Social media is a powerful tool for any medical practice, including those in the urology field. Where social media for urology gets tricky is with sensitive subject matter and potentially offensive posts. If you’ve been eager to increase your social engagement but unsure where to start, Practis, an Onspire Health Marketing company, can help. 

With the right social media management, you can utilize social media – from YouTube to Doximity to X – to spread awareness and reach more patients. Some urologists have had outstanding success with YouTube channels and other platforms by easing anxiety around procedures and sharing insightful health and wellness tips.

Benefits of Social Media for Urologists

At first, urology might not seem like the most social-media-friendly topic. But the vast majority of patients look for health-related information online – and that includes urology patients. Insight, educational information, and inspiration are needed to support patients online, and urologists must answer that call if they hope to remain competitive.

Social media for urologists can have the following benefits:

• Stand out in a competitive field
• Raise awareness around certain procedures to reduce patient distress
• Educate patients about bladder health
• Build credibility and trust in your community
• Attract new patients and engage existing patients
• Help reduce fear, stigmas, and misinformation

Social Media for Urologists and HIPAA Compliance

Some urologists shy away from social media for fear of violating HIPAA or alienating patients. A better-safe-than-sorry mentality is understandable, but it shouldn’t keep you from accessing the many benefits of social media marketing. 

Social media best practices can help you stay compliant and ensure you don’t miss out on your full digital marketing potential. Whether you want to make the most of Instagram, YouTube, or Doximity, Practis can help ensure you strike a balance between personable, professional, and privacy-minded – just like your HIPAA-compliant urology website.

Make Your Social Media Account Stand Out

Believe it or not, having neglected social media accounts is worse than having none at all. In this day and age, patients often check online reviews, websites, and social media accounts before they ever step foot in a new practice. If your social accounts are sparse, unprofessional, or they fail to engage with curious patients, it can make you look disinterested and uncaring.

Your social accounts should have the following:

• An active voice that’s human and engaging
• Timely, thoughtful responses to comments and questions
• Content that’s been re-shared from other reputable sources
• High-value, in-demand information
• Inspirational content that offers emotional support
• Posts that show community events, celebrations, traditions etc.

Top Social Media Platforms for Urologists

Sharing high-quality content, raising awareness, and engaging with patients is always a plus – regardless of which social medial platform you use. But some platforms are especially useful for urologists, and each platform can add unique value to your practice.

YouTube

YouTube has a lot of potential for urologists looking to raise awareness and ease anxiety. Some urologists have gained massive YouTube followers by sharing videos of cystoscopy procedures. People like to know what they’re in for, and watching a video can demystify the process, helping them feel more at ease. Other popular urology YouTube channels educate patients about bladder health and share advice with medical students.

Instagram

You can use Instagram to post photos or videos of your clinic or staff or share interesting educational content through carousel-type posts. You can share posts that feature health tips, common misconceptions, fun facts, or patient testimonials (with their permission.) Instagram is very popular among adults who might use your services, so it’s a great place to connect, share valuable insights, and answer questions.

Facebook

Creating a Facebook page for your practice (separate from your personal page) is essential. On Facebook, it’s best to post content on a daily basis. You can link to your urology blog, share patient reviews, offer up helpful tips for preventative care, and much more. You can also point your followers to other websites and articles you think they might appreciate. 

Doximity

Doximity was created specifically for people in the healthcare industry. It’s similar to LinkedIn, but uniquely tailored to the medical community. For Doximity, you’ll need to complete a verification process, but the platform is free to join and use. Users enjoy Doximity because it allows them to connect with those in the medical field, collaborate with other physicians, and access trending medical news. 

X (Formerly Twitter)

With Twitter, you’re communicating with your followers in short bursts. For quick sharing, you can take posts from Instagram or Facebook and shorten them to meet X’s 140-character requirement. If you have a urology blog on your website (and you should!), users can “tweet” content directly from your blog, letting their followers access your blog as well. For X, it’s popular to share a quote, fun fact, blog blurb, or helpful tip, giving followers a quick glimpse into your unique services and offerings.

Make the Most of Social Media for Urologists

Staying on top of social media can feel like a full-time job. Luckily, the medical marketing experts at Onspire have years of experience crafting compelling, HIPAA-compliant social posts so you don’t have to! Get a free Practice Assessment to kickstart your strategic medical marketing strategy – including online review management, social media for urology, medical website design, and much more.

Want to see how your urology practice stacks up in social media and all other areas?
Schedule a Free Practice Assessment Today!

Companies commonly use a twice-yearly SWOT analysis to help crystalize their current and future positions. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. SWOT analysis in healthcare is essential because it helps practice owners maintain their competitive edge, increase ROI, and boost patient acquisition.

Say you’re a practice owner doing a great job of retaining existing patients, but you’re in a slump with your marketing. Maybe you’re spending money on medical marketing strategies without seeing the results you’d like, or you’ve got a couple of online reviews damaging your reputation. A healthcare SWOT analysis can help you identify areas for improvement and implement the changes necessary to grow your practice. 

What is a SWOT Analysis in Healthcare?

Every industry has its share of competition, and healthcare is no exception. A medical practice SWOT analysis gives you the chance to perform a deep dive into things you may have yet to consider recently, like your customer persona, mission, and local competition. It’s an opportunity to formally document where you’re at, where you hope to be in the future, and how to get there – specifically. This is where a strategic healthcare marketing plan aligned with your practice growth goals begins to take shape.

How Does a SWOT Analysis Benefit Your Practice?

