I hope you write a ton of more posts, with your experience in marketing!

FWIW, there’s a well-known (in medicine, anyway) crisis in primary care medicine, i.e. those providers of the most regularly used services. Most patients will go to a primary care doctor for the vast majority of their common care (~ 90%), like for colds, sprains, blood pressure/cholesterol, diabetes, annual checkups, and the odd whattheheckisthat?

The training programs putting out primary care physicians (PCP’s) are putting out HALF as many graduates as they were 10 yrs ago, mainly because primary care physicians don’t make much compared to their specialist colleagues. A specialist can make $1000 for about 15 minutes of procedure time; a PCP spending an hour with a patient/family might make $50.

At any rate, it’s no joke when I say that PCP marketing to patients will become critical, IS critical, when it comes to drawing in and retaining patients, more and more of whom will be researching their new MD’s via the internet and checking out their web/blog sites. As more patients sign up for high deductible plans, where they’ll have to pay cash for the first $2-5000 of care for that year, to have lower monthly premiums (typically half of a standard HMO plan’s rate), they will be very choosy about their docs.

Handling the marketing angle well may make the difference between thriving and struggling.

Please. Post. More.

There are definitely different types of "new" patients as you say, as well as different initial contact points for them.

In writing this post (and the subsequent ones that’ll be published over the next week or so), I focused on what I felt would be a typical doctor, i.e. one who didn’t yet have an online presence. After all, for each one who may be web- and marketing-savvy like yourself, there are many more who don’t yet have websites, let alone podcasts.

As a result, in my head I defined a "new" patient more as a first-time or occasional visitor, or someone who called on the phone or responded to a direct mail piece, rather than a website/blog visitor or podcast listener. But you’re absolutely right, doctors can benefit from using those tools to build their practices.

Hmm, website-specific marketing ideas for doctors… sounds like I’ll be writing a few more posts…

I guess it depends on one’s definition of "new" patients.

There are new patients who are more potential patients: they’ve never been to the office, have never seen the doctor or any staff, and are doing research on the internet to find a new MD/office. The first goal with this group would be to have the practice web/blog/podcast site *stick* in their minds long enough, to consider the office as a seirous contender for an actual visit — mostly done via the site design. But having the *practice* giving out *its* email could be seen as a distinguishing plus; and the patient’s email would come automatically if they sent the office any queries for more info. THE FIRST REPLY could have a brief paragraph in it, giving the option to click on a link to immediately unsubscribe from receiving future practice updates, which could be a standard ending sentence in any subsequent mailings.

Similarly, the more standard technique of giving a free ebook or similar digital product in exchange for the email sign-up for practice updates could work for browsing patients.

Then there are new patients who are signing-in for their 1st visit, and are already on the premises, or will be, or have recently visited. Part of the sing-in process could be a nicely done page, exclusively on the matter of email signing up, extolling its virtues and promising to not misuse it, and to unsubscribe at any time.

Great points. I’m looking forward to a great discussion here too.

I totally agree that for your existing patients, the trust factor is likely less of an issue. You just have to figure out the best time/way to get that information from current patients - one way would be to make it part of the sign-in sheet when they first come in (telling them what you’ll be doing w/their email address, of course)

For new patients, it’s a bit tougher since you don’t have that trust… are they going to be willing to provide an email address? On the one hand, they’re already providing a lot of medical history/personal information, but at the same time they don’t know that they’re ever going to come back to your office and so they may not be willing to provide an email address where you can easily reach them.

Hopefully we’ll get some great ideas in the comments on how to address these challenges.