Outreach activities — what to bring a referring physician office

Stage III: Outreach

The third stage in building your framework comes after you have visited an office for the first time. You now need to engage your prospects in outreach activities to get them to refer to you and to keep them referring over time.

Outreach activities are things that you do which engage your prospects and make sure they are utilizing your services as often as possible. Outreach activities alone will not be enough to build referral relationships, but it is an important stage of the process. They will help you further develop the relationships you have already started and they are designed to supplement your office calls.

Make sure when you use outreach activities that you are treating them as supplements to your office calls. Do not rely solely on outreach activities in lieu of making office calls or else you will soon see your relationships wither away and the outreach activities will quickly become merely desperate solicitations.

Outreach activities are like chucking coal on a fire. You cannot get warmth by simply having coal, no matter how much you have. But if you build a fire first, then the coal that you have can become a catalyst to really get that fire blazing.

Outreach activities are best used when they work to involve the prospect in the marketing process so that your visits and interactions with their offices are a dynamic two-way interaction between you and them.

Let us take a look now at the best steps to take while in the third stage of building a framework, Outreach.

Step 1: Prepare Your Activities

Which activities you utilize for each prospect will be different and will come from the information you gather during your office calls. You will need to decide which prospect needs what and design your activities to satisfy those needs.

There are several activities that you can perform and I recommend that you use some form of each one at some point with all of your prospects. The different outreach activities are:

Delivering material.
Food and goodies.
Thank you cards.
Availability notices.

Material

Outreach material can supplement your office calls nicely and will often be what you use to set up a return visit to an office. There are a number of things that you can produce for outreach material, and the pieces described here are worked out in the resource library.

The material that you produce should always be designed to work in conjunction with the delivery of the material. In other words, the material itself is not the sole purpose. The act of providing the material is just as important.

Flyers

Flyers can be an effective way to communicate bits of information about your practice to your prospects. The hiring of a therapist, an office expansion, or a change in insurance-related information are all things that are presented nicely on a flyer. Make the content simple, readable, and avoid being too dense. Your prospects are busy and they will not want to read a long flyer no matter how interesting or relevant it is.

Make the flyer engaging by using it to answer a question that someone asked you at a previous visit. Find out from the front office staff what information is important for them to know (which type of insurance you take, how a patient might schedule with you, and what they should do when the doctor gives them a referral for your office) and then include this information on the flyer. When you present the flyer, ask the person you hand it to to show it to the person who wanted the information. That way, you are setting up an inter-office conversation about you and your service. If you drop off a flyer for the doctor, make sure the staff knows that the doctor had requested to see it, otherwise it will probably end up in the circular filing cabinet (aka the trash can). The flyer spec is here for you.

Referral pads

A referral pad is something that some offices will request. But whether an office requests one or not, every office you visit should be offered one. A referral pad is a stack of full-sized paper sheets (8.5 by 11) that the doctor can fill out and fax to your office for a referral. The sheets are stacked on a cardboard backing and glued at the top or along the side so that they may be ripped off one by one. The referral pad page has both design layouts and instruction on how to make your own.

A referral pad should always consist of single 8.5 by 11 sheets. A smaller sized referral pad may be tempting due to the simple nature of a massage therapy referral, but I highly discourage using anything besides single 8.5 by 11 sheets. The reason for this is simple. Anything smaller is difficult to put through a fax machine, and multiple sheets with carbon copies are cumbersome and have HIPAA implications. Stick to a standard size piece of paper for the referral pad.

When you create the referral pad, make sure that you include a few key elements that will make referring to you easy.

Your name or clinic name, phone number, fax number, and address. This is as much for the front office staff as it is for the patients who might receive a copy of the prescription on their way out of the office.
A succinct instruction about what to do with your referral. “Fax prescriptions to (555) 555-5555” is good enough. This seems like a really obvious and redundant thing to put on a prescription, but I have been on the receiving end of enough phone calls with a young office assistant asking me what I want her to do with the prescription that I have realized this should just be on the pad.
A map on the back of each page and driving directions to your office. The map should be black and white, very simple, and only include the major streets or landmarks. Do not copy and paste a mapping service screenshot of your office; those include far too many things to be easily readable as a static black and white image. Keep it simple and keep it clear. The same goes for your written directions.
A list of reasonable treatment goals that can be checked off by the doctor. The easier you can make the referral process for your prospects, the greater the chance that you will receive a referral. Treatment goals are often required by insurance companies. Assist your prospects by suggesting common treatment goals (Decrease Muscle Pain, Resolve Muscle Spasms, Increase Range of Motion). It will reduce the amount of effort they need to put in to refer to you.
The doctor’s name — spelled correctly! — and her phone number and office address. Make it clear and easily identifiable because, remember, documents lose clarity the more they are faxed back and forth. This is for you as much as it is for the insurance company who might be wondering whose signature is on the bottom of the prescription.

