Websites for Hospital-Acquired Practices

It’s no secret that while the web is full of substantial, state-of-the-art medical practice websites, the new web presence of a practice that has been acquired by a hospital often leaves much to be desired.

The current method seems to involve a style and format that reflects the basic pages of the hospital site, with a noticeable scarcity of images and patient-friendly information and topics. It’s understandably likely that with all the details involved in the acquisition of a practice, the update to the hospital website is not much of a priority.

They’re Still Out There

Just because a practice is now under hospital management doesn’t mean that any of its independent practice competition has gone away. On the contrary, they’re doing their best to market themeselves to capture and retain more patients – in part just so they can manage to stay independent. And in today’s market, that usually means a full-featured, attractive website.

It’s Still All About the Patients

Patients who are going through the Internet looking for a doctor aren’t likely to make allowances for a plain-vanilla hospital web page they come across just because it’s a hospital web page. They naturally compare what they see with the website they just left and the one they’re going to go visit next. And with all the quality and rich content out there, they’re not very likely to stop looking and engage with the hospital-owned practice.

And Not Only That…

It’s also no secret that many of today’s patients are getting increasingly leery of these types of practices. They’ve seen the news stories about “facility fees” and forced in-house referrals, as well as the lack of options in choosing a hospital to be admitted to if the need arises. Add to that the fact that many patients are looking for a physician’s website precisely in order to get healthy enough to avoid the hospital stay experience.

The discerning patient who comes across an institutional-looking website when looking for a physician will almost certainly keep on looking until he or she feels comfortable with another practice website. The fact is, hospital physician websites just don’t look like “real” physician’s websites.