Picture a referral coordinator opening your website between phone calls. A pediatrician has recommended a therapy evaluation, and the coordinator needs to find a practice that serves the child's age group, offers the right service, and has a clear way to receive the referral.
Your homepage says you provide compassionate, individualized care. Your team looks experienced. But the coordinator still can't tell which location offers speech therapy, where to send the paperwork, or whether someone will confirm it arrived.
If you want more pediatrician referrals for your therapy practice, start with those unanswered questions. Make it easy for the referring office to understand who you serve, send the right information, and find out what happens next. The website and the intake process need to tell the same story.
For speech therapy, occupational therapy, pediatric physical therapy, ABA, and multidisciplinary practices, this work sits between marketing and day-to-day operations. It gives your team something concrete to improve before asking more pediatricians to send families your way.
Explain which referrals your practice can accept
Start with the questions your intake team answers repeatedly. Which ages do you serve? Which services are available at each location? Do you offer care in a clinic, at home, or in another setting? Who should a referring office contact when it is unsure whether a referral fits?
Be specific enough to help someone make the next decision. If your practice offers occupational therapy at both locations but speech therapy at only one, show that difference. If a service has an age restriction, put it beside the service description. Have your clinical team review those descriptions and any criteria for accepting referrals.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality recommends referral agreements that clarify which patients are appropriate to refer, how information is exchanged, and each practice's responsibilities. Your public website can explain the basics, while the two offices agree on the details of working together.
Clear boundaries are useful. An office should be able to identify a service you do not offer without calling three people to find out. Accurate information helps it decide whether to contact you or look for another resource.
Give referring providers one page they can use
Create a clearly labeled "For Referring Providers" or "Refer a Patient" page. Link to it from your navigation and relevant service pages. Keep essential instructions on the page itself, with a downloadable referral form or one-page reference sheet if your team uses one.
A practical referral page should answer these questions:
Services and ages: What does the practice offer, and which age groups does each service cover?
Locations and settings: Where is each service available, and how does the referring office reach the right team?
Insurance questions: Where can staff find current plan information, and who can clarify verification or authorization steps? Do not present a payer list as a promise of coverage for every service or patient.
Referral instructions: Which approved channel should the office use, and what information does your team need to review the request?
What happens next: Who reviews the referral, who contacts the family, and how can the referring office check its status?
Last reviewed: When did someone check these details, and who is responsible for updating them?
Have your intake and clinical leads agree on the required information for each service. Do not copy another clinic's requirements or make every field mandatory just because it might be useful someday.
Keep patient information out of ordinary website contact forms unless those forms have been reviewed and configured for that use. HHS's guidance on sharing information for treatment emphasizes reasonable safeguards. Have the people responsible for privacy and security approve the referral channel and its handling of patient information.
For the wider site, our pediatric website design guide covers how to organize services, locations, and contact options. The referral page gives professional contacts a direct route through that information.
Be precise about availability
"Accepting new patients" leaves room for several interpretations. It might mean your team is accepting referrals for review, scheduling evaluations, or adding families to a waitlist. Those are different steps. Use language that describes the one you can currently support.
Consider a fictional two-location clinic with speech evaluation openings at one office and a waitlist at the other. A single banner announcing "Immediate availability" would hide a detail the referring team needs. A location-specific update, checked by the intake team, would be more useful.
For a practice that confirms openings by phone, sample wording could be: "Speech evaluations at [location]: contact intake for current openings. Ongoing therapy availability is confirmed separately." Adapt it to your actual process before using it.
If you cannot keep appointment estimates current on the website, say how an office can check availability. When you publish an estimate, identify the service and location, date the update, and explain what the estimate covers. An evaluation opening should not imply an immediate opening for ongoing therapy.
Assign one person to update the website and referral sheet when capacity changes. Include the staff who answer the phone in that update so they can give the same information.
Give every referral an owner and a next step
A referral arriving in an inbox is the beginning of the process. Decide who reviews it, what that person checks, and who covers the work when they are away. The same applies if referrals arrive through an electronic system or fax.
Write down the handoff in plain language: the referral reaches the designated team, someone reviews it, missing information is requested if needed, and the family receives instructions for the next step. Clinical questions go to the clinician responsible for reviewing them.
Set a response target your team can consistently meet. Be clear whether that target refers to acknowledging receipt, reviewing the paperwork, or contacting the family. Promising a fast reply is only useful when everyone understands what the reply will cover.
Use your approved patient or referral system to record the status, responsible staff member, and next action. A marketing CRM should not automatically become the place where patient records or clinical referral details are stored. Its suitability for that information needs a separate review.