We recommend performing a SWOT analysis twice yearly because up-to-date information is critical. Patient retention, acquisition, and engagement have changed so dramatically over the past decade that curiosity and flexibility are necessary if you hope to stay competitive. By taking the time to thoughtfully explore your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you position yourself to develop a medical marketing strategy empowered by the latest data. 

With SWOT analysis in hand, you’ll be ready to enlist the experts at Practis. Using the detailed information produced by your self-examination, our medical marketing experts can develop a unique medical marketing strategy that plays to your strengths, improves your online reputation, and helps get more new patients in the door in 2024. 

Healthcare SWOT Analysis Elements

Performing a healthcare SWOT analysis can sound a little daunting: especially the parts where you discuss weaknesses and threats. But everything revealed by your analysis is positive because it empowers you to make informed decisions that benefit your practice. It can be helpful to step into a growth mindset, which sees challenges as opportunities and weaknesses as invitations to improve. 

Internal: Strengths

When focusing on your practice’s strengths, remember to stick with factors you can control. This portion of the review can include feedback from patients or staff, as well as resources, capabilities, and accomplishments that make you stand out from your competitors. 

Strengths can include things like:

• Strong brand name/recognition
• Niche patient base
• Great location
• High success rate
• Friendly staff
• Personalized care

Internal: Weaknesses

As with your strengths, you want to stick with things you can control when listing out weaknesses. Compiling weak spots in a succinct list is incredibly helpful in knowing which areas for improvement are most critical and time-sensitive.

Your weaknesses could include:

• Longer patient wait times
• Struggling to attract new patients
• High staff turnover rate
• Old equipment
• Outdated technology or website
• Challenging booking process

External: Opportunities

Now that you’ve got strengths and weaknesses laid out, you’re ready to explore opportunities for your practice to grow and improve. You may not have complete control over opportunities and threats, but you can typically leverage them to your advantage (opportunities) or steer clear of them (threats) with the right medical marketing plan. 

Your list of opportunities might include:

• Increased patient referrals
• Positive online reviews for your practice
• Convenient parking 
• New technological advancements
• Expansion to a good location
• Cost-effectiveness

External: Threats

The last section of your SWOT analysis is threats. Here, you will list items generally not under your control that are threatening the sustainability, success, and growth of your practice. This section is especially helpful for exploring ways to minimize or completely avoid imminent threats through savvy medical marketing strategies.

Threats can look like: 

• New competitor in the area
• Economic downturn
• Dissatisfied patients
• Recent loss of key staff
• Decline in patient demand
• Negative online reviews for your practice

Evaluating Your Results

During the evaluation stage, you will set specific goals for moving forward. It’s best to set SMART goals, keeping your aims as specific as possible based on your findings. To effectively track your progress, create milestones that are reasonable and attainable. Once you have completed your SWOT analysis, you will start to see how your weaknesses and threats can be converted into strengths and opportunities in the months ahead.

Healthcare SWOT Analysis Implementation

Once you have a set of growth goals, you’ll want to list them in order of priority based on where your practice currently is and where you want to be in six months. The medical marketing experts at Practis can help you set strategic growth goals, map a marketing plan, and budget for the year ahead. Then, you can delegate tasks, set milestones, and track progress toward your goals. All in all, your SWOT analysis should take several hours and involve as many members of your team as possible. The more in-depth your examination, the more productive its results in the long run. 

Get Started With a Practis Growth Assessment 

From social medical management to medical SEO to online review management and beyond, Practis is your trusted partner in strategic healthcare marketing. After performing your SWOT analysis, give us a call. Together, we’ll develop a custom marketing plan informed by your unique needs and goals. We also provide FREE practice growth assessments to kick-start your 2024 marketing efforts!

It’s called If Dreams Were Lightning: Rural Healthcare Crisis, and it’s a poignant piece casting a much-needed spotlight on the “healthcare deserts” of America’s small towns. It opens with the true story of an abandoned community hospital sitting empty. Once the center of health and life – where babies were born, injuries were healed and lives were saved – the building itself is now used by paranormal researchers who want to connect with ghosts.

From there, the 25-minute film (which you can scroll down to watch below) follows the tragic stories of patients and families up and down the rural byways of the impoverished Appalachian region. The journey is as real as it is heart-wrenching. And for those reasons, it must be seen and heard.

Rural hospital closures, decreasing reimbursements, declining operating margins, and staffing shortages have all coalesced to undermine the delivery of care in communities whose populations are older, less healthy, and less affluent. The mission of the safety net to serve under-resourced communities is unraveling.
— Chartis Center for Rural Health

Why This Message Matters

Rural hospitals make up about one-third of all hospitals in the U.S. – and among them, roughly a quarter (23 percent) are now at risk of closing. A full 50 percent of rural hospitals are currently operating in the red (which is up from 43 percent just 12 months ago). Operating at losses leads to bleak outlooks. That community-hospital-turned-ghost-hunter-haven that was featured in the documentary? Before it had no choice but to shutter its doors, the hospital was offered to Veterans Affairs (the VA) to buy for a single dollar, and the VA declined.

Nearly 20 percent of U.S. residents – over 66 million people – live in rural America. Many depend on their local community hospitals as the only sources of care they can get to. They are essential safety nets – not to mention major employers – for rural residents across the country. And yet, according to recent findings from the Chartis Center for Rural Health:

• In the last 14 years, 167 rural hospitals have either closed completely or converted to outpatient care only.
• Between 2011 and 2021, 267 rural hospitals shuttered their OB services – which represents a loss of nearly 25 percent of America’s rural OB units.
• Between 2014 and 2022, 382 rural hospitals have stopped providing chemotherapy services.
• Critical access hospitals are seeing reimbursement rates plummet as Medicare Advantage (MA) now accounts for 35 percent of all Medicare-eligible patients in rural communities. In some states, it now exceeds 50 percent.

