Make Your Website a Competitive Advantage
If you use your practice’s website only to provide static information—basically an online version of a printed brochure—you’re missing a practice development opportunity that can also affect profitability. Research shows that patients value dynamic online technologies and want access to them.*
Adding Interactivity
A basic practice website creates visibility by providing one-way communication—general information helpful to potential and present patients. The site could include short physician biographies, directions to your offices, downloadable pre-visit forms and general health-care information. In short, this is an introduction of your practice to the general public.
However, you can do much more for your practice and your patients if you make your site more useful by allowing two-way communication. Interactivity can save time for your patients and staff because patients will be able to easily take care of many administrative needs online. For example, you might allow patients to request and confirm appointments, complete pre-registration forms for initial office visits or even access selected health information and/or a periodic newsletter.
Clinical Level Communications
You can raise your website’s interactivity to a clinical level by adding secure, encrypted e-mail messaging. After patients enter their user names and passwords, they can use e-mail to request prescription refills or ask for lab results. If you choose, you can also allow them to communicate with their physician.
You may find that responding to patients’ questions by e-mail becomes faster and easier than responding to phone messages, especially if you use an electronic medical record (EMR) system that calls up the patients' records automatically when e-mails are received. With or without an EMR, consider having a nurse respond to routine e-mails and refer the rest to you as necessary.
*Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Health-Care Poll, September 2006.
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