As a medical professional, how do you effectively promote your medical practice in a COVID-19 world? The world changed in 2020. Not a corner of the globe remains untouched by the COVID-19 pandemic. And while U.S. states begin to reopen, cautiously, American business owners struggle with how to do so safely. Nowhere is this more evident and critical than for healthcare providers.

If you’re a doctor or dentist, you get the dilemma of needing to protect your patients as well as your staff. Precisely how to do this can vary significantly from practice to practice. Some healthcare providers pull out all the stops. They perform temperature checks at the door. Some mandate the use of hand sanitizer once a patient is in the office. And, some may insist that everyone – patients and staff alike – wear masks the entire time. Others are simply asking incoming patients to remain 6 feet apart and restricting the total number of patients allowed inside at a time.

The type of healthcare service you provide makes a difference as well. Patients with urgent medical concerns are more likely to seek out healthcare despite their coronavirus fears. Whereas, those with less-urgent needs may attempt to wait out the pandemic.

But that doesn’t mean you have to wait. There are ways you can reach out to your patients now in order to maintain those relationships and to provide needed care and medical information – even if your office is closed or business has slowed to a trickle. Below are four ways you can do just that in a COVID-19 world.

Update Your Medical Practice Website

Your medical practice website is the first place where patients may go to find out how you’re dealing with the COVID-19 situation. It’s where you can share your current hours of operation, office closures, changes you’ve implemented to protect everyone’s health and safety, and what patients may expect during an office visit. Your website is the easiest, most convenient way to provide this information. Your website can be most effective especially when that information can change from day to day. And it’s much more efficient than fielding a mob of phone calls and having to repeat the same information every time.

From the very beginning of when this pandemic came onto the scene, the medical website design team at iHealthSpot Interactive has been helping our clients communicate with patients in the most streamlined ways possible. Adding banners and other noticeable features and functionality to their websites has helped them communicate effectively with their patients during this crisis.

Is your medical practice website doing this now? Is it mobile-responsive? That’s how most people will visit your site. Is it easy to navigate from a cellphone? And, can your most urgent website messages be easily seen without much effort? Are you making it convenient for current and new patients to reach out to you if they need to?

All of this is built into optimal medical practice website design. If your website is missing this, or if it is more than 5 years old, it may be time for a refresh.

Offer Telehealth on Your Medical Practice Website

Prior to COVID-19, telehealth was used only intermittently as part of doctors’ websites, if at all. According to a survey conducted in March, telemedicine had been used by just 25% of consumers surveyed before the current health crisis. Since then, interest in telehealth has soared.

These days, remote healthcare has become a necessity. Conducting a virtual visit with HIPAA-compliant videoconferencing is a win for patients and physicians alike. It allows medical attention while both parties can remain safely isolated.

Most important now is letting your clients know you offer telehealth services. You’ll want to make sure your patients can easily access it from your website. That’s where we can help. As experts in medical website design, we not only create a presence on doctors’ websites explaining the technology to patients, but we also ensure it receives prominent placement and can be easily found and accessed.

Reach Out on Social Media to Promote Your Medical Practice

Because so many people are out of work, and many more continue to work from home during this pandemic, the lure – and impact – of social media is immense. Make sure you’re getting your message out where your patients are.

Most Facebook users, for example, log onto the social media platform every single day. And these days, absolutely every demographic is on Facebook: the young, old, rich, poor, rural, urban. If you’re trying to reach current and prospective patients, you’ll need an active Facebook presence. Having this as part of your medical internet marketing strategy will help promote your practice. We can take care of all of it for you.

At iHealthSpot Interactive, we can guide you on how to promote your medical practice via social media – we can even set up your own Facebook page and regularly post for you. As a medical internet marketing agency, we work with each of our medical and dental providers, who can be as involved as they wish to be in the process.

Regularly Blog

Although there’s a global health crisis keeping most people at home, that doesn’t mean you have to sit back and let your healthcare business suffer. You already know how to promote your medical practice. Don’t stop now.

­­­By regularly posting blogs on your medical practice website, you can achieve multiple objectives. Blogging before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic allows you to:

• Provide valuable information to patients. This may include information about changes your clinic has undergone during the crisis, as well as tips and guidance for patients who are worried about the virus and their health. It can also include updates on new findings and how that affects your business and patient care.
• Bolster your authority in your area of expertise. When your website regularly features new blogs about topics in your field, you become a trusted resource, your brand recognition skyrockets, and people who are interested in your services are inevitably drawn to you – including potential new patients.
• Improve your medical SEO rank. The more often your website has blogs on relevant topics using strategic keywords, the better your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking will be. This means your blog posts and website will appear higher up in Google search results, thereby garnering new interest.

How iHealthSpot Interactive Can Help You

At iHealthSpot Interactive, we do medical website design and beyond. We show you how to promote your medical practice – and we can do a lot of the medical internet marketing and communication legwork for you, even during the COVID-19 healthcare crisis.

Call iHealthSpot Interactive now at (877) 709-0999 to find out more. You can also get a free analysis of your current website performance at any time. We look forward to hearing from you.