Chapter 31 · Florida Urology Center · Florida
A durable practice is built by taking exceptional care of patients and making referring providers confident that their patients will be treated well, kept informed, and never lost in the system.
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Practice building is not a separate sales activity layered on top of clinical care. It is the visible result of excellent service. Patients remember whether the team listened, explained the plan, called after the visit, and made the next step easy. Referring providers remember whether their patient was seen promptly, whether the consultation answered the question, and whether the plan came back to them. Do those things reliably and relationships compound.
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The practice-building principle
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Every interaction either increases or decreases trust. Greet the patient, introduce your role, understand what matters most to them, and explain the plan in plain language. Always schedule the next visit at checkout before the patient leaves. Do not rely on calling the patient later or on the patient calling the office. A patient should never have to guess what happens next or when they will return.
Start with the patient’s goal: “What would make today’s visit successful for you?”
Set expectations: explain what can be decided today, what requires testing, and when the patient will hear from the team.
Explain and draw: use a simple drawing to show the relevant anatomy, the problem, and what the recommended next step will do.
Use emotional intelligence: read the patient and calibrate the amount of information. Some patients want to hear every option; most do best with two strong options, or occasionally three. Do not overwhelm the patient with a long undifferentiated list.
Recommend a path: explain the meaningful tradeoffs, identify the two good options, and then give the patient a clear recommendation and plan of care. If the patient wants more detail, expand the discussion.
Schedule at checkout: always schedule the next visit before the patient leaves.
Do not defer it: do not rely on a later staff callback or on the patient remembering to call the office.
Urology has advanced so much that several reasonable options can often produce an excellent outcome. The APP’s job is to translate those choices into a decision the individual patient can understand and act on. Medical complexity does not automatically rule out a procedure: even medically complex patients may be able to undergo procedures safely when the procedure, anesthesia plan, clearance, and care setting are selected appropriately.
Call your patients—especially when a patient has called with a question or concern. Also prioritize patients who need procedures: confirm that they understand why the procedure was recommended, what must happen before it, how it will be scheduled, and what follow-up to expect. These calls identify barriers, answer new questions, and prevent a patient who agreed in the room from becoming lost or uncertain afterward. This is not a requirement to call every patient after every visit.
Ask | Listen for | Close the loop |
“How are you doing since the visit?” | New symptoms, worsening pain, fever, retention, bleeding, medication effects, or anxiety. | Triage urgent issues immediately and document the action. |
“Is the plan clear?” | Confusion about medications, testing, procedures, or preparation. | Restate the plan in plain language and draw the anatomy, problem, and next step. |
“Were you able to get what you need?” | Pharmacy, cost, transportation, scheduling, or authorization barriers. | Assign an owner and timeframe; do not leave the patient to navigate alone. |
“Is your follow-up scheduled?” | A checkout scheduling failure or an appointment that was later disrupted. | Correct the appointment immediately; the next visit should have been scheduled at checkout. |
Record the call, the patient’s concerns, and the resolution in the approved system. If the patient cannot be reached, follow the practice’s contact and escalation policy. Never put protected health information in an unsecured voicemail or text.
After clarifying the plan, send the patient the appropriate educational brochure from urology411.com and send the after-visit summary from Intelligent One. The brochure teaches the condition or procedure; the after-visit summary reinforces the patient’s specific plan. Review the Intelligent One post-visit analysis so omissions, guideline gaps, or unresolved actions can be corrected.
Send the practice’s approved Google review link as part of a consistent follow-up workflow. Keep the invitation simple and pressure-free. Do not offer an incentive, write the review for the patient, or ask the patient to disclose medical details. Respond to public reviews without confirming that the reviewer is a patient or discussing protected information; move service recovery to a private channel.
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Simple review invitation “Thank you for trusting us with your care. Your feedback helps us improve and helps others find urologic care. If you would like to share your experience, here is our Google review link.” |
A referral is an act of trust. The referring provider needs to know that the patient will receive prompt, thoughtful care and that the clinical loop will close. Make the consultation easy to initiate, answer the referral question directly, and communicate the plan promptly. If something changes, update the referring office rather than making them chase the information.
Access: make it easy to obtain an appointment and help with urgent patients.
Answer: state the assessment and plan clearly; do not bury the answer in a long note.
Communication: send the consultation and important updates back promptly through the approved channel.
Reliability: when you promise a call, result, or appointment, make sure it happens.
Availability: give the referring team a clear way to reach the urology team for a clinical question.
Relationships deepen when people know the clinician who will care for their patients. Schedule regular face-to-face visits with PCP offices. Lead with curiosity rather than a pitch: learn which urologic problems are difficult for them, what delays frustrate their patients, and how the urology team can make referrals easier.
Introduce yourself, your role, your clinical interests, and the practice’s access points.
Ask: “What can we do to make urology easier for your patients and your team?”
Explain how urgent questions, rapid appointments, results, and follow-up communication are handled.
Offer one useful teaching point or resource instead of delivering a long presentation.
Lunch with a PCP group: if you want to arrange lunch with a PCP group, the practice is always supportive. Use the time to listen to the team’s needs, teach something useful, and make access to urology easier.
Write down the office’s needs, follow through, and return with an update.
APP-to-APP relationships are especially valuable because APPs often recognize the referral need, educate the patient, place the order, and coordinate follow-up. Know the APPs in primary care, urgent care, emergency medicine, oncology, gynecology, nephrology, cardiology, and other specialties that overlap with urology.
Build the network by being useful. Share a direct route for questions, offer short educational sessions, send practical referral guidance, and be generous with curbside education within appropriate professional boundaries. Networking is not collecting contacts; it is becoming the colleague who responds, helps, and closes the loop.
Put relationship work on the calendar. Call patients who have reached out with questions or concerns, and call patients who need procedures when the plan requires clarification. Then send the appropriate education and after-visit summary. Each week, contact referring offices about unresolved needs, meet or schedule time with a PCP office, and connect with another APP. Track service measures that reveal whether the system is working: returned patient calls, procedure-plan barriers resolved, follow-up scheduled before departure, open-loop resolution, response time to referring offices, completed face-to-face visits, and patient feedback themes.
Do not chase volume at the expense of care. The goal is to become the urology team that patients recommend and referring providers trust because the service is consistently excellent.
Practice growth follows service: take exceptional care of the patient, close every clinical loop, and make the referring provider confident that sending the next patient will be easy and safe.
Turn every visit into a clear, complete, and caring experience—from arrival through post-visit follow-up.
Select a box to open its teaching details.
Review the Intelligent One post-visit analysis for omissions, guideline gaps, or unresolved actions.
Thank you for trusting us with your care. Your feedback helps us improve and helps others find urologic care. If you would like to share your experience, here is our Google review link.
Make every referral reinforce the provider’s trust: access, answers, communication, and reliability.
Select a box to open its teaching details.
Turn good intentions into a consistent calendar of service, relationships, and follow-through.
Select a box to open its teaching details.
Networking is not collecting contacts. It is becoming the colleague who responds, helps, and closes the loop.
Do not chase volume at the expense of care. Become the urology team that patients recommend and referring providers trust because the service is consistently excellent.