Our website inquiry handoff guide explains the same ownership question for general business inquiries: once a request arrives, who is responsible for moving it forward?
Keep the referring office informed
Agree on useful updates with the offices that refer to you, including how they want to receive them. Receipt, scheduling, and a referral that cannot proceed are separate events. The coordinator should not have to interpret silence to work out which one happened.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement's 2017 guide to safer ambulatory referrals includes tracking referral status and communicating scheduling outcomes. Its guidance concerns referrals generally, but the operational lesson applies here: sending a referral is only one part of the exchange.
For an administrative update, your team could use the following format within its approved communication process. This is a suggested structure, not a patient record or a clinical report:
Current status: State whether the referral was received, is being reviewed, is awaiting information, or has reached another defined step.
What is needed: Identify any outstanding item and which office or person is being asked to provide it.
Next action: Explain what your team will do next and any follow-up timing it has actually committed to.
Contact: Give the referring office a reliable route to the person or team handling the request.
Use only the patient information appropriate to that approved exchange. Keep administrative status updates distinct from evaluation findings and clinical recommendations, which belong with the qualified clinicians and the agreed care communication process.
Give families a clear next step, too
The pediatrician's office and the family should hear a consistent explanation. If your intake team will call the family, say so. If the family needs to contact you first, explain where to call and what to ask for. Tell them what to do if they have not heard back within the timeframe your team gave them.
As part of its developmental surveillance resources, the American Academy of Pediatrics provides a family-friendly referral guide that pediatric practices can customize with local resources. A short handout from your own practice can serve a similar practical purpose: helping a family understand the next administrative step.
Keep it readable on a phone and easy to print. Include the practice name, relevant location, intake contact, and what happens before an appointment can be confirmed. Add directions and information about language assistance where available. Ask someone outside your intake team to read it and explain what they would do next.
The handout and the website should agree. When instructions change, replace the old download and let referring offices know where to get the current version.
Make outreach useful to the pediatrician's team
Once the process works, introduce it. A focused conversation with the person coordinating referrals can be more useful than another broad message announcing your services.
Ask which details they need before sending a referral, where they run into delays, and how they prefer to receive practice updates. Then give them the referral page and a concise reference sheet containing the information they asked for.
For speech therapy referrals, for example, that sheet might identify the ages and locations your team serves, the route for checking availability, and the instructions for submitting a referral. An occupational therapy practice would prepare the equivalent information for its own services. Describe your actual scope instead of trying to sound like the right destination for every child.
Follow up when you have something relevant to share, such as a new service, a location change, or revised referral instructions. Check first that the website, reference sheet, and intake team are ready to support the update. Outreach is easier to act on when it points to accurate information and a working process.
Track where referrals get stuck
Review the process with your intake team regularly. A count of incoming referrals tells you how many requests arrived. It does not tell you whether the family was contacted or whether an evaluation took place.
Choose a few measures your approved systems can support:
Time to first review: How long does a referral wait before the responsible person reviews it?
Missing information: Which items repeatedly require another call or message?
Progress to the next step: Of the referrals received in a defined period, how many reached family contact, scheduling, or a completed evaluation? Keep those stages separate and allow for referrals still in progress.
Reasons for delay: Are requests waiting on information, service availability, insurance review, or another recorded issue?
Use the findings to choose a specific repair. Repeated location questions may point to unclear website copy. Repeated missing documents may call for better instructions. A queue of unreviewed referrals may need different staffing or coverage. Review patient-level details only in the appropriate system with authorized staff; a marketing report does not need identifiable patient information.
Test the process before expanding it
Start with one service and follow its referral path from the website to the receiving team. Use clearly labeled test information, coordinated with staff, and keep it out of real patient records.
Check whether you can find the service, identify the correct location, understand the submission instructions, and reach someone who can explain the next step. Open the page on a phone. Try the downloadable form. Confirm that an outdated phone number or old PDF is not sending offices down a different path.
Then ask a referring office to review the instructions and tell you what is missing. Fix the practical gaps before sending the page to a larger list of contacts.
Connect the website to the way your practice works
Making pediatric therapy referrals easier is specific work: clearer service information, current availability, a dependable submission route, and follow-up that each office understands. Those details give pediatricians and their teams a more useful picture of your practice than a general promise of exceptional care.
Driftlss is a marketing agency serving businesses across industries, with ABA and pediatric care among our specialties. We help connect website design and content with the way a business handles inquiries, and build CRM workflows around clearly defined responsibilities.
If referring offices keep calling to ask where to send paperwork or which location offers a service, that is a concrete starting point. Talk with Driftlss about making those answers easier to find and the next step easier to take.
