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Searching for Doctor Right

At the AMA’s 28th Annual Medical Communications Conference, held April 16-18, 2008, in San Diego, I had the opportunity to serve as a panelist for a session on social media in medicine. The audience featured media savvy professionals, many of whom were physicians. I could not have asked for finer fellow panelists than Craig Stoltz, one of Time’s Top 25 Bloggers, David Rothman, an expert on online search and medical web technology, and Eric Wright, our video guru from DSS.

I was struck by the level and quality of group participation and the questions surrounding new and innovative uses of the Web. We spent time discussing Web Presence, how and when to blog or distribute videos, the rationale behind Search Engine Optimization(SEO), and how patients search for their physicians on Google. If physicians aren't actively involved in enhancing their Web presence, potential patients are likely to find search results from a physician rating site or—even worse—no results at all. Since so many Web sites mention a physician by name (even Zagats offers physician ratings now), it’s virtually impossible for the average physician to provide adequate monitoring and surveillance. At a minimum we should check our reviews on the more significant rating sites, including Healthgrades (http://www.healthgrades.com) and RateMD (http://www.ratemd.com).

More importantly, we should concentrate on strategies and tactics over which we have a great deal of control, namely our own practice site or blog. Search Engine Optimization for a physician practice website or blog helps to ensure that the first search result returned to a potential patient is a link to a page with a controlled message. Google offers some solid guidelines on how to make your site "Google Friendly" and how to evaluate SEOs. Yahoo and MSN provide similar resources. Even if you aren't ready to plunge into the web headfirst, conduct a search on your name and review the results...you may surprised at what you find.