2026 update

Fax is still the default, but ask anyway

Healthcare runs on fax to a degree that surprises everyone outside it, and that is still true — a referral pad built around a fax number is not a period detail. What has changed is what sits behind the number. Many offices now send and receive through an e-fax service that delivers to an inbox instead of a machine, and many handle referrals inside their EHR, where an outbound referral is a queue entry rather than a sheet of paper. Some do both, and some still have the machine.

None of that invalidates the advice above. A full-sized sheet, your details in the corner, one plain instruction, treatment goals ready to check off: all of it survives the trip through an e-fax or a scan into a chart, which is exactly why the sizing and legibility rules matter as much as they ever did.

Add one question to the office call. Ask each office how they prefer to send you a referral, and how they prefer to receive documents from you. Some will point at the fax machine. Some will give you an e-fax number, and some will offer to add you to the referral list inside their system. The pad works for the first group, and the question costs you nothing with the rest.

Editorial note added in 2026. The surrounding chapter is the original text.

Brochures

Brochures should be used sparingly. When used, a brochure should be a full-scale production because cheap brochures look cheap. Hold nothing back and spare no expense. Print it on high quality paper and have it designed by a graphic designer. The content of the brochures should be targeted at a specific message and that message will vary depending on the needs of your prospects. You may need multiple brochures to relay all of your messages.

In general, brochures should include something that will make the office want to keep it around. For example, the back of your brochure might contain prescription guidelines. I have found that most doctors are actually unsure about how many massages they can prescribe, the frequency of treatments, and other details required by insurance companies. Knowing that, I went ahead and put that information on the back of my brochures. I have noticed more than one of my brochures pinned to a doctor’s desk months after I have dropped it off with her. Whether you include prescribing guidelines or something else, give your prospect a reason to keep it around.

Again, like with flyers, take the opportunity of dropping off this brochure to make your presence known around the office. Use your brochure to point out the answer to a specific question that someone in the office had, or highlight the information you add on the back as something they need to know. When you drop off your brochures, get them engaged. Chances are they will not read most of the brochure, so it is important to actively get them in on this one.

Patient-oriented material

Patient-oriented material is things that the prospect’s patients can take with them. I often use rack cards with simple information about medical massage prescriptions. Whatever you decide to use, make sure that the information is universally accepted as true so that the doctor does not have to worry about her patients getting misinformation. An ideal patient-oriented rack card is here for you to look at.

I leave them in an area where other brochures and rack cards are left and try to notice the other kinds of patient-oriented material that are in the doctor’s office. Do they have a whole wall of sloppy brochures, cards, posters, and papers? Do they have a few select high quality cards and brochures for their patients? Ask them if they would like some material before dropping it off. Bring them a single sample of the item, inquire if you can leave it, and then bring it back the next time with you. If they have an entire wall of material, I would suggest only leaving a few behind. Your patient-oriented materials are as much for the patients to learn from as they are for the prospects to notice and remember you by. Adding to a wall full of messy flyers and pamphlets is not the best way to get noticed, so hold on to your precious and expensive material.

One thing that you can also do with your patient-oriented material is nest a map into it for those offices that do not want a referral pad. This way, when a doctor makes a referral to your office, the staff has a map for those patients that want one (and many will).

Food and Goodies

The use of food is another powerful tool in marketing to physicians. It is such a powerful tool that every pharmaceutical company in the nation uses it extensively. This fact creates both an advantage and a disadvantage for you. The advantage is that all medical offices are familiar with the presentation of food. Not one of them will be taken aback by this and not one of them will think it is strange that you have brought a tray of pastries.