For these reasons and many others, If Dreams Were Lightning is perhaps the most relevant film you won’t hear mentioned in the Short Subject Documentary category at this year’s Oscars. But fortunately, the publicity and attention that came with being shortlisted for an Oscar helped bring awareness to the director Ramin Bahrani’s cause. The film has been screened at several festivals and is available to watch with PBS Passport:

At Dobies Health Marketing, we are sharing this film because we are passionate about contributing to a world where rural healthcare can thrive, not merely survive. Through our rural health division (dhmstudio+), we bring decades of experience to rural hospitals, delivering affordable, effective, strategy-first marketing solutions that make their organizations stronger and more sustainable. From building the value of primary care to building community partnerships for health, we are committed to advancing rural health in communities across the country. If you are part of a rural hospital team and want to hear more about the work we do to support rural health, contact us today.

Healthcare advertising, also known as medical marketing, takes many different forms. From raising patient awareness to encouraging community engagement to expressing the vision and mission of a practice, medical marketing is a powerful tool when properly harnessed. 

Most importantly, medical marketing is always about connection. When your messaging is on-point and your strategies are savvy, you can connect to the right patients at exactly the right time. Though navigating the ever-changing landscape of medical marketing has its challenges, the specialists at Practis can help you make the most of the latest and greatest tools and techniques. 

Medical Marketing Benefits

Done effectively and strategically, medical marketing has many benefits:

• Patient engagement and connection: Other practices are utilizing medical marketing to connect with prospective and existing patients. That means if you aren’t, you’re falling behind. The online space is full of opportunities to connect with patients in a human, empathetic way, forming the foundation for a lasting relationship.
• Build patient trust: When your values, mission, and vision come through in your marketing messaging, it helps build confidence and trust in your patients. Other factors, like a professional website, great online reviews, and a quick response time all help contribute to that budding trust. 
• Grow your practice and maintain your competitive edge: While building patient trust and forming a strong connection, you are also growing your practice and strengthening your reputation. With the right website, social presence, online reviews, and marketing strategies, you can attract your ideal patients and get them in the door. 

Healthcare Marketing Examples

Raising Awareness

Some of the most memorable healthcare advertising efforts involve raising public awareness. One great example is New York Presbyterian Hospital’s Patient Story campaign. Through a series of intensely human and compelling individual stories, the hospital brought awareness to its values, mission, and vision, along with how its team treats specific conditions and illnesses.

Influencing Patient Behavior

Another popular healthcare advertising technique is using striking messaging to encourage people to change their behavior. This type of healthcare advertising includes ads that urge and inspire people to make healthy lifestyle changes, adopt new wellness-centric habits, look out for children’s safety, etc. These advertising strategies often tie in closely with raising awareness.

Digital Outreach and Messaging

As a practice owner, mastering digital outreach and messaging is essential if you want to stay competitive and relevant. The purpose of digital outreach and messaging is to drive patient attention, acquisition, and retention. Digital marketing is an essential tool for practice owners, leveraging various channels like search, social, email, and SMS (text) to connect with patients at every stage of their wellness journey. 

Medical Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Practice

Website Design and Development

It’s easy to see your website as a necessary evil – something you don’t have time to refresh or maintain. But most patients will visit your website before they ever step foot in your office. That’s why your site has to make a good first impression. 

Practis offers medical website design and development with the following features and benefits:

• Responsive and mobile-friendly
• Medical SEO
• Professionally designed layouts
• Engaging healthcare content and a variety of interactive features
• Designed with healthcare compliance in mind, including HIPAA

Social Media Management

As a practice owner, it’s unlikely you have time to nurture your social media following. Luckily, the team at Practis can do it for you. After all, no social media is probably better than neglected or poorly managed social media. Every aspect of your online presence speaks volumes to potential patients, and social media is no exception. 

Through social media management, a professional medical marketing team can help you develop an active social media presence, reach a new audience, and grow your following. The positive results are numerous, including increased patient trust, boosted community participation, and enhanced empowerment and education among patients.

Online Review Management

Review management, also known as reputation management, is critical in our digital age. Often, practice owners believe they’re at the mercy of their online reviews – good or bad, numerous or nonexistent. However, professional online review management puts the power back in your hands.

Practis can help you develop and nurture a robust online reputation with Practis Reviews. Our reputation management strategy includes developing HIPAA-compliant responses to your reviews, savvy campaigns that request and generate reviews, and patient satisfaction surveys. Plus, we’ll stay on top of your reviews, consistently checking for areas that need improvement.

Paid Search

Paid search, also known as medical pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, is an affordable, predictable way to grow your practice in 2024. By targeting your ideal patient, PPC allows you to maximize your marketing budget and your leads. 

The Practis team can help by creating eye-catching PPC ads that reach your target audience and compel them to book an appointment. We’ll handle the entire campaign from start to finish, identifying strong conversion opportunities and achieving heavy market saturation for your services and offerings. 

Exceed Your Growth Goals With a Little Help From Practis

Whether you’re interested in PPC, a website refresh, social management, or reputational help, Practis is on the job. Our skilled team of medical marketing professionals will develop a custom strategy for reaching and exceeding your growth goals, nurturing patient trust, and maintaining your critical competitive edge. Give us a call today to get started!

