When you use creativity to expand beyond traditional referral sources, the knowledge you bring can boost CPAP referrals and give you a lift in the competitive sleep market.
With more than 18 million people who have sleep apnea across the country and many more still to be diagnosed, one would think there is ample CPAP business to go around. But faced with reimbursement challenges and growing competition in the sleep segment, HME providers continue to look for new and better ways to boost referrals. Smart providers are finding that reaching beyond traditional referral sources and educating nonspecialists lead to new revenue streams.
The key is to share your knowledge of sleep disorders with nonspecialists. Your expertise and commitment can gain you new referrals from fresh sources. This can be done in face-to-face meetings, but also through communications tools like your Web site or a monthly newsletter.
OPPORTUNITIES TO EDUCATE
“The best way to boost referrals is to explore every avenue of medicine. We call on internists, family practitioners, and all the specialty areas of medicine,” says Dan Loezee, copresident of Sleep Solutions based in Arlington Heights, Ill. “Just because a doctor is not a pulmonologist, don’t overlook him.”
However, Loezee says it is not enough to simply call on nonspecialists. Providers need to be able to articulate information about sleep disorders and links with other medical conditions. For example, Loezee has found that urologists are often unaware that frequent urination during the night can be a symptom of sleep apnea. By educating urologists, Sleep Solutions is tapping an entirely new market for referral business.
Tools and Tactics
- Boost referrals by exploring every avenue of medicine—internists, family practitioners, and all specialties.
- Urologists are often unaware that frequent urination during the night can be a symptom of sleep apnea.
- Pursue orthopedists for referrals because joint replacement patients tend to be overweight and overweight patients often suffer from OSA.
- Educate referrals in face-to-face meetings, through your Web site, or with monthly newsletters.
- Partner with a pulmonologist to add credibility to your educational efforts.
- Invite a sleep specialist to contribute an article to your newsletter.
“Orthopedists are another good source of referral business,” says Loezee. “Patients who undergo joint replacement tend to be overweight, and overweight patients often suffer from OSA.” Loezee says his company offers orthopedists apnea screening services, especially for those patients about to go in for surgery. “It’s a benefit for the orthopedic surgeon and the anesthesiologist as well.”
Family practitioners are an important source of referral business, too. Loezee says an HME provider’s knowledge can go a long way with family practitioners. He says he aims to demonstrate two things to the family doctor: how CPAP therapy can benefit his patient, and how he can continue to treat the patient. “I can help train the family practitioner about sleep apnea, CPAP, and how to manage the disease,” says Loezee. “The patient may need one visit to a specialist, but it is important to let the family physician know that he can keep that patient, manage the apnea, and generate further revenue.”
Loezee sees every face-to-face meeting as an opportunity to educate. In fact, Sleep Solutions takes the education process so seriously that the company invested in a partnership with a retired pulmonologist. The pulmonologist goes along on select sales calls, adding credibility and deepening Sleep Solutions’ base of knowledge. “When working with nonspecialists, I would encourage HME providers to get support from a pulmonologist if possible,” says Loezee. “Any way you can expand your knowledge and further educate the nonspecialist can help build referral business.”
SPREAD KNOWLEDGE WITH A NEWSLETTER
There are other ways to bring sleep knowledge to nonspecialists while keeping your company visible. For example, you can position yourself as an expert in the niche by creating a company newsletter about sleep. Develop a target list of family practitioners, cardiologists, urologists, and orthopedists to mail to each month, and your newsletter becomes an instant sales tool.
This strategy is working for sleep specialists in the field and can certainly work for HME providers as well. Consider partners in practice Timothy J. Walter, MD, and Uma Marar, MD. The two sleep specialists are as dedicated to educating nonspecialists about sleep medicine as they are to high-quality patient care. Every month, they reach some 800 practitioners throughout central Ohio with an informative, enlightening newsletter about the myriad facets of sleep medicine.
Walter and Marar teamed up some 7 months ago to launch their practice, Capitol Sleep Medicine. Presently, it is the only sleep center accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine in Grove City, Ohio. Almost as soon as they opened the doors, the partners decided to create a monthly newsletter to help educate nonspecialists as well as demonstrate their expertise and generate referral business. “We wanted to bring a little bit of academia into private practice,” says Walter. “The newsletter forces us to delve into the latest literature.”
The goal was to keep their image positive and intelligent in the community, while sharing knowledge and research from the sleep medicine field with nonspecialists. “We wanted to communicate that there is a lot more to sleep medicine than sleep apnea,” adds Marar.
The Capitol Sleep Medicine Newsletter is targeted to primary care physicians, cardiologists, and ENT doctors. Walter writes the newsletter while Marar contributes ideas and editing. It is professionally designed, which makes it eye-catching and easy to read. Some of the topics covered in recent issues include “The Dreaming Brain,” “OSA and American Diabesity,” “Sleep and the Heart,” “Restless Legs Syndrome,” and “OSA and Cognitive Impairment.” The upcoming issue will be on dreams and depression.
Walter says with all that is going on in the field and constant new studies, finding topics is easy. The partners pride themselves on choosing material they believe nonspecialists need to hear about. “We didn’t want it to be sponsored by a drug company,” says Marar. “We wanted to pay for the production of the newsletter ourselves.” By investing in the newsletter, the partners keep control of the content.
So how is the newsletter doing? Walter says many physicians on the mailing list have told him and Marar they find the newsletter informative and interesting. By all accounts, doctors are learning from it. “When an endocrinologist tells you he did not know that the treatment of OSA was helpful in diabetes, you know you’re making a difference,” says Walter. Marar says her husband, who is a cardiologist, was impressed by the new studies he found in the Capitol Sleep Newsletter—studies about heart health and sleep that he was not yet familiar with.
Walter and Marar have made education a key part of their sleep medicine practice. While the primary purpose of their newsletter is to spread knowledge about sleep to nonspecialists, the partners say it has turned out to be a great marketing tool, too. “A few days after we send the newsletter out, we see a bump in new patients coming in,” says Walter. To read back issues of the newsletter, visit www.capitolsleep.com.
While HME providers do not have the medical background of Walter and Marar, there are other ways to go about developing content for your company’s newsletter. You can write about patient experiences with CPAP, cite case histories and unique challenges for diabetic or obese patients, and recap recent sleep research you find on the Web or in the news. You can even invite sleep specialists to contribute articles to your newsletter.
Marianne Matthews is a contributing writer for HME Today.
Resources
