Physician Web Sites:
If You Build it, They Will Come

Few physicians these days would think of operating their practice without a listing in the phone book.

Survey results show a newer patient outreach device – a home page on the World Wide Web – is attaining a mounting degree of acceptance and accomplishing what no phone listing ever could.

From December 1999 to January 2001, the percentage of U.S. physicians in practices with Web sites grew from 29 to 42 percent, reports the recently released "Computing in the Physicians’ Practice" study. Other survey data suggest that their patients are the force behind physicians’ decisions to hang up their shingles in cyberspace.

Consider this:

• More than 100 million Americans are now online, and three-quarters of them are searching the Internet for health information.
• Patients’ number one preferred source for online health information is their own doctor (62 percent), far outstripping insurance companies (45 percent) and media outlets (33 percent).
• Another survey found that 45 percent of Americans are interested in accessing their physician’s office Web site, only 4 percent have already done so, and a stunning 19 percent say they’d be willing to switch physicians to get that access.

"Medical doctor Web sites will be the catalysts for furthering digital adoption in the online health sector," said Claudine Singer, senior analyst for Jupiter Research. "They will drive physicians to interact with patients, forcing integration into their professional workflow, and will also provide a platform for patients to use the Internet for meaningful health activities."

Why Web?

A home page on the World Wide Web can provide a practice with significant new tools for marketing, patient service, and patient education. Many, but not all, of those advantages can come without even opening the "Pandora’s Box" of patient/ physician e-mail.

For many practices, the Web site is little more than an online brochure. It lists the practice location, office hours, and insurance plans accepted. Phone numbers and maps to the office are also standard. The basic page also may add background about the physicians, such as their training and practice philosophy.

The next step in interactivity makes the practice home page a little more useful for the patient. This can include links to area hospitals and participating health plans, or perhaps some marketing tools. Plastic surgeons were among the first to seize this opportunity, posting "before and after" photos on their Web sites.

With the average primary care patient visit now under 15 minutes, many physicians see the Internet as a simple and cost-effective way to extend the patient/physician relationship. Their Web pages include basic information about the diseases they most commonly treat, questions and answers about how to handle medical problems at home and when to call the doctor, or standard preoperative instructions and postoperative precautions. More advanced sites now include streaming video, diagrams, and X-rays that walk a frightened patient through each step of an upcoming procedure.

A security feature should be built into the site (a very important concern), allowing the patient and office to communicate electronically and offers a new opportunity to serve patients efficiently. Appointment scheduling, prescription refills, questions and answers about non-emergency situations, and requests for copies of medical records all can be handled over the Internet.

Home Page Building

Physicians or office staff with a little extra time and a few hundred dollars for software can assemble their own Web sites, even if they lack technical skill. Most doctors who have built their own home pages say the problem comes not in the initial construction but in the maintenance, i.e., adding new clinical information, remembering to make changes when the practice adds or drops a health plan, keeping physician biographies and photographs up to date. The practice also must arrange for an Internet service provider to host the site.

Medem Inc., a consortium that includes the American Medical Association and many of the country’s largest specialty societies, is one of several organizations who will build and maintain physician Web sites for free, or at a nominal cost. Members use a "wizard" to walk them through the step-by-step construction of the site. The specialty societies provide clinical articles, edited to be understandable by average patients. Medem now also includes a secure patient-physician messaging service. Others offering these services include Medscape and Salu.net.

Finally, physicians who want to dive head-first into e-health can contract with custom site builders, which can implement all the newest bells and whistles. Experts suggest looking for firms that specialize in health care sites and offer reputable patient education material.

Local medical associations and state or national specialty societies can often suggest vendors for practices to consider. A word of warning: Start-up costs can range from $500 to more than $5,000, and annual maintenance fees can run a similar amount.

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