One of Christopher Crow’s patients was in Miami, about to leave on a week-long cruise, when his prostatitis flared up again. “He e-mailed me from his hotel room to ask for a prescription,” recalls Crow, whose Web site features secure e-mail messaging. “All he had to do was locate the closest drug store and pick up his medicine the next day. Imagine how difficult it would have been for him, trying to get an appointment with a doctor in a strange city before his ship sailed.”
Crow practices at Village Health Partners in Plano, Texas. Crow says that the three-physician practice’s Web site, www.villagehealthpartners.com, attracts new patients and helps make the practice far more efficient.
The same goes for the Office of Orthopaedic Medicine and Surgery, a three-physician practice in Washington, D.C. As patients leave after an appointment, they are handed cards with the practice’s Web address (www.dcorthodocs.com) printed on the front and their diagnosis written on the back.
“We’ve just upgraded our Web site,” says Latisha Harrison, the practice’s marketing director. “Now it’s more interactive, and patients can submit forms to us online. We also added an educational guide so now our patients can look up reliable information about their specific condition. Our doctors were really, really adamant about including that feature in the upgrade.”
These physicians are among the early adopters of Web-based technologies for medical practices, although many more are likely to soon follow their example. In today’s wired world, patients want the same level of service online from their physicians that they already routinely receive from companies selling them books, music, and camping gear.
“Absolutely everyone should have a practice Web site,” says practice management consultant Judy Capko. “It’s a very reasonable investment, and it makes you more visible, not only to your existing patients, but also to people who are searching for a new physician in the area.”
About three-quarters of U.S. adults would like to schedule their doctor visits via the Internet, and they’d also appreciate e-mail reminders from their doctors, according to a recent Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive poll.
But only a small minority of medical practices offers such services, resulting in a paltry 4 percent of patients using them. Moreover, roughly two-thirds of patients would like to receive their lab results via e-mail, but only 2 percent currently do.
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the practices that invest in Web-based IT offerings will carry an advantage in the healthcare delivery marketplace.
Your billboard on the Web
Some practice Web sites provide basic information about the practice, including short biographies of each physician, directions to the office, and forms patients can download and complete at home before arriving for scheduled visits. Other sites boast more sophisticated features, such as Crow’s secure e-mail and gastroenterologist Patricia Raymond’s Web movies.
When patients visit Raymond’s site (www.simplyscreening.com), they find personalized videos available for viewing. Raymond, a solo practitioner in Chesapeake, Va., meets about two-thirds of her patients for the first time when they arrive for procedures. “The videos show me chatting in my living room, answering their most common questions,” explains Raymond. “My patients love them, and the Web site has streamlined, getting new patients in for their colonoscopies.”
The specific mix of features your Web site should incorporate depends on the nature of your individual practice. A primary-care practice in which new patients are seeking long-term relationships with a physician should probably use its Internet presence to introduce its physicians and share some personal information about them. A specialty practice such as gastroenterology should focus more on the specific procedures it performs. Most physician practices start out with a basic Web site and then add new features over time as they perceive demand for them.
One way to think about your Web site is to envision it in three developing stages, says Bruce Kleaveland, president of Kleaveland Consulting in Seattle. In the first stage, you offer a basic introduction to your practice. Then, as you expand the site and enter the second stage, you add administrative functions such as giving patients the ability to make appointments, pre-register, and complete downloadable forms. The third stage involves incorporating clinical interactions with patients, such as prescription refill requests and access to secure e-mail communication between physicians and patients.
