Case History #2
Physicians use e-mail as marketing tool
When Mid-Iowa Fertility got an e-mail from a patient in Saudi Arabia, the physicians weren’t that surprised. "Infertility is the type of situation where people will go anywhere and do anything to address fertility issues," says Brad Hart, practice manager of the Des Moines-based infertility diagnosis and treatment center.
After a series of Internet conversations, the patient decided to come to Des Moines for treatment. "We definitely get business from the Mid-Iowa Fertility Web site. Generally speaking, people are willing to travel significant distances for fertility treatments," he says.
The practice typically gets about 20 questions a month through the e-mail system. Hart screens the questions and refers them to the person in the practice who can best answer them. Questions to the Mid-Iowa Fertility site include kinds of treatments available, cost, and success rate.
Hart also is practice manager of Des Moines Perinatal Center, a prenatal care and genetic counseling practice, which also offers visitors to its Web site the option of e-mailing questions to the practice. "We consider it a part of marketing. Through our Web sites, we provide the option for people to e-mail us," he says.
Des Moines Perinatal gets 90% of its referrals from other doctors. That’s why the practice views the Web site and e-mail system as primarily informational, Hart says. "Generally speaking, here in Iowa, in the rural areas, the family practice physician is doing the deliveries and they generally do fine. However, they are not trained in special issues that sometimes come up."
Most of Des Moines Perinatal’s 10 to 15 e-mail questions a month come from patients or family members asking for specific information on genetic counseling or diseases, Hart says.
Staff think of the Internet site and e-mail service primarily as a relationship builder. "Patients who are referred to us by other doctors can look at us before they come in and get a better feel for who we are. It increases the comfort level," he says.
Both practices have had Internet sites for about two years and added the e-mail capacity about a year ago. The Web pages contain registration forms that the patients can download and fill out before they arrive, saving time in the check-in process.
Both practices discourage patients from asking confidential questions over the Internet because the sites do not contain any kind of security technology. "We’ve made it clear to patients that they are dealing with generic e-mail. Most of the questions are not super-confidential-type questions. They’re generally broad-based. If we start to feel the need to deal with patients on a more confidential basis, we’ll look for encryption," Hart says.
Neither practice uses the Internet to relay test results.
"We would not be comfortable transmitting test results until we have encryption in place. Another factor that hampers us is that many of our referring offices do not have active use of the Internet and still rely on faxes," Hart says.
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