As a practice owner, you might have noticed that some of the marketing tactics you used in the past are no longer producing the results you expect. Don’t worry – that’s par for the course with medical marketing. If you want to stand out, captivate potential patients, and grow your practice in 2024, you’re going to need a healthcare marketing strategy that’s fresh and focused.

Healthcare marketing strategies and techniques are constantly evolving, and no practice owner has time to single-handedly develop a new plan every few months. Thankfully, Practis has your back with on-trend and ahead-of-the-curve strategies you can be proud of while staying aligned with your values and loyal to your marketing budget.

Creative Healthcare Marketing Strategies for 2024

Every year, medical marketing becomes more exciting and powerful. Today, there are more opportunities than ever to share your mission and vision, engage with potential patients, build relationships, and get new patients in the door. Below are five modern strategies that can help your practice rise above the competition and maintain your reputation as a knowledgeable, compassionate resource patients can trust.

1. High-Quality Educational Content

The internet is full of information, but healthcare content is unique. Because of its sensitive and high-stakes nature, it has to speak with authority, professionalism, and empathy. Patients appreciate being able to access blogs, videos, and social media posts that speak to their unique needs in a knowledgeable, human way. 

Building a catalog of blogs, keeping your website updated with fresh content, and staying on top of social media engagement all take an investment of time and intentionality. Fortunately, Practis can supply high-quality medical content while you focus on providing high-quality care. 

2. Enhanced Waiting Room Experience

Your online presence matters, but your waiting room environment and experience are critical, too. As a practice owner, you no doubt understand how important first in-person impressions are, but you could be missing out on some opportunities to impress and instill patience from the comfort of your front lobby.

In your waiting room, your commitment to patient care can shine through in several ways:

• Free Wi-Fi that allows patients to be productive while they wait
• Signage, brochures, and television programs that offer helpful information, patient testimonials, or educational videos that are highly valuable to your patients
• Readily available information that showcases your services and unique area of expertise
• A pleasant, comfortable environment with temperature control and a soothing atmosphere
• Friendly, attentive front-desk staff who keep patients updated and reassured

3. Make the Most of Messaging Apps

HIPAA-compliant chat, text, virtual visits, and reminders vastly improve patient communication within your practice. Making good use of these features helps your staff save valuable time, decreases the number of no-shows, and streamlines communication between care teams, referring providers, and patients.

Practis can help you integrate the following messaging features at your practice:

• Video chat virtual visits for face-to-face patient visits from any device
• A web chat feature for your website that converts visitors into patients
• A unified inbox to help seamlessly connect multiple practice email addresses
• An AI Chatbox on your site that automatically responds to frequently asked questions

4. Get Social Media Savvy

More and more, patients are turning to social media for medical information and advice. As a practice owner, you don’t have to personally be social media savvy. However, you do need a social media presence that’s captivating, professional, and full of relevant content. That’s where the Practis team comes in. We offer social media management services to help you connect with new patients, reach a broader audience, and build trust.

Through social media, we can help you keep patients informed about:

• New services, offerings, or promotions
• Health calendar events related to your specialty
• Tips on how to identify conditions you treat
• Inspiring testimonials and success stories
• The story of you, your practice, and your mission & vision

5. Explore Video Marketing

Video marketing is quickly becoming one of the most effective tools for engaging audiences online, and healthcare patients are no exception. There are many different ways you might use video to capture attention, build trust, and spread awareness. 

Consider the following medical video marketing methods to help grow your practice in 2024:

• YouTube is a great place to share knowledge and expertise in your field
• Social media video content is popular and powerful when used in a savvy manner
• An intro video on your website’s home page offers a creative glimpse into what makes your practice unique
• Emails with the word “video” in the subject line have been shown to significantly increase open rates

If you’re unsure how to incorporate video into your healthcare marketing strategy, don’t worry. The experts at Practis can assess how video can be optimized to improve your website, increase social media engagement, and help you connect with more people than ever before. 

Revitalize Your Healthcare Marketing Today

If you feel like your healthcare marketing plan is in a slump, get excited. Dissatisfaction with your current strategies opens the door to so many new things! And you don’t have to blindly try different methods until something works. The healthcare experts at Practis will perform a free growth assessment and build a medical marketing strategy uniquely tailored to your offering and goals. 

Get Your Free Growth Assessment Now! 

Looking for the only business plan you’ll ever need? Practis has you covered with a comprehensive business plan that will help you attract patients, stay on top of your goals, and manage your cash flow. This essential document can also help you understand your strategy for sustainable growth and improve your odds of funding. 

You can use the template below to create a business plan from scratch or rewrite your existing plan to prepare for the road ahead. Think of it as GPS for your business – an essential navigational tool to help you structure, run, and grow a practice you can be proud of. 

Why You Need a Medical Business Plan

If you want to succeed, grow, and continually add value to your practice, a medical business plan is essential. No matter where you are in the process, a strategic plan will help you create an operating framework that crystallizes your focus and puts your goals front and center.

A medical business plan is important for many reasons, including: 

1. To define your mission, vision, goals, and target audience
2. To help you set SMART marketing goals and achieve optimal results
3. To help you estimate costs and make informed financial projections
4. To shed light on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

The questions addressed in your business plan will guide your ship for years to come. What makes our practice unique? What value do we provide for the community? What are our patient personas? What are our annual growth percentage goals? Your business plan answers these and many other questions to create a solid foundation built on strategy and specificity. 

