Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 - (Page 65)

WEB SURFING IF YOU BUILD IT … B Y E L A I N E Z A B LO C K I HOW A TOP-NOTCH WEB SITE CAN EXPAND AND ENHANCE YOUR SERVICE 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. IN SUMMARY Many organizations use Web sites to serve their customers and attract new business. But physician practices in general fall far behind in meeting the expectations of their patients in this area. Many practices that do have Web sites hire a skilled professional to design their Internet presence, but small practices can easily create simple sites and update them on their own. Practices wishing to enhance their sites by expanding their patient services may choose to create secure sites that enable e-mail correspondence with physicians, lab result access, electronic prescription reﬁlls, and automated health alerts. At its most basic, medical practice Web sites should include: • Ofﬁce hours; • Phone numbers and other ways to reach the practice; • Location and directions; • Information about each physician, including special expertise; • A list of accepted insurance plans; • Hospital afﬁliations; • An introduction to and history of the practice; • A short statement of the practice’s patient-care philosophy; • Links to patient education materials; • and Downloadable patient forms. Note that none of these features requires specialized computer expertise or a secure hosting service. 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.” TECHNOLOGY GUIDE | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM 65 http://www.villagehealthpartners.com http://www.dcorthodocs.com http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 TG Cover Story: Protect Your Practice and Sleep Better Operations: Paperless? Not Quite The Internet: You've Got Mail...Or Do You? Patient Relations: Attention Grabbers The Tech Doctor: All About Blogs Lessons Learned: 'My EMR Nightmare...And Why I'd Do It Again' Scheduling: No More No-Shows The Marketplace: Who's Got Your Back IT Enhancement: Time, at Last, for an Upgrade? Online: 'Yup, I'm a Junkie. And Proud of It.' In the Office: New Technologies in the Workplace: Blessing or Curse? Web Surfing: If You Build It...

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

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