As you peruse the web, you’ll find that many websites for healthcare practices share the same core pages: a home page, profile for each doctor, services overview and on more comprehensive sites, an overview of various procedures performed in the office. If you’re looking for ways to diversify your site and offer additional value to visitors, consider developing a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Section page in addition to these standard core pages. FAQ pages offer three main benefits: 1) they can help to address some of your prospective patients’ concerns before they’ve even had the chance to contact you, 2) they can help to show just how patient-centric your practice is and how committed you are to serving as a resource and 3) they can save your receptionist a lot of time in fielding calls (and questions) that could have easily been addressed online.

Identifying the Questions

To get started with this copy, ask all patient-facing staff members to jot down ten of the most common questions that they receive from prospective patients and current patients. You’ll likely find that there is a great deal of overlap and you can easily condense these lists into 10-15 of the top frequently asked questions that you receive each day. You’ll likely find ones like “Do you accept my insurance?”, “Do you have evening appointments” and “Do you perform XYZ procedure in your office?” top the list. Of course, these questions should be more general and administrative in nature since you can’t answer medical-related questions without first examining a patient.

Tackle the Answers

Don’t use these questions strictly as bait to get patients. It can be frustrating if each question is just answered with “call our office for more information.” Instead, work with your team to develop concise answers and encourage visitors to call, if they didn’t find the information they were looking for in this section.

Highlight the Page(s) on Your Site

Once you’ve taken time to develop this content, work with your website developer to strategically integrate it into your practice’s website. This information is valuable and shouldn’t be hidden away on some inner page. In addition to a prominent graphic or place in the menu, you might consider having various links to relevant questions scattered about the site on different pages. Also make certain that this page has a vanity URL which can easily be remembered and shared (e.g. www.zolasurgeons/FAQ)

Send Callers & Interested Parties to the Site

Take time to update your after-hours message and hold message to include information and explain that answers to many questions can be found on your website. This helps to ensure prompt service and minimizes frustration among prospective patients who may want immediate assistance. You may also have an automated email which includes this information that is sent to parties who submit an online inquiry or consultation request through your website.
Once you have these basic FAQs in place, you might even consider doing a monthly “Ask the Doctor” spotlight where you tackle a specific concern of prospective patients like “how long is the recovery period following a tummy tuck?” or “is the extraction of wisdom teeth painful?” These questions only take a few minutes to address and are a great way to continuously add helpful copy to your website.