Your Executive Summary

Your executive summary is essentially a broad overview of your practice. This overview includes your practice’s goals and specialties, a review of the practice so far, and details on how you would like your practice to grow in the future. 

In this section, you will: 

• Give a concise overview of your specific goals
• Make your specialties and services clear
• Emphasize your commitment to exceptional patient care
• Highlight key financial projections, service offerings, and unique aspects of the practice

Your Description, Mission, and Vision

Practice Description

The description section is where you summarize your medical practice in detail. Here, you have a chance to describe the services your practice will provide and discuss your target patients and personas. Your description should also include your location, history, mission, and vision. 

Mission & Vision

Your mission statement could be something like, “To be the best urology clinic in Ourtown, providing empathetic, patient-centric care that utilizes the latest technological advancements to meet our patients’ needs.” 

Whatever your mission and vision, these statements act as unifying declarations and goals your team can reference time and again. Plus, any time you set goals, you can refer back to your mission and vision to ensure they align. 

The Market Analysis

Your Industry Landscape

Your industry landscape includes a detailed analysis of your industry, including the latest trends, regulatory changes, and relevant technological advancements. In this section, you will address how these factors impact patient care and service delivery. 

Patient Demographics and Segmentation

This is the section where you explore patient preferences, needs, and expectations, showing that you understand (with great specificity) the type of patients your practice will attract and serve. Getting a clear picture of your patients will also help you craft your messaging and create engaging content moving forward.

Competitor Analysis

In this section of your medical business plan, you will assess competing local practices, highlighting their strengths, weaknesses, and service offerings. Along with this competitor information, you will identify opportunities for differentiation while emphasizing your competitive advantage. 

This section might also include a look into your competitors’ marketing strategies. Keeping an eye on the competition is a tactic you will use time and again to gain valuable insight into how you can identify marketing gaps, enhance your strategies, and bring in more patients. 

Your Marketing and Sales Strategy

In the marketing and sales section of your plan, you will describe how you plan to attract and retain patients. It’s best to be specific, outlining your marketing strategies, goals, and activities. This can include information on digital marketing efforts, referral networks, and local community outreach. 

Specific medical marketing strategies include:

• Medical SEO
• Social media management
• Online review management
• A user-friendly, patient-centric website

While outlining your marketing strategy, it can be helpful to remember the “7 Ps” of marketing: product, people, price, promotion, positioning, packaging, and place. Attracting and keeping patients is the number one factor in the success of your practice, so having a robust marketing and sales strategy is essential. This section can also include information on patient retention, like your plan for scheduling, follow-ups, and satisfaction initiatives.

Your Operations Plan

The operations section is used to outline how exactly your medical practice will work. As you can imagine, determining these factors before getting your practice off the ground is critical. It’s also a great opportunity to assess which areas might be outsourced, such as recruitment and billing. 

Here, you will include information like:

• Operational workflows, patient management systems, and administrative procedures
• How you will use technology for record-keeping and patient communication
• The organizational structure, roles, and responsibilities within the practice
• Staff training programs, recruitment strategies, and measures for staff retention
• Insurance billing procedures, accepted insurance providers, and coding systems used
• Your pricing structures for services offered to uninsured or self-paying patients

Your Financial Plan

Any solid business plan includes a financial strategy that explores how your practice will grow financially, including expected profitability. Ideally, you will include a cash flow forecast that breaks down your outflow and inflow monthly. If you are starting a new practice, this section will include your start-up costs. If your practice is established, this section will include items like cash flow statements and balance sheets. 

Your Risk Analysis and Contingency Plan

Writing a risk analysis is no one’s idea of a good time, but it is a mandatory element for any successful business plan. This section will identify risks like unforeseen market shifts, malpractice issues, or regulatory changes. 

What it lacks in fun, this section more than makes up for in empowerment. That’s because analyzing your risks allows you to develop a contingency plan to mitigate those risks and keep your practice growing year after year. 

Your Implementation Schedule and Milestones

Lastly, you need a schedule to help keep you on track and accountable. Dates, milestones, and an ambitious but realistic timeline are all key to maintaining focus and momentum. Your timeline might include when you plan to implement items like patient care enhancements, tech upgrades, and key initiatives. Best of all, measuring progress and achievements is empowering and inspiring, helping propel your practice toward greater success. 

Create a Winning Medical Business Plan in 2024

Whether you’re creating a brand new business plan or revising an old one, it can be a daunting task. As a physician who puts so much time and energy into caring for others,  you may feel like there’s very little left over for creating such a detailed, strategic document. 

The Practis team can help, particularly in the areas of mindset, medical marketing, and strategic goal-setting. Get empowered and inspired today with a free Practice Assessment with one of our dedicated practice growth experts. Need a refresh on your current marketing efforts? From medical listings management to SEO to PPC (pay-per-click) ads and more, we’ve got you covered.

Contact us to get started.

All the urology SEO and innovative AI in the world can’t drive practice growth without the right data to back it up. Understanding patient behaviors, preferences, and experiences is critical in the competitive, ever-evolving urology healthcare landscape. If you need a fresh approach that drives impressive growth, it’s market research to the rescue. 

Urology Patient Demographics and Preferences

Gathering and examining data on patient needs, behavior, and preferences positions you to set strategic goals and achieve practice growth. Your best marketing and business strategies will always be inspired by detailed market research findings, helping you improve patient care and increase revenue at the same time. 

Demographic Analysis

Knowing your local demographics is critical. In short, patient demographics include basic information like name, occupation, address, age, race, ethnicity, medical history, and income. These vital insights help you analyze population trends and their implications for your urological services. 