The disadvantage is that if you try to rely on this method too heavily, you will most likely be perceived as competing with the pharmaceutical companies who have limitless money to spend on food spreads and luncheons. Do not compete with the pharmaceutical companies who have made this marketing technique into a science. Do not bring lunch for an entire office, because your lunch will almost certainly not be as good as the pharmaceutical reps’ lunches unless you have $500 to blow in one afternoon.

Food gifts should be used infrequently and in small portions. A muffin or pastry from a local hot spot after a referral is made to you is plenty. Do not bring an office food before they have referred to you, or food to any office too often (three or four times per year at most). You do not want this gift to be misconstrued as a bribe. Food works best as a surprise and in small portions to let the prospect know you have been thinking about them and that you appreciate what they have done for you.

It should also be noted that many people have food allergies and restrictions. Therefore, food deliveries should vary. And whatever you bring, make sure it will not spoil over the course of the day. If you bring meat and cheese platters, they might go bad in the back of the office. If you bring hot food, it will be cold and rubbery within an hour.

Food as gifts can be kept in check by following the rules of infrequency and in small preservable portions.

2026 update

Gifts to referral sources have a legal dimension too

The chapter’s instinct — keep it small, keep it rare, never let it look like a bribe — is the right one, and it is worth knowing that the same instinct has law behind it. Federal anti-kickback rules cover anything of value offered in connection with care that is billed to a federally funded program, and many states have their own versions that reach further and do not depend on federal dollars being involved at all.

That does not make a pastry illegal, and nothing described in this chapter is a scheme. But the rules turn on the arrangement rather than the price tag. A gift that is nominal, occasional, and unrelated to how many patients an office sent you is a different thing from one that tracks referral volume, and both are different from a standing arrangement of any kind. The book’s own timing rule — a small thank-you after the fact, never something offered in advance of a referral — is what keeps the gesture from reading as an inducement, and it is worth following for that reason as much as for the social one.

Practically: keep gifts nominal and infrequent, do not scale them to referral volume, and do not attach one to a specific referral. If you find yourself planning something more structured than a plate of muffins — a recurring spend, a discount, a fee, anything moving in either direction between you and a referral source — ask a healthcare attorney licensed in your state first. That is a flag, not legal advice; the specifics genuinely depend on your state and on how the patients in question are paying.

Editorial note added in 2026. The surrounding chapter is the original text.

Thank You Card

A thank you card, hand written and hand delivered, will go a very long way. In fact, thank you cards are probably the most effective of any of the outreach materials. A thank you card should be of good quality and it should have a hand written thank you note from you on the inside and signed. Be brief, but sincere. And keep it formal. You do not want to seem presumptuous by being too casual with the doctor early on.

On the inside of the thank you card use a paperclip to attach a business card. On the outside of the envelope, write the doctor’s name and nothing else. Hand deliver the thank you card to the office and ask the receptionist to give the card to the doctor. Thank her verbally and then leave. Do nothing else on this visit. No exceptions.

I know what you are thinking right now. And the answer is no. Do not mail in the thank you card.

A thank you card done in this way, hand delivered, is so powerful that I sometimes see a few extra referrals right away after I drop one off. Anything else you do to this perfect formula will water down the power of the hand delivered card and diminish the returns that you see from it.

This activity should be done a week or so after a prospect refers to you for the first time. It is not necessary to do this after every single referral, but it is nice to give these to the doctors every so often (perhaps two or three times per year) so that they know you appreciate that they choose you.

Availability Notice

The availability notice is a quick phone call to the office of a prospect to let them know that you have an opening for a referral. This works best on prospects who are already referring to you rather than on prospects who have yet to refer. It also tends to work best on Friday mornings and before long weekends when there is a scramble to find services for last minute patients.

This phone call should be succinct but friendly. When you call, be sure you speak to the person that coordinates the referrals. Let them know that you have an opening to take a new referral and that you are happy to fax over a blank prescription sheet just in case.

It should be noted that if you tell an office that you have the ability to take a last minute referral, you absolutely have to take anyone that comes your way. If they think you can take a patient today, and then you tell their patient that they cannot get in until next week, this will not go over well. If you tell them you are available, you must honor that referral no matter how late you have to stay. So when giving an availability notice, only do so to a few offices so that you are not bombarded with too many referrals at once.