Medical Practice Website: The Case Against Physician Nephews

It may be hard to believe or may even bring a smile to your face, but for our smallest medical practice clients one main competitor for our medical practice website design service is “the physician’s nephew”.  That is at least what we call this group of people that sometimes includes a staff member’s daughter, or some neighbor’s son.

We know this group’s strengths and weaknesses.  We should, because many years ago, you could count me as one of them.
The story usually goes like this.  We have a client with a real need – they have no online presence and their reputation or online first impression is at the mercy of 3rd parties. After agreeing to what needs to be created, a solution where physician website design is only one of many building blocks, there is a hold-up in the process.  A few weeks later we receive word that the “physician’s nephew” will create a website for them.
While we are happy to still be engaged with all of these clients through some of our other services like compliance, EHR implementation or billing audits, it’s still not easy for us to see them make these decisions regarding their online presence.

The Pros – Leaving your online presence to your nephew

  • Your cash outlay may be smaller (ignoring potential liability and compliance issues).
  • You’ll get an extra star from your neighbor or whoever’s son/daughter you’ve hired.
  • You should feel good about employing these young people. This experience may prove to give them some valuable lessons.

The Cons – Leaving your online presence to your nephew

  • You will spend considerably more time assisting him/her with creating medical content.  Tell me again, how valuable is your time?
  • What you will get is a webpage, NOT an online presence.
  • Chances are slim that the end result will be programmed and written in such a way (medical SEO) that you will regain control of your first impression on Google’s search results.
  • Will the structure be sophisticated enough to support dynamic content, integration with social media and even EHR Patient Portals, or will it end up as a static webpage?
  • After 12-24 months, will your nephew still be excited about this project and help you maintain your website?
  • And perhaps most importantly, with our decades of industry experience and knowledge of healthcare laws and regulations, our design and content decisions may significantly differ from your nephew.

Medical Content as a Service

The greatest difference between our work and a job done by your nephew is not that we create multiple online properties for you and not just on a single website, but that we continually create new medical content every month for the client.  That’s the key to influence search engine results.

That’s why we only offer online presence as a service.  We don’t do one-time jobs – you can’t get actual results for your medical practice without continuous medical content creation and optimizations.

When you need proven expertise and performance

Audun

With background and training in classical music, international business and software engineering, Audun Utengen brings a unique combination of traits to the healthcare industry.