Patient Preferences and Behavior

Understanding patient preferences and behavior helps you provide a more positive, beneficial experience to every patient or potential patient, whether they’re visiting your website or your office. This information is essential for knowing communication preferences, deciding which technology to adopt, and providing more personalized care. 

Knowing patient preferences and behavior creates the following benefits:

• Well-informed treatment plans
• Enhanced communication
• Reduced costs
• Better patient cooperation and engagement
• Improved patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes

Perhaps best of all, prioritizing patient preferences helps inspire loyalty and encourages referrals, two essential components in creating practice growth. After all, patients are people, and people value being seen, heard, and understood.

Adapting Urology Services and Innovation

Tailoring Services to Patient Needs

Urology market analysis offers essential insight into evolving healthcare concerns, emerging trends, and patient needs. Patient-centric care means your services are tailored to suit your patients’ unique preferences and expectations, ultimately improving overall satisfaction and outcomes. 

A patient-centric care model is defined by:

• Respect for patient values, preferences, and expressed needs
• Emotional support that helps alleviate fears and anxieties
• Easy access to relevant education and information
• Efficient, effective coordination of care

The right patient feedback and data help you understand what’s working, what needs to be tweaked, and what – if anything – needs urgent attention! With a growth mindset, you can view your market research results as an invitation to change what needs to be changed and double down on what makes your practice great.

Innovation and Technology Integration

As a practice owner, you studied and worked your entire life to be a caregiver, but some days it feels like your job is everything. Luckily, there are plenty of innovative tools that can help improve operational efficiency while growing your practice and increasing revenue. Whether it’s practice management software, medical billing software, electronic health records (EHR), or an intuitive patient portal, the experts at Practis can help you decide which tools are right for you.

Strategic Planning and Urology Practice Growth

If you’ve ever tried to write a business plan or set annual growth goals, you know strategy and specificity are essential. That’s where data comes in. A detailed, well-informed understanding of patient wants and needs is key to becoming a goal-getter in 2024.

Goal Setting and Strategy Formulation

If you want to achieve practice growth in 2024, clear and specific goals are a must. And the best way to define your goals and chart a course forward is with market research. Say, for example, you have a general goal of growing your urology practice this year. Market research insights can help you identify areas that are hindering growth – like a clunky website – and hone in on strategies that satisfy patient preferences, like intuitive patient portals and online forms. 

Risk Mitigation and Decision Making

In addition to helping you set and meet specific goals, market research helps you avoid wasting time and money on strategies that won’t work. Rather than flying blind or trusting what other urologists are doing, you can use the data you have at your fingertips to mitigate risks and make savvy decisions. While it’s been proven that most vague goals fail to materialize, data-driven goals supported by market research are the stuff success is made of. 

Enhancing Patient Engagement and Experience

A patient-centric approach involves individualized care planning, healthy communication, and optimized experiences both in your office and on your website. When you have in-depth data on what your patients want and need, you can set strategic goals that drive growth and build loyalty. 

Market research insights help drive successful marketing strategies like:

• https://practis.com/urology-marketing/sem/ ads
• Social media campaigns
• Urology SEO (search engine optimization)
• Intuitive, user-friendly urology website design

Your marketing research findings can also help improve patient engagement by offering valuable insight into experiences and expectations. Say you discover long wait times are one of the biggest concerns. This insight could drive critical changes to both your operational efficiency and how your staff approaches unexpected waits. For example, research has found that many waiting patients simply want to be acknowledged and assured they are a priority. 

Healthcare Market Research: Shape the Future With Help from Practis

The right market research doesn’t just help you prepare for the future – it helps you shape it. Knowing patient preferences and expectations drives efficient, effective, patient-centric solutions that result in exciting practice growth.

If you’re ready to find out how urology market research can work for you, give Practis a call today!

As you might have guessed, new marketing strategies are key if you want to take your practice to the next level. What worked last year might be irrelevant today, and strategies that once yielded positive outcomes might need an upgrade or a total overhaul. Not to mention, pediatric marketing is unique, and finding the perfect blend of kid-friendly, parent-pleasing content is a fine art. 

Your Pediatric Website in 2024: New Year, New Patients

With websites, it’s tempting to “set it and forget it.” But neglecting a prime opportunity for a powerful refresh is a mistake you can’t afford to make. If you haven’t scrutinized your site in a while, it’s a great place to start. 

Pediatric website essentials at a glance:

• • Patient-centric content: The best websites empower patients by introducing them to resources, information, and educational tools relevant to their health and treatment. 
  • Great design: Appealing, intuitive design matters. Patients need to be able to navigate your page quickly and easily, and they also need to feel your authority and professionalism in a tangible way.
  • Clear call-to-action: Patients shouldn’t have to search high and low for your phone number or contact info when they’re on your website. If they do, they’ll bounce. 
  • Trusted authority: The layout and language of your website should instill a high level of trust. You should come across as knowledgeable, warm, accessible, caring, and consummately professional.
  • Relevant topics: Having a good variety of topics increases the likelihood of hooking an ideal patient. When people find solid, helpful information full of valuable insights, they’ll associate that positive experience with your practice and, ultimately, with you. 

Getting the Most Out of Pediatric SEO

SEO, or search engine optimization, is a cost-effective, efficient way to boost both traffic and online visibility for your pediatric practice. While most people know SEO improves search rankings, it’s important to note that expert SEO strategies don’t just drive traffic, they source high-quality patients genuinely interested in your unique offering. 

