Klaus-Dieter Thill: "With eHealth, a new market is emerging for doctors"

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How can doctors influence their image and market their practice? Klaus-Dieter Thill has been advising medical practices and clinics in her work for 20 years. We spoke to the business graduate about practice websites, social networks and health applications.

Her current book is called "Image building in medical practices: Something is still going on here!". What general tips do you give doctors who want to improve their image – especially online?

Klaus-Dieter Thill: A particularly patient-understandable explanation of the range of services is particularly important for the Internet presence of medical practices, especially supported by images and videos. Unfortunately, this is not implemented by many practices, they are often too text-heavy because you want to explain everything in detail and also too medically and scientifically. Questions that other patients keep asking are very important to patients. Your collection and answering also helps to optimally design the service descriptions. Here, patient satisfaction surveys are suitable to answer these questions. Download offers of brochures, information sheets and educational aids are also required, as well as links to other pages with subject-related topics, which of course have previously been checked for suitability in practice. A presentation of the team with photos, functional descriptions and skills, if possible with certificates, is mandatory. In times of increasing importance of doctor rating portals, it is also important to regularly publish the results of your own, practice-internal patient surveys, supplemented by the link to portals in which reviews of the practice can be found. However, the number of assessments must be substantial, otherwise the reference is not necessary.

They write in their weblog that social networks are not yet well known among doctors. What can doctors achieve through activity in social networks?

Klaus-Dieter Thill: Primarily, it is about multiplying your own internet presence and the goal of competence profiling and transparency, both towards patients and with regard to cooperating doctors. So it can be said that it is good to be up-to-date there, but the activities are not a top priority. In view of limited resources, the core of all activities should be the practice website. After all, a presence on Facebook, Google+ etc. is of little use if you are not regularly active there and post new content. Above all, social networks have a communication function and you can refer to your own website very well from there. Because radiology is very visually oriented, it makes sense for radiologists to provide images and videos on their practice website, for example of their devices and how they work. Of course, these should be prepared in a way that patients can understand. However, radiologists do not always have to produce all of the content themselves or commission it for a fee. A good way to inform your patients with very little effort is to link to external websites. However, you have to carefully check the quality and relevance of this website content beforehand. So that this effort is kept within limits, the link to the websites of associations is particularly suitable.

In one of their blog posts you describe in detail how doctors Health Coaching can operate and thus support their patients with the use of health apps, fitness trackers etc. Why is it worthwhile for doctors to offer this type of extended patient counseling?

Klaus-Dieter Thill: To make this effort worthwhile for doctors, it must of course be rewarded. But the first health insurance companies are already paying for certain applications. A new market for doctors is currently emerging. Especially with family doctors and sports doctors, I can well imagine that this type of service could become a third pillar. In general, the trend is towards improving the quality of care and thus towards prevention or health practice and clinic. The effects on the various doctors are difficult to predict, but the market for eHealth and telemedicine is currently developing very diverse. We will see what remains in the end, which health applications are of interest to doctors and which ones they would like to recommend to their patients.

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