Whether you’re a new retinal specialist actively building patient volume or an experienced physician working to maintain your practice, techniques to enhance relationships with referring doctors and patients remain central to a successful practice. The basic recipe is always the same: be available, be friendly, be knowledgeable. A call — or even a visit to the referring doctor — goes a long way.
However, with a wealth of technology at our fingertips, it is important to take advantage of these channels to further enhance your practice. In this article, we provide five simple tips to enhance your practice in this era of new technology.
1 KEEP YOUR PRACTICE WEBSITE CURRENT
It’s surprising how many medical practices don’t have websites. Equally surprising is the number of practices whose websites are out of date. Your website will likely be the first stop for prospective patients and referring doctors, so it’s imperative that you keep the information about your practice and service offerings up to date. For example, if you have a “News & Updates” subpage, be sure that is current. Also your personal bio — including your headshot — should be up to date and serve as a strong promotion for you. (See tip #2.) Patients increasingly like to “meet” their doctor prior to their first visit. A video profile on your website is a great way to provide that experience. Seeing a specialist for a problem can be anxiety-inducing, and a friendly video describing your approach to patient care can put patients at ease.
Efforts to ensure that your practice website is prioritized during related searches (SEO, or search engine optimization) will likely pay off. Although search algorithms aren’t publicly defined, a continually updated website, especially one with pictures and videos and links to other websites, may help ensure that your website shows up toward the top of searches. In addition, an informative educational section with lots of easy-to-understand drawings and animations can further drive traffic to your site and demonstrate the breadth of knowledge your practice offers.
2 MAINTAIN YOUR ONLINE PROFILE
Google yourself — your patients and referring doctors certainly will. Many of the top hits will provide information about you that is within your control to edit. For example, your LinkedIn page, your website bio (see tip #1), your ASRS profile, and various medical or social media websites will likely occupy the top search results. Edit these to ensure they not only reflect where you are and what you are doing, but also use these as an opportunity to market yourself. Discuss what makes your care of patients special. Consider including some of your interests outside of medicine to add a personal touch — but don’t over-share. In fact, keeping a separate and private profile for your personal life may be wise.
Today’s patients are increasingly engaged in their care. They enjoy seeing reports and images of interesting cases and staying current with the latest health news. Maintaining a social media profile can be a great way to broadcast periodic updates that patients and referring doctors may enjoy following.
3 FIND WAYS TO BROADCAST YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS
Your referring doctors and patients want to know what’s new and noteworthy in retina — and you should be the one to tell them. If you pioneered a novel surgical approach, such as a simpler technique for sutureless scleral IOL fixation, make a narrated and edited video and post it on YouTube. If you have a great patient outcome, such as a patient regaining visual stimuli for the first time in many years after a first Argus II surgery, document the outcome on social media websites — it may go viral. If you’re a runner and help guide blind runners through marathons, let the news and other popular media outlets share this remarkable achievement. You get the idea.
Remember that your audience for promoting your practice is referring doctors and patients, so typically not other retinal specialists. What you may feel is commonplace may not be to them. A new piece of equipment, such as OCT angiography or wide-field imaging, an interesting case presentation, and participation in clinical trials can pique their interest. In addition to spreading the word via your online channels, regular newsletters, mailed and/or emailed, are a great way to maintain communication with your audience who may not regularly follow your website or social media sites. In addition, organizing meetings for referring physicians is a great way to highlight and share your achievements.
4 BE READILY AVAILABLE FOR E-CONSULTS
Your biggest asset as a retinal physician is your wealth of knowledge regarding a part of the eye that is intimidating to others. Traditionally, patients have needed to see us in the office to be evaluated. Sometimes, we conduct over-the-phone consults. However, in this day and age, high-tech retinal imaging modalities, such as fundus cameras and OCT devices, are commonplace in even a general eyecare provider’s office. Sharing these images is as easy as downloading and emailing the images, or even just taking a screenshot and texting the image with a smartphone. Encourage referring doctors to consult you by emailing or texting cases or images they may not understand. Doing so maintains active and direct lines of communication between you and the referring physician, making it more likely that you’ll be the first on the list to be contacted for future retina-related issues. It reflects well on referring doctors that they have easy access to the specialist. Although these “e-consults” may result in deferring a patient visit to you, this frees the slot for patients with true pathology. And most importantly, strong relationships with referring doctors will lead to more patient referrals.
5 ONLINE REVIEW SITES
We live in an era of online reviews. We no longer make purchases, choose restaurants, or go anywhere new without reading online reviews first. Online review websites of doctors are still in relative infancy, but are becoming increasingly popular. It is worthwhile for every provider and practice to develop a strategy for monitoring and maintaining these reviews. Be proactive. Register and update your profile for the major sites. If you receive a negative comment, it may benefit from a response from the practice or office manager, acknowledging the comment and a commitment to address the reported concerns. An additional strategy to deal with negative comments is working to increase the number of positive comments.
Practices can help facilitate by asking happy patients to complete positive reviews, either by providing the link to review sites or even having stations with tablets or computers in office, which may allow less tech-savvy patients to fill out online reviews with the help of office staff. Patients are often very appreciative of the care you provide, and happy patients are often eager to share their experiences.
A POWERFUL TOOL
Today’s technology can be a powerful marketing tool for both new and mature retina practices. The five tips outlined here are easy to incorporate into your existing strategy. As referring doctors and patients become increasingly comfortable with rapidly advancing technology, approaches to continually engage them will evolve. Bottom line? Stay current! NRP
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