Want to engage with patients? Hang a digital shingle

Dr. Rosevear is a urologist in community practice in Colorado Springs, CO. Urology Times blogs present opinions, advice, and news from urologists and other urology professionals. Opinions expressed by bloggers are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Urology Times or its parent company, UBM Medica.

I recently read “Lincoln and the Power of the Press,” a fascinating book about how President Lincoln attempted to influence public sentiment via the three most important media outlets of his day: the New York Times, theNew York Herald, and theNew York Tribune. As fascinating as the book was, my thoughts while reading it kept turning to how pervasive social media is in the lives of our patients and how little physicians interact with patients on this medium.

While no one would consider me a neo-Luddite, I’m not the fastest adopter of technology either. I didn’t get a smartphone until the iPhone 5 came out, as my flip phone worked fine and I wasn’t sure if smartphones were just a fad. I don’t have a personal Facebook site and until recently had only the vaguest idea what Twitter really was.

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My opinion of social media began to change over the last year as I started to notice how many of my patients commented on the fact that I went to the University of Michigan for medical school. I don’t regularly wear maize and blue ties so I was confused how they knew this until I realized patients had simply read about me on my company’s website. No surprises there; that’s why we have websites. What shocked me was the number of patients who said they choseto see me because of that website.

Chose to see me? Yes, chose to see me based on what they learned about me online. If that doesn’t scare you a bit, it should. A few years ago, I wrote about the necessity to monitor your online reputation and the importance of that lesson hasn’t diminished over the intervening years. In fact, the number of outlets where patients can “review” a doctor has skyrocketed. It’s no longer just Google, vitals.com, or healthgrades.com. Now patients can use Facebook and Twitter or a million other private websites to leave either positive or potentially disparaging comments about doctors. And that thought depressed me.

This made me wonder if there is a proactive way help define what patients learn about you online. And there is. You simply have to go online and hang up a shingle. So I did it. I created my own website (FiveRosesUrology.com) and Facebook page and even started my own Twitter feed (@5rosesurology). I didn’t do this on my own. My wife, who is much more tech savvy, and a local web designer get most of the credit, but we did it.

These efforts also weren’t free. I insisted throughout the process that the product was going to look professional yet down to earth. And I think we succeeded.

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