Web site Ideas for Clinicians

Create a Web site to Acquire New Patients

The Internet has become a part of daily life for many people. This is why developing a website that puts your practice in the presence of people who are searching for doctors, therapists, chiropractors, and other healthcare professionals makes good business sense. A website can help patients find your practice and choose your services in many ways. Consider the following scenarios:

• Prospective patients use their insurance provider directories to choose a few physicians to research. They type your name and location into their search engines and find your website. This is especially important because your competitors do not have
websites.

• Uninsured individuals use the Internet to find healthcare providers in their area and your website is listed at the top of the search results.

• A colleague refers a potential client to your therapy practice. Before making an appointment, he searches for your website to gather more information about your background and treatment philosophy.

• Current patients want easy access to information about your practice and want to have online access to medical forms.

What information should a website contain?

The goal is to develop a website that illustrates your practice’s competence, compassion, and concern for its patients’ needs. A website that contains a wealth of well-written, relevant information and that is easy to navigate will create this image.

Initially, your website might be small and contain basic information about you and your practice. But to increase a website’s popularity and importance to visitors, it should be updated regularly to include changes about the practice and information that patients will find useful. The following lists give an idea of the kind of information that will attract prospective patients to your website and practice.

Biographical information

• Medical school attended
• Years of experience
• Board certifications
• Special interests
• Professional memberships
• Reason for becoming a health care professional
• Treatment philosophy

Information regarding practice

• Hours of operation
• Address
• Telephone number
• Map of location
• Parking information
• After-hours/emergency telephone number
• Hospital affiliations
• Information regarding office visits
• List of accepted insurance plans
• Payment policy
• Cancellation policy
• Privacy policy
• Procedure for responding to messages
• Updates and changes to business operations

Medical Resources

• Information regarding medical conditions that you commonly treat
• Articles that pertain to your medical specialty
• Nutrition and fitness information
• News regarding new medical procedures or changes in medical treatments

Photographs can make your practice feel inviting and familiar

Photographs of yourself, your staff members, and your office will make your practice feel more real, accessible, and welcoming to prospective clients.

Attract traffic to your website

A well-designed website, alone, is not enough to receive high rankings in Internet searches. One criterion for high rankings is the age of the website’s domain name. The older the domain name, the better ranking it will receive with search engines. But age is not the only determining factor. Other important factors include the quality of the website’s content, use of keywords, and links from other websites to your site.

Quality of content

Search engines place higher value on websites that contain a large amount of well-written content. Furthermore, an abundance of relevant and easy to understand information shows current and prospective patients that your practice provides high-quality healthcare and is willing to provide valuable information at no-cost. This will motivate them to make an appointment.

Keywords

Keywords and keyword phrases are what Internet users type into search engines to find websites that pertain to a particular subject. Therefore, your website will rank higher in search results if the content contains a large number of keywords and phrases that people in search of healthcare providers and medical information are more likely to use.

Links to your website

When other good-quality websites link to yours, it increases your website’s value with search engines. Search engines assume that a website that contains a large number of links back to it from other high-quality websites is valuable and trustworthy. Therefore, the more quality inbound links that a website receives, the better its ranking will be in search results.

You can increase the number of inbound links to your site by asking friends, colleagues, affiliates, and business associates to place a link to your website on theirs and vice versa. You can also include a link to your website in the online directories that contain your information.

Promote your website

Once you’ve launch your website, promoting it will help you drive traffic to the site. Some promotional ideas include the following:

• Make sure that outgoing communications such as appointment reminders, invoices, receipts, patient instructions, and correspondence contain your website’s address.

• Include the website’s address on letterhead, business cards, and forms.

• If you sponsor fundraising events, ask that your website address be included in information that lists your contribution.

• If you are featured in an article, request that a link to your website be added to the article.

Building a comprehensive website that addresses the needs of your target market is an ongoing process. By starting now, you will be on your way to creating an online presence that will draw a steady stream of new patients to your practice. Besides, if you have a website and your competition does not, you will be better positioned to grow your practice and protect it from economic downturns.

References

Jorgensen, Amy. Finding Patients Online, Netdoc.com. http://www.netdoc.com/Physician-Practice-Articles/Marketing/Finding-Patients-Online/ (accessed on July 6, 2009)