We moved to Grand Rapids 2 years ago and my wife still drives almost an hour to go to the doctor in East Lansing. She just has not been able to find a doctor here. Finding a doctor is like finding a date or a mate. A slight difference being that even though you may not say it most people mean ‘till death do us part, probably more so than when people get married. So that means finding the right doctor is probably one of the biggest decision people today make.
So how do you find a doctor? The two biggest factors are location and reputation. Hmmm…Sounds like the 2 biggest things I talk about. So you guessed it, this makes Health care providers the biggest group who should be taking advantage on the Web 2.0 evolution. WebMD has become an incredible force with unique visitors jumping from 853,000 in 2004 to 40.3 million unique users per month in 2007. Mayo Clinic has created an online community that has blogs, forums, podcast, videos, and slide shows.
What do you call a doctor who passes medical school with a D average? “Doctor”
But who do you want operating on you? Of course you want to entrust your life into the hands of the most competent individual. Care Providers can showcase their knowledge through blogs and podcast. At the same time keeping their patients informed. Believe me there are a lot of crackpots out there blogging about health care who probably should be blogging at all. Then there are those like Dr. Oz. Who is not aware of Dr. OZ “Americas” doctor? Google his name on the internet and you will get 645,000 hits. If you are a health care provider, how many hits do you get when you Google your name and is your website or blog one of the top 10 pages? Instead of WebMD I am sure most would prefer to read helpful medical information from their own local care providers.
Word of mouth can grow or kill a business or practice. I am not sure if most health care providers know what people are saying about them the other day while on yahoo local my chiropractors name came up (I was not searching for a chiropractor). Chris Miller is great by the way and that is exactly what someone had said. Who would you choice someone not rated or someone with 5 stars? If you are a health care provider do you know what people are saying about you online?
From 1996 – 1998 I spent a great deal of time at the University of Michigan Hospital help doctors and nurses take advantage of the latest technology back then. The last two years I have been helping out launch one of the best clinical inventory management systems in the world. Maybe now I will spend some time helping care providers in Grand Rapids fully adopt Web 2.0 technologies. But first I have to help my wife find a local doctor.
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