The referral kit: one page, one fax number, one promise

What the one page has to say

A referral packet earns its one page by naming exactly what a referring office needs to route the right patient: your specialty and populations served, insurance participation, whether you are currently accepting new patients, and the turnaround time before a first appointment. Add one line on physical and communication access, since Title III of the ADA treats a private health care office as a public accommodation 1Ref 1U.S. Department of Justice (2026).The Americans with Disabilities Act.That Title III of the ADA requires private health care offices, as public accommodations, to provide physical access and effective communication — supporting the one-line access statement in a referral kit..

• Specialty and populations: name the ages, presenting concerns, and any excluded populations (for example, no active psychosis, no involuntary holds) so the referrer doesn't waste a fax on a patient you'll bounce back.
• Insurance participation: list the plans you're in-network with, or state plainly that you're private-pay only.
• Openness status: accepting, waitlisted, or closed — updated on a cadence you actually keep.
• Turnaround time: the typical number of business days from referral to first contact.
• Access statement: one sentence on physical accessibility and interpreter arrangements.

One way to reach you, not five

Referring offices abandon a kit that lists a cell number, an office line, an email address, and a portal link, because nobody knows which one actually reaches you today. Pick a single intake channel — a dedicated fax line, a secure referral inbox, or a portal form — and put only that one on the page. Every other contact method invites confusion at the exact moment a referrer is deciding whether you're worth the effort of a follow-up call.

A common convention among solo behavioral-health practices is to keep fax as the primary channel, since it requires no vendor account or login on the referring office's end — a front-desk staffer can send it without help. Whatever channel you choose, test it yourself once a quarter. A kit pointing at a fax line nobody checks is worse than no kit at all.

Say whether you're actually taking new patients

The single most useful line on the page is the honest one: accepting, waitlisted, or closed to new referrals. A kit that always says "accepting" trains referrers to stop trusting it, and a stale "closed" line costs you patients who would have waited. A common convention is a fixed refresh cadence — weekly for a high-volume solo practice, monthly for a steadier one — with the date it was last checked printed right next to the status.

If you run a waitlist rather than a hard close, say so and give an honest range for how long it typically runs. A referrer who can tell a family "expect a four-to-eight week wait, but the practice takes new patients" keeps them in the loop instead of sending them somewhere else entirely.

What never belongs in the kit

A referral kit is not a marketing brochure, and three inclusions turn it into one: a patient success story, a claim about being "the best" or "top-rated" locally, and a wait-time promise you cannot keep. A patient story specific enough to identify someone requires that patient's written authorization before it appears anywhere, because using protected health information to promote a practice counts as marketing under HIPAA 2Ref 2HHS Office for Civil Rights (2026).Marketing.That using a patient's protected health information to promote the practice requires that patient's authorization — supporting the ban on patient testimonials in a referral kit..

A quote from a colleague endorsing your practice raises a separate issue: if you have a material connection to that colleague — you share office space, or you send referrals back and forth — FTC guidance requires disclosing that connection wherever the endorsement appears 3Ref 3Federal Trade Commission (2023).FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking.That a material connection behind a colleague's endorsement must be disclosed wherever the endorsement appears — supporting the rule for printing a referring colleague's recommendation in the kit.. Two more rules of thumb: never name or rank other local practices, even favorably, and never print a capacity claim ("same-week appointments") you might not honor by the time the fax is read.

If the kit travels through a portal, check who else touches it

Some solo practices distribute their referral kit through an EHR's referral module or a shared regional intake platform rather than a plain PDF. The moment that platform stores or transmits any patient-identifying detail from an actual referral — not just your one-page fact sheet — the vendor is handling protected health information on your behalf, and HIPAA requires a signed business associate agreement covering how it may use and protect that data 4Ref 4HHS Office for Civil Rights (2026).Business Associates.That a vendor platform handling patient-identifying referral data on the practice's behalf is a business associate requiring a signed agreement — supporting the distinction between a blank kit and a live referral workflow..

The distinction matters: the blank fact sheet itself carries no PHI and needs no agreement. It's the referral workflow built around it — the platform that carries a named patient's information from the referring office to you — that turns a vendor into a business associate. Confirm the agreement exists before you route real referrals through any third-party system.

Get the kit into the hands that matter

A kit that sits in a drawer does nothing. Hand it personally to the community partners already sending you patients — a school counselor's office, an employee assistance program, a discharge planner working the discharge stream at your local hospital — and mail it to nearby primary care offices. Building this list by hand is slower than buying visibility, but it produces referral sources you keep for years, not clicks you pay for once.

A strong local seo presence gets a patient searching online to find you; a referral kit gets the offices who already trust you enough to send someone to find you too. The two do different jobs and neither substitutes for the other.

Close the loop after the first visit

The single habit that turns a one-time referral into a standing relationship is a short note back to the referrer after the first visit: seen, no-showed, or still pending. This costs two minutes and tells the referring office their fax reached a real person, not a void — the trust a kit alone cannot buy. Practices that build referral flow without buying it treat this note as routine, not an afterthought.

Keep the note brief and free of clinical detail beyond what the referrer already knows from making the referral. A one-line status update, sent consistently, does more for the relationship than an elaborate kit that never gets acknowledged.

A kit you can copy

Copy the fields below onto a single page, fill in your practice's specifics, and delete anything that doesn't apply. Keep it to one printed page — a second page rarely gets read on a busy referral desk, and a referrer deciding whether to send someone your way reads only what sits in front of them.