Designing a First Rate Site

Here is where the real fun begins. By now, you have designed your first site, have some familiarity with the HTML editor of your choice, and know the joy and frustration of navigation, links, and FTP. You have surfed a bit more and have seen some really good sites. You know now the truth of what I said before, that although time and money are always limitations in this life, with the internet you are mostly limited by your imagination. You have much more lofty goals this time around.

We are all individuals, and my ideal site is probably nothing like what you want. But let me share with you some of the things that went through my mind as I designed my second site (actually, the fourth site but the second office site. The first was eRadius and the second was this Guide).

Promote My Practice
My goals for the site included promoting my practice, differentiating it from others by emphasizing the fact that we do not have any capitated contracts and that I spend a lot of time with the patients. I had done several studies to improve patient care, one on post-operative pain management (my patients' average number of pain pills [Vicodin] in the entire post-operative period, averaged over all patients treated in a one-year period, was only 2.54) and one on office-exit satisfaction. I wanted to share this information with my patients. Although this may be a vain hope, but I would like to think that patients will pay for quality, especially if they have experienced poor quality care previously and are given an option.

Patient Education
I also have always felt that patient education was important. Like many hand surgeons, I keep a stack of letterhead and felt tip pens in each treatment room, so that I can sketch out the anatomy and write down important concepts for the patients. (I also give each new patient a copy of my dictation for that visit.) I wanted a website to emphasize and expand on the information that I normally give to my patients, as well as to lead them towards the better sites available on the web, and give them something against which to measure what they find on other sites. Personally, I am apalled at the lack of quality in physician websites on the web.

My Attempt at a First-Rate Site
The designing and editing of this Guide have taken vastly more time than I anticipated. My site is partly designed but not yet fully linked navigationally, so I have not yet posted it. I apologize for not being able to show it to you at this time (March 14), but it was more important that the entire Guide function than my site function. The AAOS and the ISOST educational activity, the Orthopedist's Guide to the Internet, start in about 10 hours, and I need to get some sleep! I will put a link to it here as soon as it is up.

Do you have a physician website? Let me know about it and it may help me to make this chapter better. 

Also, please send your comments about this chapter of the Orthopedist's Guide to the Internet to David Nelson. Thank you.