Conference Presentation Triples Mobile PET/CT Patient Volume
PACS Vendor Offers Marketing “Boost”
10 Steps for a More Effective Web Site
Conference Presentation Triples Mobile PET/CT Patient Volume
By Renee DiIulio
Gary Fedo, director of imaging at Ridgeview Medical Center, Waconia, Minn, said that given the chance to do it over, he might have started marketing the facility’s new mobile PET/CT service earlier. “We didn’t start very early, and, subsequently, we had very few patients when we started,” he recalled of the service, which is supplied by DMS Health Group (Fargo, ND).
When launching the program in early 2005, Ridgeview Medical did not expect to generate enough volume to justify the cost of purchasing a permanent system, but it was expected that there would be enough patients to support a mobile PET/CT service 1 day per week. “We came to the conclusion that our oncologists, radiation therapists, and other users were sending these patients 30 miles to downtown Minneapolis. Once we realized there was enough volume—not just one patient a month—we wanted to keep them in Waconia,” Fedo said, citing the facility’s philosophy of keeping care as close to patients’ homes as possible.
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| A technologist prepares a patient for a PET/CT examination in a mobile station. |
For help marketing the new service, he turned to the physicians of Ridgeview Medical, an independent, 129-bed, acute care hospital and the heart of a regional network that includes neighborhood clinics, emergency facilities, and specialty programs and services. Because the facility’s radiologists cover some 30 hospitals, it was relatively easy for one of them to pull together a presentation that highlighted the benefits of the hybrid imaging system with what Fedo called “eye-popping, wow stuff.” Fedo secured Geoffrey R. Bodeau, MD, an area radiologist, on the schedule for the facility’s routine Friday-morning conference, for which physicians who attend are awarded CME.
“Dr Bodeau pulled together a variety of cases highlighting the use of PET/CT,” Fedo explained. “I’ve never seen physicians exiting a conference so excited.” The result was a patient volume that went from one or two patients a week to six or seven.
Fedo’s advice is that similar efforts should be part of any marketing plan for mobile PET/CT, even if the facility has to wait 6 months to pull such a presentation together. He believes that grassroots efforts like this one are more successful than traditional marketing efforts, such as brochures and advertising.
Brochures directed to patients complete with space for recording appointments were printed, but Fedo directed most of his marketing efforts toward referring physicians. He communicated the benefits of the hybrid system to physicians and their staff—technologists, nurses, and assistants—during lunches, phone calls, and personal visits.
In discussing the market with service provider DMS, Fedo realized that in addition to medical oncologists, both radiation oncologists and surgeons should be targeted. “These systems are truly changing the way [radiation oncologists] set their fields,” Fedo said.
The facility is now monitoring volume for consistent levels to justify adding a second day of the mobile service. Clearly, the service’s slow start has now hit a higher gear.
PACS Vendor Offers Marketing “Boost”
Dynamic Imaging, Allendale, NJ, is offering its new and current IntegradWeb PACS customers assistance in promoting the benefits of PACS to referring physicians. The Boost Marketing Initiative provides customers with a set of marketing tools and materials targeted to referring physicians and their affiliated group practices. The materials are provided at no additional charge, allowing new customers to concentrate on implementing the PACS. The Boost program includes:
- a laminated 9½- x 12¾-inch dimensional box that graphically depicts how imaging results are delivered to referring physicians; the box is ½-inch deep to accommodate all of the materials;
- an introductory piece that details how imaging results are delivered, along with a response card;
- a silk-screened IntegradWeb PACS CD with an auto-launching viewer;
- a sample printout of reports with key images; and
- an IntegradWeb PACS quick-start guide developed specifically for referrers.
Each set of materials is customized with the customer’s logo. New PACS customers receive 150 copies of the materials; current customers receive 25 copies.
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| IntegradWeb PACS customers receive this fold-out box filled with tailored marketing materials geared toward referring physicians. |
John Griffith, CRA, RT(R)(MR)(CT), is the CIO of EPIC Imaging, Portland, Ore. A full-service imaging center that works with more than 2,000 referring physicians and performs 100,000-plus examinations each year, EPIC has been using IntegradWeb for more than a year, and has just begun using the Boost program. “Because IntegradWeb has many options for delivery of images to the referring physician, it was always difficult to provide them with all of their options in a concise package,” Griffith says. “With Boost, that has changed, and our marketing staff is able to show all of the delivery options and allow the referring physician to choose how he or she wants to receive them.”