SEO can benefit your pediatric practice in the following ways:

• Builds practice  authority in your local market
• Optimizes the relevance of your content for the people searching for your services
• Drives new (high-quality) traffic/leads to your website
• Creates a more positive, impactful patient experience from the very beginning
• Supports patients in their search for relevant content and answers their questions

If you get the feeling SEO best practices are always changing, that’s because they are. But you don’t have to spend your precious little free time (if you even have any) brushing up on the latest SEO strategies. The SEO experts at Practis are on the job. 

Expert Social Media Management for Pediatricians

Social media matters. Globally, 4.8 billion people use social media, and parents tend to be big fans. Parents use a variety of social media platforms to keep in touch with friends and family and to gather information – particularly information relevant to their kids.

If your social media presence lacks luster, it can reflect negatively on your pediatric practice. What’s more, it’s a huge missed opportunity to attract families that need what you’re offering. Expert social media management gives you a tailored marketing plan complete with compelling blogs, consistent social posts, and boosted patient engagement. If your social media presence isn’t up to par, Practis can help. 

Creative Content Marketing for the Win

It’s a new year, and it’s the perfect time to look over your content. Ideally, your pediatric website and social media accounts should cover a wide variety of compelling, relevant topics to child and family health. Creativity is key, ensuring parents have a chance to find what they need, collect valuable insight, and come to associate your practice with helpful, essential information.

The right pediatric marketing team can add immense value through features like:

• A child health library that covers a wide variety of children’s health topics
• Blogs, infographics, and social posts that are creative, captivating, and custom-tailored
• Patient education videos on highly-searched topics like car seat safety, breastfeeding, fevers in children, and more
• Intake forms and well-child visit forms for optimal convenience and improved efficiency
• Online bill pay to make parents’ lives that much easier.

If it’s starting to sound like successful pediatric marketing requires a ton of knowledge, expertise, and attention, that’s because it does. Luckily, the experts at Practis are here to hone your New Year’s marketing strategy with meticulous care and diligence so you can focus on the families in your care. 

The Raw Power of PPC for Pediatricians

PPC or pay-per-click advertising is a powerful marketing tool that happens to be incredibly cost-effective. That makes it a favorite among pediatricians looking to broaden their reach on a budget. A solid PPC strategy finds the right medium for your message and gets the word out about your unique offering.

Practis specializes in expert PPC campaigns with:

• Immediate Visibility: As soon as it launches, your PPC campaign makes you visible to patients – a huge benefit for growth-driven new practices or established practices eager to expand.
• High Probability of Conversion: Precise keyword targeting means your ads are in front of patients seeking your specific pediatric services, increasing conversions.
• Budget Control: You get total control over your ad spend, with daily or monthly limits to help you stay on budget.
• Measurable Results: Comprehensive performance metrics offer essential insight into clicks, conversions, etc., fueling data-driven strategies that make a difference.

2024: Get Discovered (With Some FREE Help from Practis)

People know about you, but you’re eager to usher more families through your doors. If you’d love for 2024 to be the year your business “gets discovered,” Practis can help. Professional pediatric marketing strategies can support your clinic in new and exciting ways, breathing fresh life into your practice. Don’t forget to head over to our blog for more insight, tips, and information on all things marketing.

Want to get started on the right track? Get a  FREE year of social media posts to engage your local community and put your best foot forward.

While patient care is, of course, always the top priority, the goals of being patient-centric and consumer-centric are not mutually exclusive. In fact, evaluating your healthcare marketing strategy and viewing your patients as consumers can often bring to light areas that may require attention in your patient experience journey.

Patient-centric and consumer-centric are terms that are often bandied about interchangeably, but in many critical ways, they are not the same. Certain key questions can help tease out the distinctions – and make all the difference in the performance of your strategy and the care you provide.

Borrowing from the classic information-gathering approach used by journalists, we’ll break it down by way of the essentials: who, what, where, when, why and how.

• WHO is the consumer? In healthcare, the consumer is not always the patient. The primary caregiver of the household may be choosing healthcare providers for the children, spouse, parents or in-laws. In this scenario, while all family members are patients, the main caregiver is actually the decision-making consumer. You can strive to ensure they all have a positive patient experience, but you cannot discount the primary caregiver as the true healthcare consumer.
• WHAT is the difference between a consumer and a patient? A consumer mindset is the key differentiator between a consumer and a patient. A patient may leave the doctor’s office smiling and simply remarking, “They were nice.” A consumer mindset, on the other hand, notices not just how nice you were but also how efficient – plus a variety of other factors like your most recent advertising and social media, patient portal experience, provider pedigree, and quality of care. Hospitals and academic medical centers in urban areas almost always have higher marketing and advertising budgets and can afford better patient portal systems. Details count when you’re facing a consumer mindset. Share your outstanding patient outcomes, and shout about your accolades and awards. Now is not the time to be humble.
• WHERE does this play out in the healthcare experience? Before they even walk through your doors, consumers do their homework. They read the reviews – of your hospital system or practice, your providers, even career experiences of your staff – all posted online. Friendliness should greet them in your waiting rooms and at the front desk. Quality of care will seal the deal in the medical offices, ED or surgery suites. Billing, aftercare, and your choice of patient portal are all relevant to the overall consumer experience in healthcare as well. And they see and react to your competitors’ advertising alongside your own. This is where patient-focused stories on experiences and outcomes with your providers and system can make an impactful impression.
• WHEN did the consumer phenomenon become a factor in healthcare? Healthcare has not always been evaluated as a product to be consumed. In fact, it’s a relatively recent development. Only in the last two decades have walk-in care, easy-to-access telehealth, and retail-like environments and services become priorities – types of features that larger, urban center hospital systems can afford. This is when strategy is essential in determining where to allocate resources with integrity and wisdom while still engaging and attracting the healthcare consumer.
• WHY does it matter? This is the simplest question with the shortest answer. It matters because consumers have choices, and they can choose your competitors. Once upon a time, proximity to care was everything, but not in today’s world. Consumers travel – sometimes driving, or even flying, for hours – to reach the healthcare they prize. In fact, in some cases, consumers have come to discount local care from small-town providers and critical access hospitals and instead value the care found in larger cities with academic medical centers and large hospital systems – with a mindset that bigger is better. Add telehealth and new market disruptors, and it’s easy to see how winning at consumerism is an increasingly critical way to compete for any healthcare organization.
• HOW does creating a positive consumer experience differ from delivering a positive patient experience? It’s no longer as simple as providing quality medical care – though patient experience still matters profoundly. If your nursing shortage has diminished your ability to provide a seamless continuum of care, for example, that piano player won’t make up for it. You have to hit all the high notes to take home the prize.

