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This is the age of the internet. It really is imperative that you have sort of a web presence in order to communicate with your patients. The first thing they’re going to do is go to the web to see something about you. They’ll look at companies such as Healthgrade, which might be rating you. They will look at other sites put up by insurance companies and other agencies which might report information about you. So you want to be proactive and have your own presence out there.

One company, a division of the American Medical Association called Medem, Medem.com, who can put up a basic website for you for as little as $30 a month. They even have a free program which accepts some basic advertising. So you have two very good choices out there which could send a fundamental presence on the web. Bios of your practice, directions, the kind of work you do and links to patient-education material for your particular specialty society. If you can, you want to be ready to set up email appointments. Patients are looking for convenience. They are used to doing things such as paying bills online, buying tickets online, buying airline tickets, hotel tickets, well, maybe they can set up an appointment schedule system as well. So you want to have a web presence. This puts you in a position to control your image, to control how you communicate with your patients and others in the community who do work at business with you.