Physician Referrals and the Medical-Dental Connection

New understandings presented by today’s emerging sciences have elevated standards-of-care and created a new level of cooperation between dentists and other health professionals.

Dentistry is now entering an exciting era where this heightened awareness and cooperation will result in better patient care, increased professional respect, and practice growth.

These benefits are best realized when dentists generally and individually understand this science, and learn how to approach physicians and how to build professional referral relationships and referral networks.

Course Objectives: At the conclusion of this presentation, IACA course attendees will be able to:

• Understand the significance of the emerging science associated with periodontal disease, TMD, and sleep apnea, and how this science links dentists with other health professionals in their community.
• Understand with specific examples how to improve patient-related communications with health professionals, how to manage these interactions, and why to use these communications to improve patient care and strengthen professional referral relationships.
• Describe B2B practice growth strategies, and how to use specific outbound marketing methods to build professional referral networks and benefit from these professional and community based associations.

Release date: Wed, February 24, 2010

Speaker: G. Lee Ostler, D.D.S.

G. Lee Ostler DDS graduated in 1983 from the University of Washington School Of Dentistry and has a private general practice in Richland Washington. His practice emphasis is on advanced cosmetic rehabilitation, neuromuscular dentistry, comprehensive periodontal treatment, dental sleep medicine, and TMD therapy. He is a graduate of and past clinical instructor at the Las Vegas Institute.

Dr. Ostler has developed numerous marketing strategies related to building professional referral networks and increasing practice differentiation. He founded DREAMarketing and MDReferrals to help share these ideas with the dental public and to provide resources to help dentists grow their practices and elevate their care of patients. His purpose is to build a bridge between the medical and dental communities which will benefit patients and save lives.

His articles on these subjects have been published in Dental Economics and Dentistry Today. He is author of the book“The Physicians Marketing Handbook – How to Market To and Get Referrals From Physicians”, and developed the “Physicians Referral and Education Program (PREP) marketing system”, which are being used by dentists and practice consultants throughout the United States and internationally.