So, the key is to be the most informed and strategic player in your playing field to meet expectations. And yes, the difference almost always lies in doing more, oftentimes with less.

Understanding consumer needs and priorities is essential to consumer-centricity. Understanding these needs requires data and analytics for actionable insights. Healthcare organizations using the right metrics and accessing the right tools will have an inside track. The right data is essential to determine who your primary consumers and decision-makers are – and zero in on what they are looking for in a healthcare experience.

Unfortunately, most rural or small-town critical access hospitals do not have data analysts and healthcare marketing strategists on staff. Fortunately, we can help.

Through dhmstudio+, we bring decades of experience to rural hospitals, delivering affordable, effective, strategy-first marketing solutions to make their organizations stronger. Interested in learning more? Contact us today.

Because healthcare options are typically limited in rural areas, navigating patients through disjointed care delivery across varying geographies, locations and providers needs even more emphasis. Rural health patients often have fewer convenient, community-based options for assistance in making informed health decisions. That means health literacy efforts are among the many challenges that intensify for rural health providers, who already do so much with such limited resources.

Having spent so much of my career in marketing and communications for rural and community hospitals, I’ve seen the difference it makes when we eliminate medical jargon, increase access to supportive technologies, and meet patients where they are with information that’s easy to absorb and retain. Below are three best practices for improving health literacy efforts within your organization:

1. Evaluate health information materials.

In collaboration with your Patient and Family Advisory Council or Patient Advocate team, review materials with a keen eye toward understanding and comprehension at a seventh-grade literacy level (maximum) to meet almost every education level. When empowered with clear, easy-to-follow directions, patients and families are better able to partner in their care decisions, leading to better health outcomes.

Also, be mindful of language barriers in written and verbal communication. Many state hospital associations can connect their members to skilled, easily accessible interpreters. Here’s one such example from the Kansas Hospital Association.

2. Be a voice that guides people to the right information.

If residential broadband is slow but high-speed internet access is available for free at the local library, let people know. If your local library staff can reliably help people understand complex, evidence-based content – as they research cancer clinical trials, for example – let people know that, too. Does the library also have private rooms where a patient and/or family could have a telehealth appointment without worrying about slow internet issues? If so, spread the word.

Even better, go beyond making people aware of those resources by becoming part of those resources: Explore the possibility of coordinating educational programming with your local library to promote their services in assisting patients and/or families with their healthcare needs. These programs can include a physician-led educational series for seniors or an educational center that consolidates all healthcare resources in one space.

Consider hosting onsite educational sessions for patients with serious and/or chronic conditions like diabetes, multiple sclerosis, cancer and more. Physician or clinical leaders from your hospital can provide interactive education – a great way to strengthen the connection between your providers and patients while helping people make more informed and personalized health decisions.

3. Expand the healing power of healthcare workers toward improved understanding.

Physicians and nurses are often regarded as highly trustworthy and enormously compassionate. Encourage all healthcare workers, providers and ancillary staff (scheduling, billing, medical records and beyond) to approach every patient as if s/he is at risk of not understanding the diagnosis and how best to manage symptoms.

Applying the concept of universal precautions – which means simplifying how you speak and write, then confirming the patient’s comprehension – lowers the risk of miscommunication. When you combine health literacy efforts with the compassion that healthcare workers deliver daily, you will effectively deliver a higher level of care and help transform uncertainty into informed decisions for your patients.

Looking for more information about health literacy? Here are two great places to start:

• Introduction to Health Literacy – Rural Health Information Hub
• The Nurse’s Guide To Health Literacy – NurseJournal

At Dobies Health Marketing, we are committed to advancing rural health. We understand the unique challenges and opportunities that rural hospitals face in delivering care, optimizing revenue, recruiting and retaining strong talent, and building healthy communities. Through dhmstudio+, we bring affordable, effective marketing solutions to make rural health organizations stronger. Interested in learning more? Contact me directly at anorthrop@dobies.com.

About the Author

As Director, Rural Health Division, at Dobies Health Marketing, Amy Northrop manages client relationships and ensures marketing tactics always align with strategic objectives. A lifelong advocate for strengthening rural communities with better health, Amy’s career spans 30 years in hospital marketing, communications and physician relations.

Connect with Amy on LinkedIn or contact Dobies Health Marketing today.