Anne Arundel Dermatology, one of the largest dermatology groups in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, raised enterprise-wide referral conversion from 21% to over 50% with Medsender, retaining 75% of converted referral patients and cutting average time to first contact to 22 hours.
21–50%
referral conversion rate improvement
75%
retention of converted referrals
32%
new patient share of unique patients
22 hrs
average time to first patient contact
Anne Arundel Dermatology started more than 40 years ago as a solo practice in Annapolis, Maryland. Today it’s one of the largest dermatology groups in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, with practices in seven states. The group offers medical, surgical, and cosmetic dermatology, with in-house Mohs surgery and its own dermatopathology lab serving every location.
Anne Arundel Dermatology (AADerm) had built one of the largest dermatology platforms in the country. With more than 100 clinics and 300 providers across multiple states, its clinical reputation was strong. What had not kept pace was the front-office infrastructure needed to consistently capture the demand generated. Thousands of referrals were arriving every month. Many of them were not being contacted.
Referrals arrived through multiple channels, including faxes, shared email inboxes, and web form submissions. Each practice handled them differently. There was no centralized tracking, no standardized workflow, and no visibility into how many referrals were coming in, how many were being worked, or how many were slipping through. The fax burden alone was significant, requiring staff to manually sort, download, rename, and upload documents.
We had no idea who our referring population was. We had no idea the number or the volume of referrals we were receiving overall, let alone at the clinic or market level. Visibility was the biggest pain point.
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Brittany Dimitri
Director of Operations Support, Anne Arundel Dermatology
Without a system to identify, track, and work those referrals, conversion was nearly impossible to measure. In the practices that were tracking it, referral conversion rates hovered around 21%. Referring providers who sent patients and never heard back grew frustrated. The referral loop was not being closed, and the practice had no way to know how much potential demand it was losing.
Brittany Dimitri, Director of Operations Support, was tasked with finding a solution. She evaluated multiple platforms, building a detailed scorecard to compare capabilities. What she was looking for was a solution flexible enough to meet the unique operational needs of a large, distributed enterprise and a vendor willing to build toward their evolving needs.
After evaluating the market, Brittany presented her scorecard to Medsender and asked a direct question: “Can you do all these things?” The answer from Medsender co-CEO Zain Qayyum was yes, with a commitment to deliver.
The reason I went with Medsender is that they were willing to customize their platform to fit the way we operate. I gave them my scorecard and asked them, can you do all these things? They said yes, and they delivered.
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Brittany Dimitri
Director of Operations Support, Anne Arundel Dermatology
AADerm began a phased implementation starting in March 2025, with the enterprise-wide rollout completing in March 2026. The rollout included Medsender’s fax automation and referral management capabilities, integrating directly with their EHR, ModMed EMA, across all locations.
With Medsender in place, every incoming fax is automatically read, categorized, and routed to the right person before staff even touches it. Referral workflows that previously lived in disparate inboxes and paper piles are now managed through a single coordinated system. Front office staff at each location incorporate referral tasks into their existing daily workflow without additional headcount. AADerm’s Operations Support team uses a dashboard to track referral volume, time to first patient contact, and regional performance across the enterprise.
Medsender provides visibility to the patients who are waiting to be seen. It shows us where we have potential for volume growth in offices where we may have been struggling to fill schedules. That has been significant to our revenue growth.
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Brittany Dimitri
Director of Operations Support, Anne Arundel Dermatology
The automation of fax processing has also reduced overtime for staff who previously spent significant time sorting and uploading documents by hand.
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Brittany Dimitri
Director of Operations Support, Anne Arundel Dermatology
The impact became measurable quickly. Enterprise-wide, referral conversion rates increased from approximately 21% to over 50%, with some regions reporting rates of 60%-70%. The practice is now working all its referrals rather than losing some in inconsistently managed fax queues.
Where we did have a referral process before that was trackable, we were converting around 21% of referrals. We are now converting over 50% as an enterprise, and in some regions over 60 to 70%.
BD
Brittany Dimitri
Director of Operations Support, Anne Arundel Dermatology
Retention of converted referrals is strong. In a three-month analysis of completed appointments, Anne Arundel retained 75% of converted referral patients for a second appointment, a metric that directly links referral management to long-term patient loyalty and revenue.
Converting more than half of incoming referrals, rather than one in five, brought a materially higher volume of new patients through the door. Following full enterprise rollout, new patients accounted for 32% of the unique patients AADerm saw, compared with 20.6% typical for medical specialty practices according to the National Center for Health Statistics (CDC), National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey.
Time to first patient contact has improved significantly. Across practice locations, the average is now 22 hours, a dramatic shift from the inconsistent, often multi-day timelines of the manual era. The team is working toward contacting referred patients on the same day the referral arrives, before they have had time to call a competing practice.
The data now available through Medsender has also enabled entirely new strategic capabilities. The platform is piloting physician liaison roles with data-driven targeting, something that was not possible before because the referral source data simply did not exist.
Understanding the magnitude of this organic referral volume and being able to measure and take steps to improve it over time has really important implications for our demand generation strategy. Patients were knocking on our doors; we needed a tool that could help us measure and maximize that. With a predictable flow of new patients coming from the referral channel, we can really optimize our marketing spend.
DS
Drew Sogn
VP of Marketing, Anne Arundel Dermatology
Beyond the operational results, Brittany highlights the nature of the relationship with Medsender as a differentiator. After years of working with software vendors that promised features on long timelines and failed to deliver, the experience with Medsender stood out.
Speed of delivery has opened my eyes to realize that others have a choice, and they choose not to do it and tell me it will take a year. Medsender says they can do it and did it in two weeks. They proved there is always a choice.
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Brittany Dimitri
Director of Operations Support, Anne Arundel Dermatology
From early implementation through enterprise rollout, the Medsender team, including co-CEOs who engaged directly, invested significant time ensuring AADerm’s team was set up for success. Brittany notes that the team was open to critical feedback and treated each concern as a problem to solve rather than a contract obligation to manage.
It’s a real partnership, not me handing over a list of pain points and hearing, ‘It’s too late. You’re already under contract.’ It’s, ‘Let’s make sure you’re successful.’
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Brittany Dimitri
Director of Operations Support, Anne Arundel Dermatology
A vendor willing to customize the platform to fit the way a large, distributed enterprise operates
Flexibility to meet unique operational needs, validated against a detailed capability scorecard
Speed of delivery: capabilities requested were built in weeks, not promised on year-long timelines
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Brittany Dimitri
Director of Operations Support, Anne Arundel Dermatology
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