Patient education: using your website to increase treatment awareness

By Glenn Lombardi

A dentist’s efforts to connect, educate, and build trust shouldn’t end when patients leave the office. Instead, dentists should make it their top priority to extend their expertise to patients outside of a routine visit. Since the Internet has become a major source of information that many people rely on to learn about their symptoms and treatment options, a website is one of the most effective mediums a dentist can use to reach patients from the comfort of their home computers, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Education is the key to equipping patients for optimal dental care. The more informed and knowledgeable the patients, the better equipped they are to make educated decisions about their oral health. Serving as the patients' research tool, a website provides valuable information that will encourage them to seek appropriate care, refer friends and family, and continue their course of treatment.

Additionally, it’s common for questions and anxieties to arise before an impending dental procedure or following a diagnosis. Your website can help reduce these concerns and answer questions by improving patient knowledge, thus reducing in-office explanations.

Not only can your informational website reduce patient anxiety, but it also can help increase a patient’s awareness of treatment plans. Patients often are not aware of the full range of expertise available within your practice or the wide scope of services you provide. Educational elements available from your site allow you to emphasize the qualities of your practice that make you unique, and communicate the skills and qualifications your patients can expect.

A professional dental website company offers a variety of engaging and trusted educational options that dentists can incorporate into their websites. Such patient-friendly materials can range from digital libraries with hundreds of pages of dental news and articles, visually stimulating dental animations and videos, and educational blogs that are added to the site weekly.

Speaking directly with your patients about their health, treatments, and concerns is always the best approach to patient care and education. Outside of the office, however, a professionally designed website enriched with valuable education can be a highly effective vehicle to communicate your expertise and improve patient knowledge about dental health.

Author bio
Glenn Lombardi is president of Officite, LLC, the number one provider of websites and Internet presence management strategies for the dental community. Officite has built more than 6,000 websites that have generated over 325,000 appointment requests since 2002. To learn more, visit www.officite.com or call (800) 908-2483.