Griffith says that the Boost program is a helpful value-added service that all companies should offer. “It’s the kind of program I have been wanting from a PACS company,” he explains. “I have installed multiple PACS, and it was always hard to market to the referring physicians and get them on board.”
For more information, call (888) 303-PACS or visit www.dynamic-imaging.com.
—A. Lucas
10 Steps for a More Effective Web Site
by Wendy J. Meyeroff
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| www.acr.org |
Whether you already have your Web site or are still thinking of launching, consider these 10 tips for making your Web content as effective as possible. A great site is less about the technology and more about content and presentation.
1) Determine Your Target Audience. If you are speaking solely to those in radiology, you need not worry about your site’s language being too clinical. But if you are seeking to draw patients, you need a Web site that is written in “patient-speak,” a vocabulary that few clinicians have mastered. Medical marketing defines “plain English” as about an 8th-grade reading level. If you are targeting both groups, do three things:
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| www.varicoceles.com |
- First, determine your main target, and write most of the site for it.
- Second, provide a link to the secondary audience, such as the “Patient Info” link information shown in the menu bar on this ACR site.
- Finally, switch your writing tone. For example, on the ACR site’s “Patient Info” section, the organization posts quotes on the right side of the screen. Unfortunately, those quotes usually have nothing to do with how the ACR serves patients. The ACR would be better served to insert something more consumer-oriented—a quote about how comfortable a radiology group made someone feel, for instance—or eliminate any quote at all.
2) Make It Easy on the Eyes. There are lots of rules for this, but a key one is: Stick to black letters on a white screen. Although this interventional radiology site has many good points, the white letters are unnecessarily hard on the eye.
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| www.chsbuffalo.org/body.cfm?id=315 |
3) Limit Scrolling. The whole point of the Internet is that it is fast; you have about 10 seconds to capture your audience’s attention. So keep scrolling to a minimum—especially on your home page. Here, Catholic Health System’s radiology page delineates its services in a seemingly endless scroll. (There is much more past what you see here in this screen capture; it prints nine pages.) Those services would have been more effective in a link to the side, saying “Radiology Services,” and then sublinks grouping those services either geographically or by technology.
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| www.advancedrad.com |
4) Indicate Location Immediately. Can you tell where the aforementioned Catholic Health System is based? It lists the cities they’re in, but where is East Aurora? Having a “Locations” link isn’t enough. Look at how Advanced Radiology Services did it. In big bold letters above the opening paragraph, it reads, “West Michigan’s Premier Radiology Practice.” Plus, the site lists its offices—complete addresses and phone numbers—on the left.
5) Indicate Other Key Information Up Front. Put the key information you are trying to convey so it always shows up within a 15- or 17-inch screen. The Advanced Radiology site listed in #4 has the same links at both the top and bottom of the page, just in case you see only one on your monitor. Also, Nighthawk Radiology Services’ home page is very well designed for the most part; however, upon scrolling, we found two key points that would have been better in the opening paragraph. First, the company was founded by United States-based physicians as a way for radiologists to have tests read overseas while they’re sleeping. Second, a tag line that is buried within the text but would have made a good intro or even a slogan next to the logo: “When it’s the middle of the night in Boston, it’s daytime ‘Down Under.’ ”
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| www.nighthawkrad.net |
6) Be Repetitive. You never know which page(s) a reader will access. Make sure any information you always want them to see, such as your location and phone number, is on every link.
7) Avoid Overusing Technology. The Internet is a great interactive medium, but people can get carried away. Most site visitors don’t want to work through Flash introductions unless they are evaluating a potential Webmaster. And animations that never stop are very annoying.
8) Establish Credibility. Tell how long you’ve been around (eg, “Serving West Michigan since 1998”). Ask clients—patients or colleagues—to provide testimonials, and then post them appropriately throughout your site. Let their words indicate you’re a leader. Just make sure you have written permission for usage.
9) Keep the Copy Current. You do not want an old address or a physician no longer with the practice facing your audience. So, make sure that content is fresh.
10) Got the Keys? Ask your Webmaster about key words—words that help your site be one of the top five that pop up no matter how the audience searches. When we performed a Google search for “Truxton Radiology Medical Group,” the facility’s site was listed first. But without “Medical Group,” all that Google returned was a handful of secondary links that never brought us to Truxton’s site. Good key words would have connected us in the second search.
Wendy J. Meyeroff is a medical communications consultant who has lectured extensively on Web site writing and content to pharmaceutical companies, nonprofit groups, and advertising agencies.
