What is a Referral Funnel, Examples, How to Measure
What is a referral funnel?
We’re all familiar with sales funnels and how each stage has an impact on customer behavior. Knowing each step can help you improve how many people go from one stage to the next. Visibility to the funnel can make a significant impact on your business.
At Sophrona, we believe in the power of the Referral Funnel.
Whether you receive a referral by fax, e-Referral, or through the Referral Portal, each and every referral is important. Still, patient referrals slipping through the cracks is one of the most common challenges we hear from eye care practices.
Sophrona can help.
We can help your practice track, schedule, manage the process, and update the referring doctor along the way.
Automated workflows are on the rise in the healthcare industry. And so will your guesswork, if you can’t see where your referrals are coming from, or where they are in the follow up process.
- Where did your patient referral come from?
- What type of referral is it?
- Have they been scheduled?
- Have they been seen?
- Have you communicated the status or result to the referring doctor?
- What are the next steps?
The Referral Funnel: How it Works
It’s important to understand your funnel. Your referral funnel illustrates the different paths that referrals come to you. Sophrona can help grow your practice by reducing lost referrals through superior referral management.
- Traditional Referral: It is estimated that only 54% of faxed referrals result in a scheduled appointment. Do you know if the referral was addressed? How quickly? What was the outcome?
- Fax Intake: Doctors still fax. So let them. You no longer have to worry about referrals getting lost on a printer or someone’s desk. With Fax Intake, each fax is digitized for easier review and follow up.
- Digital and e-Referrals: With e-Referrals, your practice can choose which appointment types to allow online scheduling and which need more interaction from your team.
- Real-Time Scheduling: Appointments are scheduled in real-time by the referring doctor, streamlining every step of the referral funnel from patient visit to final outcome. Every referral is tracked.
- No More Lost Referrals: Outcome is sent to the provider to close the referral loop.
Understanding your funnel can help you see the gaps or holes that exist and take action to optimize and move patients all the way through.
Wherever you are in the process of measuring your referrals, Sophrona can help.
The referral funnel narrows as patients move through. Depending on the technology you are using, they may enter the referral funnel at different stages. The goal is to increase visibility to get to no more lost referrals.
Focus on the work that matters.
Sophrona can help your practice improve workflows for your referral process and create scheduling efficiencies that increase referrals and increase revenue. Talk with our team to learn how Sophrona can help you track every referral.