And they're like, a guarantee? And the guarantee is this, is I guarantee you will not get back to 100%. In fact, I guarantee you probably won't get back to 80%. But if we could reduce your pain by 80%, would you be happy? Most patients go, yeah. Okay. So we have to under-promise and over-deliver. Okay, third, increase the likelihood of the desired outcome. This comes in the form of the signature solution. Do not do à la carte, one little thing at a time. Do the opposite of what they teach you in the insurance space. So what you want to do is you want to increase the likelihood, put a couple of things together to get those results, figure out how to get results faster. Next is make your experience better and better. This is the 7-star experience. And then finally, the last one is ask for the referral. Ask them to refer people to you. Now you can't compensate them for it. Because that's fee splitting, but ask them for the referral. You'll be amazed at what happens. All right, there you go. That's how you build a great referral network. It's really not coming from the doctors in your market. It's coming from your patients. Take great care of them. They'll love you for it. Check out our book, The Anatomy of a 7-Figure Medical Practice. You'll see a link on the page right below. This is where we dive into all of these topics. It is the consummate Bible for our industry. About how to grow a 7-figure cash practice. Check it out. We'll ship it to you for only $7.95. The book is free, and you'll have an opportunity to book a call with one of our ambassadors on how to get the best and most out of the book. You'll see the link below. Check it out. My name is Matt Gillogly. Thanks for coming to the Practice Profit System. You have a great day. Talk to you later.
