Every nurse practitioner with a private practice should build partnerships with relevant neighboring businesses. These connections can boost your patient satisfaction and retention as well as your reputation and ability to attract new patients.

What are the benefits of partnering with local businesses?

• Providing extra benefits to patients: There is only so much you can do to support your patients during an office visit. Forming partnerships with local businesses allows you to spread the circle of influence and incentivize patients to make healthy lifestyle choices year-round.
• Attracting new patients to your practice: A partnership with another business is a two-way street. You may form a partnership to help your patients access services, but it can also help spread the word about your business. For example, if you send weight loss patients to a personal trainer, the personal trainer can refer any client looking for extra weight loss support to you.
• Staying engaged with important community issues: Small businesses should root themselves in their neighborhood, make connections, and become involved. Community involvement for healthcare professionals can mean seats on local boards, attending town hall meetings, or having a presence at local parades and festivals. You should also stay in the know on upcoming events and business openings, tailoring your marketing to what is currently relevant to your clientele.

What sorts of partnerships should nurse practitioners consider?

Your ideal business partnerships will differ based on your private practice’s specialty. Consider what would make the biggest impact on the patient experience, what complementary services your patients need, or what other local businesses your patients frequently patronize.

Partnerships to improve patient services

Consider what you recommend patients do in their free time to mitigate symptoms or support treatment regimens. Offering membership discounts or first-class-free coupons to patients can help them follow your advice and, in turn, help you provide better care.

For example, if you run a medical weight loss clinic, you may consider partnering with a gym to get your patients discounted memberships. You could also form a partnership with a nutritionist or fitness coach to get your patients the extra attention and dietary expertise they need. If patients struggle to exercise due to injuries, consider partnerships with sports medicine or physical therapy businesses. Finally, you can work with healthy food stores or restaurants to provide incentives for healthy eating. All these partnerships can work in tandem to help your patients have a more well-rounded weight loss journey.

Say you are a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner treating patients for anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions. Yoga, meditation, and outdoor physical activity have proven beneficial to mental health. Therefore, you could consider partnering with a yoga or meditation studio that would provide discounts to your clients. 

Partnering based on mutual clientele

The above examples reflect lifestyle changes you would recommend to patients, so forming partnerships helps them follow through on your advice. If you can’t think of any good partnership options this way, that’s okay. Instead, consider other services you know your patient population also accesses.

For example, nurse practitioners with aesthetic niches can partner with local shops or salons to round out the beauty and wellness treatments patients receive. This isn’t a requirement for your treatment, but with a huge overlap in your patients and a spa’s clients, for example, a partnership here is natural and can bring new patients to both your practice and their business.

You may specialize in fertility treatments and prenatal care. While partnering with a store that sells diapers, baby clothes or toys isn’t going to improve the quality of care your patients receive, they will be grateful to save money on products they will soon need. 

Building a professional network and partnering with fellow medical providers

While it’s important to focus on commerce-based partnerships, don’t forget to also consider forming professional connections with other healthcare providers. If you work as a primary nurse practitioner, you should have specialists to whom you refer patients.

How can nurse practitioners form partnerships?

Partnerships begin with networking connections. Build your professional network by attending professional conferences and events, using LinkedIn, and introducing yourself to other business owners in the neighborhood.

Marketing partnerships for nursing practices

An easy way to form a partnership with another business is by suggesting a joint marketing campaign. You can offer the initial investment of paid advertising and hope your partner organization will chip in once they see its initial success.

Good marketing campaigns take research and creativity to develop a unique selling point and understand your target audience. For example, consider the popularity of exercising as a New Year’s resolution. Gyms and other fitness facilities always see a spike in January. If you have a weight loss or men’s health clinic, you can partner with such facilities to market both your services at the beginning of the year.

Affiliate or referral partnerships for medical professionals

Referral partnerships are mutually beneficial for everyone: you, your partner organization, and your patients. Forming affiliate partnerships requires an overlap of clientele in both directions as well as a negotiation of discounts for clients. You can approach partners with requests for such collaborations once there is common ground and benefit to all parties.