Offer services that complement those of other assessment and treatment professionals, keep patients’ health care teams informed and take the time to highlight the complementary skills and services you can offer patients in order to make your practice more appealing to the medical community.

1. Make yourself distinct from others

Offer services that complement those of other assessment and treatment professionals in order to make your practice more appealing to the medical community. Physicians vary in their familiarity with alternative and complementary medicine, but increasingly patients are looking for these types of treatments and family physicians are referring their patients to them.

For example, our chiropractic clinic also offers a range of related services, including medical acupuncture, laser therapy, physiotherapy, therapeutic massage and naturopathic medicine – all adding up to a multidisciplinary practice.The key factor that will distinguish you from your peers is your success rate. No matter which approach you use, if you can achieve better-than-average clinical results, then you will certainly increase the number of referrals you receive.

2. Foster open communication with others

It is important to keep patients’ health care teams informed, not only to help their health records remain up to date, but also to strengthen the relationship between you and the other health professionals involved in their care.

After the initial visit with a patient, I send a short note to the family doctor and any other medical or health care practitioners they may have seen about their chief complaint, such as a physiatrist, surgeon, naturopath, physiotherapist or massage therapist. This note briefly explains my diagnosis and the methods I am using to correct the problem. If this is the first time I have corresponded with them, I include a short biography so they can familiarize themselves with my skill set. I then follow with a short progress report at the two-week mark and again at the time of discharge. After I had been following this practice for a period of time, referrals from family physicians and medical specialists began to increase in number. Today I receive an average of two patient referrals per week from the medical community. Additional referrals to our clinic have come from physiotherapists, naturopathic doctors, registered massage therapists, reflexologists and other chiropractors. One of the best places to meet other progressive health professionals is at courses and seminars, where you not only improve your skills and techniques but also have lots of networking opportunities. These events have accounted for many of the referrals I have received from other rehabilitation practitioners. Knowing your peers can build relationships that are the source of new patients.

3. Make sure your curriculum vitae is current

When you strive to be the best in your field, you will get noticed. You must make a lifelong commitment to improving your skills and also practise the discipline necessary to make sure your curriculum vitae reflect those skills. I often send my CV to doctors who have extensive educational and clinical backgrounds, such as surgeons or pain specialists. This helps to highlight the fact that I am not only a chiropractor, but I am also certified in muscle release techniques and completed two years of acupuncture study at McMaster University, where I am now an instructor.Some of these additional specialties have greatly benefited the amateur and professional athletes who have come to our clinic. Once these players received the treatment and the results they were looking for, they started to refer other members of their team, and that component of our client base began to expand.

If you take the time to highlight the complementary skills and services you can offer their patients and can demonstrate success, physicians will see that you have skills that set you apart and they will be more likely to refer future patients.