All in the Family, Part 1
The days of the town doctor who knows everyone and makes house calls are certainly over. Nowadays, it appears that every doctor is a specialist in something. If you have a problem that your specialist doesn’t cover, you get to go see another specialist. Many people, families in particular, don’t need a specialist for anything in particular. They just want an all-around doctor who can treat the flu everyone is sharing, give the kids their immunization shots, give dad his yearly check up, and treat mom’s arthritis – all while looking at the same doctor.
The Family Practitioner
Being a family physician, or FP, is actually a specialty of its own and requires three years of specialized medical residency training in family medicine, after already having completed medical school. The residency includes training in pediatrics, obstetrics-gynecology, internal medicine, psychiatry and geriatrics. While a family practitioner has a vast knowledge of the medical field, they become experts in problems that are common to the majority of the population.
Sometimes referred to as a general practice doctor or GP, the family practitioner takes a more holistic view of medicine. The family physician provides comprehensive health care to people of any age, any gender, any disease or part of the body. This outlook of medicine treats a patient in the framework of the community and family and emphasizes the prevention of disease and promoting good health. This specialty is rooted in the importance of family.
Family practitioners in the U.S. must be licensed and then certified by the American Board of Family Medicine and certification must be renewed periodically, generally every 7 to 10 years.
This requires a lifetime of continuing medical education and a display of medical knowledge that remains up to date. The recertification process also involves physician chart audits as an oversight to patient care.
Get the Word Out
As a family physician, you already know about all of these requirements, but your patients, and
prospective patients don’t. They are not aware of the continuing education and recertification that you complete so that you can provide them with the best of care. Being an FP requires a different skill set that some other specialties don’t require. You have a wider audience to appeal to than most physicians, as your practice treats patients from infancy through old age. You need to be able to meet the needs of all the members of a family and acquire their trust and confidence. To do this, you need to convince the decision maker to make an appointment to meet with you and this is where Internet marketing does the work.
So, what is Internet marketing? Simply put, it is the marketing of a product or service over the World Wide Web, but you probably already know that. What you might be asking though is, “What is medical marketing?” or “What is healthcare online marketing and what can it do for my practice?” What it can do is get the word out about your practice and get it in front of the people who are looking for you.
Marketing Your Family Practice
Internet marketing, when done with great success, is a fine art that takes years of experience. In the case of a medical practice, it also takes a marketing company that understands the medical community and its requirements. Your marketing firm needs to know not only about Internet marketing, it also needs to know about medical marketing.
Providing a comprehensive, and successful, marketing strategy for online marketing of a medical practice requires many aspects. Aside from knowing how to design a website, a marketing firm, such as Axiom Health Care Marketing, needs to understand how search engines work and how to achieve search engine optimization. Website design, optimal placing of keywords, blog creation, and social media marketing all play a part of a successful Internet marketing campaign.
Axiom Health Care Marketing has the experience and knowledge to successfully market your family practice on line and bring in new patients. Contact us today for a free consultation and learn how we can put you in front of those looking for you.
In Part 2 we will discuss more in depth what Internet marketing includes.
Published by Axiom Health Care Marketing
