Fort Worth Oral Surgery
Bringing the Whole Referral Community Along
How Fort Worth Oral Surgery traded fax-and-phone friction for one secure channel its referring partners actually asked for.
The Challenge: a single busy fax line standing between patients and care
For a practice that is almost entirely referral-based, the referral process is the business. At Fort Worth Oral Surgery, that process used to run on a fax machine and a paper pad.
“We had the classic fax program and a referral pad that we had distributed. The referring offices would complete that referral pad and fax it over.”
— Bob Pendry, Director of Professional Relations.
It worked until it didn’t. One busy signal could hold up an entire day of incoming referrals, and an unclear fax meant picking up the phone to sort it out.
“One of the biggest problems was if you had a busy signal on your one fax machine. The huge amount of phone calls we had to make back and forth with these offices, just for purposes of clarification or verification before the patient arrived, was just a day-to-day routine for us.”
— Bob Pendry
The bigger gap was clinical. Fax could not carry the images the surgeons needed to plan care, so X-rays and photos either traveled in with the patient, leaving little time to review, or arrived by mail, pushing the appointment back.
“And the referring offices couldn’t send us X-rays or photos via fax.”
— LeAnn Beamish, Lead Referral Coordinator
The team made it work the only way they knew how.
“We did the best we could. Using our referring pad. Using the fax machine. Using the phone. Using me. Whatever needed to be done, we just did it. We didn’t know any better.”
— Bob Pendry
The Solution: one secure platform, and a community willing to adopt it
A peer practice, Austin Oral Surgery, introduced Fort Worth Oral Surgery to LeadingReach in 2015. The fit was immediate: a digital, HIPAA-compliant home for referral communication that could finally carry the images the surgeons relied on.
“To be able to have an automated, digital, HIPAA-compliant platform for that communication, that could also transmit the X-rays, panorexes, pictures and documentation we require for our diagnosis process. When we heard about LeadingReach, it was like the clouds opened and the sunshine came through.”
— Bob Pendry
For the coordinators handling referrals every day, the difference showed up in the small moments.
“They can shoot them right over to us, and it’s so easy to download and save to the charts. And I can communicate back and forth with the referring offices about scheduling or rescheduling.”
— LeAnn Beamish
Rather than wait for adoption, Pendry took the platform on the road, training referring offices one by one. The product made the case for him.
“When I started to teach it office-by-office, the compliments just came pouring in. ‘Wow, this is so much easier, this is so much better!’ When competitors started to pop up, they weren’t nearly as user-friendly.”
— Bob Pendry
Even the holdouts came around.
“The very few who were reluctant to try it, I’d say, ‘Just try it, please, just give it a chance,’ and they’d call back about a week later and go, ‘Bob, this is amazing!’ Most people embraced it, and now you couldn’t pull it away from them.”
— Bob Pendry
The Results: a connected network that runs on its own
As the referring community came online, the practice felt the shift in volume almost immediately, and in a way that spoke to how naturally the platform fit into the workday.
“We went from having 1 or 2 LeadingReach transactions per hour to 1 or 2 transactions every few minutes. It takes nearly two full-time employees to process all the LeadingReach activity. That’s a real testament to the program and people’s ability to use it easily.”
— Bob Pendry
Beyond the volume, the platform tightened the back-and-forth that used to eat the day, with a direct effect on getting patients into care.
“This really helps us clarify everything the referring office expects us to do versus what they’ve already done. Our case compliance and acceptance rate is extraordinarily high, and I’m sure LeadingReach has helped us with that. The immediacy of treatment and getting patients into our practice has definitely increased with LeadingReach.”
— Bob Pendry
For the team using it, the recommendation is simple.
“Once the front-desk person handling referrals becomes familiar with LeadingReach, it’s awesome. It’s so simple to use, and you can use it while you’re trying to do something else. Just the easiest system to use and save information.”
— LeAnn Beamish
The deepest payoff was the one that matters most in a tight-knit referral community: stronger relationships with the offices that drive the practice.