When building a practice, many new physicians may think first of mailing advertisements and meeting referring doctors, or perhaps word of mouth. As important as these sources may be, an unconsidered referral source for many is the hospital consultation. For those of you who enjoy office practice I’d like to recommend expanding your practice to include hospital consultations. The benefits are manifold and more than outweigh the disadvantages.

For those of you who spend time in the hospital, what tried and true methods work for you? 

For those who stay away from the hospital, what concerns or issues keep you away?

Hospital affiliation is essential if a busy surgical practice is the goal.

Practicing in a professional building attached to a hospital is one way to achieve this. Making rounds is much more efficient if one can literally walk to their in-patients bedside from their office.

Practicing out of a hospital-based-wound-care center is another way to establish a hospital presence. Overhead including professional-support staff (RNs etc) is assumed by the hospital. 

Networking with Infectious Disease and Interventional Cardiology has proven to be the key to success in my experience.

I agree.  Apart from the obvious benefits in proximity, there is a certain credibility that the podiatric surgeon can obtain by working along side members of other medical and surgical specialties.  Interdisciplinary interaction fosters a greater communal understanding of each other’s’ specialty, and allows overall better patient care.  It is important to cultivate these relationships and to develop a report with members of other services, such as vascular surgery, endocrinology, orthopedics, and nephrology.  It is likely that your patients may need referral to these specialists much like their patients will need referral to see you!  The development of a strong referral base is vital to both the surgically and non-surgically oriented podiatric physicians, and interaction within the hospital can facilitate such an arrangement

Of course Hospital Consultations is a great way to expand your practice.  And just to add with hospital consultation discussion, getting to know the house physicians if there is any in the hospital you are affiliated with is a great referral source.  They are the group admits and manages patients day in and day out.  One important thing that I found helpful is communication with involved physicians during rounds or phone call discussion about plan of treatment to those physicians will build trust.  It would always be benefit not harm.

Another great avenue to pursue while in the hospital setting is to seek out the opportunity speak at grand-rounds.  Many physicians don't really have a great handle on what it is we do (and can do) and therefore presentations which highlight the management of particularly challenging conditions, or on those areas of your practice that you are working to cultivate may be just the thing to initiate the dialogue with your hospital colleagues.  Greater, more thorough understanding on the part of the referring services will lead to increased referrals.