6 Medical Website Features Every Doctor Should Know About
To run a successful private medical practice, you need to go about the business of medicine smartly. You shouldn’t stick to the old style of ticking dates on calendars, piling up medical records, or waiting and waiting for a patient to fill out paper forms. These processes just slow you down in a high-tech world.
Thanks to the internet, you can now reach more patients and run your medical practice more effectively by using a medical website. With a medical website features, you can place your practice before patients across the globe and offer them important information about your services.
One key objective in private practice is to turn inquiries into appointments. Websites for doctors can help keep their visitors informed and show them why they need medical services. It can also help to save front office time when patients can book appointments online and fill required forms from their homes.
You’ll need medical website design features for patient education, appointment booking, and case updates. However, designing a professional medical website requires immense expertise. An effective website needs to offer an experience that has visitors enthusiastic about engaging with your private practice. Experienced web developers like Officite have the expertise to make sure vital features are designed specifically for your website.
How do you know if your medical website has all the features it needs? Here are six medical website features that doctors like you need to know about.
1. Patient Education
Patient education is a great way for health practitioners to provide information to patients and caregivers. It encourages proper health behaviors and sheds more light on healthy living and wellness. By featuring educational content on your website, patients can access information and learn more about your private practice.
You’ll become a resource for patients seeking answers. When they often find solutions on your website, they will come to trust you. Because of the informative articles, infographics, and videos you share, they will be more likely to refer friends and family to you. Eventually, your search engine rankings will improve, and your website will become a go-to platform for potential and current patients.
You need medical website features like patient education — which could serve as a patient’s first call when they need information on a medical condition, disease, or impairment. And since they’ll get the details before visiting a doctor, it will minimize the time spent with the doctor.
The physician website should also be designed in a way that allows you to easily update it with the latest medical information.
2. Blogging
Blogging is a good way to answer questions that patients often ask. You can use search engine optimization (SEO) tools to find out which questions people often ask about your area of medical expertise. SEO can show you which content is relevant at different periods (i.e., COVID-19). By addressing topics that pertain to your practice and sharing relevant information with prospective patients, you’ll demonstrate that you have the expertise they need.
A blogging feature makes your medical website a trusted healthcare resource that readers are excited to visit. By visiting your website regularly, readers will want to visit your private practice when the need arises. You can also link your blog posts on social media, a powerful platform for spreading information and advertising your services.
Health professionals can also keep patients engaged with discussions, opinion polls, and various original content. Boosting traffic to your website with varied, engaging content means more visitors that become patients.
3. Online Booking
To better utilize your time and resources, you need to know how to organize appointments. A physician website design featuring online booking will help you utilize time, energy, and other resources. It will also help prevent burnout for physicians and office staff.
You and other staff members will know what, or who, is scheduled next, and who needs to cover it.
The online booking feature reduces a patient’s waiting time and improves their satisfaction as the pre-appointment work is completed from their home at their convenience. They can access a simple interface that allows them to book appointments on your calendar.
With online booking, routine checkups — such as dental appointments, cancer screening, counseling sessions, and family planning services — become easier. Your office calendar will be synchronized and your staff will get automated notifications, so you’re up to date on cases and don’t miss appointments.
4. E-Commerce
Apart from educating patients on why and how to acquire medical care, you need to make sure they easily have access to medical products. Professional medical websites with an e-commerce feature can sell recommended products to patients online. Without walking into your office, patients can pick up medications and other products that can help them improve their health. Also, your website becomes an online store that works with popular marketplaces like eBay and Amazon.
The e-commerce medical website design feature allows you to market your products without limits. You can also grant discounts to patients who already get their treatments from you. Your patients will obtain medical help quickly, and your practice will make more profits without any extra work.
5. Secure Email and Forms
With the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) created the Privacy Rule ( HIPAA). The latter informs patients about their privacy rights and how much control they have over their health information. Patients often want assurance that any information supplied through your medical website is secure and confidential, as well as beneficial to their treatment.
A medical website design that enables patients to fill forms online will reduce staff workload and help minimize the time that patients spend in your waiting room. You’ll be able to integrate forms into your website and communicate better so that patients can receive timely medical care. Beyond saving your time and theirs, you need to ensure that the information filled on such forms is protected by encryption technology.
By keeping medical and contact information safe, you’re offering patients peace of mind, and they’ll be more open to engaging your services.
6. Doctor Portal
Medical website design features help patients learn more about improving their health. Patients have the opportunity to complete certain processes before going to your office.
Doctors also benefit from the website by using the doctor portal feature. Doctors can interact with their patients before they even arrive at the office. The doctor portal allows doctors to access their emails, manage web content (with the help of other staff members), review web statistics, track their appointments, send periodic newsletters to patients, and even send e-cards to current or prospective patients.
This feature allows patients to contact their doctors without eating into medical professionals’ off-shift time.
Get Started on These Features Right Away
Your medical website should fit your practice like a glove. You need features like blogging, secure email and forms, online booking, SEO for doctors, Facebook ads, and more to easily reach new and current patients from anywhere.
A physician website design should have features like the doctor portal and reputation tracker as part of a user-friendly website design to help improve how you present your services to patients.
Professional medical websites need the above features, and even more — like intelligent reviews, call scheduling, and customer support — to meet the unique needs of medical practitioners and the expectations of their prospective and current patients.
For a successful practice, you need a feature-packed medical website, and expert designers like Officite can help you figure out how to use website features to improve the engagement and satisfaction of patients who come into your practice.
Schedule a consultation with Officite to discuss your unique needs today.
