Venturing into the healthcare business seems like a huge investment; however, things will eventually fulfill you if you are keen on running a primary hospital or a clinic. Running a healthcare facility is a round-the-clock duty because serving patients requires professional expertise and financial ability.
Being good at your profession and running a business are necessary to thrive in the healthcare industry. There are stringent requirements in running a medical facility, and the standards keep on updating year by year.
The qualifications for medical practitioners also tighten, giving a challenge to all to engage in continuous education. The task is to serve patients, strengthen your professional credentials, and manage the business finances well.
If you are up for the challenge, setting up your own clinic is the way to go.
Set up Your Virtual Clinic
Aside from your physical clinic, also consider setting up a virtual clinic. Having a website helps you communicate the ideals of your clinic and reach out to your patients in a more convenient way.
A virtual clinic can meet your patients’ needs for telehealth, digital payments, and online appointments. As stated by Digital Authority Partners, ecommerce and the latest software technology bring more functionality to your operations and healthcare service.
A virtual clinic with telehealth, a digital payment gateway, and SEO features will enable you to run your clinic smoothly and ensure a balanced flow of patient service and cash flow.
Reality strikes hard for healthcare startups because maintaining the finances entails a solid patient database and investor relations. You can do it as long as you focus on the quality of your service.
You can incorporate these six features into your healthcare website to attract more clients and build your patient database:
1. Vision Video
The best way to introduce your clinic is to share your vision with your target market through video. Feature the video on your website and link it to your social media accounts. Upload it also on YouTube and optimize it to gain likes and shares.
Create a digital marketing campaign to grow your subscribers on YouTube and increase the number of your viewers and subscribers.
2. 360-degree Virtual Tour of the Clinic
Many people would want to visit a clinic for a checkup, but they worry about contracting Covid-19. You can ease their worries by showing them how your clinic has abided by the state’s health and safety protocols. Have all the medical staff wear their PPEs and demonstrate how you attend to a patient coming in for a physical consultation or treatment.
You can ask a professional photographer to take 360-degree multiple shots of the clinic. Feature the photos on your website and share the page link to your social media sites.
3. Health Blogs
Another way to boost your online presence is to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Write health articles that educate people about common illnesses and discuss the treatments that patients need to undergo.
If you specialize in a medical field, give more specific discussions about special cases and inform the readers about the medical procedures needed to combat the illness.
If you write about a sensitive case or severe illness, make sure to mention that you are qualified to give medical advice because you are a licensed practitioner. This establishes your authority over the subject matter while abiding by state regulations on patient rights and safety. Always verify facts and statistics before quoting them in your article.
4. Live Chat
A fast way to boost inquiries on your website and social media sites is to have live chat. Ask your web developer to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into your website so you have pre-set answers to frequently asked questions and can respond to inquiries.
AI can empower your chatbot to analyze queries and find the closest answers. You can input pre-encoded sets of questions and possible answers. And then let the chatbot match the queries with the available answers. AI can also personalize chat replies by mentioning the user’s first name.
AI uses your website’s cookies to track a user. Remember to inform your site visitors about how you use cookies and their personal details.
If you or your staff is online, you can directly answer questions. But if you are offline, you can turn on auto-replies.
5. Telehealth
This is one of the most important features that your healthcare website must have. Your patients might need immediate medical attention, but they cannot visit your clinic in person.
Having a telehealth feature on your website can help you reach out to your patients and attend to their immediate medical concerns. Ask your web developer to add more software technology to improve the quality of videoconferencing.
If you have the budget, ask your software developer to create a customized app for your brand so that patients can have seamless transactions and a more steady telehealth experience.
6. Digital Payments
It will be easy for your patients or their guardians if you have a digital payment gateway on your website or social media pages. This will enable them to just swipe their credit cards or use their PayPal accounts to pay for the consultation or treatment.
Moreover, payments can be arranged in advance, so family members can pay on behalf of the patient. Even if the family member is abroad, they can settle the payments via the website’s payment gateway. If you have this feature on your website, more and more clients will be glad to avail themselves of your medical services.
To accommodate more clients, offer more digital payment options and make this feature available on your social media pages. You can also set up your virtual clinic via Facebook Shop and grow your client database by integrating it with your Instagram account.Â
Final Words
To continue building your client database, invest in SEO campaigns for your website. SEO helps nurture current prospects and enables faster conversion on websites and social media sites.
Stay abreast of the latest developments in digital marketing and grow your social network by participating in local community events such as medical and dental missions. Work with your web developer in integrating the latest software technology into your website and commit to continuous learning so that you can harness your professional skills.
Staying on top of your game is synonymous with hitting the dart target. Always sharpen your skills so that you can give your best shot and reach your goals.
