Referrals still rely on personal touch
Whose brand matters most in self-pay: the consultant or the hospital?
Conference attendees voted 56% for consultants and 32% for hospitals or clinics, but 12% thought neither. The latter considered patients were only interested in convenience and speed of access.
Rosemary Hittinger
London Consultants’ Association representative Rosemary Hittinger said that in a straw poll she took of her membership, between 60-80% said they got referrals via personal recommendations.
A further 20% were via private GPs – but nobody mentioned anything about branding.
The Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN) had told her there were four times as many visits to its website consultant page as there were to any hospital page, so she considered the consultant’s reputation, which was hard won and easily lost, was more important than branding.
Private GP Dr Shaima Villait, GP chairwoman of the Independent Doctors Federation (IDF) and deputy chairwoman of the BMA Private Practice Committee, said patients came to see her because they wanted to ask opinion about who they should be referred to. ‘I would never refer to a brand; I would be referring to a person.’
She said private GPs took a long time to create their individual list of consultants they trusted and who they felt their patients would be happy to see.
‘At no point would I be referring personally to a specific hospital unless a patient said ‘I’m not going anywhere else apart from this hospital and I need to see someone there’.
Even then she would be researching somebody she considered would be the best person for them to see at that hospital – otherwise it would be going back to the generic open referrals which most private GPs were against. ‘Patients trust you and I don’t feel we should be referring just to a brand.’