Information Technology has become integral part of our personal and professional life. These days, we cannot imagine any business or service that is not run by using IT. The profound impact of technology has been seen in the medical and healthcare industry too. IT is improving not only the health care techniques, but also the methods of their delivery. The time has changed and now it has become quite imperative for doctors to manage their practice using the internet.
I believe that one cost effective way for the doctors to achieve this is by using doctor listing portals. These portals are web-based online applications where you can register yourself and get connected with your patients quite easily. These interactive portals help a doctor improve and enhance his practice in several ways. Let us discuss, how!!
Easy access: a doctor listing portal allows patients to have access to many doctors, belonging to different specialties and different localities. For example, if a patient wants to consult with an asthma specialist in Delhi, he may simply search by this specialty and locality and he will get a list of relevant doctors. Then, he can request or book an online appointment with the desired doctor instantly with just a click. In this way, portals like Drriight.com enhance the visibility of doctors and give more options to the patients.
Promotion: Many doctor listing portals have the option for the patients to write testimonials for the doctors. So, when a patient searches for a doctor, he can get an idea about the care and treatment provided by a particular doctor by reading other patient’s reviews and comments. This way, good doctors can build solid credentials without spending any extra money on self-promotion.
Enhanced communication: Through a doctor listing portal, physicians can access most up-to-date information about their patients and that too in real time. This information may be related to the patient’s health history, test reports, his current medications, etc. When all these health records are available online, a doctor can easily understand his patient’s problem, even before actually seeing him. On the other hand, patients are also comfortable in sharing the records with their doctors via these portals as they provide a discreet and direct communication channel. These days, many successful doctor portals such as Drriight.com are helping doctors and patients to have an effective and real-time communication.
Streamlined process: These portals have made it quite easy for patients to request appointments, seek lab results or raise a query. No more calling and waiting on the phone, just a smooth check in and checkout process. Moreover, these portals have some helpful inbuilt software for doctors. Recently, I found that a famous doctor listing portal, Drriight.com, has a very innovative software called MAP®. It helps the doctors manage a lot of time-consuming activities such as online appointment scheduling, patient record management, billing, SMS communication with patients etc., in quite an easy manner. Apart from stopping wastage of valuable resources, a doctor can streamline the whole process by using this software. This saves a physician’s time and helps him in paying attention to more important cases.
I think that these portals can also help many physicians with limited resources to remain viable in today’s competitive environment. The success of these portals, however, depends on the strong participation by both the doctors and the patients. Deeper engagement from both sides can ensure that the objective of such platforms is achieved in an effective manner. Nevertheless, doctors need to adopt such technologies for improving communication and enhancing self-efficiency so that they can focus more on providing optimal health care.